Alan Watts searchable speech v2.0

i realize that every professional group 00:00:01

has a special concern uh when they attend such a seminar as 00:00:10

this 00:00:14

with the practical application to their 00:00:17

specific 00:00:18

jobs of the ideas that are being 00:00:21

discussed 00:00:21

and uh the question has been put to me very concretely 00:00:27

that if i'm discussing the human game 00:00:34

and uh 00:00:34

promulgating some sort of philosophy of life 00:00:41

as play 00:00:45

how will you get this across to your 00:00:47

clients 00:00:48

your students your patients etc 00:00:51

however you name them 00:00:51

and i want to assure you that this is the one subject on earth that you should 00:00:58

not be concerned with 00:01:00

now i very often talk i talk to all sorts of groups 00:01:09

and in these groups there are invariably 00:01:13

parents 00:01:15

and they hear about the sort of point of 00:01:16

view and they want to know how to apply 00:01:18

it to their children 00:01:20

as if children were certain things that 00:01:22

you apply something to 00:01:25

children are very canny and the moment 00:01:27

you start applying a method to them 00:01:29

they're aware that something's afoot 00:01:29

and the only way to do anything at all with children 00:01:35

is to be natural to be you 00:01:40

but there's no way of doing that because 00:01:42

the moment you know you're being natural 00:01:43

you're not 00:01:43

uh if you however are a person fascinated with something 00:01:50

deeply interested in anything at all it 00:01:55

doesn't matter what the devil it is 00:01:58

a child is uh intrigued 00:01:58

catches the infection of it from you by osmosis 00:02:06

and so in exactly the same way 00:02:11

if you are 00:02:12

deeply absorbed in life you can commit psychotherapy 00:02:21

without any technique at all 00:02:22

only uh there are rituals which bring you into contact 00:02:32

with people you know they have to make 00:02:35

an appointment and they have a problem 00:02:37

and they want to discuss it with you 00:02:40

uh and so that has to be tolerated 00:02:40

but beyond that what they want to re they really want to meet is a person 00:02:49

whose own life 00:02:55

is really satisfactory to him or her 00:02:58

rather than a person who is a 00:02:59

professional in setting other people's 00:03:02

lives right 00:03:04

there's no way of doing that 00:03:04

and so the thing that i i want to talk to you very seriously about 00:03:13

very sincerely 00:03:19

about certain things that seem to me 00:03:19

important in the life of anybody in your position and certain things that 00:03:27

are ordinarily quite out of the bounds 00:03:33

of psychiatrists and psychologists 00:03:37

discussions 00:03:37

speaking quite frankly the thing that oppresses 00:03:45

me in my constant contact with 00:03:48

psychotherapeutic 00:03:50

circles 00:03:50

is the um 00:03:58

amazing superficiality of it all 00:04:04

you know let's be psychologists and let's not venture 00:04:13

any deeper than that 00:04:14

let's um be quite clear that we are working with something empirical 00:04:19

something matter of fact and let's not 00:04:26

get anything 00:04:28

really spooky mixed up with this 00:04:28

because after all we are as i explained earlier we are still under the 00:04:37

influence of the 19th century mythology 00:04:43

of the world 00:04:43

and this has become a tremendously important thing 00:04:49

for all those branches of the academic profession 00:04:55

that want to be scientific and aren't [Applause] 00:05:02

now science is something as a discipline 00:05:06

possible 00:05:07

only in very very special situations 00:05:07

the nature of science is the accurate description first of all 00:05:17

and accurate description is possible only when the subject matter to be 00:05:25

described 00:05:29

is very carefully limited and restricted 00:05:32

in other words in situations where all 00:05:35

the important factors are measurable 00:05:38

and in order say to have a 00:05:42

test tube containing certain chemicals 00:05:42

which need to be measured with extreme accuracy 00:05:50

you've got to isolate this test tube 00:05:54

from the external world 00:05:57

if the mixture is in in any way unstable 00:06:00

a passing truck might damage things 00:06:03

a subtle alteration of temperature and 00:06:06

the sun comes out 00:06:07

might upset something and so more and 00:06:10

more you have to isolate your specimen 00:06:14

in an influence-proofed room 00:06:17

and that's a very expensive and a very 00:06:19

difficult thing to construct 00:06:21

but once you've done it when you've got 00:06:24

your or all the variables in the 00:06:25

situation 00:06:27

are known and measurable you can have 00:06:29

some approximation to a truly scientific 00:06:32

experiment 00:06:34

to pretend to be able to do this in 00:06:36

human relations is absurd 00:06:36

your variables are infinite you've no real idea what they are but that 00:06:44

is not to say in 00:06:51

any sense whatsoever that therapy cannot 00:06:53

be performed 00:06:56

and that you as psychologists consulting 00:06:59

schools cannot do your jobs 00:07:02

i only ask of you don't sail on the 00:07:05

false pretenses 00:07:08

don't 00:07:08

assume the mask of science 00:07:16

don't aspire to the status 00:07:23

of being scientists in the sense that a 00:07:25

physicist 00:07:26

or a chemist or a mathematician can be 00:07:29

scientists 00:07:31

with their rigorous precision and their 00:07:33

elimination of variables 00:07:36

you if you are successful must be 00:07:38

artists 00:07:38

and an artist is a person who performs certain things skillfully but doesn't 00:07:44

really know how he does it 00:07:47

you learn art by methods that you don't know how you learn 00:07:54

you can't describe because your brain 00:08:01

is capable of absorbing 00:08:05

all kinds of information that is much 00:08:08

too subtle to be translated into words 00:08:13

you see let's take we're doing an 00:08:15

enormous in the academic world today 00:08:17

we're doing enormous number of studies 00:08:19

on creativity 00:08:19

how do we get creative people couldn't we somehow pin this down 00:08:25

and try and analyze and specify the 00:08:30

factors which lead to creativity 00:08:33

in engineering in inventive work 00:08:36

in psychology anything you want well 00:08:39

it's fun doing that 00:08:41

it's all right to analyze creativity and 00:08:43

see if you can make any sense of it but 00:08:46

you won't 00:08:46

but that doesn't deny the fact that creativity exists and can indeed be 00:08:52

stimulated 00:08:55

creative people can stimulate creativity in others 00:09:01

by osmosis by exposure 00:09:09

and so as a form of creativity also the 00:09:12

power of psychotherapy 00:09:14

can be learned provided you do not 00:09:18

pretend it is a science 00:09:20

and that there is a specific method for 00:09:21

learning it 00:09:23

it can be learned provided you expose 00:09:26

yourself to a therapeutic person 00:09:26

you don't know do you how you digest vitamins 00:09:34

you don't when you take these pills 00:09:40

have to know the precise steps by which 00:09:42

they're turned into your 00:09:44

life images your body knows how to do it 00:09:48

but that's not and were a process 00:09:51

analyzable into words and figures 00:09:51

so in exactly the same way through certain kinds of human contact 00:09:57

with people who have the gift of therapy 00:10:03

you can absorb 00:10:05

their wisdom like you absorb the virtues 00:10:09

and vitamins 00:10:09

but don't be anxious about it and try to define the whole thing 00:10:14

i remember when i was a little boy i 00:10:19

once thought the idea that i would write 00:10:20

a book 00:10:22

which would pass down all knowledge 00:10:25

to a subsequent civilization that would 00:10:28

know nothing about us 00:10:30

and the first thing i had to do was to 00:10:32

write down how the letters of our 00:10:34

alphabet were pronounced 00:10:34

figure that one out 00:10:38

i made a way of saying how a was pronounced 00:10:45

that i had to use a to show how a was 00:10:49

pronounced 00:10:49

and that is the sim that is an epitome of the problem 00:10:56

that we have 00:11:01

you can't say in words 00:11:05

how words are used 00:11:08

and so do you know a game called vish 00:11:13

what you do is everybody has a standard 00:11:15

web uh college 00:11:16

dictionary webster's college dictionary 00:11:19

you sit around the table 00:11:21

and then there's a hat and you pull out 00:11:23

somebody pulls out a word 00:11:25

and everybody looks the word up then 00:11:28

they write down on a pad 00:11:30

the key words in the definition of that 00:11:32

word 00:11:33

and then they start looking them up 00:11:36

and the first person who gets back to 00:11:38

the original word calls out vish 00:11:42

short for vicious circle and he wins the 00:11:45

round 00:11:46

and the referee there's always a referee 00:11:49

he decides 00:11:50

whether you worked fairly whether you 00:11:53

didn't take an illegitimate shortcut 00:11:56

you know like looking up and or 00:11:57

something like that in the definition 00:12:00

you have to look up a key word 00:12:03

because so long as a dictionary doesn't 00:12:06

include pictures 00:12:08

all it does is define words in terms of 00:12:11

words 00:12:12

it never makes the bridge between words 00:12:14

and the physical universe 00:12:16

which kozibski so delightfully called 00:12:18

the unspeakable world 00:12:18

so fascinating unspeakable also means disreputable 00:12:26

the world that is not academically respectable do you know 00:12:32

that in the recent controversy at 00:12:36

harvard 00:12:38

about the experiments with psychedelic 00:12:39

drugs 00:12:42

some member of the department of social 00:12:43

relations actually said 00:12:46

nothing is act no knowledge is 00:12:48

academically respectable knowledge 00:12:50

unless it can be expressed in words 00:12:53

it completely throws out the football 00:12:55

team 00:12:55

you know did you ever hear of the football team doing a thesis on 00:13:01

how to play football 00:13:07

obviously not because that's something 00:13:10

that has to work 00:13:10

notice too in the academic world that all subjects which are 00:13:17

are started in terms of their history 00:13:19

when you start studying mathematics you do not study the history of mathematics 00:13:25

as the 00:13:29

initial course but history of philosophy 00:13:32

history of religions is the start out 00:13:34

course 00:13:35

in these topics medicine you don't start 00:13:38

studying the history of medicine until 00:13:40

you're in graduate school 00:13:40

history of science is a graduate school history of psychology whenever you think 00:13:47

a subject is practical 00:13:52

you go right into doing it rather than 00:13:57

being historical about it 00:13:57

but the point simply is that you cannot pretend to be scientific and to adopt 00:14:04

the 00:14:08

gestures and attitudes and postures of 00:14:11

scientists 00:14:12

about things that are arts 00:14:16

and that require a certain kind of 00:14:20

personal 00:14:20

magic profundity or whatever to carry them off 00:14:27

and so i would say that the thing that 00:14:33

affects me 00:14:34

and depresses me about the whole world 00:14:37

of psychiatry 00:14:38

psychology and psychotherapy is a 00:14:41

certain extraordinary 00:14:43

lack of depth and almost bending over 00:14:47

backwards not to encounter anything 00:14:49

profound 00:14:50

[Applause] 00:14:53

because that would expose us to the 00:14:55

charge of mysticism 00:14:57

or some other bug bear 00:15:00

[Applause] 00:15:01

but this is quite fatal 00:15:05

because what your patients are concerned 00:15:07

with is profound things 00:15:12

have you ever looked into the literature 00:15:15

on the relation 00:15:16

between psychotherapy and death 00:15:19

[Applause] 00:15:23

you will find a lot of blank pages 00:15:26

there's hardly anything about it 00:15:26

there are i know of two books and i don't know how many articles i'm 00:15:37

not in the habit of reading articles 00:15:40

very much but uh 00:15:41

but so far as books are concerned i know 00:15:44

about two books 00:15:46

outside of the work of freud where he 00:15:48

discusses 00:15:50

uh death wishes and so on and outside 00:15:52

the work of jung who 00:15:55

has said that he regards the cycle of 00:15:58

his kind of psychotherapy 00:16:00

in particular as a task for the second 00:16:02

half of life in which a person prepares 00:16:04

for death 00:16:04

but by and large uh ordinary psych psychotherapeutic work ignores the 00:16:10

subject 00:16:12

uh likewise the whole orientation of medicine to death 00:16:18

is one where death is a misfortune it's 00:16:25

not allowed to happen 00:16:25

doctors don't prepare people to die when somebody is into a 00:16:31

state of terminal cancer every all their 00:16:35

friends come around and say 00:16:36

cheer up oh boy you'll be all right in 00:16:38

another two weeks and we'll be back and 00:16:40

having a beer again or we'll go out 00:16:42

the country and we'll be back at work 00:16:44

love to see you in the office once again 00:16:45

this person knows jolly well 00:16:47

they're going to disappear within a 00:16:48

couple of days 00:16:48

and knows this and feels the strange mockery of his friends 00:16:55

unwillingness to accept 00:17:00

this therefore a lack of genuine human 00:17:03

relationship 00:17:03

and so the physician is embarrassed in a way that maybe a priest is not 00:17:12

embarrassed when somebody says to him 00:17:16

listen 00:17:16

i am sick of being ill i want to die 00:17:19

i want to stop all this stuff being fed 00:17:22

into my veins 00:17:24

and i i'm i want to be through 00:17:24

and the doctor in his role can't say of course that's perfectly 00:17:32

understandable 00:17:33

and in so far as the psychotherapist takes his cue 00:17:40

from medical role-playing 00:17:45

he can't say to a person all right you 00:17:47

should die 00:17:49

i think it's a good thing it's a a very 00:17:52

wise man once said 00:17:54

this was under kumaraswamy i would 00:17:57

rather die 10 years too early than ten 00:17:59

minutes too late 00:17:59

there's a time to die and dying should be one of the great 00:18:05

events of life like 00:18:09

birth and marriage graduation anything 00:18:13

like that 00:18:14

no uh or all cultures have had the 00:18:16

rights of passage 00:18:18

but in our culture 00:18:18

death is a very strongly repressed event we call it passing away 00:18:25

and our morticians who call themselves 00:18:31

that instead of undertakers 00:18:34

uh make up bodies 00:18:37

in the mockery of a beauty sleep and 00:18:40

they have a kind of 00:18:42

oily unctuous avuncular approach 00:18:46

which is extremely beastly 00:18:46

and they make a huge racket out of the whole thing 00:18:53

you know the the the fantasies about 00:18:59

forest lawn 00:19:01

which is the epitome of all this kind of 00:19:04

thing henry miller's one 00:19:05

i was quoting to someone at dinner where 00:19:09

he says 00:19:09

follow a dozen vitamins and throw 00:19:11

anything down the hatch 00:19:12

if that doesn't work see a surgeon if 00:19:15

that doesn't work get a hollywood 00:19:16

funeral 00:19:17

they're the duckiest cutest craziest 00:19:21

funerals in the world 00:19:22

you can have your beloved embalmed 00:19:25

and sitting on a couch reading something 00:19:27

edifying like the bhagavad gita and 00:19:29

smoking a cigarette 00:19:31

cigarette guaranteed not to rot away 00:19:33

before the lips and the buttocks 00:19:36

oh death where is thy sting o grave 00:19:38

where is thy victory 00:19:38

and this you see because the healing professions today 00:19:53

are working on the basis the metaphysical basis 00:20:05

of that 19th century scientific 00:20:09

mythology 00:20:09

that this world is nothing but a mechanism 00:20:15

and that when you're dead you're dead as 00:20:22

people love to say and lick their 00:20:23

tongues rounded 00:20:26

as if that really said anything at all 00:20:26

and so what we are reduced to is on the matters on which we are fundamentally 00:20:34

embarrassed we carefully keep silence 00:20:38

we have no answers about that we'd 00:20:40

rather not talk about it but it's a 00:20:41

thing 00:20:42

people are fundamentally fascinated with 00:20:45

[Applause] 00:20:47

now you can rationalize all you want and 00:20:50

say that questions about the ultimate 00:20:51

meaning of the universe have no meaning 00:20:53

you can be as logical positivist as you 00:20:55

please 00:20:56

but that will never quash the questions 00:21:02

and a person who doesn't somehow 00:21:02

have a 00:21:07

a sense of relationship with whatever it is that's eternal 00:21:20

[Applause] 00:21:26

will rattle rather than speak 00:21:26

and so i would say to you talking frankly here tonight 00:21:37

is the most important thing for any kind 00:21:41

of psychologist or therapist 00:21:44

is not 00:21:44

religion in the old sense of this word because 00:21:51

religion is something in our world partisan 00:21:58

are you a catholic or a baptist a 00:22:03

methodist or an episcopalian 00:22:03

you deal there you see in those in in our sectarian religion 00:22:12

with things that are beliefs 00:22:17

and therefore not knowledge these are expressions of opinions and 00:22:27

hopes 00:22:32

that they're not 00:22:32

these these religions have no power because they have no knowledge they have 00:22:38

no experience 00:22:42

in fact they hate experience 00:22:46

if you try and discuss as i did when i 00:22:49

was a minister in the anglican church 00:22:51

problems of mystical experience most 00:22:53

clergy will say you're a nut 00:22:53

because they will say that's all subjective 00:22:59

and what matters is do you adhere to a 00:23:05

certain 00:23:05

standard of traditional doctrine 00:23:09

or behavior that's objective 00:23:13

that's something we have out there see 00:23:16

when it comes to experience actually 00:23:18

knowing something in your bones they're 00:23:20

scared out of 00:23:22

[Applause] 00:23:25

and i said this afternoon the same thing 00:23:27

is true in psychiatrists 00:23:28

the psychiatrist is terrified to experience something 00:23:33

outside the banalities of ordinary 00:23:38

everyday consciousness 00:23:38

and as i said he clings to that with a peculiar pattern 00:23:43

you know i remember once i was 00:23:48

undergoing an lsd experience and the 00:23:50

psychiatrist in attendance he wasn't a 00:23:52

bad fellow at all 00:23:54

i mean he was a very imaginative man but 00:23:56

he said uh 00:23:57

what a five and seven what a nine and 00:24:00

three 00:24:01

you know could i still negotiate these 00:24:03

mathematical trivialities 00:24:03

and these are tests of sanity 00:24:07

now i i don't want to deride that completely because 00:24:17

anybody who explores into worlds 00:24:24

beyond the everyday world should be able 00:24:28

ideally to come back with an account of 00:24:30

what he's seen 00:24:32

i believe very much in being a bridge 00:24:35

between worlds 00:24:36

and being able to put into intelligible 00:24:39

and rational language 00:24:42

things that come from experiences beyond 00:24:44

the intelligible and rational 00:24:46

that's the task of a poet a poet is 00:24:48

supposed to be a person 00:24:50

who says what can't be said 00:24:50

at least he's always approximating to that 00:24:55

in a way nothing can be described 00:24:58

except to those who already know what it is you know what i mean by water because 00:25:05

you've tasted water and seen it 00:25:11

if you had never seen water you wouldn't 00:25:13

know what i meant by the word 00:25:13

on the other hand what will i do with a person who's congenitally blind 00:25:19

and he's never seen light and doesn't 00:25:24

know what color is 00:25:25

i'm going to make a hell of an attempt 00:25:27

to describe it to him 00:25:30

i'm going to exercise my all my wits and 00:25:32

say look 00:25:35

there is something like what you 00:25:38

experience as different degrees of 00:25:40

temperature 00:25:42

you know what heart is you know there 00:25:44

are many degrees of 00:25:45

from hot to cold now there's something 00:25:48

else like that 00:25:50

we talk about hot and cold colors reds 00:25:53

and blues 00:25:55

there are different ends of the spectrum 00:25:58

which is 00:25:59

like you experience between hot and cold 00:26:03

or between rough and smooth 00:26:03

but this thing also is like what you hear in sound you hear high and 00:26:11

low notes 00:26:14

and you can see a whole range of 00:26:16

different tones between them 00:26:19

now there's something else 00:26:19

in which these things happen 00:26:23

and it's a sense you don't have and so i can't tell you directly 00:26:30

but it's like all that and i can really 00:26:35

work on it 00:26:36

give him an idea of something else he 00:26:38

won't get it directly from my problem 00:26:38

but he will 00:26:42

through the conviction with which i'm speaking and through the care with which 00:26:46

