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You are God pretending to be Human | Alan Watts

Aperture | September 8, 2026



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Right now, our world is built on something that could be completely wrong. Individualism. The idea that you end at the tip of your fingers. That you are one person, in a body, separate from everyone and everything around you.

But Alan Watts, one of the strangest philosophers ever, spent his life proving that nothing could be further from the truth. He argued that everything; you, me, animals, plants, even rocks, are all a single being, wearing different masks.

00:00 The Most Important Idea of Our Generation
00:57 You are God pretending to be Human
03:55 The Great Taboo: Who You Really Are
05:51 God Playing Hide-and-Seek
07:00 Pantheism & Hinduism
08:48 Breaking Down Boundaries: Language & DNA
11:05 Quantum Physics & Relational Reality
15:26 The Ant Analogy: Organism and Environment
17:21 The Intelligent Universe & Skin as a Bridge
20:11 The Childhood Double Bind
22:36 Differentiation vs. Separation
24:00 The Hostility Machine: Society’s Enemies
25:31 The Trap of Ego and Moralizing
27:11 Playing the Game with Awareness
28:55 Absurdism & The New Spirit of Living

Aperture explores the ideas shaping how we think — philosophy, psychology,
and the hidden forces behind human behavior. New perspectives, every week.

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#alanwatts #philosophy #psychology #dualism #individualism #existentialism #reality #illusion #humanity #humannature

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Comments

This post currently has 46 comments.

  1. @davidkalombomasanka7538

    September 8, 2026 at 7:04 pm

    Pretending is not the right word cos it means u know what you're doing and others don't or know

    It's more than that cos you are God and you're not crazy but you don't know that you are God and others don't know that they are the same God so there's no word for it atm. But

    It's probably best to use there's only 1 SOURCE which everything came from😅

  2. @LSD209

    September 8, 2026 at 7:04 pm

    @8:12 I wouldn’t say it’s a game of Hide & Seek…. It’s more like playing a r.p. game of existence as all character types. I can imagine that being God would get quite boring without imagining.

  3. @LSD209

    September 8, 2026 at 7:04 pm

    At 18 years old, while doing time in 1999, I had come to this very conclusion as I was reading the Bible. It was the part that states something to the effect of God being within each of us.

  4. @MrGrace123

    September 8, 2026 at 7:04 pm

    'They ask you about the soul: tell them the soul is a command ("be") from the Lord, and you haven't been given knowledge except a little.' – Qur'an
    It's nice to see you dabble in these mysteries, keep growing, and I hope you do realize that these are nice milestones of the soul to see one's own beauty and divine grace, but at the end , it all goes back to serving the Lord Almighty, NOT THE EGO OR THE SELF. Although the soul is a wonderful thing but after all it is still the servant not the served.

  5. @iamsodonebro

    September 8, 2026 at 7:04 pm

    Eastern Philosophy has been preaching this thousands of years before the bible, while the west got busy developing colonizing weapons, the east had been developing to figure out reality and the self and the cosmos

  6. @agentsmidt3209

    September 8, 2026 at 7:04 pm

    Guys Alan Watts merely adopted gnostic teachings and writings, whom also adopted ancient Egyptian and Mesopotanian cosmonogy. It is like literally all that freud, Watts, Yung, and all the philosophers from the 1st century regugitated afomentioned civilizations.

  7. @slater3286

    September 8, 2026 at 7:04 pm

    25 years ago is when this hit me during a "spiritual awakening" when I was desperate and willing to to anything, die even, honestly, to stop harming myself and anyone around me. I acknowledged there had to be a force in the universe more powerful than I was, and I asked it for it to make my choices for me so I didnt have to anymore. This concept was revealed to me. I used to be catholic until that day. Since then I have been told while being loaded onto a helicopter that I might not make it to the hospital, if I needed to make a call here is there phone…… when I faded I to darkness on the flight there, I was filled with gratitude, not fear, for how lucky I was to have been a part of this incredible experience we call life, the good, the bad and the indifferent. I still feel the same way again another decade later. Panenthism is what it is called. We are all the same. 5:51

  8. @fraser-_-6671

    September 8, 2026 at 7:04 pm

    This whole theory pisses me off bcs all it means that we are god trolling ourselves. Bcs what do you mean its like a game?? People are suffering terribly on a daily basis. Animals are suffering on a daily basis. Why would we troll ourselves like this?

  9. @jakejackson2989

    September 8, 2026 at 7:04 pm

    Love the channel, but I think you missed the heart of Alan Watts here.
    You covered the ideas well. What you didn’t capture is the beauty of them, and the beauty is the whole point. It’s what actually changes how people think, and it’s the rarest thing about him.
    Watts wasn’t really making claims in the scientific sense. He was putting words to the feelings we all have about the universe and can’t explain, the same territory Carl Jung was circling with synchronicity. And Nobody has ever had a better vocabulary for that.

  10. @philosoraptor777

    September 8, 2026 at 7:04 pm

    Watts was close. We are no closer (or further) to being parts of God than fish are parts of the ocean.
    The main thing that keeps us individuated, incorporated, is unshareable physical pain. As long as you can stub your toe without everyone saying "ouch" you feel like an individual. This is the body trap, and unless you are some kind of monk, you can't escape it.

  11. @eddiem1494

    September 8, 2026 at 7:04 pm

    We are the thoughts of God made real. God, being infinite, contains every possibility, the beautiful and the horrific, and creation is those possibilities becoming experience. But we are not God in totality, we are perspectives within God gifted with choice. Our thoughts don’t have to become worlds. So there is no sin in discovering darkness within the mind. Our responsibility is what we choose to make real. God creates possibility, we choose which possibilities we embody. Choose the good.

  12. @Terreurhaas

    September 8, 2026 at 7:04 pm

    The Holy Spirit is inside every living and non-living thing that you can imagine. He spoke it into existence. God reaches out to Himself. Such is life. It is your job, dear reader, to reach back. God loves you. Love yourself like God loves you. Love your neighbour, like God loves you. If you believe that you are unworthy, look inwards. If you believe that you are worthy, spread outwards. God bless you, dear reader. I love you.

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