Alan Watts’ vision in *The Book (On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are)* rests most deeply on a nondual reading of Hindu and Buddhist sources. From Hinduism, especially Advaita Vedānta, he draws the insight that the individual self (ātman) is not ultimately separate from the ground of reality (Brahman). This is closely related to the Upaniṣadic affirmation “tat tvam asi” (“that thou art”), which he uses to suggest that one’s most intimate sense of being is continuous with the life of the cosmos. The concepts of māyā and līlā further shape this view: ordinary perception of a world of isolated selves is treated as a kind of illusion, and the unfolding of reality is seen as a divine play rather than a grim test. In this way, the apparent seriousness of the ego’s struggles is relativized within a larger, more playful cosmic context.

From Buddhism, Watts is especially indebted to the doctrines of anattā (or anatman) and śūnyatā, together with the principle of dependent origination. The ego is portrayed as a construct without permanent substance, and all phenomena are understood as arising only in mutual dependence, never in isolation. This sense of radical interdependence undermines the idea of a self standing over against a separate world, and instead presents each person as a relational pattern within a larger field of processes. The Buddhist teaching on emptiness, as he employs it, does not imply a nihilistic void but rather the absence of any fixed, independent essence in things, including the self.

Zen Buddhism provides the stylistic and methodological key to how these ideas are communicated. Zen’s emphasis on direct, nonconceptual insight, on “direct pointing” to one’s true nature, and on the limits of intellectual analysis informs his way of speaking about awakening. Rather than proposing a new belief system, he leans on Zen’s insistence that realization is a shift in perception, a sudden recognition of what has always been the case. In this synthesis, the Advaitic affirmation of identity with ultimate reality and the Buddhist deconstruction of the ego converge: the socially defined, isolated self is exposed as illusory, and what remains is an intimate participation in the total process of reality itself.