Alan Watts: Improbable and Magical – Being in the Way Podcast Ep. 19 – Hosted by Mark Watts

when you fully realize that to be surprised that everything is high wisdom you get a new point of view towards the world which gives you almost what could be called a child's vision of life [Music] to a child the world is entirely new and therefore all of it is extraordinary when you get used to things you see a tree and you say oh well that's a tree we use the trees we know what trees are but if you can go back to your childhood and remember how it was when you first looked at a tree and you saw the Earth itself reaching up into the sky extending itself in many branches and waving all these little flags at heaven or when you looked at the Sun as a child you stared at the sun with marvelous and the sun turned blue so there is a most extraordinary Passage it is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin a creature who does not exist it is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he doesn't and this is the key to this man's Wisdom that he could see all kinds of everyday things and events as if they were completely improbable and magical [Music] thank you welcome to the Alan Watts podcast being in the way and I'm your host Mark Watts and today we're going to pull another talk from the early radio series out of The Archives this is a delightful one it's a tribute to GK Chesterton and it's about an author that influenced him greatly as a young man and really helped shape his worldview as he explains it's an early live recording one of the few made in the field during this period a time when he was primarily in the radio booth and it's a delightful exploration of one of his favorite literary figures today's podcast was produced in conjunction with the ramdas be here Now podcast Network our theme music is by Zakir Hussein courtesy of moment records and in a moment we'll hear Alan Watts in the talk tribute to GK Chesterton I want you to have in mind an enormously fat man wearing a black cloak and a rather large wide brimmed hat with parsnay secured to his nose and prevented from destruction by a large black long ribbon fastened around his neck who speaks as fat men do with a certain luxurious voice rather like Charles Loudon only with a slightly grieved tone in everything he says what I would call a humorously grieved tone foreign a person whom I discover has had an enormous influence on my life because when I was a late adolescent and when um I was for a while a priest in the Episcopal Church I read this man's works very carefully and I have by osmosis imbibed an enormous amount of wisdom from him funny thing is not so much in terms of specific ideas as in basic attitude to life because this is a man who above all virtues had I think what is one of the very greatest virtues which we don't usually find cataloged in lists of Virtues he had a sense of wonder he knew a truth that was once enunciated by kind of um Guru type who was a friend of mine many years ago who said that gnosis which means I suppose you best call it transcendental knowledge genosis is to be surprised at everything because you see if you carry out technology to its final fulfillment you have technological means of supplying you with every need or wish that you could imagine so that you have instead of just the plain little telephone with this dial on it you have a somewhat more elaborate machine on which you can dial for anything you need at any time and it'll be supplied instantly imagine yourself in that omnipotent position and what you will wish for in that final ultimate push button world will be a button labeled surprise you won't know what's going to come when you dial that one and chesterton's fundamental attitude as a poet and as a theologian was that even God needs a surprise and of course for that very reason endowed angels and Men with the mystery of free will so that they would do things that uh would be surprising and that could not be foretold this is why Calvinists are so dreary that they believe that everything is predestined and uh that's why of course the Episcopal Church is always uh more interesting than the Presbyterian Church [Laughter] in that uh they're not Calvinists something always rather depressing about Calvinists although there are many interesting things about them that I won't go into but uh the chesterton's idea was that the universe is so arranged that it is a basically the Lord's own way of surprising himself because that's what you would do if you were God if you really think it through a lot of people never think this through they think about um I remember a story about a conversation at a dinner party where all it was in England and all the people were discussing what they thought was going to happen after death whether they would simply be extinguished or whether they're being reincarnated or whatever kind of thing and present at the dinner there was a very respectable Country Squire who was uh on the Vestry of the local church very pious and finally the hostess said to him sir Roger you haven't said anything in the conversation this evening what do you think is going to happen to you when you die he said I'm perfectly sure that I shall go to heaven and enjoy Everlasting Bliss but I wish you wouldn't raise such a depressing subject so you see people that people just don't think it through uh it's very fascinating to ask people deeply about their