Alan Watts’s writing emerged from a profound postwar spiritual crisis. The horrors of global conflict, followed by the ongoing threat of nuclear annihilation, left many questioning the moral authority of traditional institutions and the sufficiency of Western materialism. This atmosphere of disillusionment and existential anxiety created a readiness to explore alternatives that promised deeper meaning and inner peace. Watts’s emphasis on interconnectedness and his critique of the isolated, “skin-encapsulated” ego can be read as a response to this sense of alienation, offering a vision of reality that transcended both political divisions and rigid religious dogma.

At the same time, the cultural climate of conformity and consumer prosperity fostered its own kind of spiritual hunger. Suburban norms, careerism, and the ideal of endless productivity produced a backlash among those who longed for authenticity and direct spiritual experience. The Beat Generation and the early counterculture, with their rejection of mainstream values and fascination with Zen, spontaneity, and nonconformity, formed a receptive audience for Watts’s relaxed, conversational style. His celebration of play, suspicion of moral rigidity, and exploration of ego-transcendence resonated with readers who felt that Western society possessed immense technological power but lacked wisdom.

Watts’s work was also shaped by intellectual currents that had already turned Western attention inward. Psychoanalysis and humanistic psychology had popularized exploration of the unconscious, self-actualization, and questions of identity, preparing the ground for a more nuanced discussion of ego, self, and awareness. Existentialist concerns about meaning, freedom, and authenticity further intensified interest in the nature of the self. Into this landscape, Watts introduced Vedānta and Mahāyāna Buddhist insights, translating nondual ideas into terms that spoke directly to contemporary anxieties about neurosis, personal authenticity, and the search for a more expansive consciousness.

Crucially, this period saw unprecedented access to Asian philosophies and religions. Translations of Buddhist and Taoist texts, the influence of figures such as D. T. Suzuki, and the growth of academic Eastern Studies helped dismantle the view of Eastern traditions as mere curiosities. Against the backdrop of a Cold War world divided into “East” and “West,” there was both political tension and cultural fascination with “Eastern wisdom.” Watts, trained in Christian theology yet deeply engaged with Hindu and Buddhist sources, stood at this crossroads and served as a bridge, offering a nonsectarian synthesis that suggested Western rationality and Eastern insight could complement rather than oppose one another.

The emergence of new spiritual and psychological experiments further shaped the reception of his ideas. The human potential movement, the spread of meditation and yoga, and the exploration of altered states of consciousness created a climate in which notions of ego-dissolution and “cosmic consciousness” did not seem purely abstract. Psychedelic exploration, along with early research into substances such as LSD and psilocybin, led many to seek frameworks for understanding radical shifts in perception. Watts’s writings provided such a framework, encouraging direct experience over dogma and articulating a vision of the self as fundamentally continuous with the universe, rather than a lonely subject adrift in a hostile world.