i'm 00:26:49

trying to outline this to know that 00:26:51

there is another dimension beyond his 00:26:53

imagination 00:26:53

and so in just the same way there are dimensions beyond 00:26:59

the imagination that our ordinary 00:27:05

academic education gives us 00:27:05

it would be all right if we were as definitively 00:27:12

excluded from them as people who are 00:27:15

congenitally blind are excluded from 00:27:18

color and light 00:27:19

but we're not we keep slipping in and 00:27:22

out of them 00:27:24

sometimes in a way that is beneficent 00:27:28

sometimes in a way that is deeply 00:27:30

troubling 00:27:30

when a person who was brought up in arkansas 00:27:35

and has no other religion than the fundamentalist interpretation of the 00:27:40

king james bible 00:27:44

slips accidentally to a mystical 00:27:46

experience 00:27:48

there is no other way to describe what 00:27:50

is happening 00:27:51

than to say that he is jesus christ 00:27:51

or god 00:27:56

this is blasphemous in his community [Applause] 00:28:03

but to give him the benefit of the doubt 00:28:06

they say he's crazy 00:28:06

and whenever somebody says such a thing we challenge them in our culture with 00:28:15

technical questions 00:28:19

if you are god command that this glass 00:28:22

be made into a rabbit 00:28:25

how did you create the universe in six 00:28:28

days there was once a poor woman 00:28:31

in an asylum was asked this question and 00:28:34

she replied 00:28:35

i never talk shop 00:28:35

but there it is you see these states do occur 00:28:53

and psychology and psychiatry 00:29:03

can do nothing with them except 00:29:07

call them aberrations 00:29:12

unless psychiatrists and psychologists 00:29:14

have themselves 00:29:16

explore these experiences 00:29:16

because you have to deal with them 00:29:30

and because what is always being asked of you 00:29:37

[Applause] 00:29:41

you see people go to you today whereas before they went to clergymen 00:29:53

the clergyman is a pretty hopeless case today 00:30:02

because people feel that if they go to 00:30:05

him with a real problem all they'll get 00:30:07

is platitudes 00:30:07

especially if it's a moral problem of any kind he'll be a little 00:30:11

he'll be understanding they know that 00:30:15

because he's been to a modern 00:30:16

theological school without courses 00:30:18

in pastoral psychology and counselling 00:30:21

but they know fundamentally that a 00:30:22

clergyman is out to get you 00:30:25

he wants to enroll you in a community in 00:30:27

a church 00:30:28

and so that you'll be a regular 00:30:29

contributor they have a little bit more 00:30:32

confidence in a doctor or somebody 00:30:34

associated with doctor 00:30:36

because they know a doctor wants to get 00:30:38

rid of his patients 00:30:38

a doctor doesn't want to get you hooked on medicine 00:30:43

if he's an honest doctor but a clergyman 00:30:47

wants to get you hooked on the religion 00:30:50

so you people who stand midway 00:30:55

culturally are looked to because you 00:30:59

have the aura of science 00:31:02

therefore people say well that's rather 00:31:04

more objective that's a little safer 00:31:06

i feel i can risk this person because 00:31:09

he's not out to 00:31:11

get me into some hocus pocus see 00:31:11

so i'm afraid of that clergyman because eventually however understanding 00:31:17

he is he's going to wag his finger at me 00:31:22

and say 00:31:23

naughty naughty naughty you mustn't do 00:31:24

that especially 00:31:26

see to in effect today our churches 00:31:30

are nothing but sexual regulation 00:31:32

societies 00:31:32

that's all they're interested in they get a little bit 00:31:39

riled up about race relations 00:31:40

but fundamentally what can you get kicked out of a church for 00:31:46

that's the test especially if you're a minister 00:31:53

you could live openly in envy hatred 00:31:59

malice 00:32:00

and all uncharitableness hardness of 00:32:02

heart and contempt of god's word and 00:32:04

commandment 00:32:04

and be a bishop 00:32:08

but the moment you sleep with your secretary 00:32:13

and furthermore continue to do so you're 00:32:17

out 00:32:18

out if you're a homosexual it's even 00:32:21

worse 00:32:21

that's the test that's what it's all about 00:32:28

let's reserve questions to a little later and then we can take them all 00:32:33

together 00:32:35

but that but over and over again this is 00:32:37

the thing that matters 00:32:40

so people who for various reasons 00:32:44

uh are involved in a form of 00:32:48

love or sexual relationship which is by 00:32:50

these standards irregular 00:32:52

they know that when finally they get 00:32:54

down to it with the minister he's going 00:32:56

to say naughty naughty naughty 00:32:58

and uh so it goes so they don't go to 00:33:02

him 00:33:02

because he stands this pure squaren however softly he puts it over the soft 00:33:07

cell 00:33:12

but they know with the psychotherapist 00:33:13

they're going to get 00:33:15

some less judging and more understanding 00:33:18

attitude 00:33:20

but they will pursue the psychotherapist 00:33:25

to a certain extent 00:33:27

and find that beyond a certain point he 00:33:29

collapses 00:33:31

because he doesn't know what to do with 00:33:32

death 00:33:34

he has no metaphysical 00:33:37

the priest has too much metaphysics and 00:33:40

he has no 00:33:42

understanding on the level of uh that 00:33:45

the psychotherapist has competence in 00:33:49

so therefore to be truly effective 00:33:53

the psychotherapist needs 00:33:57

a kind of deeper vision and he hasn't 00:34:01

any reason to be afraid of it 00:34:03

and to be feeling that this will injure 00:34:06

his psych 00:34:07

scientific respectability because as 00:34:09

i've given you the clues this morning 00:34:12

you don't need to talk about mysticism 00:34:12

you need to talk about ecological awareness 00:34:20

there is always a language you can 00:34:23

translate this into that will placate 00:34:25

behaviorists 00:34:26

logical positivists and other people 00:34:29

who want to insist fundamentally that 00:34:31

the universe is dull 00:34:35

you see that's what lies behind all 00:34:37

these mythologies 00:34:40

the person who wants to say on the one 00:34:42

hand that the universe is something that 00:34:45

strikes him as profoundly mysterious 00:34:49

we'll talk about the godhead 00:34:53

and the things behind it 00:34:56

personally on the other hand who wants 00:34:57

to say oh well 00:34:59

[Applause] 00:35:01

it's just a thing that's not really very 00:35:04

important 00:35:06

he'll find a language so as to describe 00:35:09

the universe 00:35:11

in a slightly contemptuous way he'll say 00:35:14

it's nothing but 00:35:17

and neither of these people can prove 00:35:20

that what they say is true 00:35:20

they're just two different ways of expressing the kind of person you are 00:35:26

or what role you're playing with respect 00:35:32

to life 00:35:33

see a lot of people want to advertise 00:35:35

the fact that they are sound and 00:35:37

reliable 00:35:38

and nobody can put over any nonsense on 00:35:41

them they're tough-minded 00:35:43

so in the academic world they'll always 00:35:45

play a certain role you can watch it you 00:35:47

know exactly what it is 00:35:48

how they come on other people once say 00:35:51

to those people 00:35:51

you're dry as bones you rattle you know the words but you don't know the music 00:35:57

you see all really all these people 00:36:03

really are differentiated between two 00:36:04

schools of thought 00:36:07

the prickly people and the gui people 00:36:11

and on the side of goo we have the 00:36:14

romanticist 00:36:15

and on the side of prickles the 00:36:17

classicists 00:36:18

in medieval times on the side of gu we 00:36:21

had people who were then called realists 00:36:24

and on the side of prickles the people 00:36:25

were called nominalists 00:36:28

now realists believe that every 00:36:32

man individual person 00:36:35

was an example of an essence called 00:36:38

mankind 00:36:40

the realist said that's a lot of 00:36:42

nonsense there are only particular 00:36:44

people 00:36:45

there is no such essence called mankind 00:36:48

and today uh the logical positivists and 00:36:53

behaviorists 00:36:54

are examples of prickly people 00:36:57

and mystics and uh 00:36:57

idealists in the berkeleyan sense are examples of gooey people 00:37:04

and this is an eternal debate 00:37:08

when you examine any substance closely you find structure 00:37:18

but when your lens gets out of focus 00:37:27

you find substance or goo 00:37:27

because you can't see the details so it was all homogeneous 00:37:34

like homogenized milk 00:37:36

so depending on the level of magnification with which you look at 00:37:41

life 00:37:43

you see prickles or structure and goo 00:37:47

or stuff 00:37:51

and all philosophical debates go along 00:37:53

between these people 00:37:55

whereas the truth of the matter is of 00:37:56

course that life is gooey prickles and 00:37:58

[Applause] 00:38:02

quickly 00:38:04

now don't get 00:38:08

taken in by being too prickly 00:38:12

this is the thing that in our academic 00:38:14

world 00:38:15

today and considering what its fashions 00:38:17

are is the besetting temptation 00:38:18

the to secure oneself as an honest and respectable academician 00:38:26

who is of sound scientific approach 00:38:33

people who ought not to be so prickly 00:38:36

because they're dealing with things in 00:38:37

which there are infinitely many 00:38:39

variables 00:38:40

put on the idea that they know what all 00:38:42

the cripples in this 00:38:43

psychological situation are and we just 00:38:45

don't 00:38:45

you have to get a bit gooey 00:38:50

and don't be ashamed of it 00:38:53

so then uh we have to consider mythology 00:39:02

we've looked at myths now two myths which have been so influential on our 00:39:09

culture and one myth 00:39:12

was an authoritarian paternalistic one that we are under god 00:39:19

we are the subjects of the divine king who acts towards us in the role of a 00:39:28

cosmic grandfather 00:39:30

this was all rather uncomfortable and so i 00:39:38

as i pointed out there's a reactionary 00:39:40

missed 00:39:42

[Applause] 00:39:43

the universe isn't interested in us at 00:39:46

all 00:39:46

it was too interested in us you see with the god the father myth 00:39:52

so the reaction to that is that is not a 00:39:55

bit interested 00:39:58

nature cares nothing for the individual 00:40:00

only for the species you know that story 00:40:03

[Applause] 00:40:06

uh i invite you to consider another myth 00:40:08

and i say myth 00:40:08

which is of course the famous hindu myth 00:40:13

that the universe is a drama 00:40:17

a drama is a it is an image just like an artifact considering the 00:40:33

universe 00:40:36

has something constructed put together 00:40:39

manufactured 00:40:40

that's a myth but the dramatic myth is 00:40:44

different from the constructionist myth 00:40:47

in the dramatic myth there is a very 00:40:50

immediate relationship 00:40:53

between any member of the world that is 00:40:56

to say 00:40:56

a human being 00:40:56

the root and ground what there is because in the dramatic myth 00:41:09

every one of you is 00:41:13

basically connected 00:41:16

with the reality which for untold billions of years 00:41:26

has sparkled in these galaxies and 00:41:32

nebulae 00:41:34

these are not things foreign to you 00:41:34

what you see outside you are apparently outside you 00:41:43

although it looks distant and foreign is most fundamental to you 00:41:50

there was sense in what is now only a 00:41:55

superstition 00:41:55

astrology astrology as a means of predicting 00:42:02

uh what is going to happen to any 00:42:07

individual in his life 00:42:09

is as far as i could make out of almost 00:42:11

no value 00:42:11

but there was one sensible idea behind it 00:42:16

when you cast a person's horoscope 00:42:21

what you did was you drew a map of the 00:42:23

then known universe 00:42:25

as it was at the time this child was 00:42:27

born 00:42:29

and this was supposed to be a map of his 00:42:31

soul 00:42:31

what an ingenious idea it is to say your soul is the whole world 00:42:38

as it focuses upon your moment 00:42:43

now ordinarily when we talk of souls we think of 00:42:52

something plaid in a sheet with holes in 00:42:55

it you know like a halloween ghost 00:42:57

that is a kind of miasmic creature that 00:42:59

inhabits your body and when you die it 00:43:01

leads you like this 00:43:02

leaves you but that's not the soul at 00:43:05

all 00:43:06

the soul is something which contains the 00:43:09

body 00:43:10

the body doesn't contain the soul the 00:43:13

soul 00:43:14

if we put it into modern language 00:43:14

is the entire complex of relationships in whose context this organism exists 00:43:22

so it includes social relationships 00:43:28

communications relationships 00:43:28

dynamic relationships of heat and temperature 00:43:36

relationships with animals with insects 00:43:39

with bacilli 00:43:41

relationships with gravity with cosmic 00:43:43

rays 00:43:45

and uh interstellar balances 00:43:49

all these things as they are focused at 00:43:51

any individual point in the world 00:43:53

constitute the soul 00:43:56

that was the truth in the astrological 00:43:58

diagram 00:43:58

but we are as i said taught to feel this system inside out 00:44:05

to ignore the soul and identify with the body 00:44:14

with the organism it's not that the body 00:44:19

and soul are different 00:44:21

in the cartesian sense it's not that 00:44:24

they're 00:44:25

different substances they're all the 00:44:27

same world 00:44:28

the soul is the physical world in its 00:44:30

entirety 00:44:31

and god only knows what that contains 00:44:33

because 00:44:35

our senses are attuned only to a very 00:44:37

small 00:44:38

spectrum band of the physical world 00:44:42

[Applause] 00:44:44

but there it is 00:44:44

and if you persist in screening out 00:44:52

the knowledge of yourself as all that has been defined 00:45:00

in our system of conventions as other 00:45:04

than you 00:45:04

you're going to be very unhappy 00:45:09

because you're going to feel estranged and this estrangement that we most of us 00:45:18

feel 00:45:22

in our culture is reflected in things 00:45:24

that we do that are very destructive 00:45:26

[Applause] 00:45:31

we constantly hear of 00:45:31

man's conquest of nature and we talk about the conquest of space 00:45:39

and we talk about when we climb great 00:45:44

mountains we speak as if we were 00:45:46

conquering them 00:45:47

why this hostility 00:45:47

look at this rocket these enormous aggressive phallic emblems 00:45:55

being zoomed at the moon what do you 00:45:59

think that means they're going to screw 00:46:01

the moon 00:46:01

poor old venus 00:46:04

well now this is a ridiculous way to explore space 00:46:12

you're never going to get anywhere in a 00:46:17

rocket 00:46:19

it's a it's a crawling thing it's a 00:46:21

horse and buggy 00:46:24

if you want to explore space the right 00:46:26

direction to go is radio astronomy 00:46:30

because that makes the outer space come 00:46:32

to you you don't have to go to it 00:46:34

you're in space here we are floating on 00:46:37

this earth which is way out in space 00:46:39

we're already there all we need to do to 00:46:42

find out what's around us is get more 00:46:43

sensitive 00:46:45

more open develop things that are like 00:46:47

the radio 00:46:48

astronomical things maybe we can find 00:46:51

instruments more sensitive yet 00:46:53

than those and they will bring the 00:46:56

outside to us 00:46:57

instead of going and conquering it 00:46:57

and so in the same way [Applause] 00:47:08

in california where i live everything is 00:47:14

being bulldozed 00:47:14

they go uh to the hills people would love to live in the hills 00:47:20

they take a bulldozer and they flatten 00:47:25

out 00:47:25

whole terraces in the hollywood hills 00:47:27

and elsewhere 00:47:28

make them into track plots where they 00:47:30

can build conventional houses that the 00:47:32

banks will finance 00:47:34

whereas any good architect knows how to 00:47:37

put a house back 00:47:38

on the side of a hill with making no 00:47:40

more alteration in the land than 00:47:41

building a road to get at it 00:47:41

better still on the top of the house a landing for a helicopter 00:47:49

and then those hills aren't disturbed 00:47:56

people who want to live in the hills 00:47:57

presumably want to enjoy the hills they 00:47:59

don't want to destroy them 00:48:01

by living there but that's what they do 00:48:06

so they conquer the hills they bash them 00:48:08

about with bulldozers 00:48:10

and then the rains come and since all 00:48:13

the vegetation has been torn off 00:48:16

the water the soil starts to erode and 00:48:18

eventually the house falls down the hill 00:48:21

serving right but a good architect goes 00:48:25

to a hill and says 00:48:27

good morning i'm delighted to meet you 00:48:31

i would like to live on you and i would 00:48:33

like you to tell me what kind of a house 00:48:35

you would like me to build on 00:48:35

and so he studies the nature of hills and eventually learns 00:48:42

how to live on one without disturbing it 00:48:47

a zen buddhist poem which says of a wise 00:48:49

man 00:48:51

entering the forest he does not disturb 00:48:54

a blade of grass 00:48:56

entering the water he does not make a 00:48:56

ripple he first of all becomes one with the 00:49:02

environment 00:49:05

that is to say in our more precise 00:49:08

scientific language 00:49:10

he studies thoroughly the ecology of the 00:49:13

situation 00:49:14

before he does anything to interfere 00:49:16

with it 00:49:16

we must interfere we can't help interfering 00:49:21

with the world around us because even to 00:49:25

know something is to interfere 00:49:29

even when you shine a light on something 00:49:30

to look at it you alter it 00:49:32

by shining the light on it when you 00:49:34

examine the behavior of an electron 00:49:36

you change its behavior and so you want 00:49:39

to know what does it do when you're not 00:49:40

looking at it 00:49:42

does the light in the refrigerator go 00:49:43

out when you close the door 00:49:45

how can you look inside to see 00:49:45

but if we are sensitive enough to recognize that the outside world is 00:49:55

our own physical body 00:50:00

and that we should respect it just as we 00:50:02

respect our own feet head hands and 00:50:04

stomachs that's literally true 00:50:09

it's physically not merely 00:50:11

metaphysically 00:50:11

and so with this fantastic technology that we have 00:50:18

we have power to alter the physical 00:50:23

world as nobody ever had 00:50:27

but do we have the sensitivity 00:50:30

to interact 00:50:34

with the physical world 00:50:37

as our friend as our own body as our own 00:50:41

self 00:50:42

we don't have that sensitivity so long 00:50:44

as our knowledge that this is so 00:50:46

remains purely theoretical 00:50:46

now many scientists biologists ecologists zoologists botanists 00:50:55

uh forestry people they know 00:51:00

theoretically up here 00:51:01

cortically that this relationship exists 00:51:06

but they don't know it here they are 00:51:09

still 00:51:10

christian souls 00:51:10

living in bodies constituting egos that came into this world instead of 00:51:19

having come out of it 00:51:22

and so for from my thought what really constitutes therapy not 00:51:29

merely the therapy of 00:51:33

peculiar individual variations of people 00:51:36

who cannot adapt themselves 00:51:38

to a particular social context 00:51:42

the the important therapy is the therapy 00:51:44

of 00:51:46

the social institution itself 00:51:50

the institution of the ego 00:51:50

individual variations will crop up i think anyhow but they will crop up in 00:52:00