theological ideas what they really do think God is and what heaven would be like and uh not only what it would be like as based in based on the symbolism of the Bible but what sort of a heaven they would really want to go to I mean do you want to be stuck with the rest of your family forever saying God gives us our relations but let us thank him we can choose our friends do you uh at what age would you like your resurrected body to be uh there are all sorts of fascinating questions of this kind which bring out the Great marvelous problem of what we would really like to happen and uh when we follow that through and through and through and through we must admit in the end that we don't want a situation in which everything is completely controlled in other words if everything is rationalized if everything is perfectly logical and clear it all works and there's no possibility of anybody making a mistake and we know exactly what's going to happen forever and ever and ever we'd be bored to death nobody wants that kind of Heaven so what kind of Heaven would you like supposing for example you had the privilege dream Any Dream you wanted every night and have it real Vivid and of course you would be able to dream any amount of clock time in one night that you desired you would be able to say have a hundred years of experience in one night and when you think that through what dreams would you dream it's almost like the question if you were going to have half an hour's interview with God and you have the privilege of asking one question what question would you ask and you've got a little while to think that one over see before you go into the interview so then the same thing is what would you dream you would dream of course at first I suppose all possible fulfillments of wishes whatever your wishes were whatever your desires were you would fulfill them all and when you've done that for about a month of nights of 100 years long each night of dreams I would say well let's vary things a bit let's get a let's let things get out of control let's have an adventure and uh then you'd you know you would rescue a princess from a dragon or something of that kind and then you would arrange it so that you would forget that you were dreaming and so the thing would seem as real as real could be and you would dare yourself like kids dare themselves to do all sorts of dangerous exploits and finally you would dare yourself to experience awful situations because you knew it would be wonderful when you woke up because the contrast would be so fascinating and finally in the course of your dreaming you would dream a dream in which you were sitting in Campbell Hall at Christchurch Sausalito listening to me give a lecture with all your personal lives and your problems and whatever it is that's going on see because that would be the nature of surprise now in the in this when you fully realize that to be surprised that everything is high wisdom you get a new point of view towards the world which gives you almost what could be called a child's vision of life when Jesus said that uh unless you be converted and become as a child you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven this is the thing that Chesterton understood in a very profound way because to a child the world is entirely new and therefore all of it is extraordinary and I hope most of you can remember how you saw things when you were about two years old as the whole world being quite weird and uh when you get used to things you see a tree and you say oh well that's a tree we're used to trees we know what trees are but if you can go back to your childhood and remember how it was when you first looked at a tree and you saw the Earth itself reaching up into the sky extending itself in many branches and waving all these little flags at heaven or when you looked at the Sun as a child and you stared at the sun it was marvelous and the sun turned blue and there was a feeling about everything of being essentially magical so there is a most extraordinary passage which um occurs in one of the rarer books of Chesterton called the colored lands where he makes this extraordinary remark it is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin a creature who does not exist it is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he doesn't and this is the key to this man's Wisdom that he could see all kinds of everyday things and events as if they were completely improbable and magical and that he could describe the world as an extremely improbable object this great globe of Rock floating in space around the Fast Fire covered with green hair with the ordinary people call grass and containing all the extraordinarily odd objects on it and when he thought about this he realized two things that are not ordinarily realized by religious people and the two things are this he realized that the World created by God is a form of nonsense and that one of the most important features of the Divine mind is human in one of his essays he says so often when I have written the word Cosmic the printer makes a misprint and prints it comic but he said there's a certain unconscious wisdom in that the cosmic is the comic Dante wrote The Divine Comedy an account of Earth Heaven purgatory and Hell The Divine Comedy and I one finds you see that in ordinary people's religious attitudes there is a lack of both these things of nonsense and of humor when I was