In Watts’ presentation, the ego or sense of separateness is a constructed, limited identity, whereas the “true self” is the underlying reality that is not confined by such boundaries. The ego is the familiar “skin‑encapsulated” sense of being a discrete person, defined by name, role, personal history, and the social and psychological profile built from memories and conditioning. It is a localized perspective that carves the world into “me” and “not‑me,” “inside” and “outside,” and then struggles to defend that fragile division. This egoic identity is a practical convention, useful for communication and everyday survival, yet it remains a narrow and artificial construct. When treated as ultimate, it generates anxiety, effort, and the persistent fear of loss and death, because it experiences itself as cut off from the larger field of life.

By contrast, the “true self” for Watts is not the personality at all, but the deeper identity that is continuous with the whole universe. It is the fundamental reality or “real you,” the unified field of existence that manifests as all beings rather than one isolated subject peering out at an external world. This true self is identical with the total field of organism‑and‑environment, the underlying consciousness that has no fixed boundary at the skin and is not confined by birth and death. It may be spoken of in the language of Self, God, Brahman, or Tao, yet it is not something that can be grasped as an object, because it is that which is always already doing the grasping. Recognizing this distinction does not abolish the ego’s practical function, but it reveals that the sense of being a separate, threatened entity is an illusion overlaying an undivided wholeness.