extraordinary numbers 00:52:06

in a society where the conventional view 00:52:10

of the self 00:52:12

is in such tremendous 00:52:16

disparity from the state of affairs 00:52:21

as we see it 00:52:21

through the best tools of knowledge that we have 00:52:26

that's what one can claim for scientific 00:52:31

knowledge you can't claim that it's 00:52:33

absolutely true 00:52:34

but you can claim that using the most 00:52:37

careful means that you have of knowing 00:52:40

anything 00:52:42

it shows you the world to be in a 00:52:43

certain way 00:52:46

now if that's the way the world is then 00:52:48

the way you 00:52:49

feel the world should ideally correspond 00:52:53

to the way in which you know it 00:52:54

theoretically 00:52:54

so the task of the therapist in this case becomes 00:53:00

to help people 00:53:01

to feel subjectively how it is to exist in a way that 00:53:08

corresponds 00:53:13

to the best of our objective knowledge 00:53:13

and that leads us into you see uh areas which scientists have avoided 00:53:22

because they are associated with 00:53:32

religion and mysticism 00:53:33

and weird things of that nature 00:53:33

and supposing then it does turn out 00:53:38

that which seems to me most far from you most remote most alien 00:53:47

you you look out take a telescope or 00:53:53

whatever you have 00:53:54

and look out at the vast distances of 00:53:57

space 00:53:57

and it seems all very foreign and remote 00:54:01

that's because you've been hypnotized to feel it that way 00:54:08

when human beings thought at one time it was just a cozy little 00:54:16

cosmos the earth was the middle of it 00:54:19

and all those planets were in 00:54:21

crystal spheres and right up there uh 00:54:24

was god the father and the angels and 00:54:25

jesus christ when he ascended he just 00:54:27

shot up a few miles and he was there 00:54:30

cozy then as a reaction to that 00:54:34

see when people wanted to de-personalize 00:54:36

the universe because the personalization 00:54:38

of it was too 00:54:39

traumatic they said 00:54:43

billions of light years in comparison 00:54:45

with which we are of no importance 00:54:46

just a reaction crazy billions of light years and you 00:54:53

can think across them 00:54:56

and then you go the other direction and you look into your own physiology 00:55:03

and that's as queer and weird as 00:55:08

anything there is outside 00:55:08

when you feel your own path it's that funny thing going from thumping you 00:55:14

give some people the creeps 00:55:21

you think about the fantastic structure 00:55:25

of your own 00:55:26

neurology does that mean 00:55:26

it seems so strange but the stranger it gets 00:55:35

the farther away it 00:55:36

the more essential it gets the more it really is you 00:55:43

but unrecognizable until the moment you 00:55:47

look at it amazing 00:55:49

that's me 00:55:49

but as every device is used in the human game 00:55:57

to stop receiving that 00:56:00

don't you dare don't you dare 00:56:08

best method of stopping 00:56:14

now i was going to say something about 00:56:19

guilt guilt guilt 00:56:24

this is the prime emotion which cuts us off from this sense of solidarity 00:56:32

with the whole works 00:56:34

and there are various kinds of guilt there's academic guilty skills 00:56:39

academic guilt is uh 00:56:48

you you have to subscribe to the myth 00:56:50

that man is not really important 00:56:50

and that uh geology is more fundamental than biology 00:56:58

older and the biology is a sort of 00:57:05

ex-crescence as little fungus goes to 00:57:07

draw on the top of geology see 00:57:07

now the the whole point of guilt is that it's undefined 00:57:15

[Applause] 00:57:19

you are charged with a crime which has 00:57:21

not been specified 00:57:23

this is the way all dictators and uh 00:57:23

sinister people like that work you don't know what you're charged with 00:57:31

what was original sin it wasn't sex you may be sure of that 00:57:38

you study the really subtle theologians 00:57:44

on the subject of original sin 00:57:46

it's thrilling what did lucifer do 00:57:46

in the beginning of the world well they say vaguely his sin was 00:57:55

spiritual pride 00:58:00

he loved himself more than he loved god 00:58:00

well that's pretty vague but the really interesting theologians will say 00:58:07

you can no more put into words what the 00:58:12

sin of lucifer was 00:58:14

then you could describe the vision of 00:58:16

god it's ineffable 00:58:18

it was infinitely diabolical more 00:58:21

horrible than anything you could 00:58:22

possibly imagine 00:58:25

and incidentally it wasn't just lucifer 00:58:27

you are implicated in this 00:58:29

you did it 00:58:29

something unspeakable 00:58:32

now this can be a therapeutic gambit if you know how to use it 00:58:42

some psychotherapists use this in their analysis of dreams 00:58:49

there's something we've done i mean it may only turn out to be the oedipus 00:58:55

complex 00:58:58

but uh incest wish 00:59:01

but take it further 00:59:02

take it further back what is the awful thing you've done 00:59:08

won't you confess don't you know 00:59:13

adults play the weirdest games 00:59:16

quite incomprehensible to children and 00:59:19

there's no explanation forthcoming 00:59:21

so they feel strangers 00:59:24

and so in later on everybody feels a 00:59:27

stranger 00:59:28

poor old therapist gets called in to 00:59:30

sort the whole thing out 00:59:33

now here is alan watts with a talk 00:59:34

entitled lecture on 00:59:36

gk chesterton allen begins by describing 00:59:39

some of the qualities of this famous 00:59:41

writer 00:59:41

wearing a black cloak and a rather large wide-brimmed hat with passnay 00:59:48

secured to his nose and 00:59:56

prevented from destruction by a large 00:59:59

black 01:00:00

long ribbon fastened around his neck 01:00:04

who speaks as fat men do 01:00:08

with a certain luxurious voice rather 01:00:11

like charles louden 01:00:13

only with a slightly grieved tone in 01:00:15

everything he says that what i would 01:00:17

call a humorously grieved 01:00:18

tone 01:00:18

and this is gk chesterton a person whom i discover has had an enormous influence 01:00:25

on my life 01:00:28

because when i was a late adolescent 01:00:33

and when i was for a while 01:00:38

a priest in the episcopal church 01:00:41

i read this man's works very carefully 01:00:42

and i have by osmosis imbibed an enormous amount of wisdom 01:00:50

from him 01:00:53

funny thing is not so much in terms of 01:00:55

specific ideas 01:00:57

as in basic attitude to life 01:01:00

because this is a man who above all 01:01:03

virtues had i think what is one of the 01:01:06

very greatest virtues which we don't 01:01:07

usually find catalogued in 01:01:09

lists of virtues he had a sense of 01:01:12

wonder 01:01:12

he knew a truth that was once enunciated by a kind of 01:01:20

guru type who was a friend of mine many 01:01:27

years ago 01:01:29

who said that gnosis 01:01:32

which means i suppose you best call it 01:01:35

transcendental knowledge 01:01:37

gnosis is to be surprised at everything 01:01:38

because you see if you carry out technology to its final fulfillment 01:01:46

you have technological means of supplying you with every 01:01:54

need or wish that you could imagine so 01:01:58

that you have instead of just the plain 01:02:00

little telephone with its dial on it 01:02:02

you have a somewhat more elaborate 01:02:04

machine on which you can dial 01:02:06

for anything you need at any time and it 01:02:08

will be supplied instantly 01:02:10

imagine yourself in that omnipotent 01:02:12

position 01:02:12

and what you will wish for in that final ultimate push button world 01:02:18

will be a button labeled surprise 01:02:24

you won't know what's going to come when 01:02:25

you dial that one 01:02:25

and chesterton's fundamental attitude as a poet as a theologian 01:02:32

was that even god 01:02:40

needs a surprise and of course for that 01:02:44

very reason 01:02:46

endowed angels and 01:02:49

men with the mystery of free will 01:02:52

so that they would do things that uh 01:02:55

would be surprising 01:02:57

and that could not be foretold 01:02:57

this is why calvinists are so dreary that they believe that everything is 01:03:04

predestined 01:03:07

and uh that's why of course the 01:03:10

episcopal church 01:03:11

is always more interesting than the 01:03:15

presbyterian church 01:03:17

[Laughter] 01:03:17

in that uh they're not calvinists or something always rather depressing about 01:03:23

calvinists 01:03:26

although there are many interesting 01:03:27

things about them that i won't go into 01:03:30

but uh the chesterton's idea was that 01:03:33

the universe is so arranged 01:03:35

that it is a basically the lord's own 01:03:39

way of surprising himself 01:03:41

because that's what you would do if you 01:03:44

were god 01:03:45

if you really think it through a lot of 01:03:47

people never think this through 01:03:49

they think about um i remember a story 01:03:52

about a conversation at the dinner party 01:03:54

where all it was in england and all the 01:03:57

people were 01:03:58

discussing what they thought was going 01:04:00

to happen after death 01:04:02

whether they would uh simply be 01:04:04

extinguished or whether they're being 01:04:05

reincarnated or whatever kind of thing 01:04:08

and present at the dinner there was a 01:04:10

very respectable 01:04:12

country squire who was uh 01:04:16

on the vestry of the local church very 01:04:18

pious 01:04:20

and finally the hostess said to him sir 01:04:22

raja 01:04:23

you haven't said anything in the 01:04:25

conversation this evening 01:04:26

what do you think is going to happen to 01:04:28

you when you die 01:04:30

he said i'm perfectly sure that i shall 01:04:32

go to heaven and enjoy everlasting bliss 01:04:34

but i wish you wouldn't raise such a 01:04:35

depressing subject 01:04:41

so you see people that people just don't 01:04:43

think it through 01:04:44

uh it's very fascinating 01:04:48

to ask people 01:04:51

deeply about their theological ideas 01:04:55

what they really do think god is 01:04:58

and what heaven would be like and uh 01:05:03

not only what it would be like as based 01:05:05

in 01:05:06

based on the symbolism of the bible but 01:05:09

what 01:05:10

sort of a heaven they would really want 01:05:11

to go to 01:05:11

i mean do you want to be stuck with the rest of your family forever 01:05:16

saying god gives us our relations to let 01:05:21

us thank him we can choose our friends 01:05:21

do you uh at what age would you like your resurrected body to 01:05:29

be 01:05:33

uh there are all sorts of fascinating 01:05:35

questions of this kind which bring out 01:05:36

the great 01:05:38

marvelous problem of what we 01:05:41

would really like to happen 01:05:41

and uh when we follow that through and through and through and through 01:05:50

we must admit in the end that we don't 01:05:54

want a situation 01:05:56

in which everything is completely 01:05:58

controlled 01:05:58

in other words if everything is rationalized if everything is perfectly 01:06:04

logical and clear 01:06:07

it all works and there's no possibility 01:06:09

of anybody making a mistake 01:06:12

and uh we know exactly what's going to 01:06:14

happen 01:06:15

forever and ever and ever 01:06:19

we'd be bored to death nobody wants that 01:06:23

kind of heaven 01:06:23

so what kind of heaven would you like supposing 01:06:28

for example you had the privilege power 01:06:32

to dream any dream you wanted every 01:06:35

night 01:06:35

and have it real vivid and of course you would be able to dream any amount of 01:06:42

clock time 01:06:46

in one night that you desired you would 01:06:49

be able to say have a hundred years 01:06:51

of experience in one night 01:06:51

and when you think that through what dreams would you dream 01:06:57

it's almost like the question if you 01:07:01

were going to have half an hour's 01:07:02

interview with god 01:07:04

and you had the privilege of asking one 01:07:06

question 01:07:08

what would you ask 01:07:08

and you've got a little while to think that one over see before you go in for 01:07:13

the interview 01:07:15

so then the same thing is what would you dream 01:07:20

you would dream of course at first i 01:07:24

suppose 01:07:25

all possible fulfillments of wishes 01:07:25

whatever your wishes were whatever your desires were you would fulfill them all 01:07:32

and when you're done that for about a 01:07:38

month of nights 01:07:40

of a hundred years long each night of 01:07:42

dreams 01:07:43

you would say well let's vary things a 01:07:45

bit let's get a let's let things get out 01:07:47

of control 01:07:49

let's have an adventure 01:07:49

and uh and you would you know you would rescue a princess from a dragon 01:07:56

or um something of that kind and then you would arrange it so that 01:08:04

you would forget that you were dreaming 01:08:09

and so the thing would seem as real as 01:08:10

real could be 01:08:12

and you would dare yourself like kids 01:08:14

dare themselves to do all sorts of 01:08:16

dangerous exploits 01:08:19

and finally you would dare yourself to 01:08:22

experience 01:08:24

awful situations because you knew it 01:08:26

would be wonderful when you woke up 01:08:28

because the contrast would be so 01:08:30

fascinating 01:08:32

and finally in the course of your 01:08:33

dreaming you would dream a dream 01:08:36

in which you were sitting in campbell 01:08:37

hall at christchurch sausalito listening 01:08:39

to me give a lecture 01:08:41

with all your personal lives and your 01:08:43

problems and whatever it is that's going 01:08:45

on 01:08:45

see because that would be the nature of 01:08:45

surprise now 01:08:53

in the in this when you fully realize that to be surprised that everything is 01:08:58

high wisdom 01:09:02

you get a new point of view towards the 01:09:04

world 01:09:07

which gives you almost what 01:09:10

could be called a child's vision of life 01:09:14

when jesus said that unless you be 01:09:17

converted and become as a child 01:09:19

you cannot enter into the kingdom of 01:09:20

heaven this is the thing that chesterton 01:09:23

understood in a very profound way 01:09:25

because 01:09:25

to a child the world is entirely new 01:09:29

and therefore all of it is extraordinary 01:09:32

and 01:09:32

i hope most of you can remember how you 01:09:34

saw things when you were about two years 01:09:36

old 01:09:36

as the whole world being quite weird and uh when you get used to things 01:09:48

you see a tree and you say oh well 01:09:56

that's a tree 01:09:57

we're used to trees we know what trees 01:09:59

are 01:10:01

but if you can go back to your childhood 01:10:03

and remember 01:10:04

how it was when you first looked at the 01:10:06

tree and you saw the earth 01:10:08

itself reaching up into the sky 01:10:10

extending itself in many branches and 01:10:12

waving all these little flags of heaven 01:10:16

or when you looked at the sun as a child 01:10:18

you stared at the sun it was marvelous 01:10:20

and the sun turned blue 01:10:20

and there was a feeling about everything of being 01:10:27

essentially magical 01:10:29

so there is a most extraordinary passage which um 01:10:35

occurs in one of the rarer books of 01:10:39

where he makes this extraordinary remark 01:10:48

it is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin 01:10:54

a creature who does not exist it is 01:10:59

another thing to discover that the 01:11:01

rhinoceros 01:11:02

does exist and then take pleasure in the 01:11:05

fact 01:11:05

that he looks as if he doesn't 01:11:06

and this is the key to this man's wisdom 01:11:09

that he could see all kinds of everyday things and events 01:11:17

as if they were completely improbable 01:11:20

and magical 01:11:20

and that he could describe the world uh as an extremely 01:11:26

improbable object 01:11:33

this great globe of rock 01:11:36

floating in space around a vast fire 01:11:36

covered with green hair the ordinary people called grass 01:11:46

and containing all the extraordinarily odd objects 01:11:53

on it 01:11:54

and when he thought about this 01:11:58

he realized two things that are not ordinarily realized by 01:12:05

religious people 01:12:07

and the two things are this he realized that the world 01:12:16

created by god is a form of nonsense 01:12:23

and that one of the most important 01:12:25

features 01:12:26

of the divine mind 01:12:29

is humor in one of his essays he says so 01:12:33

often 01:12:33

when i've written the word cosmic 01:12:37

the printer makes a misprint and prints 01:12:39

it comic 01:12:42

but he said there's a certain 01:12:43

unconscious wisdom in that 01:12:45

the cosmic is the comic dante wrote the 01:12:49

divine comedy 01:12:50

an account of earth heaven 01:12:53

purgatory and hell the divine comedy 01:12:54

and our one finds you see that in ordinary people's religious attitudes 01:13:02

there is a lack of both these things of 01:13:07

nonsense and of humor 01:13:07

when i was a boy i was brought up in the church of england i went to school at 01:13:12

king's school canterbury 01:13:16

and of course we attended innumerable 01:13:18

services in that great cathedral 01:13:20

and one of the cardinal sins which one 01:13:23

could commit was to laugh 01:13:24

in church 01:13:24

and that is of course because uh the same reason the judges don't like 01:13:30

laughter and court 01:13:33

that um laughter is threatening to 01:13:36

tyrants 01:13:36

and if you conceive god in the image of a tyrant 01:13:42

a monarch who 01:13:47

rules by violence whatever kind of 01:13:50

violence it may be 01:13:51

military violence moral violence any 01:13:54

kind of violence 01:13:55

all tyrants are afraid and they sit in 01:13:57

courtrooms 01:13:58

with their backs to the wall surrounded 01:14:00

on either side by their guards 01:14:02

and everybody who comes in of course has 01:14:04

to fall flat on their faces 01:14:06

because in that position it's more 01:14:07

difficult to attack 01:14:08

and so when a marine sergeant on parade salutes the flag he has a very serious 01:14:16

expression in his eyes 01:14:22

that's not a time for laughter 01:14:22

and therefore we have uh associated the word solemn 01:14:29

as when we celebrate in the catholic 01:14:33

church solemn high mass 01:14:35

solemn solemn means serious 01:14:35

and one of the great things one of the fundamental insights that is underlying 01:14:42

all chesterton's work 01:14:45

is that the attitude of heaven 01:14:50

is not serious there's a famous passage 01:14:54

in his book orthodoxy where he says 01:14:54

things like stones are subject to gravity 01:15:02

they are heavy they are grave they are 01:15:04

serious 01:15:06

but in all things spiritual there is 01:15:08

likeness and therefore a kind of 01:15:10

frivolity 01:15:13

the angels fly because they take 01:15:15

themselves lightly 01:15:15

and if that must be true of the angels how much more true 01:15:21

of the lord of the angels 01:15:23

i have said uh in in my funny way that there are four fundamental philosophical 01:15:30

questions 01:15:34

that human beings have argued about as 01:15:37

far back as we 01:15:37

can remember the first question is who 01:15:40

started it 01:15:42

the second question is are we going to 01:15:44

make it 01:15:45

the third question is where are we going 01:15:47

to put it 01:15:49

and the fourth question is who's going 01:15:50

to clean up 01:15:53

but that all those things suggest the 01:15:56

fifth question 01:15:57

which is is it serious 01:15:57

like when someone is sick and says to the doctor is it serious 01:16:03

are you serious 01:16:06

but he would say that's quite the wrong question to ask 01:16:12

not are you serious because that would 01:16:16

mean are you grave 01:16:18

are you heavy are you ponderous are you 01:16:21

solemn 01:16:23

and in this all these senses he would 01:16:25

equate that with a kind of 01:16:26

lack of spirituality and it's much 01:16:29

better to ask people not are you serious 01:16:31

but are you sincere 01:16:34

in other words are you with it as we say 01:16:37

in more 01:16:38

current american slang 01:16:41

so from his view the world is 01:16:43

fundamentally not serious 01:16:45

it is sincere and beyond that 01:16:49

uh to go on to the higher mystery of his 01:16:52

insight 01:16:53

the world is basically nonsense 01:16:53

now what do we mean by that 01:16:58

in the book of job which is the most profound book in the bible 01:17:07

so far as i'm concerned there is raised 01:17:12

the problem 01:17:13

of the suffering experienced by those 01:17:16

who are just and righteous 01:17:16

and uh chesterton has written a great deal on the book of job 01:17:24

and without quoting him directly i'm 01:17:27

going to summarize what i've learned 01:17:29

from him about this book because this is 01:17:31

really 01:17:31

very important about this whole theme 01:17:35

the prelude to the book of job 01:17:38

is in heaven 01:17:38

and a conversation enthused between god and one of the angels called satan 01:17:46

otherwise known as summer elf the word 01:17:52

l on the end of the name of an angel 01:17:54

like gabriel raphael 01:17:56

uriel and so on means uh divine being 01:18:01

uh angel attendant of the court of 01:18:05

heaven 01:18:06

and the the role of satan in the old 01:18:08

testament 01:18:09

is different from the role of satan in 01:18:11

christianity 01:18:13

the role of satan in the old testament 01:18:14

is he's the district attorney of heaven 01:18:17

he's the prosecutor and as you will see 01:18:21

in a court today 01:18:23

it is arranged that the prosecution 01:18:26

uh is always on the left of the judge 01:18:30

and the defense is on the right 01:18:30

so at the left hand of god a situation which is not mentioned in the creed 01:18:36