a boy I was brought up in the Church of England I went to school at King's School Canterbury and of course we attended innumerable services in that great Cathedral and one of the cardinal sins which one could commit was to laugh in church and that is of course because uh the same reason the judges don't like laughter in court that laughter is threatening to tyrants and if you conceive God in the image of a tyrant a monarch who rules by violence whatever kind of violence it may be military violence moral violence any kind of violence all tyrants are afraid and they sit in courtrooms with their backs to the wall surrounded on either side by their gods and everybody who comes in of course has to fall flat on their faces because in that position it's more difficult to attack and so uh when a marine sergeant on Parade salutes the flag he has a very serious expression in his eyes and that's not a time for laughter and therefore we have Associated the word solemn as when we celebrate in the Catholic Church solemn high mass solemn solemn means serious and one of the great things one of the fundamental insights that is underlying all chesterton's work is that the attitude of Heaven is not serious there's a famous passage in his book Orthodoxy where he says things like stones are subject to gravity they are heavy they are grave they are serious but in all things spiritual there is lightness and therefore a kind of frivolity the Angels fly because they take themselves lightly and if that must be true of the Angels how much more true of the lord of the Angels I have said uh in in in my funny way that there are four fundamental philosophical questions that human beings have argued about uh as far back as we can remember the first question is who started it the second question is are we going to make it the third question is where are we going to put it and the fourth question is who's going to clean up but that all those things suggest a fifth question which is is it serious like when someone is sick and says to the doctor is it serious are you serious but he would say that's quite the wrong question to ask not are you serious because that would mean are you grave are you heavy are you ponderous are you solemn and in this all these senses he would equate that with a kind of lack of spirituality and it's much better to ask people not are you serious but are you sincere in other words are you with it as we say and more current American slang so from his view the world is fundamentally not serious it is sincere and beyond that to go on to the higher mystery of his Insight the world is basically nonsense now what do we mean by that in the Book of Job which is the most profound book in the Bible so far as I'm concerned there is raise the problem of the sufferings experienced by those who are just and righteous and uh Chesterton has written a great deal on the Book of Job and without quoting him directly I'm going to summarize what I've learned from him about this book because this is really very important about this whole theme the Prelude to the Book of Job is in heaven and a conversation ensues between God and one of the Angels called Satan otherwise known as samael the word L on the end of the name of an Angel like Gabriel Raphael Uriel and so on means uh Divine being uh Angel attendant of the court of Heaven and the the role of Satan in the Old Testament is different from the role of Satan and Christianity the role of Satan in the Old Testament is he's the district attorney of Heaven he's the prosecutor and as you will see in a court today it is arranged that the prosecution uh is always on the left of the judge and the defense is on the right so at the left hand of God a situation which is not mentioned in the Creed there is of course the prosecutor at the right hand of God for he sitteth at the right hand of the father is our only mediator and advocate Jesus Christ because he's the council for the defense and he happens to be the boss's son he puts him in a rather strong position because in the course of time when you read uh reports of cases in court and you get very familiar with court procedures you always start having sympathy with the accused and therefore uh antipathy towards the prosecution because the prosecution is always putting people down it was saying nasty things about people and the defense is always trying to say nice things about people so therefore there's popular enthusiasm for the defense and popular displeasure for the prosecution and it was for this reason that the particular Angel called samael or Satan was in due course of time turned into the devil the enemy of all things good whereas actually the devil in the Book of Job is a loyal servant of the court of Heaven it's just his job to do the prosecution so he proposes that God tried job said you think you've got a virtuous follower in job but he's only virtuous so long as he's prosperous you see what happens when you visit him with suffering and then see if he's loyal to you so God does exactly that and he visits job with all these plagues and then the three friends of job sit around and they try to rationalize why all this is happening they say you in effect you must have committed some sort of secret sin otherwise you wouldn't be suffering this is the reasoning of the book of Deuteronomy that if you obey the law of God you will prosper and the Hebrews were eternally puzzled as to why this