Alan Watts describes the “taboo” as a deep, culturally imposed prohibition against recognizing one’s true identity as inseparable from the total process of the universe. Rather than being a neutral misunderstanding, it functions as a kind of unspoken rule that one must experience oneself as a separate, “skin‑encapsulated” ego confronting an external world. Social institutions, language, and religious ideas all tend to reinforce this sense of separation, treating the suggestion of a deeper unity as heretical, fanciful, or merely poetic. The result is a pervasive resistance to acknowledging that what is usually called the “self” is not an isolated subject, but an expression of a more fundamental reality.

This taboo operates through social and psychological conditioning from early life, training individuals to identify exclusively with a narrow ego-image. The ego is taken as the whole of who one is, while the underlying interconnectedness with other beings and with nature is obscured. Western religious and cultural patterns especially sharpen the division between God and the individual, subject and object, self and world, thereby concealing the possibility that the individual is a manifestation of the same reality that is called divine. The fear that such recognition might undermine moral order, personal responsibility, or cherished uniqueness further strengthens the reluctance to explore this dimension of self-knowledge.

Watts portrays this resistance as so ingrained that it becomes a kind of “conspiracy of silence,” not necessarily through explicit denial, but through never allowing the insight of unity to be taken seriously. To suggest that the true “Self” is identical with the fundamental reality of the universe is often dismissed as mystical excess or psychological aberration. Yet, for Watts, breaking this taboo does not erase individuality; rather, it reveals individuality as a particular focal expression of the larger cosmic process. The taboo, then, is the collective and internalized refusal to see that the personal self is a limited construct, and that one’s deeper identity is continuous with the very activity of the universe itself.