there is of course the prosecutor at the 01:18:40

right hand of god 01:18:42

for he sitteth at the right hand of the 01:18:43

father is our only mediator and advocate 01:18:47

jesus christ because he's the council 01:18:49

for the defense 01:18:51

and he happens to be the boss's son he 01:18:53

puts in a rather strong position 01:18:55

because in the course of time when you 01:18:57

read uh reports of cases in court 01:19:00

and you get very familiar with court 01:19:02

procedures you always start having 01:19:04

sympathy with the accused 01:19:08

and therefore uh antipathy towards the 01:19:11

prosecution because the prosecution's 01:19:13

always putting people down 01:19:14

but we're saying nasty things about 01:19:15

people and the defense is always trying 01:19:17

to say nice things about people 01:19:19

so therefore this popular enthusiasm for 01:19:21

the defense 01:19:22

and popular displeasure for the 01:19:25

prosecution 01:19:26

and it was for this reason that the 01:19:27

particular angel 01:19:29

called summer l or satan was in due 01:19:32

course of time turned into the devil 01:19:35

the enemy of all things good 01:19:39

whereas actually the devil in the book 01:19:41

of job is a loyal servant of the court 01:19:43

of heaven it's just his job to 01:19:45

do the prosecution so he proposes 01:19:49

that god tried job 01:19:52

said you think you've got a virtuous 01:19:54

follower in job 01:19:56

but he's only virtuous so long as he's 01:19:57

prosperous 01:19:59

you see what happens when you visit him 01:20:01

with suffering and then see if he's 01:20:03

loyal to you 01:20:04

so god does exactly that 01:20:08

and he visits job with all these plagues 01:20:11

and then the three friends of job sit 01:20:13

around 01:20:14

and they try to rationalize why all this 01:20:16

is happening he said 01:20:18

you in effect you must have committed 01:20:20

some sort of secret sin 01:20:22

otherwise you wouldn't be suffering this 01:20:24

is the reasoning of the book of 01:20:25

deuteronomy 01:20:27

that if you obey the law of god you will 01:20:29

prosper 01:20:30

and the hebrews were eternally puzzled 01:20:33

as to why this didn't work out 01:20:33

so the book of job highlights this question 01:20:40

and all the advisors of job the three 01:20:44

men 01:20:44

who have this discussion with him while 01:20:46

he's covered with saws and 01:20:48

sitting around uh in some wretched pad 01:20:52

with all his property lost and his 01:20:55

family in trouble and so on 01:20:58

and he cannot see any sense in their 01:21:00

arguments 01:21:02

and finally god appears at the end the 01:21:05

28th 01:21:05

what is the 28th chapter and he comes in 01:21:08

a whirlwind 01:21:08

and he refutes the advice of all these three friends 01:21:14

who is this he says the darkeneth 01:21:17

counsel with words without knowledge 01:21:20

now stand you up like a man and answer 01:21:22

like a man 01:21:24

were you there when i laid the 01:21:25

foundations of the earth 01:21:27

when the morning stars hang together and 01:21:29

all the sons of god shouted for joy 01:21:32

then he goes on to ask job a series of 01:21:35

questions 01:21:35

which include such questions as why do i send rain on the desert where no man is 01:21:41

why uh can you can you catch the leviathan with a hook 01:21:49

can you bind the influences of the 01:21:54

pleiades and make them work for you 01:21:57

or can you loosen the astrological 01:22:00

influences of this 01:22:01

constellation of orion can you do all 01:22:03

this and what is it all about 01:22:06

so a series of questions are delivered 01:22:08

to job none of which have any answer 01:22:12

and the effect of these questions on job 01:22:15

is to solve this problem 01:22:15

and ordinary interpreters of the book of job 01:22:21

always say that this isn't really the 01:22:24

answer 01:22:25

it's a the book of job raises the 01:22:27

question and doesn't answer the question 01:22:29

it does answer the question it 01:22:33

answers the question by asking questions 01:22:36

all of which uh 01:22:39

seem to reflect that in some 01:22:43

curious way the universe 01:22:46

doesn't make sense why do you send rain 01:22:50

on the desert where no man is 01:22:50

now what about that see our trouble is that uh where we really get into 01:23:00

difficulty in life 01:23:04

is that we expect everything to make 01:23:06

sense 01:23:07

and then we get disappointed we expect 01:23:11

for example 01:23:12

that uh time 01:23:16

is going to solve our problems this is 01:23:19

going to come a day 01:23:20

in the future when we will 01:23:24

be finally satisfied 01:23:24

and so things make sense we say of something it is sensible 01:23:31

it is satisfactory it is good because we 01:23:35

feel 01:23:36

it has a future it's going to get 01:23:39

somewhere 01:23:40

and we're going to arrive our whole 01:23:42

education is programmed 01:23:44

with the idea that there is a good time 01:23:46

coming when we are going to arrive 01:23:48

we're going to be there when you're a 01:23:50

child 01:23:51

you see you're not here yet you're 01:23:53

treated as a merely probationary human 01:23:55

being 01:23:58

and they get you involved in the system 01:23:59

where you go up step by step through the 01:24:01

various grades 01:24:02

when you get out of college you go out 01:24:04

step by step through the various grades 01:24:06

of business 01:24:07

or your profession or whatever it is 01:24:09

always with the thought that 01:24:10

the thing is ahead of you see it's going 01:24:13

to make sense 01:24:14

and perhaps the the universe doesn't work that way at all 01:24:20

maybe instead of that this world 01:24:25

is like 01:24:29

music where 01:24:29

the goal of music is certainly not in the future 01:24:38

you don't play a symphony in order to 01:24:43

reach the end of the symphony 01:24:45

because then the best orchestra would be 01:24:47

the one that played the fastest 01:24:50

you don't dance in order to arrive at a 01:24:52

particular place on the floor 01:24:55

and so chesterton's view of the world is 01:24:57

an essentially musical view 01:24:59

a dancing view of the world in which the 01:25:02

object 01:25:03

of the creation is not some far-off 01:25:06

divine event 01:25:08

which is the goal but the object of the 01:25:10

creation 01:25:11

is the kind of musicality of it the very 01:25:14

nonsense of it 01:25:15

as it unfolds and so 01:25:15

that uh when you talk sense 01:25:25

your words refer to something else 01:25:37

in other words if i talk about tables 01:25:43

and chairs 01:25:44

these sounds that i'm making tables 01:25:47

chairs 01:25:48

refer to something in the physical world 01:25:52

the sound table is not the table 01:25:55

but it refers to this 01:25:55

but then when we ask what is the world mean what does the table mean 01:26:02

the word the noise table means this now 01:26:08

does this have a meaning 01:26:08

what is the meaning of life if we ask the question 01:26:15

what is the meaning of life we are 01:26:18

treating life as if it were 01:26:20

a set of words a set of symbols 01:26:25

but it isn't the real great insight 01:26:29

is that these things don't have any 01:26:31

meaning 01:26:31

now in ordinary way of talking in the west we would say that's terrible 01:26:36

something that has no meaning is awful 01:26:43

a meaningless life you see that we say 01:26:45

about the most dreadful kind of life 01:26:47

but chesterton is trying to say that the 01:26:51

the 01:26:51

the meaningless universe the nonsense 01:26:53

universe is just great 01:26:56

just because it doesn't mean anything it 01:26:59

is because 01:26:59

god himself is dancing 01:27:04

is playing he has a poem of god as a 01:27:07

child 01:27:07

and he's playing with a windmill and the uh fans of the windmill of the 01:27:13

four great winds of heaven and the balls 01:27:19

with which he's playing the sun and moon 01:27:19

and the whole idea therefore then is that that existence itself is 01:27:25

it is a magical play and if therefore 01:27:32

nonsense in the sense the special sense 01:27:37

of nonsense 01:27:38

that it is something going on which does 01:27:41

not refer to anything except itself 01:27:45

when we say nonsense we are saying it 01:27:47

for the delight of the words 01:27:49

and not for anything that they mean it 01:27:52

was brilliant and the slivy toves did 01:27:54

dire and gimble in the wave 01:27:56

all mimsy were the borogroves and the 01:27:58

mum 01:27:58

or better from edward lear who said of himself 01:28:04

uh he really drew the portrait of 01:28:08

chesterton 01:28:09

his body is perfectly spherical he wears 01:28:11

a runtable hat 01:28:12

and so there was an old man of spit head who opened the window and said 01:28:19

phil jumble phil jumble phil rumble come 01:28:23

tumble that doubtful oh man of spit head 01:28:23

we think no birds so happy as we cloth skin tuscan pelican jill we think so 01:28:39

then and we thought so still 01:28:45

you see now he says that in this kind of 01:28:49

marvelous playing with the voice and with words 01:28:56

you have something nearer to the nature 01:28:59

of reality 01:29:00

than you do with statements that make 01:29:02

formal sense 01:29:04

even though this manchester was a great 01:29:06

believer in reason 01:29:08

and you know in the father brown stories 01:29:10

there is an occasion 01:29:11

when um father brown despised the 01:29:15

criminal masquerading as a priest 01:29:18

because the man says well we cannot 01:29:22

find our god with our reason all the 01:29:24

things of divine are beyond reason we 01:29:26

must learn to suspend reason and at that 01:29:28

moment 01:29:29

father brown knows this man is not a 01:29:30

good catholic i'm not really a priest at 01:29:32

all 01:29:32

because thomas you see bases everything saying there is a consistency between 01:29:38

reason and faith and chesterton believed 01:29:42

in that very strongly 01:29:45

but that didn't prevent him from seeing 01:29:46

the deeper mystery that there is a kind 01:29:48

of super reason in unreason 01:29:51

but not just pure unreason but in 01:29:53

something that we recognize 01:29:55

as nonsense in the sense that edward 01:29:58

lear 01:29:58

and lewis carroll wrote nonsense now 01:30:01

it's an enormously important thing to 01:30:03

understand 01:30:04

what is the difference shall we say 01:30:07

between 01:30:08

inspired nonsense and 01:30:08

mere bosch 01:30:13

and this is is what he's trying to point out there is a kind of nonsense which we 01:30:20

could call 01:30:22

magical nonsense and there's a kind of 01:30:25

nonsense on the other hand which we 01:30:26

should call just 01:30:27

trivial rubbish 01:30:27

it is the nonsense the divine nonsense has this 01:30:40

extraordinary humor with it 01:30:49

but which he tries to evoke in saying 01:30:50

that it is a great thing to look at a 01:30:52

rhinoceros 01:30:54

or a hippopotamus creatures who don't 01:30:56

who do exist and because if they don't 01:30:59

a poem in which he brings this out 01:31:02

is so called a fish 01:31:02

dark the sea was but i saw him one great head with goggle eyes like a 01:31:09

diabolic cherub 01:31:14

flying in those fallen skies 01:31:17

i have heard the horse denials i have 01:31:19

known the word he wars 01:31:21

i have seen a man by shouting seek to 01:31:23

orphan all the stars 01:31:26

i have seen a fool half-fashioned 01:31:29

borrow from the heavens a tongue so to 01:31:31

curse them more at leisure 01:31:33

and i trod him not as done for i saw 01:31:36

that finny goblin 01:31:37

hidden in the abyss untrod and i knew 01:31:40

there can be laughter on the secret face 01:31:42

of god blow the trumpets 01:31:44

crown the sages bring the age by reason 01:31:47

said he that sitteth in the heavens he 01:31:49

shall laugh 01:31:49

the prophet said 01:31:50

so he sees in a goldfish you know those kind of disney goldfishes which have all 01:31:55

sorts of 01:31:58

tales and fins and complications with 01:32:00

their big goggle eyes what on earth are 01:32:02

they doing 01:32:04

you ever thought about that you know 01:32:05

what what is this going on 01:32:06

i mean does it have a purpose goldfish you know they they eat and they absorb 01:32:14

things in and make more goldfish 01:32:18

and they go on making goldfish and more 01:32:20

goldfish nobody we don't even eat them 01:32:23

maybe something does that we finally eat 01:32:27

but but fundamentally what's the point 01:32:29

of a goldfish 01:32:29

a goldfish is a solemn thing which keeps on going round 01:32:35

you know it keeps on going round and 01:32:38

round and round and round 01:32:40

and round lives beneath the water but 01:32:42

it's very seldom drowned which is 01:32:44

because it keeps on going round and 01:32:46

round 01:32:47

[Laughter] 01:32:47

this isn't going anywhere at all 01:32:53

uh it's just going as children like to go 01:33:02

[Music] 01:33:07

or um phil john will phil jumble feel 01:33:09

rumble come tumble that doubtful old man 01:33:11

of spit head 01:33:13

that's what's happening and so in very 01:33:15

profound theological ideas 01:33:18

uh it is said you see that when we 01:33:20

finally go to heaven 01:33:21

and we join the choirs of the angels 01:33:24

uh the the what are the choirs of angels 01:33:26

doing well they are sitting around 01:33:28

uh in heaven or actually dancing 01:33:32

uh singing alleluia alleluia alleluia 01:33:36

when you sing on easter jesus christ has 01:33:38

risen today hallelujah 01:33:40

what is this hallelujah well i must 01:33:43

assure you it doesn't mean anything 01:33:45

[Music] 01:33:46

it is the sound of delight but of 01:33:49

no other meaning it is an expression 01:33:51

like whoopee 01:33:52

[Music] 01:33:55

when somebody is riding a surfboard and 01:33:58

they're going down at the 01:34:00

just like that you see well what's the 01:34:02

point of that the point of it is itself 01:34:07

it has no point beyond itself it's there 01:34:09

it's arrived 01:34:10

it's in a complete present it is here 01:34:12

and now 01:34:12

and that's what it's all about uh we say to swing it get with it 01:34:18

and that is of course what all those um 01:34:25

angels are doing the beatific vision the 01:34:29

that means that the word beiatus in 01:34:31

latin 01:34:32

we translated blessed but that's a 01:34:34

rather pious word 01:34:35

uh it really means happy joyous 01:34:35

and um so all those angels as dante describes it in the paradiso 01:34:45

when he 01:34:48

first hears the song of the angels he 01:34:50

says it sounded as if it were the 01:34:52

laughter of the universe 01:34:55

and what no laughter in church 01:34:59

well we are supposed to be a small 01:35:00

replica of the beatific vision and of 01:35:03

the angels gathered around heaven 01:35:04

represented by the altar 01:35:06

uh you know the present the throne of 01:35:08

god 01:35:09

why why 01:35:13

associate all this 01:35:18

with solemnity you see sunday is a very interesting institution 01:35:26

it's a kind of modification of the jewish idea that after the 01:35:32

six days of creation when god was 01:35:37

working 01:35:38

he took a day off 01:35:42

holy day that was as it were the 01:35:45

culmination of the six days of work 01:35:48

in christianity of course the sunday is 01:35:50

the first day of the week 01:35:52

and not the seventh day the sabbath 01:35:56

but the same idea is involved that once 01:35:59

in every 01:35:59

six pulses there is a seventh pulse 01:36:03

which is a little space of time 01:36:03

to take it to take off 01:36:07

now six days of your life say you're working and you're being responsible and 01:36:16

you're earning a living and you're being 01:36:19

serious 01:36:21

if you do that all the time you're going 01:36:23

to go quite mad 01:36:23

you're going to be like a bridge a steel bridge which is so rigid 01:36:28

that it has no swing in it and therefore 01:36:33

it will fall apart in a storm 01:36:36

for in order to be sane every human 01:36:39

being must allow himself a little time 01:36:41

in life to be 01:36:41

insane to let go 01:36:46

to stop trying to control everything to 01:36:48

stop trying to be god 01:36:50

and just go baby with whatever way you 01:36:53

want 01:36:54

see so when you go to church on sunday 01:36:57

that's what you're supposed to do 01:36:57

you're supposed to take off from all this thing of laying it on 01:37:03

but what we've we've made the mistake 01:37:07

when we go to church on sunday 01:37:10

present company accepted that most 01:37:11

preachers lay it on 01:37:13

then they say this is what you ought to 01:37:15

do that's what you ought to do you 01:37:16

haven't been conducting this right and 01:37:18

so on and so on 01:37:19

and nobody gets a vacation 01:37:19

nobody gets a holy day holiday a sabbath time off 01:37:27

so when you go the whole idea of church 01:37:34

is that this is the place where 01:37:37

we can get back to the fundamental 01:37:40

sanity of 01:37:41

nonsense and sing alleluia with the 01:37:44

angels 01:37:45

around the center of the universe which 01:37:47

is actually 01:37:48

manifesting these stars these galaxies 01:37:53

for what it's a firework display 01:37:53

it's a celebration you say today there will be at 11 o'clock on sunday or 01:38:02

whatever other time it is a celebration 01:38:05

of the holy communion 01:38:08

do you celebrate 01:38:08

or do you comport yourselves as if you were attending funeral 01:38:14

i used to be a chaplain in the 01:38:17

university and i used to say 01:38:20

there will be a celebration of the holy 01:38:21

communion at such and such a time on 01:38:23

sunday 01:38:24

and incidentally if you come here out of 01:38:27

a sense of duty we don't want you 01:38:31

better be lying in bed or going swimming 01:38:33

or something 01:38:34

because what this is is we are going to 01:38:36

have celestial whoopi 01:38:36

and uh we're going to enjoy it that's what you're supposed to do 01:38:44

instead of coming in and saying 01:38:50

uh you know you're gonna go to this 01:38:52

thing 01:38:53

and you're gonna feel how awful you are 01:38:56

how unbeautiful you've been how 01:38:58

absolutely terrible you've been 01:39:01

and uh however can you expect to be 01:39:05

anything 01:39:06

more than terrible if you don't really 01:39:09

enjoy your religion 01:39:11

that's what's going to give you the 01:39:12

strength and the power to be something 01:39:14

other than terrible 01:39:15

but if you just go in and make your 01:39:17

religion on the occasion of saying oh 01:39:18

we've been terrible and we're awful sick 01:39:20

and we need help 01:39:21

and here's the holy communion which is 01:39:22

your medicine and i hope it tastes nasty 01:39:25

no that's awful 01:39:25

it doesn't get to the center of the thing you see which is 01:39:31

chested and put it in another poem where he said 01:39:36

it's called the song of the children 01:39:39

and it says of jesus that he taught to the adults he taught them 01:39:45

laws and watch words to preach 01:39:50

and struggle and pray but he taught us 01:39:53

deep in the hayfield 01:39:54

the games that the angels play had he 01:39:57

stayed here forever 01:39:59

their world would be wise as ours and 01:40:01

kings be cutting capers and priests be 01:40:03

picking flowers 01:40:09

because that's the sense of the thing 01:40:11

fundamentally 01:40:12

that everything that's going on 01:40:12

is a sort of jazz a badoo jada 01:40:20

and we have piped you and you have not danced we have mourned you and you have 01:40:33

not left you won't join the game because 01:40:36

you human beings think you're so special 01:40:38

and so serious and you've got to make 01:40:40

sense of it all there isn't any sense to 01:40:42

it just join in come on 01:40:43

make projected our duty to our but you 01:40:45

did our the whole thing and finally 01:40:46

singing hallelujah with the angels 01:40:50

this is kpfk los angeles we have just 01:40:52

heard alan watts with 01:40:54

a lecture on gk chesterton 01:40:54

[Applause] 01:41:12

[Applause] 01:41:19

listen listen down to down sound what is it 01:41:31

a current of air vibrating vocal cords 01:41:42

your own ear drums something running 01:41:45

in your head it's all of these 01:41:50

but go still deeper 01:41:50

this sound is you vibrating and who are you 01:42:00

[Music] 01:42:03

don't give me your name address and 01:42:05

occupation 01:42:07

you know that's just a mask a front a 01:42:10

big act 01:42:12

who puts it on 01:42:12

[Music] who puts it on your body 01:42:18

what an act that is and who puts that on 01:42:27

your father and mother did they put you 01:42:29

come off it you know very well who you are but you won't admit it 01:42:35

deep in there in the middle middle of your heart you know it 01:42:41

you've always been around and always 01:42:46

will be 01:42:46

and the you and you is the same as the you in me 01:42:51

you're not some sort of tourist just visiting in this world for a short time 01:42:56