didn't work out so the Book of Job highlights this question and all the advisors of job the three men who have this discussion with him while he's covered with saws and sitting around uh in some wretched pad with uh all his property lost and his family in trouble and so on and he cannot see any sense in their arguments and finally God Appears at the end the 28th what is it 28th chapter and he comes in a whirlwind and he refutes the advice of all these three friends who is this he says the darkeneth counsel with words without knowledge now stand you up like a man and answer like a man Were You There When I laid the foundations of the Earth when the morning Stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy and then he goes on to ask job a series of questions which includes such questions as why do I send Rain On The Desert where no man is why uh can can you catch the Leviathan with a hook can you bind the influences of the Pleiades and make them work for you or can you loosen the astrological influences of this constellation of Orion can you do all this and what is it all about so a series of questions are delivered to job none of which have any answer and the effect of these questions on job is to solve this problem and ordinary interpreters of the Book of Job always say that this isn't really the answer you say the Book of Job raises the question and doesn't answer the question it does answer the question it answers the question by asking questions all of which seem to reflect that in some Curious way the universe doesn't make sense why do you send Rain On The Desert where no man is now what about that see our trouble is that where we really get into difficulty in life is that we expect everything to make sense and then we get disappointed we expect for example that um time is going to solve our problems that is going to come a day in the future when we will be finally satisfied and so things make sense we say of something it is sensible it is satisfactory it is good because we feel it has a future it's going to get somewhere and we're going to arrive our whole education is programmed with the idea that there is a good time coming when we are going to arrive we're going to be there when you're a child you see you're not here yet you're treated as a merely probationary human being and they get you involved in the system where you go up step by step through the various grades when you get out of college you go up step by step through the various grades of business or your profession or whatever it is always with the thought that the thing is ahead of you see it's going to make sense and uh perhaps the the universe doesn't work that way at all maybe instead of that this world is like music where the goal of music is certainly not in the future you don't play a symphony in order to reach the end of the song because then the best orchestra would be the one that played the fastest you don't dance in order to arrive at a particular place on the floor and so chesterton's view of the world is an essentially musical view a dancing view of the world in which the object of the creation is not some far-off Divine event which is the goal but the object of the creation is the kind of musicality of it the very nonsense of it as it unfolds and so that uh when you talk sense your words refer to something else in other words if I talk about tables and chairs these sounds that I'm making tables chairs refer to something in the physical world the Sound Table is not the table but it refers to this but then when we ask what does the world mean what does the table mean the word the noise table means this now does this have a meaning what is the meaning of life if we ask the question what is the meaning of life we are treating life as if it were a set of words a set of symbols but it isn't the real Great Insight is that these things don't have any meaning now in ordinary way of talking in the west we would say that's terrible something that has no meaning is awful a meaningless life you see that we say about the most Dreadful kind of life but Justin is trying to say that the the the meaningless Universe the nonsense universe is just great just because it doesn't mean anything it is because God himself is dancing is playing he has a poem of God as a child and he's playing with a windmill and the uh fans of the windmill are the four Great Winds of Heaven and the balls with which he's playing the Sun and Moon and the whole idea therefore then is that that existence itself is is a magical play and is therefore nonsense in the sense the special sense of nonsense that it is something going on which does not refer to anything except itself when we say nonsense we are saying it for the Delight of the words and not for anything that they mean it was brilliant and the slithery toves did Gaia and gimbal in the wave or a Mimsy were the borrow Groves and the marmaraths outgrave or better from Edward Lear who said of himself he really drew the portrait of Chesterton his body is perfectly spherical he weareth a ransible hat foreign who opened the window and said Phil jumble Phil jumble Phil Rumble come tumble that doubtful little man of spit head [Music] um or um cloth skin plus skin pelic and G we think no birds so happy as we plough skin plough skin Pelican Jill we think so then and we thought so still you see now uh he says that in this kind of um marvelous playing with the voice and with