A Message of Sanity - Alan Watts

now as far as I can see the basic mistake is that we've invented this wonderful system of language and calculation and that it is at once too simple to deal with the complexity of the world and also we are liable to confuse that system of symbols with the world itself just as we confuse say money with wealth we confuse ourselves as living organisms which are one with this whole universe with something we call our personality and so we get the marriage of an illusion with a falsehood and that we call ourselves you know wonder we feel cut off from everything alienated frightened of life and death because this is the point you can't transform yourself you can't make yourself sane you can't make yourself loving you can't make yourself unselfish and yet it's absolutely that necessary that we be that way it's absolutely necessary if we are going to hand over the direction of nature to nature which is what it comes to it's absolutely necessary that we let go of ourselves and it can't be done not by anything that we call doing it so when it comes down to it it's shocking news for us for the human race for our pride you're only making a mess by trying to put things straight you're trying to straighten out a wiggly world and no wonder you're in trouble so you can't do anything so you can't transform yourself and what can you do what happens when you just wait there's nothing you can do you watch and all you see is what goes on that is happening of itself you're breathing the wind is blowing the trees are wavy your blood is circulating your nerves opinion it's all going on itself but you know that's you that's the real you feel that goes on of itself so what has to happen is we have to come back to a say view of our own life which is the way we really are an organism functioning in terms of the whole environment with the whole environment instead of this funny little separate personality but how are we going to do that people say you can't change human nature overnight you're asking us to give up the ego and that's the most difficult of all things to do actually it isn't because the ego doesn't exist you

Channel: Nate Roth

Views: 58,227

Keywords: Alan Watts (Author), philosophy, philosiphy, spirituality, religion, life, whats wrong with the world, psychology, ego, who are you, Dexter Britain, from truth, meditation, guru, yoga, mantra, peace, love, happiness, the end of suffering, alan wats, alen watts, alan watt, the meaning of life, who am I, a message of sanity

Id: e5aSTGgs40M

Length: 3min 51sec (231 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2015