you belong here like the apple on the 01:43:01

tree 01:43:03

and as the apple is the energy of the 01:43:05

tree you 01:43:06

yes you are the energy of the world 01:43:10

[Applause] 01:43:11

you don't know who you are do you 01:43:14

you can't really get it yourself just as 01:43:17

the fingertips can't touch itself and 01:43:19

the teeth can't bite themselves 01:43:21

and that's because you the far in you is 01:43:24

what we call brahman 01:43:26

the self of the universe the witch than 01:43:29

which there is no witcher 01:43:31

the heart and foundation of all that's 01:43:33

going on 01:43:33

you think you're going to die someday yes 01:43:40

that's because every now and then you 01:43:43

have to go off 01:43:45

so that you can know you're on you can't 01:43:48

have an up without a down 01:43:50

or a back without a front or a light day 01:43:53

without a dark night 01:43:55

the whole thing is pulse 01:43:55

so what are you doing bronn you're playing on and off with yourself 01:44:06

hide and seek with yourself 01:44:10

you're just passing eternal time with 01:44:12

adventure 01:44:12

you forget who you are really every now and then 01:44:18

you make like you're just a john doe or 01:44:21

a mary smith 01:44:23

or a butterfly or a worm or a star 01:44:26

and that you're lost in the middle of a 01:44:28

big big outside world that isn't you 01:44:31

that you don't understand and that you 01:44:32

don't control 01:44:34

of course there has to be something else 01:44:38

something other to bring out the feeling 01:44:41

that you are you 01:44:41

and so that you can feel really you that outside world has to feel really 01:44:46

strange 01:44:50

different weird 01:44:50

you old trickster [Applause] 01:44:55

deep down in you know the whole bit 01:45:02

therefore what you want is a surprise 01:45:02

so you have to let things get out of control 01:45:08

you have to feel lost and lonely to know 01:45:12

you as you 01:45:14

you play the thing out by inventing 01:45:15

lusts and loves fears and terrors 01:45:18

annoying anxieties and screaming mimi's 01:45:22

also you can imagine it's not really me 01:45:25

it's it that runs the show 01:45:30

but our secret is as we say 01:45:30

you are it you are running the show by not letting your right hand know what 01:45:39

your left is doing 01:45:43

by making like there's a whopping great 01:45:44

split between what you do and what 01:45:46

happens to you 01:45:46

and this is what we call maya the great illusion 01:45:52

and leela the play the big act 01:45:58

and you don't just play your game with 01:46:00

such simple elements as on and off black 01:46:02

and white or life and death 01:46:02

to seem as real as real can be this world that you are playing must be so 01:46:08

complicated that you can't figure 01:46:11

it out especially if you're using 01:46:15

figures to figure 01:46:15

so between black and white there is the whole range of colors 01:46:22

between thunder and silence the whole 01:46:26

scale of tones 01:46:28

and between something and nothing 01:46:30

between a smashing fist on the face and 01:46:32

trying to touch air there are all the 01:46:35

textures of feeling 01:46:37

burning throbbing pushing hugging 01:46:39

fondling tickling kissing brushing 01:46:42

and light wind on the skin 01:46:42

your world is all these elements of light and sound 01:46:50

of taste smell and touch woven together 01:46:54

in many dimensions on the fabulous loom 01:46:56

of your brain 01:46:59

your brain the most complicated thing in 01:47:02

the world 01:47:03

which you yourself grew without even 01:47:06

thinking about it 01:47:06

you have always been around for you i the self is simply what there is and 01:47:15

all that there is 01:47:21

all of us are raised from one center 01:47:23

tits on one sow 01:47:25

sounds on one flute forever and ever 01:47:30

but it doesn't get monotonous boring 01:47:33

because we keep forgetting it 01:47:35

we keep the ons on by putting offs 01:47:38

between them 01:47:38

how big is it and how long is on and how long off 01:47:47

don't take these figures literally for 01:47:53

their purpose is just to give an idea of 01:47:55

vastness 01:47:56

we say that man human life is a dance 01:48:00

that lasts for four million three 01:48:01

hundred and twenty thousand years 01:48:04

and of course there are all sorts of 01:48:06

other dances going on at the same time 01:48:08

with their own rhythms 01:48:09

star dances rock dances fish dances 01:48:13

insect dances plant dances and strange 01:48:16

animal scenes like crocodile dancers 01:48:19

elephant dancers 01:48:19

the human dance runs for four million three hundred and twenty thousand years 01:48:26

a span of time that we call a calpers 01:48:32

before it begins and after it ends there 01:48:35

is always another calper 01:48:37

or off period of rest during which the 01:48:40

self is simply the self 01:48:41

and doesn't pretend to be this me or 01:48:43

that you 01:48:45

we call this rest period the prolia 01:48:49

peace uninvolvement pure bliss 01:48:52

[Applause] 01:48:52

when four million three hundred and twenty thousand years of rest draw to a 01:48:59

close 01:49:03

the leela dance begins again though it 01:49:06

always seems like the first time 01:49:08

every day is today 01:49:08

and then through many centuries through many pulses of waking and sleeping 01:49:14

life and death you stretch your world 01:49:19

out through a span of time 01:49:20

that varies in mood like the rainbow 01:49:23

running from purple to red 01:49:25

from royal delight to destruction and 01:49:27

fire 01:49:29

for as there is no purple without red 01:49:31

there is no pleasure without pain 01:49:31

there are thus four great divisions of the kalpa 01:49:37

we call each one a yuga and name them 01:49:42

after the four throws in the hindu game 01:49:44

of dice 01:49:46

krita the perfect throw of four treta 01:49:50

the slightly imperfect throw of three 01:49:52

divapara 01:49:53

the throw of two and kali the worst 01:49:56

throw 01:49:57

of one and so the first period 01:50:01

the krita yuga runs for one million 01:50:03

seven hundred and twenty eight thousand 01:50:05

years 01:50:07

during which the whole world is as 01:50:08

perfect as a fresh flower 01:50:11

and as unblemished as the skin of a 01:50:12

young girl 01:50:15

the second period the treta yuga is a 01:50:17

little shorter 01:50:19

it runs for one million 296 000 years 01:50:23

during which a small element of evil and 01:50:26

decay comes into life 01:50:28

and the tips of the petals are very 01:50:30

slightly brown 01:50:30

the third period is the dvapara yuga running for 01:50:36

hundred and sixty four thousand years 01:50:40

the syllable in vapara means 01:50:43

to double or duel so that in this age 01:50:47

the powers of good and evil are equally 01:50:50

balanced 01:50:52

the fourth period is kali yuga running 01:50:55

for only 432 01:50:57

000 years in which the power of evil and 01:50:59

destruction takes over 01:50:59

at the end your eternal self takes the form of shiva 01:51:06

the lord of renewal through death blue 01:51:11

bodied and ten armed with a necklace of 01:51:13

skulls 01:51:14

but with one hand in the gesture called 01:51:16

fear not 01:51:18

as a reminder that all this is in 01:51:21

illusion and play 01:51:21

and then shiva dances the tandava dance the dance of fire in which the material 01:51:27

world is destroyed 01:51:31

and the self returns to the state of 01:51:33

pralia 01:51:35

of peace uninvolvement and pure bliss 01:51:39

[Applause] 01:51:39

all this goes on forever through calper after calper 01:51:46

[Applause] 01:51:48

and not only in this visible world that 01:51:50

we call the universe 01:51:53

for this universe that we know is only a 01:51:56

speck of dust in another universe 01:51:59

and all the specks of dust in this 01:52:01

universe that we know 01:52:03

contain my new universes without measure 01:52:06

boundless inward in the atom boundless 01:52:09

outward in the whole 01:52:09

however vast however incomprehensible however terrifying this entire display 01:52:17

may seem to be 01:52:21

all of it is at root your own inmost 01:52:23

self 01:52:25

the self which you cannot touch or see 01:52:27

or pin down or control 01:52:30

because it's too close tunia 01:52:34

right in the middle of everything 01:52:38

because it's you 01:52:44

[Music] 01:53:11

[Applause] 01:53:14

[Music] 01:53:15

[Applause] 01:53:22

[Music] 01:53:22

[Applause] [Music] 01:53:48

[Applause] 01:53:51

[Music] 01:53:54

[Applause] 01:53:54

[Music] 01:53:56

[Applause] 01:53:57

[Music] 01:53:57

[Music] 01:54:02

hello [Applause] 01:54:09

[Music] 01:54:12

[Applause] 01:54:13

[Music] 01:54:13

[Music] [Applause] 01:54:25

[Music] 01:54:28

[Applause] 01:54:29

[Music] 01:54:34

[Music] [Applause] 01:54:40

[Music] 01:54:44

[Applause] 01:54:46

[Music] 01:54:46

[Applause] [Music] 01:54:53

[Applause] 01:55:02

now 01:55:04

[Applause] 01:55:06

[Music] 01:55:08

[Applause] 01:55:10

[Music] 01:55:11

[Applause] 01:55:13

[Music] 01:55:16

yes 01:55:16

[Music] 01:55:26

[Applause] 01:55:29

[Music] bye 01:55:44

[Music] 01:56:00

[Applause] 01:56:03

[Music] 01:56:04

[Applause] 01:56:13

[Music] 01:56:24

[Applause] 01:56:26

so 01:56:27

[Applause] 01:56:30

[Music] 01:56:32

[Applause] 01:56:36

[Music] 01:56:37

[Applause] 01:56:37

[Music] 01:56:37

[Applause] [Music] 01:56:42

[Applause] 01:56:56

[Music] 01:56:56

[Applause] [Music] 01:57:03

foreign [Applause] 01:57:10

[Music] 01:57:13

[Applause] 01:57:13

[Applause] [Music] 01:57:29

[Applause] 01:57:34

[Music] 01:57:35

[Applause] 01:57:36

so 01:57:39

[Applause] 01:57:40

[Music] 01:57:40

[Applause] now 01:57:50

[Applause] 01:57:52

[Music] [Applause] 01:58:03

wow 01:58:05

[Applause] 01:58:06

[Music] 01:58:06

[Applause] [Music] 01:58:11

[Applause] [Music] 01:58:16

[Applause] [Music] 01:58:25

[Applause] 01:58:29

[Music] 01:58:29

[Applause] 01:58:29

[Applause] [Music] 01:58:44

so 01:58:49

[Music] 01:58:49

[Applause] yes 01:59:14

[Music] [Applause] 01:59:20

[Music] 01:59:25

[Applause] 01:59:28

so 01:59:30

[Applause] 01:59:35

[Music] 01:59:36

[Applause] 01:59:38

[Music] 01:59:41

[Applause] 01:59:42

[Applause] [Music] 01:59:48

[Applause] 01:59:50

[Music] 01:59:53

[Applause] 01:59:55

[Music] 01:59:57

[Applause] 01:59:58

[Music] 01:59:58

[Applause] [Music] 02:00:07

[Applause] 02:00:12

[Music] 02:00:12

[Applause] 02:00:18

[Music] 02:00:27

[Applause] 02:00:29

[Music] 02:00:32

[Applause] 02:00:39

[Music] 02:00:41

[Applause] 02:00:46

[Music] 02:00:49

[Applause] 02:00:49

[Applause] 02:00:55

[Music] 02:01:01

[Music] 02:01:06

[Applause] [Music] 02:01:13

[Applause] 02:01:16

[Applause] [Music] 02:01:25

[Applause] 02:01:27

[Music] 02:01:30

[Applause] 02:01:32

[Music] 02:01:34

[Applause] 02:01:35

[Music] 02:01:38

[Applause] 02:01:40

[Music] 02:01:43

[Applause] 02:01:45

[Music] 02:01:45

[Applause] 02:01:52

[Music] [Applause] 02:02:08

[Music] 02:02:11

[Applause] 02:02:15

[Music] 02:02:22

[Applause] [Music] 02:02:29

now 02:02:30

[Music] 02:02:34

[Applause] [Music] 02:02:48

[Applause] 02:02:56

[Music] 02:02:56

[Applause] [Music] 02:03:05

[Applause] 02:03:13

[Music] 02:03:15

[Applause] 02:03:17

[Music] 02:03:22

[Applause] 02:03:22

[Applause] 02:03:29

[Music] 02:03:36

[Applause] 02:03:38

[Music] 02:03:38

[Music] 02:03:47

[Music] [Applause] 02:03:57

[Music] 02:04:04

[Applause] 02:04:07

[Music] 02:04:08

[Applause] 02:04:12

[Music] 02:04:14

[Applause] 02:04:15

[Music] 02:04:17

[Applause] 02:04:19

[Music] 02:04:22

so 02:04:24

[Music] 02:04:24

a person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except 02:05:59

thoughts 02:06:01

so he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions 02:06:08

by thoughts i mean specifically chatter in the skull 02:06:15

perpetual and compulsive repetition of 02:06:20

words 02:06:22

of reckoning and calculating 02:06:22

i'm not saying that thinking is bad like everything else is useful in 02:06:30

moderation 02:06:34

a good servant but a bad master 02:06:37

and all so-called civilized peoples 02:06:40

have increasingly become crazy and 02:06:43

self-destructive 02:06:44

because through excessive thinking they 02:06:48

have lost touch with reality 02:06:50

that's to say we confuse signs 02:06:54

words numbers symbols and ideas 02:06:58

with the real world 02:07:01

most of us would have rather money than 02:07:05

tangible wealth 02:07:07

and a great occasion is somehow spoiled 02:07:10

first and less photographed 02:07:13

and to read about it the next day in the 02:07:15

newspaper 02:07:17

is oddly more fun for us than the 02:07:20

original event 02:07:20

this is a disaster for as a result of confusing the real world of nature 02:07:28

with mere signs such as 02:07:33

bank balances and contracts 02:07:37

we are destroying nature we are so 02:07:40

tied up in our minds that we've lost our 02:07:43

senses 02:07:45

and don't realize that the air stinks 02:07:49

water tastes of chlorine the human 02:07:51

landscape looks like a trash heap 02:07:54

and much of our food tastes like plastic 02:07:54

time to wake up 02:08:00

what is reality obviously no one can say because it isn't words 02:08:08

it isn't material that's just an idea 02:08:13

it isn't spiritual that's also an idea a symbol 02:08:21

reality is this 02:08:23

you see we all know what reality is but we can't describe it just as we all 02:09:00

know how to beat our hearts and shape 02:09:05

our bones 02:09:06

but cannot say how it is done 02:09:06

to get in touch with reality there is an art of meditation 02:09:14

of what is called yoga or jhana in india 02:09:21

china in china and zen in japan 02:09:25

it is the art of temporarily silencing 02:09:27

the mind 02:09:29

of stopping the chatter in the skull 02:09:33

of course you can't force your mind to 02:09:35

be silent 02:09:37

that would be like trying to smooth 02:09:39

ripples in water with a flat iron 02:09:42

water becomes clear and calm only when 02:09:44

left alone 02:09:46

so when you try and experiment with me 02:09:46

simply close your eyes 02:09:52

and allow your ears to hear all sounds around you 02:09:59

don't try to name or identify these 02:10:04

sounds 02:10:04

just hear them as you would listen to music 02:10:08

as when you hear a flute or a guitar 02:10:15

without asking what it means 02:10:28

will you please stand up and put your 02:10:31

hands on your hips 02:10:32

with wrists upwards now 02:10:36

let's all just laughs 02:10:36

[Laughter] 02:10:58

oh [Laughter] 02:11:24

oh [Music] 02:11:52

ha ha 02:12:04

and now sit down again 02:12:11

this end master told me that you should do that first thing in the morning when 02:12:20

you get up 02:12:21

and it's even better than sitting for a long time and getting your legs 02:12:29

stiff 02:12:32

now how do you feel 02:12:36

where was you when you were laughing 02:12:42

what is you now 02:12:52

[Music] [Laughter] 02:13:06

foreign 02:13:29

and as and when i talk just hear the sound of my voice 02:15:02

don't bother about what it means your 02:15:06

brain will take care of that by itself 02:15:06

just let your eardrums respond as they will 02:15:15

to all vibrations now in the air 02:15:22

don't let yourself or your ears 02:15:25

be offended by improper or unscheduled 02:15:28

sounds 02:15:28

if for example the record is scratchy okay you wouldn't object if you were 02:15:36

listening to it sitting by a fire of 02:15:42

crackling logs 02:15:50

let them ring it's just a noise 02:15:50

and keep your tongue relaxed floating easily in the lower jaw 02:16:09

also stop frowning 02:16:11

allow the space between your eyes to feel 02:16:17

easy and open 02:16:19

and just let the vibrations in the air play with your ears 02:16:26

you must understand that in meditation we are concerned only with what 02:17:54

is with reality 02:17:59

nothing else the past is a memory 02:18:04

the future and expectation 02:18:11

neither past nor future actually exists 02:18:15

there is simply eternal now 02:18:15

so don't seek or expect a result from what you're doing 02:18:22

that wouldn't be true meditation 02:18:24

there's no hurry just now you're not going anywhere 02:18:31

simply be here 02:18:36

live in the world of sound 02:18:39

let it play now talk 02:18:39

in the world of pure sound can you actually 02:19:25

hear anyone who is listening 02:19:26

can you hear any difference between all these sounds on the one hand 02:19:34

and yourself on the other 02:19:37

naturally we use techniques and gimmicks to help the thinking 02:19:47

mind to become silent and one of them is 02:19:50

the gong 02:19:50

it is a sound that once pleasing and compelling it absorbs attention 02:19:55

but watch what happens when it fades out 02:19:58

[Laughter] 02:20:06

the one sound becomes the many the single tone is transformed easily 02:20:30

and gently 02:20:34

into all other noises 02:20:37

and that's how the universe comes into 02:20:39

being out of the one 02:20:41

energy underlying all events 02:20:41

so if you don't have a gong you can use your own voice 02:20:48

by chanting what hindus and buddhists 02:20:52

call a mantra 02:20:54

that is a syllable or phrase sung for 02:20:57

its sound rather than its meaning 02:20:57

chief of these is the syllable 02:21:01

called the pranava or the sound of god because it involves the whole range of 02:21:10

the voice from the back of the throat to 02:21:14

the lips 02:21:14

take the tone from the gong and hum it with me 02:21:20

[Music] 02:21:26

now you can hear all sounds of them they're all at some point in the total 02:21:54

range of sound from the back of the 02:21:57

throat of the lips 02:21:59

making a spectrum of sound as all colors 02:22:02

are originally one 02:22:03

white light 02:22:03

but don't ask what the sound is or what it means just hear it and dig it 02:22:10

come with me again 02:22:13

so [Music] 02:22:36

[Music] ah oh 02:23:02

[Laughter] 02:23:34

let me explain again what we are doing 02:23:51

we are going behind words names numbers beliefs and ideas 02:23:59

to get back to the naked experience of 02:24:04

reality itself 02:24:04

and at this level of awareness we find no difference 02:24:11

between the listener and the sound the 02:24:15

knower 02:24:16

and the known the subject and the object 02:24:22

or between the past the present and the 02:24:22

future all that's just talk what is really 02:24:28

happening 02:24:33

[Music] 02:24:33

and you may wonder how i can keep the sound going for so long a time 02:24:57

it depends on regulation of the breath 02:25:03

which is basic to the art of meditation 02:25:05

and i'm going to show you 02:25:07

how to do this and why 02:25:07

i believe that if we are honest with ourselves 02:25:16

that the most fascinating problem in the 02:25:21

world 02:25:23

is who am i 02:25:23

what do you mean what do you feel when you say the word i 02:25:31

i myself 02:25:35

i don't think there can be any more fascinating preoccupation than that 02:25:43

because it's so mysterious it's so elusive 02:25:51

because what you are in your inmost 02:25:56

being 02:25:57

escapes your examination in rather the 02:26:00

same way that you can't look directly 02:26:03

into your own eyes without using a 02:26:05

mirror 02:26:06

you can't bite your own teeth 02:26:09

you can't taste your own tongue 02:26:13

and you can't touch the tip of this 02:26:15

finger with the tip of this finger 02:26:15

and that's why there's always an element of profound mystery 02:26:21

in the problem of who we are 02:26:25

this problem has fascinated me for many years 02:26:33

and i've made many inquiries into what 02:26:37

people think they are 02:26:39

what do you mean by the word i 02:26:40

and there is a certain consensus about this a certain agreement 02:26:47

especially among people who live in western civilization 02:26:53

most of us feel i ego myself my source of consciousness 02:27:02

to be a center of awareness 02:27:09

and of a source of action 02:27:13

that resides in the middle of a bag of 02:27:15

skin 02:27:15

and so we have what i have called the conception of ourselves as a 02:27:22

skin encapsulated ego 02:27:31

now it's very funny how we use the word 02:27:34

if we just refer to common speech we are not accustomed to say 02:27:42

i am a body we rather say 02:27:49

i have a body 02:27:49

we don't say i beat my heart in the same way as we say i walk i think 02:27:56

i talk we feel that our heart 02:28:04

beats itself and that has nothing very 02:28:07

much to do with i 02:28:07

in other words we don't regard i myself 02:28:14

as identical with our whole physical organism 02:28:20

we regard it as something inside it 02:28:25

and most western people locate their ego 02:28:29

inside their heads 02:28:29

you are somewhere between your eyes and between your ears and the rest of 02:28:36

you dangle 02:28:40

from that point of reference 02:28:40

it is not so in other cultures when a chinese or japanese person wants 02:28:47

to locate the center of himself 02:28:52

he points here not here here 02:28:55

to what japanese call the kokoro 02:28:58

on chinese called shin the heart 02:29:02

minds some people also locate themselves 02:29:05

in the solar plexus 02:29:09

but by and large we locate ourselves 02:29:12

between behind the eyes and somewhere 02:29:15

between the ears 02:29:17

as if within the dome of the skull 02:29:22

there was some sort of arrangement such 02:29:25

as there 02:29:25

is at the sac headquarters in denver 02:29:29

where there are men in great rooms 02:29:32

surrounded with radar screens and all 02:29:34

sorts of things and 02:29:35

earphones on watching all the movements 02:29:38

of planes all over the world 02:29:41

so in the same way we have really the 02:29:43

idea of ourselves 02:29:45

as a little man inside our head 02:29:49

who has earphones on which bring 02:29:51

messages from the ears 02:29:53

and who has a television set in front of 02:29:55

him which brings messages from the eyes 02:29:58

and all sorts of uh 02:30:04

electrode things are all over his body 02:30:06

giving him signals from the hands and so 02:30:08

on and he has a panel in front of him 02:30:10

with buttons and dials and things 02:30:12

and so he more or less controls the body 02:30:15

but he isn't the same as the body 02:30:17

because i am in charge of what are 02:30:19

called the voluntary actions 02:30:22

and what are called involuntary actions 02:30:24

of the body they 02:30:25

happen to me i am pushed around by them 02:30:30

but to some extent also i can push my 02:30:32

body around 02:30:32

this i have concluded is the ordinary average conception of what is oneself 02:30:39

and look at the way children influenced 02:30:48

by our cultural 02:30:50

environment ask questions mommy who 02:30:53

would i have been 02:30:55

if my father had been someone else 02:31:00

you see the child gets the idea 02:31:04

from our culture that 02:31:07

the father and mother gave him a body 02:31:10

into which he was popped at some moment 02:31:13

whether it was conception 02:31:14

or whether it was parturition is a 02:31:16

little bit vague 02:31:18

but there is in our whole way of 02:31:21

thinking the idea that we are 02:31:23

a soul a spiritual essence of some kind 02:31:29

imprisoned inside a body 02:31:29

and that we look out upon a world that is foreign to us 02:31:36

in the words of the poet houseman 02:31:42

i a stranger and afraid 02:31:45

in a world i never made 02:31:45

and so therefore we speak of confronting reality 02:31:54

facing the fact 02:31:58

we speak of coming into this world 02:32:02

and this whole sensation that we are brought up to have 02:32:10

of being an island of consciousness 02:32:15

locked up in a bag of skin 02:32:15

facing outside us a world that is profoundly alien to us in the sense that 02:32:23

what is outside me is not me 02:32:26

this sets up a fundamental sensation of hostility 02:32:34

and estrangement between ourselves 02:32:43

and the so-called external world 02:32:43

and therefore we go on to talk about the conquest of nature 02:32:53

the conquest of space 02:32:56

and view ourselves in a kind of battle array 02:33:04

towards the world outside it i shall 02:33:10

have 02:33:10

much more to say about that in the 02:33:12

second lecture 02:33:13

but in the first now i want to examine 02:33:16

the strange feelings 02:33:18

of being an isolated self 02:33:18

now actually it is absolutely absurd to say that we came into this world 02:33:28

we didn't we came out of it 02:33:31

what do you think you are supposing this world is a tree 02:33:40

are you leaves on its branches or are you a bunch of birds that settled on a 02:33:48

dead old tree from somewhere else 02:33:50

surely everything that we know about living organisms from the standpoint of 02:33:58

the sciences 02:34:02

shows us that we grow out of this world 02:34:07

that we each one of us are what you 02:34:10

might call 02:34:11

symptoms of the state of the universe 02:34:14

as a whole 02:34:14

but you see that is not part of our common sense 02:34:20

western man has for many centuries been 02:34:25

under the influence of two great myths 02:34:30

when i use the word myth 02:34:33

i don't necessarily mean falsehood 02:34:33

to me the word myth signifies a great idea in terms of which 02:34:42

man tries to make sense of the world 02:34:50

maybe an idea it may be an image 02:34:50

now the two images which is most profoundly influenced western man 02:34:57

are number one the image 02:35:02

of the world as an artifact 02:35:02

like a carpenter's table or a jar made by apollo indeed in the book of 02:35:10

genesis 02:35:14

there comes the idea that man was originally 02:35:20

a clay figurine made out of the earth 02:35:24

by the lord god who then breathed 02:35:28

into this clay figurine and gave it life 02:35:28

and the whole of western thought is profoundly influenced through and 02:35:40

through and through 02:35:45

by the idea that all 02:35:50

things all events all 02:35:53

people all mountains all stars all 02:35:55

flowers 02:35:56

or grasshoppers all worms 02:36:00

everything are artifacts 02:36:03

and they have been made and it is 02:36:05

therefore natural 02:36:07

for a western child to say to its mother 02:36:10

how was i made that would be quite an 02:36:13

unnatural question 02:36:15

for a chinese child 02:36:18

because the chinese do not think of 02:36:20

nature 02:36:22

as something made they look upon it as 02:36:25

something that grows 02:36:27

and the two processes are quite 02:36:29

different 02:36:29

when you make something you put it together you assemble 02:36:34

paths or you carve 02:36:39

an image out of wood or stone 02:36:43

working from the outside to the inside 02:36:47

but when you watch something grow it 02:36:49

works in an entirely different way 02:36:52

it doesn't assemble parts 02:36:55

it expands from within and gradually 02:36:57

complicates itself 02:36:59

expanding outwards like above blossoming 02:37:03

like a seed turning into a plant 02:37:03

but behind our whole thought in the west is the idea that the world is an 02:37:12

artifact 02:37:18

that it is put together by a 02:37:22

celestial architect carpenter and artist 02:37:27

who therefore knows how it was done 02:37:32

when i was a little boy and i asked many 02:37:35

questions which my mother couldn't 02:37:36

answer 02:37:37

she used to resort in desperation to 02:37:39

saying 02:37:41

my dear there are some things that we 02:37:43

are not meant to know 02:37:43

when i said well will we ever find out and she said yes when we die and we go 02:37:50

to heaven 02:37:52

uh it will all be made clear and i used 02:37:55

to think that on wet afternoons in 02:37:56

heaven 02:37:57

we would all sit around the throne of 02:37:58

grace and say to the lord god 02:38:01

now just why did you do it this way and 02:38:03

how did you manage with that 02:38:04

and he would explain it to make it all 02:38:06

very clear 02:38:07

all questions would be answered 02:38:08

because as we have popularly in popular theology 02:38:14

understood the lord god he is the 02:38:19

mastermind 02:38:21

who knows everything and if you ask the 02:38:24

lord god 02:38:25

exactly how high is not whitney 02:38:28

to the nearest millimeter he would know 02:38:31

exactly like that 02:38:32

i will tell you any questions 02:38:36

the cosmic infectiously deprived 02:38:36

unfortunately this particular image or myth became too much for 02:38:48

western man 02:38:54

because it was a presence 02:38:54

to feel that you are known through and through and watched all the time 02:39:00

by an infinitely just church 02:39:02

i have a friend a very enlightened woman she's a 02:39:10

catholic hunter but a very enlightened 02:39:13

catholic 02:39:15

and in her bathroom she has 02:39:18

on the the pipe that connects the tank 02:39:21

with the toilet seat 02:39:23

a little framed 02:39:27

picture of an eye 02:39:31

and underneath in gothic letters is 02:39:33

written down god sees 02:39:33

everywhere is this i watching watching 02:39:41

watching watching watching 02:39:42

and judging you so that you 02:39:46

always feel you're never really by 02:39:47

yourself 02:39:49

but the old gentleman is observing you 02:39:52

and writing notes in his black 02:39:54

book and this became too much for the 02:39:58

west 02:39:59

became oppressive they had to get rid of 02:40:01

it 02:40:03

and so instead we got another myth 02:40:07

the myth of the purely mechanical 02:40:10

universe 02:40:10

this was invented at the end of the 18th century 02:40:15

became increasingly fashionable 02:40:18

throughout the course of the 19th 02:40:19

century 02:40:20

and well into the 20th century so that 02:40:22

it is today's common sense 02:40:24

very few people today really believe in 02:40:26

god 02:40:27

in the old sense they say they do but 02:40:29

they really hope there is a god 02:40:31

they don't really have faith in god 02:40:35

they they they fervently wish that there 02:40:37

was one and feel that they ought to 02:40:39

believe that there is 02:40:40

that the idea of the universe being 02:40:42

ruled by that marvelous old gentleman 02:40:44

is no longer plausible it isn't that 02:40:47

anybody's disproved it 02:40:49

but it just somehow doesn't go with 02:40:52

the vast infinitive of galaxies 02:40:56

and the immense light-year distances 02:40:59

between them and so on 02:41:01

so instead it is become fashionable 02:41:05

and it is nothing more than a fashion to 02:41:08

believe 02:41:08

that the universe is done 02:41:12

stupid that intelligence 02:41:15

values love and fine feelings 02:41:18

reside only within the bag of the human 02:41:21

epidermis 02:41:23

and that outside that the thing is 02:41:26

simply a 02:41:30

kind of a chaotic stupid 02:41:35

interaction of blind forces 02:41:35

courtesy of dr freud for example uh biological life is based on something 02:41:44

called libido 02:41:47

which was a very very loaded word 02:41:50

blind ruthless uncomfort ending love that's the foundation of the human 02:42:00

unconscious 02:42:06

and similarly to thinkers like of the 02:42:08

19th century 02:42:09

like am tackle even darwin uh t.h huxley 02:42:14

and so on 02:42:15

there was this notion that at the root 02:42:17

of being 02:42:18

is an energy and this energy is blind 02:42:23

this energy is just energy and it's 02:42:25

utterly and totally stupid 02:42:28

and our intelligence 02:42:28

is an unfortunate accident 02:42:31

by some weird freak of evolution we came to be these feeling and rational 02:42:39

beings 02:42:42

more or less rational 02:42:42

and this isn't just a mistake because here we are in a universe 02:42:48

that has nothing in common with us 02:42:53

it doesn't share our feelings has no 02:42:55

real interest in us 02:42:56

we're just a sort of cosmic fluke 02:42:56

and therefore the only hope for mankind 02:43:01

is to beat this irrational universe into submission 02:43:11

and conquer it 02:43:13

now all this is perfectly idiotic if you would think that the idea of the 02:43:22

universe 02:43:26

as being the creation of a benevolent 02:43:28

old gentleman 02:43:30

although he's not so benevolent he takes 02:43:32

a sort of this hurts me more than it's 02:43:34

going to hurt you sort of attitude i 02:43:35

think 02:43:37

uh you can have that on the one hand 02:43:40

and if that becomes uncomfortable you 02:43:42

can exchange it through 02:43:43

opposite the idea that the ultimate 02:43:46

reality doesn't have any intelligence at 02:43:49

at least that gets rid of the old bogey 02:43:52

in the sky 02:43:53

in exchange for a picture of the world 02:43:56

is completely stupid 02:43:56

now these ideas don't make any sense especially the last one 02:44:06

because 02:44:11

you cannot get an intelligent organism such as a human 02:44:18

being 02:44:23

out of an unintelligent universe 02:44:23

the saying in the new testament that figs do not grow on pistols nor 02:44:32

grapes on forms 02:44:37

applies equally to the world 02:44:40

you do not find an 02:44:44

intelligent organisms living 02:44:48

in an unintelligent environment 02:44:48

look here is a tree in the garden and every summer it produces apples 02:45:00

and we call it an apple tree 02:45:07

because the tree apples 02:45:10

that's what it does 02:45:14

all right now here is a solar system 02:45:18

inside a galaxy and one of the 02:45:21

peculiarities of this solar system is 02:45:22

that at least on the planet earth the 02:45:24

theme 02:45:26

peoples 02:45:28

in just the same way that an apple tree 02:45:29

apples 02:45:29

now maybe two million years ago somebody came from another galaxy in a 02:45:37

flying saucer 02:45:40

and have a look at the solar system and 02:45:43

they looked it over and shrugged their 02:45:44

shoulders and said just a bunch of rocks 02:45:47

and they went away later on 02:45:51

maybe two million years later they came 02:45:54

around 02:45:55

and they looked at it again and they 02:45:57

said excuse me 02:45:58

we thought it was a bunch of rocks but 02:46:00

it's people 02:46:00

and it's alive after all it has done something intelligent 02:46:04

because you see we grow out of this world 02:46:10

in exactly the same way that the apples 02:46:14

grow on the apple tree 02:46:15

if evolution means anything it means 02:46:18

that 02:46:18

but you see we curiously twist it we say well first of all in the 02:46:25

beginning there was nothing but gas and 02:46:28

rock 02:46:30

and then intelligence happened to the 02:46:33

arise in it 02:46:34

you know like a sort of fungus or slime 02:46:36

on the top of the whole thing 02:46:39

but we're thinking in a way that 02:46:41

disconnects the intelligence 02:46:44

from the rocks where there 02:46:47

are rocks watch out 02:46:51

watch out because the rocks are going 02:46:53

eventually to come alive 02:46:55

and they're going to have people 02:46:56

crawling over them 02:46:59

it's only a matter of time just in the 02:47:01

same way as the seed the acorn 02:47:03

is eventually going to turn into the oak 02:47:05

because it has the potentiality of that 02:47:07

within it 02:47:08

rocks are not dead 02:47:08

you see it depends on what kind of attitude you want to take to the world 02:47:14

if you want to put the world down you 02:47:21

say 02:47:22

oh well fundamentally it's only just a 02:47:25

lot of geology 02:47:27

it's the stupidity and uh it so happens 02:47:31

that there's a kind of a freak comes up 02:47:33

in it which we call 02:47:34

consciousness and that's an attitude 02:47:37

that you take 02:47:38

when you want to prove to people that 02:47:39

you're a tough guy that you're realistic 02:47:42

that you face back and that you don't 02:47:44

indulge in wishful thinking 02:47:46

it's just a matter of role playing and 02:47:48

you must be aware of these things there 02:47:50

are fashions in the 02:47:51

intellectual world on the other hand if 02:47:54

you feel 02:47:55

warm-hearted towards the universe uh you 02:47:57

put it up instead of putting it down 02:47:59

and you say about rock 02:48:03

they're really conscious but a very 02:48:04

primitive form of consciousness 02:48:06

because after all when i take even this 02:48:09

uh 02:48:09

crystal here which is glass and go 02:48:10

well it makes a noise and that response that resonance 02:48:17

is an extremely primitive form of 02:48:20

consciousness 02:48:22

our consciousness is much more subtle 02:48:24

than that but 02:48:25

when you hit a bell and it rings you 02:48:27

touch a crystal and it responds 02:48:30

uh inside itself i mean it has a very 02:48:34

simple reaction it goes dangle inside 02:48:37

where as we go jangle with all sorts of 02:48:39

colors and lights these intelligence 02:48:41

ideas and thoughts 02:48:42

you're 02:48:42

but both are equally conscious 02:48:46

but conscious in different degrees that's a 02:48:52

perfectly acceptable idea it's just the 02:48:55

opposite of the idea 02:48:57

see all i'm saying is that minerals 02:49:00

are a rudimentary form of consciousness 02:49:02

whereas the other people are saying that 02:49:04

consciousness is a complicated form of 02:49:06

minerals 02:49:08

you see what they want to do is to say 02:49:11

everything is kind of 02:49:12

there well what i want to say is hooray 02:49:15

you know unless the life is a good show 02:49:15

now then as we study man 02:49:26

or any other living organism 02:49:29

and try and describe it accurately and 02:49:33

scientifically we find that our normal sensation of 02:49:40

ourselves of isolated egos inside a bag 02:49:45

of skin 02:49:46

is a hallucination 02:49:46

it really is absolutely nothing 02:49:51

because when you describe human behavior or the behavior of a mouse or a rat or a 02:50:00

chicken or anything you want to describe 02:50:06

you find that as you try to describe its 02:50:08

behavior accurately 02:50:08

you must also describe the behavior of its environment 02:50:15

i walk and you want to describe the action of walking 02:50:28

you can't talk about my walking without also describing the floor 02:50:34

because if you don't describe the floor 02:50:40

and the space in which i am moving 02:50:42

all you will be describing is somebody 02:50:44

swinging his legs in empty space 02:50:44

those to describe my walking 02:50:49

you must describe the space in which you find me 02:50:55

you know you couldn't see me unless you could also see my background 02:51:01

what stands behind me see if i 02:51:08

myself if the boundaries of my skin were 02:51:11

coterminous with your whole field of 02:51:13

vision 02:51:14

you wouldn't see me at all would see my 02:51:17

bright red 02:51:19

vest instead that's why i put it on this 02:51:22

evening to demonstrate this point 02:51:22

and that would be the thing that filled your field of vision that that was the 02:51:27

thing 02:51:29

standing there you wouldn't see me 02:51:31

because in order to see me 02:51:32

you have to see not only what is inside 02:51:34

the boundary of my skin 02:51:35

but i have to see what's outside it too 02:51:35

now that's terribly important really the fundamental ultimate mystery 02:51:43

the only thing you need to know to 02:51:48

understand the deepest metaphysical 02:51:50

secret 02:51:51

is this that for every outside 02:51:55

there is an inside and for every inside 02:51:58

there is an outside and although they 02:52:02

are different 02:52:03

they go together 02:52:03

there is in other words the secret conspiracy between all insides and all 02:52:09

outside 02:52:13

and the conspiracy is this to look as 02:52:15

different as possible 02:52:18

and yet underneath to be identical 02:52:20

because you don't find one without the 02:52:22

other 02:52:22

like tweedledum and tweedlebee agreed to 02:52:25

have a battle 02:52:28

note that agreed so there is a secret 02:52:33

what is esoteric what is profound and 02:52:36

what is deep 02:52:38

is what we will call the implicit what 02:52:40

is obvious and on the open is what we 02:52:42

will call the explicit 02:52:45

and i and my environment you and your 02:52:48

environment 02:52:49

are explicitly as different as different 02:52:51

could be 02:52:53

but implicitly you go together 02:52:53

and this is discovered by the scientists when he tries 02:53:01

as the whole art of science is to 02:53:04

describe what happens exactly 02:53:07

and when he describes exactly what you 02:53:10

do 02:53:11

he finds out that you 02:53:11

your behavior is not something that can be separated from the behavior 02:53:18

of the world around you 02:53:25

he realizes then that you 02:53:28

are something that the whole world is 02:53:31

doing 02:53:31

just as when the sea has waves on it all right the sea the ocean is waving 02:53:38

and so each one of us is a waving 02:53:47

of the whole cosmos the entire works all 02:53:50

there is 02:53:52

and with each one of us it's waving and 02:53:54

saying you 02:53:55

here i am only it does it differently 02:53:59

each time 02:54:01

because variety is the spice of life 02:54:07

but you see the funny thing is we 02:54:10

haven't been brought up to feel that way 02:54:14

instead of feeling that we each one of 02:54:14

now this morning 02:54:23

i was giving you 02:54:29

a talk on the fundamental basic attitudes expressed in lao tzu's 02:54:36

dao de jing 02:54:40

and uh the title of the book dao da jing 02:54:47

introduces now the second word in the title 02:54:56

i've been dwelling this morning on the 02:54:59

first word which is tao 02:55:01

so comes up the second word 02:55:01

and this word 02:55:06

again is faces us with some serious problems of translation 02:55:14

uh ordinarily translated virtue 02:55:30

but virtue as we understand it today isn't at all appropriate the nearest 02:55:41

kind of uh when we speak of the healing 02:55:48

virtues of the plant 02:55:50

that's nearer to the meaning of this 02:55:51

word death 02:55:54

uh the japanese pronounce it toku 02:55:58

these cantonese duck and the northern 02:56:01

mandarins approximately 02:56:02

and in the section of the loud sir where this is really introduced 02:56:11

the text says something like this 02:56:14

the superior virtue not virtue thus it has virtue 02:56:21

inferior virtue can't let go of 02:56:28

virtue thus not virtue 02:56:32

and we more or less paraphrase that by 02:56:36

translating superior virtue 02:56:40

is not conscious of itself as virtue 02:56:44

and therefore it is virtue but inferior 02:56:47

virtue 02:56:48

is so hooked up with being virtuous or 02:56:52

hooked on being virtuous 02:56:54

that it's not virtue 02:56:54

now then therefore this word is a connection of virtue and magic 02:57:01

it means 02:57:08

the superior the excellence 02:57:12

of things in the sense that 02:57:12

a tree excels at being a tree and nobody really knows how it does it 02:57:23

there is no way of imitating a tree except 02:57:31

the only thing is to be one 02:57:34

and so in the same way when a human 02:57:36

being shows extraordinary skill of 02:57:38

something 02:57:41

it seems that it comes natural to him 02:57:44

it seems that he doesn't achieve it by 02:57:47

any kind of artificiality 02:57:51

if there is some discipline in it it's 02:57:53

concealed 02:57:53

so excelling in something naturally and yet it's something that is so 02:58:01

difficult to understand that it seems 02:58:05

that it has been done by magic 02:58:07

is the meaning of this word 02:58:07

so what do is is 02:58:11

the state of affairs a way of talking about 02:58:17

a particularly a human being 02:58:22

who has learned to live in harmony with 02:58:25

the dao 02:58:25

now of course everything is fundamentally in harmony with the dao 02:58:30

in the book called the jung young 02:58:37

or the unwobbling pivot it is said 02:58:40

the tao is that from which nothing can 02:58:43

depart 02:58:45

that from which things can depart is not 02:58:48

the dow 02:58:48

fundamentally you see you can't get away from it 02:58:53

it's like a situation in which we are 02:58:57

all 02:58:58

floating in a tremendous 02:59:01

river and the river carries you along 02:59:05

anyhow now some of the people in the 02:59:08

river are swimming against it 02:59:10

but they're still being carried along 02:59:13

others have learned 02:59:14

that the artifice of the thing is to 02:59:16

swim with it 02:59:18

and they're carried along too but they 02:59:21

know it you see 02:59:22

they know they're carried along whereas 02:59:24

the people who are swimming against it 02:59:26

think they're going in the opposite 02:59:27

direction 02:59:29

but they're not really so that was the 02:59:32

sort of 02:59:33

discussion we were having this morning 02:59:35

when 02:59:36

i find invariably whenever i talk about 02:59:39

these things 02:59:41

americans raise moral 02:59:44

issues because we are a people 02:59:44

incredibly bamboozled by preachers and so this always comes up 02:59:54

bamboozled preachers 02:59:58

and uh have chronic guilty consciences so those questions 03:00:06

are always raised 03:00:11

but this you see explains uh 03:00:14

part of the situation that you you have 03:00:17

to flow with the river 03:00:19

there is no other way 03:00:19

but that you can swim against it and pretend not to be flowing with it 03:00:25

but you still are 03:00:27

so but a person who is not making that pretense anymore 03:00:33

who knows that you have to go with the 03:00:36

river and swim with it 03:00:38

suddenly he acquires behind everything 03:00:41

that he does 03:00:42

the power of the river 03:00:42

the person swimming against the river you see does not by his action 03:00:48

express the force of the river the 03:00:52

person swimming with it 03:00:53

he goes along and he has that whole 03:00:55

river behind him but he's subtly 03:00:57

directing it 03:00:58

because you can change direction in the 03:01:00

course of the river you can go to the 03:01:02

left or to the right 03:01:03

as the ship can use a rudder and still 03:01:06

go along with the current 03:01:07

or more skillful still as a sailboat can 03:01:10

tack 03:01:11

because when a sailboat attacks and goes 03:01:14

in a direction contrary to the wind 03:01:17

it still is using the wind to blow it 03:01:19

along 03:01:20

now that is the most highly skillful art 03:01:22

of all that is 03:01:23

taoism in perfection 03:01:27

the art of sailing very intelligent 03:01:31

i remember once 03:01:35

i uh was looking in the open air and one 03:01:39

of those glorious little 03:01:41

thistle-down things came and i picked it 03:01:44

up like that 03:01:45

and brought it down and it looked as if 03:01:48

it was struggling to get away 03:01:50

just as if you caught an insect by one 03:01:52

leg 03:01:54

like a daddy long legs or something of 03:01:55

that kind it seemed to be struggling to 03:01:57

get away and i at first i thought 03:01:59

well it's not doing that that's just the 03:02:01

wind blowing 03:02:04

then i thought again really 03:02:07

only the wind blowing surely it is the 03:02:11

structure of this thing 03:02:13

which in cooperation with the existence 03:02:15

of wind 03:02:16

enables it to move like an animal but 03:02:19

using the wind's effort 03:02:19

not its own it is more intelligent being than an insect 03:02:25

in a way because an insect uses effort 03:02:31

like a person who rows a boat uses 03:02:33

effort but the man who puts up a sail 03:02:35

is using magic 03:02:35

he lets nature do it for him with the intelligence to use a sale see 03:02:42

so in just this way there's the meaning 03:02:47

of of uh 03:02:49

is that kind of intelligence which 03:02:54

without your using very much effort gets 03:02:56

everything to cooperate with you 03:02:56

you for example never force other people to agree with you but you give them the 03:03:05

notion that the idea you wanted them to 03:03:09

have was their own 03:03:12

this is a feminine heart 03:03:12

a a woman 03:03:19

who really wants to love her does not pursue him 03:03:25

because then most men feel that she's aggressive and if she's aggressive 03:03:30

she obviously is a woman who has had 03:03:34

difficulty in finding lovers 03:03:37

therefore there must be some undesirably 03:03:39

secret thing about her 03:03:42

but if she as it were makes a void 03:03:46

then uh and and is slightly difficult to 03:03:48

get 03:03:49

then people get excited they know she's 03:03:52

a highly prized object 03:03:54

and so they pursue same way 03:03:58

when you want to teach a baby to swim 03:04:01

you could thing you can do is to put the 03:04:03

baby in the water 03:04:05

and then move backwards in the water 03:04:08

and create a vacuum and this pulls the 03:04:10

baby along 03:04:11

it helps it to learn the feel of the 03:04:13

water and how to swim it's the same 03:04:14

principle 03:04:17

so uh also 03:04:21

clever difficult to get-ness 03:04:25

is one of the very best means of 03:04:27

acquiring immense publicity 03:04:30

take the case of t.e lawrence who 03:04:33

published the seven pillars of wisdom in 03:04:35

a limited edition 03:04:37

and uh 03:04:37

this was it became an extraordinarily celebrated book 03:04:43

cost hundreds of dollars a copy to find 03:04:47

one you know on the market 03:04:49

they waited and waited and built this up 03:04:51

and built this up and built this up and 03:04:52

finally 03:04:52

published the general edition and it was 03:04:55

a knockout 03:04:56

because the first the first one has been 03:04:58

sort of secret and uh 03:05:00

difficult to find 03:05:00

if you have patience you see you can always do this 03:05:06

uh so 03:05:12

the whole art of the ruler you see that 03:05:15

the dao de jing 03:05:16

is a book written 03:05:19

for several purposes you may take it as 03:05:19

a guide to mystical understanding of the universe 03:05:29

you may take it as a dissertation on the 03:05:34

principles of nature 03:05:36

almost a naturalistic a a handbook of 03:05:39

natural law 03:05:40

we would say or you may also take it as 03:05:43

a political book 03:05:46

a book of wisdom for governors 03:05:46

and the principle which it advocates basically is the virtue of governing 03:05:53

by not ruling 03:06:00

uh look at it in this way supposing the 03:06:03

president of the united states 03:06:03

were as unknown to you by name as the local uh 03:06:10

sanitary inspector the man who looks 03:06:18

after the drains 03:06:19

and the sewage disposal and all that 03:06:21

kind of thing this is not a glamorous 03:06:23

figure 03:06:24

you see but for that very reason 03:06:28

he probably does his job more 03:06:30

efficiently than the president 03:06:32

because the president wastes enormous 03:06:34

amount of time 03:06:36

in interviewing various groups from 03:06:40

the elks and the girl scouts and uh 03:06:43

conferring um honors and all this kind 03:06:46

of thing 03:06:47

the poor man's life must be an utter 03:06:49

torment 03:06:50

because he's so well known and therefore 03:06:52

has absolutely no time to give to the 03:06:54

government of the country 03:06:57

i mean think of his mail 03:06:57

and all the people who have to be employed sifting that out 03:07:02

and assessing it so that if he were 03:07:07

someone quite anonymous 03:07:09

and that we didn't have to think about 03:07:12

he would be a very very good ruler 03:07:15

in just the same way for example you 03:07:17

don't have to attend 03:07:19

unless you're sick to the government of 03:07:21

your own body 03:07:23

it happens automatically this is this 03:07:26

expression 03:07:27

run of itself and uh it goes on day 03:07:31

after day after day 03:07:32

and the better it is the less you have 03:07:34

to think about it 03:07:36

when you see well you do not see your 03:07:40

eyes 03:07:42

if there is something wrong with your 03:07:43

eyes you start seeing spots 03:07:46

and those spots are spots in your eyes 03:07:46

when you hear well you'd never hear your ears 03:07:53

but when they start singing you know then you're starting to hear 03:07:58

your ears and your ears are getting in 03:08:01

the way of their own hearing 03:08:04

so on the deepest level 03:08:08

a person as a whole can get in the way 03:08:11

of his own existence 03:08:14

by becoming too aware of himself 03:08:17

and then he lacks this quality 03:08:17

now the taoists then propose that there be 03:08:27

something to help people get back 03:08:31

to dao and to be able to be in a state 03:08:34

of death 03:08:34

so that they wouldn't get in their own way 03:08:39

this is connected with the idea of being empty 03:08:49

emptiness being somehow vacant was the secret of the 03:08:56

thing 03:09:02

the the highest kind of knowledge 03:09:05

is not know how but know how 03:09:09

no hyphen h o w to be able to do it know 03:09:13

how 03:09:15

without any method 03:09:15

to achieve this something is practiced which is called 03:09:24

fasting the heart 03:09:30

the heart in chinese 03:09:34

is a word 03:09:34

which doesn't mean heart in the physiological sense you see it's part of 03:09:41

the 03:09:45

character shin 03:09:45

it's usually located about here 03:09:52

and it means heart mind it's equivalently translated as mind 03:09:59

and in all the zen texts where the word 03:10:03

mind is used 03:10:05

no mind mushin it is this character 03:10:09

the psychic center 03:10:13

now the best kind of heart 03:10:16

is absence of heart 03:10:16

in english the word heartless has a very bad connotation as does the 03:10:24

word mindless 03:10:26

a heartless person is an inconsiderate unfeeling person 03:10:32

a mindless person is an idiot 03:10:37

but a person who has mushin or no 03:10:40

mind or no heart in chinese is a very 03:10:43

high order of person 03:10:43

it means that his psychic center doesn't get in its own way it operates 03:10:50

as if it wasn't there 03:10:52

zhuangza says that the highest form of man 03:10:58

uses his shin like a mirror 03:11:03

it grasps nothing it refuses nothing it 03:11:06

receives but does not keep 03:11:09

and the poem says when the geese fly 03:11:11

over the water 03:11:12

and they are reflected in the water that 03:11:15

the geese 03:11:16

do not intend to cast their reflection 03:11:18

and the water has no mind to retain 03:11:20

their image 03:11:20

the whole thing is you see to operate in the world 03:11:32

as if you were absent now this is 03:11:37

built into it physiologically 03:11:39

fundamentally let me ask you simply 03:11:41

what is the color of your head from the 03:11:43

standpoint of your eyes 03:11:43

your eyes don't see your head do they you look all around and you see 03:11:53

everything else 03:11:56

but your head you don't see 03:12:00

do you feel that your head is black 03:12:05

no hasn't any color at all 03:12:09

outside you see your field of vision is 03:12:11

an oval two eyes and this creates 03:12:14

two centers of an ellipse so there's 03:12:16

this whole field of vision 03:12:18

now experiment what is beyond the field 03:12:20

of vision 03:12:22

what color is it where you can't see it 03:12:25

isn't black 03:12:27

this is an important point it's no color 03:12:30

at all 03:12:32

beyond there and in this way you can get 03:12:34

an idea 03:12:35

of what is meant by that character that 03:12:38

i discussed this morning 03:12:39

schwann which although it formally has 03:12:42

the meaning of darkness 03:12:44

this one 03:12:44

although it formally has the meaning of darkness and the deep and the obscure 03:12:50

it actually refers to this kind of no 03:12:54

color 03:12:55

which is the color of your head so far 03:12:57

as your eyes are concerned 03:12:59

now 03:12:59

so in this sense the invisibility of one's head 03:13:05

almost the not having of any head at all 03:13:06

is the secret of being alive to be headless 03:13:14

you might say to have no head in just 03:13:18

the sense i'm talking about 03:13:20

is our way of talking about the chinese 03:13:22

expression 03:13:23

motion no mind 03:13:27

now as a matter of fact if you want to 03:13:30

see the inside of your head 03:13:32

all you have to do is keep your eyes 03:13:34

open 03:13:34

because everything that you are experiencing in the external visual 03:13:38

field 03:13:42

is a state of your brain all these 03:13:45

colors and shapes 03:13:46

are the way in which the brain nerves 03:13:50

translate 03:13:52

the electrical impulses in the external 03:13:55

world 03:13:57

being the world outside the envelope of 03:14:00

skin 03:14:02

so they translate all what is going on 03:14:05

outside into impulses which are to us 03:14:10

shape and color but shape and color are 03:14:12

states of the nerves 03:14:14

so what you see when your eyes are open 03:14:16

is how it feels inside your head 03:14:20

you think your head is a blank 03:14:23

but actually it's being a blank 03:14:27

you don't see your brain as an external 03:14:31

uh undulating corrugated structure 03:14:35

you see your brain as everything outside 03:14:40

so in this way the the emptiness of 03:14:43

one's head 03:14:45

is the condition of seeing the 03:14:47

transparency of the eye lens 03:14:50

is the condition of seeing colors it has 03:14:52

no color itself 03:14:54

eckhart said this because my eye has no 03:14:57

color 03:14:57

it is able to discern color 03:15:01

this is in germany in the 03:15:05

13th century 03:15:05

uh the this is fundamental taoist idea of 03:15:12

being absent as the condition of being 03:15:18

present being not there 03:15:22

so uh juansa says 03:15:26

when your belt is comfortable you don't 03:15:28

feel it 03:15:28

when your shoes are comfortable it is as if you weren't wearing any 03:15:33

likewise your clothes you see the more 03:15:38

you are aware of these things 03:15:42

the less properly they are made 03:15:46

or the less properly they fit 03:15:46

but we raise an objection to this very simple objection 03:15:58

if i don't know i'm there 03:16:04

i seem to be missing everything 03:16:04

we want to know that we know 03:16:09

if we're happy and we don't know we're happy 03:16:15

we might just as well not be happy 03:16:20

to be happy and to know that you're 03:16:22

happy is really 03:16:24

the overflowing of the cup of life 03:16:24

of course the penalty for that is to be miserable and to know that you're 03:16:31

miserable 03:16:33

some people are miserable without 03:16:35

knowing it 03:16:35

but uh you know my limerick there was a young man who said though 03:16:43

it seems that i know that i know what i 03:16:48

would like to see 03:16:49

is the eye that knows me when i know 03:16:52

that i know that i know 03:16:52

and this is the great human predicament the development of self-consciousness 03:16:59

the development of the possibility 03:17:03

of reflecting upon one's own knowledge 03:17:07

and this is simultaneously a blessing 03:17:11

and a curse 03:17:11

and taoism does not escape this problem i mean it doesn't it doesn't avoid this 03:17:18

problem it deals with it 03:17:23

but it doesn't deal with it obviously 03:17:27

so we get back to this fundamental verse 03:17:29

about 03:17:30

the nature of death 03:17:30

what is highly virtuous is a virtue that is not conscious of itself as virtue the 03:17:37

moment it's conscious of itself as such 03:17:41

you see 03:17:42

it it fails so 03:17:45

in this way we love to see a child 03:17:50

dancing all by itself lost in the dance 03:17:54

and not performing for an audience we 03:17:56

say oh 03:17:57

if only i could dance like that if only 03:18:00

i could become 03:18:01

like a child again innocent 03:18:03

[Applause] 03:18:05

but then soon we know when parents 03:18:07

notice how beautiful a child dances 03:18:09

and they all approve of it and say to 03:18:11

this child dance for us 03:18:14

a child begins to lose this power 03:18:17

and it puts on heirs it knows it's 03:18:19

notice 03:18:21

and we don't like that you say that's 03:18:23

affectation that's showing off 03:18:25

that's phony what we want you to do 03:18:28

is to dance as if you had no audience 03:18:31

not even yourself which of course puts 03:18:34

the child in a double bind 03:18:37

because it says to the child we require 03:18:39

you to do something that will be 03:18:41

acceptable 03:18:42

only if you do it as if it wasn't 03:18:43

required 03:18:44

we do that all the time to our children and to each other 03:18:50

you must love me after all you promised 03:18:55

to do so to when we got married in jews 03:18:58

and so on so 03:19:02

this is the difficulty but somehow 03:19:06

a very great artist in the maturity of 03:19:09

his life 03:19:10

somehow is able 03:19:15

at least to give the impression that he 03:19:18

does what he does 03:19:19

without playing to the gallery 03:19:23

without self-consciousness it seems 03:19:26

perfectly natural 03:19:26

so how does he get there 03:19:29

there was a daoist sage later than laozi his name was 03:19:39

and he had a reputation for being able to ride on the wind 03:19:52

so light juan says in one place it's easy enough to stand still 03:20:00

the difficulty is to walk without 03:20:03

touching the ground 03:20:03

because in the state of being in accord with the dow there is a 03:20:11

certain feeling of weightlessness 03:20:15

parallel to the weightlessness that 03:20:17

people feel when they get into outer 03:20:18

space 03:20:19

or when they go deep into the ocean 03:20:19

so this is of course connected with the sensation that you're not carrying your 03:20:26

body around 03:20:29

i described this morning the sensation 03:20:32

that an expert driver has 03:20:34

when he really is with it in a car 03:20:38

that the hill lifts him up and drops him 03:20:40

down the other side 03:20:41

that he and the road are all one process 03:20:45

and that's equivalent to the sense of 03:20:47

weightlessness 03:20:47

and so this is connected to this is the inner meaning of lieutenant 03:20:51

riding on the wind when suzuki was asked 03:20:56

what is it like to have satori 03:20:58

he said it's just like ordinary everyday 03:21:00

experience except about two inches off 03:21:01

the ground 03:21:02

and so we say in our own songs walking on air never a care something is 03:21:09

making me think 03:21:14

like a little bird in spring 03:21:14

what is this weightlessness it means you cross partly that you're 03:21:22

not 03:21:26

moving around in constant opposition to 03:21:28

yourself 03:21:28

most people move in constant opposition to themselves 03:21:32

because they are afraid that if they 03:21:36

don't oppose themselves all the time 03:21:38

something awful will happen see it's so 03:21:41

easy to bend your arm 03:21:41

no problem at all but supposing you make a fight about it 03:21:47

and you take these antagonistic muscles 03:21:50

as they're called and fight them against 03:21:52

each other so that 03:21:54

you have to bend their arm like that see 03:21:57

how ridiculous but if you somehow felt 03:22:01

that in bending your arm you might make 03:22:03

a mistake 03:22:04

you know instead of bending it you might 03:22:06

hit yourself 03:22:08

uh then these two muscles get nervous 03:22:11

and they fight each other to be sure 03:22:13

that everything happens all right 03:22:15

that's anxiety see 03:22:15

so uh when the human being 03:22:21

developed the power to be aware of himself 03:22:28

to know that he knows in other words 03:22:32

when the cortex 03:22:33

was formed over the original brain 03:22:33

he fell from grace that was the fall of man 03:22:42

because when he felt he had the sensation of being 03:22:50

in charge of being in control of himself 03:22:58

and you can only have that sensation 03:23:00

when you are aware of what you're doing 03:23:04

he got anxious am i aware enough of 03:23:07

myself 03:23:08

have i taken enough factors into 03:23:10

consideration 03:23:11

have i done all that should be done 03:23:15

and then he started trembling 03:23:15

this was the fall of man of course this is what is meant the 03:23:26

loud sir says 03:23:31

when the great dao lost 03:23:34

there came duty to man 03:23:37

and right conduct 03:23:38

in other words nobody talks about how you ought to behave 03:23:43

unless things have gone radically wrong 03:23:49

there wouldn't be any conception of 03:23:52

faithful ministers 03:23:54

of of the state unless there were a lot 03:23:57

of 03:23:58

lousy politicians around 03:24:01

no one would talk about filial piety 03:24:04

unless there were wayward sons and 03:24:06

daughters 03:24:06

so there is constantly in the tradition of taoism the idea that all 03:24:13

moral preaching is confusion 03:24:17

there's a marvelous case of this in the drongster book 03:24:25

where there's an alleged conversation 03:24:29

between confucius and laozi 03:24:32

in which uh laozi asks confucius to 03:24:35

explain to him 03:24:36

what is charity and duty to one's 03:24:38

neighbor 03:24:41

and confucius gives him a little some no 03:24:44

on 03:24:45

being giving up one's self-interest 03:24:49

and working for others 03:24:49

and laozi says what's stuff 03:25:11

sir regard the universe he says the stars come out invariably 03:25:20

every night 03:25:26

the sun rises and sets the birds flock 03:25:28

and migrate 03:25:29

without exception all flowers and trees 03:25:32

grow upwards without exception 03:25:35

you by your talk of charity and duty to 03:25:37

one's neighbor you're just introducing 03:25:39

confusion into the empire 03:25:41

your attempt to eliminate self is a 03:25:44

positive manifestation of selfishness 03:25:47

you are like a person beating a drum in 03:25:48

search of a fugitive 03:25:51

the modern equivalent of that would be 03:25:53

the police car 03:25:55

uh about to raid a bad nightclub and 03:25:58

coming with its siren full on 03:26:00

see and everybody in the club gets out 03:26:00

so all talk about selfishness all talk about is success 03:26:11

in becoming virtuous or enlightened or 03:26:17

integrated 03:26:18

or non-neurotic or self-actualized 03:26:21

let's use all the terms that are being 03:26:23

used all this talk 03:26:23

attests to the fact that it hasn't 03:26:27

happened and will in fact get in the way of its 03:26:32

happening 03:26:34

well to go back to liesel who succeeded in riding the wind what happened 03:26:43

leota found a very great master 03:26:47

and went to study with him and uh the master lived in a small hut 03:26:54

and leota sat outside the hut 03:27:00

and the master paid absolutely no 03:27:02

attention to him 03:27:04

this is sort of the way with taoist 03:27:06

masters because 03:27:08

why would they want students they have 03:27:11

nothing to teach 03:27:14

so after a year sitting outside 03:27:16

lieutenant went away 03:27:16

and uh she just fed up with waiting so long 03:27:23

then he sort of got regretful about this 03:27:27

and thought he really should make a try 03:27:29

so he went back to the master who said 03:27:32

why this ceaseless coming and going 03:27:32

[Applause] so he sat there and tried to control his 03:27:39

mind 03:27:41

uh in such a way that he would not think of the differences between gain and loss 03:27:47

in other words try to live 03:27:55

in such a way that nothing is either an 03:27:57

advantage or a disadvantage 03:27:58

once upon a time there was a chinese farmer 03:28:04

whose horse ran away and all the 03:28:10

neighbors came around to commiserate 03:28:12

that evening so sorry to hear your 03:28:14

horses run away 03:28:15

that's too bad and he said maybe 03:28:20

the next day the horse came back 03:28:22

bringing 03:28:23

seven wild horses with it and everybody 03:28:26

came around in the evening and said 03:28:27

oh isn't that lucky what a great turn of 03:28:30

events you've now got eight horses 03:28:33

and he said maybe the next day his son 03:28:37

tried to break one of these horses and 03:28:39

ride it and was thrown and broke his leg 03:28:42

and they all said oh dear that's too bad 03:28:44

and he said maybe 03:28:46

the following day the conscription 03:28:48

officers came around 03:28:50

to recruit to force people into the army 03:28:53

and they rejected his son because he had 03:28:54

a broken leg 03:28:56

and all the people came around and said 03:28:57

isn't that great and he said maybe 03:29:00

[Laughter] 03:29:00

[Music] 03:29:03

you see that is the attitude of not 03:29:07

thinking of things in terms of gain or 03:29:09

loss advantage or disadvantage 03:29:11

because you don't really know the fact 03:29:14

that you might get a letter from a 03:29:15

solicitor 03:29:16

i mean from a um a law office tomorrow 03:29:21

uh saying that some distant relative of 03:29:23

yours had left you a million dollars 03:29:26

uh it might be something you would feel 03:29:28

very very happy about 03:29:30

but the disasters that it could lead to 03:29:32

are unbelievable 03:29:34

internal revenue 03:29:34

to mention only one possibility 03:29:38

so you never really know whether something is fortune or 03:29:47

misfortune 03:29:48

but we only know the momentary changes and 03:29:54

as it alters our sense of hope 03:29:58

about things the taoist is wise enough 03:30:02

eventually you see to 03:30:03

understand that 03:30:06

there isn't any fixed good or bad 03:30:06

and so his point of view is what is called non-choosing 03:30:14

well anyway leota attempted to keep his mind 03:30:21

in a state of non-choosing and this was 03:30:24

a very difficult thing to do 03:30:26

to overcome one's habits of feeling and 03:30:29

thinking in this respect 03:30:31

and after he had practiced this for a 03:30:32

year the master looked at him 03:30:36

and you know sort of recognized he was 03:30:37

there 03:30:39

after another year's practice 03:30:42

he invited him to come and sit inside 03:30:44

his hut 03:30:44

and then however something changed and litzer didn't try any more 03:30:50

to control his mind what he did 03:30:56

was he put it in this way 03:30:56

i let my ears hear whatever they wanted to hear 03:31:04

i let my eyes see whatever they wanted 03:31:07

to see 03:31:09

i let my feet move wherever they wanted 03:31:11

to go and i let my mind think of 03:31:13

whatever it wanted to think 03:31:13

and then he said it was a very strange sensation because 03:31:21

all my bodily existence 03:31:25

seemed to melt and become transparent 03:31:28

and to have no weight 03:31:29

and i didn't know whether i was walking 03:31:32

on the wind or the wind was walking on 03:31:33

now that's the fasting of the heart 03:31:36

in the ordinary way you see you say uh well that made quite an impression on me 03:31:47

as if you were a 03:31:51

uh slate or a blackboard upon which 03:31:55

life makes an impression as the chalk 03:31:57

does on the slate or the blackboard 03:32:00

so we say well here are these events and 03:32:02

i'm the observer of all these events 03:32:05

and i remember them and they make an 03:32:06

impression on me 03:32:06

but in the psychology of taoism there is no difference between you as 03:32:14

observer 03:32:19

and whatever it is that you observe the 03:32:21

only thing that is you 03:32:24

is the observation of life from a 03:32:27

certain point of view 03:32:27

i said a little while ago you think your heads are empty and blank 03:32:34

but the actual inside of your head is 03:32:40

felt in terms of everything you see on 03:32:42

the outside 03:32:42

we make an opposition you see between the thinker and the thought 03:32:47

the experiencer and the experience the 03:32:52

knower and the known 03:32:54

because we think about knowledge in 03:32:57

terms of certain metaphors 03:32:59

the metaphor of the 03:32:59

stylus on the writing sheet the 03:33:06

reflection on the mirror 03:33:13

uh all those sort of images come into 03:33:16

our idea of knowledge 03:33:16

but in the taoist theory of knowledge it's quite different 03:33:26

there isn't a noah 03:33:31

facing the known 03:33:31

it would be more like saying that if there is any noah at all it contains 03:33:39

the known your mind 03:33:46

if you have one is not in your head your 03:33:49

head is in your mind 03:33:52

because your mind 03:33:52

understood from the standpoint of vision is space 03:34:00

the chinese use this word um 03:34:06

which means um sky space and sometimes 03:34:25

emptiness 03:34:29

and there is a saying that form or you know shape and color 03:34:36

there's one word in chinese that means 03:34:42

really both shape and color 03:34:42

and this and this are said to be identical 03:34:51

space or emptiness is precisely 03:34:58

shape color and shape color is precisely 03:35:01

emptiness this is actually a buddhist 03:35:03

saying from the um 03:35:03

sutra 03:35:08

so that 03:35:13

all that we call space 03:35:17

contains the myriads of shapes and colors 03:35:25

and bodies and weights and so on 03:35:27

it doesn't reflect them as a mirror 03:35:31

but it uh is the absence which guarantees their presence 03:35:39

and it's their presence which guarantees its absence 03:35:46

so there's this mutual relationship again the 03:35:52

mutual arising expression 03:35:57

between voidness and form 03:36:00

between existence and non-existence 03:36:03

being and non-being these are never felt 03:36:06

as alternatives or things 03:36:09

uh that are in some kind of uh contest 03:36:09

so then when it is said that there is not 03:36:18

any thinker behind thoughts 03:36:25

not any experiencer who has 03:36:28

experiences this is a way of saying 03:36:28

that experiencing knowing is not an encounter 03:36:36

between strangers 03:36:41

western thought concentrates very much on knowledge as an encounter 03:36:47

and it is thus that we talk about facing 03:36:53

facts 03:36:53

facing reality 03:36:56

uh as if somehow or other the noah and the known 03:37:04

came from two completely different 03:37:07

worlds 03:37:08

and met each other like that 03:37:08

whereas actually the phenomenon of knowledge is almost the precise opposite 03:37:13

of that 03:37:16

instead of being a collision between the two wandering bodies in space 03:37:22

knowledge is much more 03:37:27

like the expansion of a flower from the 03:37:29

stem and the bud 03:37:29

where the opposite points of the flower are the noah and the known 03:37:36

they are the terms of something which as it were lies between them 03:37:44

let me repeat we tend in all our metaphors and common speech 03:37:52

to think of life as an encounter between 03:37:57

the knowing human 03:37:57

being the knowing mind and the world 03:38:01

they think of it not as an encounter but 03:38:04

as an 03:38:04

expression not an impression 03:38:08

an expression of a process that has 03:38:11

polarized itself 03:38:13

coming out from a center and expressed 03:38:16

itself in terms of opposites 03:38:17

but of course this is the basis of the 03:38:19

whole yang yin 03:38:20

principle of um you know this jolly old 03:38:24

thing 03:38:24

where you've got two interlocked what are they fishes 03:38:38

commas 03:38:43

fascinating emblem 03:38:46

they call it a monarch yes but um there it is 03:38:54

this is a helix essentially this grip and this is the formation of spiral 03:39:06

nebulae 03:39:08

and it's the position of sexual intercourse 03:39:13

uh i hear this is my eye and you here with your eye i'm trying to get to 03:39:22

the middle of you you're trying to get 03:39:25

to the middle of me 03:39:25

neither one of us exists without the other this is yang 03:39:36

yang the white and the in the dark 03:39:41

yang the word yang originally means 03:39:41

or is associated with the south side of a mountain 03:39:48

which is sunny in the north side which 03:39:52

is dark 03:39:54

yang is the north bank of a river which 03:39:56

gets the sun yin is the south bank of a 03:39:58

river which is in the shade 03:39:58

now you see you don't get a mountain with only one side 03:40:04

the mountain if it's the mountain at all 03:40:08

goes up and down 03:40:10

it's like the wave you don't get a wave 03:40:13

which has a crest 03:40:14

with no trough or a trough with no crest 03:40:16

you can't have half a wave 03:40:16

so yang and yin 03:40:20

are quite different from each other but just because they are different 03:40:29

they're identical 03:40:33

this is the important idea of the identical difference 03:40:38

the saying goes in both taoism and 03:40:42

buddhism 03:40:43

difference is identity identity is 03:40:46

different 03:40:46

the chinese word for is is not quite the same as 03:40:51

our word this 03:40:55

word which is usually used 03:40:55

has rather the meaning of 03:40:59

um that that so they say would say 03:41:08

difference that identity 03:41:15

identity that difference 03:41:15

uh and so this doesn't mean quite is exactly the same as 03:41:23

it means rather is in relation to 03:41:29

or goes with 03:41:29

necessarily involves [Applause] 03:41:34

difference necessarily involves identity 03:41:39

identity necessarily involves difference 03:41:39

so yang and yin 03:41:46

there is no yang without yin no yin without yank 03:41:51

when i was first studying these things i was terribly bothered 03:41:58

by how on earth i was going to see 03:42:05

this multiple differentiated world as a 03:42:08

unity 03:42:11

what what was going to happen what would 03:42:13

it be like 03:42:14

to see that all things are one the sages 03:42:17

keep saying all things are one 03:42:19

and they all look to me so different 03:42:22

because here's all this 03:42:24

going on around one and it was doing it 03:42:26

in different ways all these people came 03:42:27

on in different ways and they had all 03:42:29

their houses and all their cars and all 03:42:31

that 03:42:31

this and that the whole world looked 03:42:33

full of the most bony prickly 03:42:35

differences 03:42:37

and i thought well what's supposed to 03:42:38

happen is this supposed to be a kind of 03:42:40

as if your eyesight got blurred and all 03:42:43

these things sound went 03:42:44

yeah and flow together 03:42:48

what is it what is this experience of 03:42:50

nirvana of uh 03:42:52

liberation etc supposed to be 03:42:55

because so many of these especially 03:42:57

hindu sages write about it 03:42:59

as if it was just this kind of 03:43:01

dissolution of everything 03:43:03

instead it all become like slug with a 03:43:05

small salt on it 03:43:05

well i took me a long time and suddenly one day i realized 03:43:15

that the difference that i saw between 03:43:20

things was the same thing as their unity 03:43:20

because uh differences borders lines surfaces 03:43:28

boundaries don't really divide things 03:43:36

from each other at all 03:43:37

they join them together 03:43:37

because all boundaries are held in common 03:43:42

it's like let's think of a of a territory 03:43:47

which has all been divided up into 03:43:50

property is your property my property et 03:43:52

cetera et cetera 03:43:53

no the fences but we hold if i live next 03:43:57

to you your fence is my fence 03:44:00

we hold the boundary in common we may 03:44:03

make up silly arrangements as to who 03:44:05

is responsible for the maintenance of 03:44:06

this fence but nevertheless 03:44:09

we hold our boundaries in common and we 03:44:12

wouldn't know what my plot of land was 03:44:14

or where it was unless we knew the 03:44:16

definition of your plot of land and your 03:44:18

plot of land that 03:44:19

is adjoining so boundaries are held in 03:44:22

common 03:44:24

and i could see then that it 03:44:30

that my sense of being me 03:44:33

was exactly the same thing as my 03:44:35

sensation of being one with the whole 03:44:37

cosmos 03:44:37

i didn't need to get some other weird a sort of different 03:44:42

odd kind of experience to feel 03:44:49

in total connection with everything once 03:44:52

you get the clue 03:44:54

you see that the sense of unity is 03:44:56

inseparable from the sense of difference 03:44:56

you wouldn't know yourself or what you meant by self 03:45:04

unless at the same time you had the 03:45:07

feeling of something other 03:45:07

now it's the the secret is that other eventually turns out to be 03:45:16

you 03:45:20

i mean that's the element of surprise in 03:45:22

life 03:45:24

when suddenly you you find the thing 03:45:26

most alien 03:45:29

we say now what is most alien to us go 03:45:31

out at night and look at the stars 03:45:33

and realize that they are 03:45:36

millions and millions and billions of 03:45:38

miles away 03:45:41

vast conflagrations 03:45:44

out in space and you can lie back and 03:45:47

look at that 03:45:47

and say well surely i hardly matter i'm just a tiny tiny little peekaboo 03:45:55

on this weird spot of dust called earth 03:46:02

and all that going on out there 03:46:06

billions of years before i was born 03:46:09

billions of years after i will die 03:46:11

nothing seems stranger to you than that 03:46:14

more different from you 03:46:17

but there comes a point if you watch 03:46:18

long enough when you'll say 03:46:21

why that me it's the other 03:46:27

that is the condition of your being 03:46:28

yourself 03:46:30

as the back is the condition of being 03:46:32

the front 03:46:34

and when you know that you know you 03:46:38

never die 03:46:38

so let's have an intermission 03:46:42

you 03:49:35