words you have something nearer to the nature of reality than you do with statements that make formal sense even though this Manchester was a great believer in reason and you know in the Father Brown stories there is an occasion when um Father Brown despise the criminal masquerading as a priest because the man says well we cannot find out God with our reason or all the things of divine are Beyond reason we must learn to suspend reason and at that moment Father Brown knows this man is not a good Catholic I'm not really a priest at all because of Thomas you see bases everything saying there is a consistency between reason and faith and Chesterton believed in that very strongly but that didn't prevent him from seeing the deeper mystery that there is a kind of super reason and unreason but not just pure unreasoned but in something that we recognize as nonsense in the sense that Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll wrote Nonsense has an enormously important thing to understand what is the difference shall we say between inspired nonsense and mere Bosh and this is is what he's trying to point out there is a kind of nonsense which we could call magical nonsense and there's a kind of nonsense on the other hand which we should call it as trivial rubbish so it is the nonsense the Divine nonsense has this extraordinary humor with it which he tries to evoke in saying that it is a great thing to look at a rhinoceros or a hippopotamus creatures who don't who do exist and look as if they don't a poem in which he brings this out is called a fish dark the sea was but I saw him one great head with goggle eyes like a diabolic cherub flying in those Fallen Skies I have heard the horse denials I have known the word he was I have seen a man by shouting seek to Orphan all the stars I have seen a fool half fashioned borrow from the heavens a tongue so to curse them more at leisure and I taught him not as dung for I saw that finny Goblin hidden in the abyss untrod and I knew there can be laughter on the secret face of God blow the trumpets Crown the sages bring the age by reason fed he that sitteth in the heavens he shall laugh the prophet said so he sees in a goldfish you know those kind of Disney goldfishes which have all sorts of Tails and fins and complications we have big goggle eyes what on Earth are they doing you ever thought about that you know what's what is this going on I mean it doesn't have a purpose goldfish you know they they eat and they absorb things in they make more goldfish and they go out making goldfish and more goldfish nobody we don't even eat them maybe something does that we finally eat but but mentally what's the point of a goldfish [Music] a goldfish is a solemn thing which keeps on going round you know they keeps on going round and round and round and round and round it lives beneath the water but is very seldom drowned which is because it keeps on going round and round and round this isn't going anywhere at all uh it's just going as children like to go or um Phil jumbo Phil Jambo Phil Rambo come tumble that doubtful little man and spit head that that's what's happening and so in very profound theological ideas uh it is said you see that when we finally go to heaven and we join the choirs of the Angels uh the the what are the choirs of Angels doing well they are sitting around uh in heaven or actually dancing uh singing alleluia alleluia alleluia you know when you sing on Easter Jesus Christ is risen today Hallelujah uh what is this Allelujah I must assure you it doesn't mean anything it is a sound of delight but of no other meaning it is an expression like whoopee oh when somebody's riding a surfboard and they're going down at the yeah it's just like that you see well what's the point of that the point of it is itself it has no point Beyond itself it's there it's arrived it's in a complete present it is here and now and that's what it's all about uh we say to swing it get with it and that is of course what all those um angels are doing the beatific vision the that means the word bayatus in Latin we translated blessed but that's a rather Pious word uh it really means happy joyous bayatus and so all those angels as Dante describes it in the Paradiso when he first hears the song of the angels He says it sounded as if it were the laughter of the universe and what no laughter in church where we are supposed to be a small replica of the beatific vision and of the Angels gathered around Heaven represented by the altar uh you know the present the Throne of God um why why associate all this with solemnity you see Sunday is a very interesting Institution it's a kind of modification of the Jewish idea that after the six days of creation when God was working took a day off holiday that was as it were the culmination of the six days of work in Christianity of course the Sunday is the first day of the week and not the seventh day the Sabbath but the same idea is involved that once in every six pulses there is a seventh pulse which is a little space of time to take it to take off now six days of your life say you're working and you're being responsible and you're earning and living and you're being serious if you do that all the time you're going to go quite mad you're going to be like a bridge a Steel Bridge which is so rigid that it has no swing in it and therefore it will fall apart in a storm for in order to be sane every human being must allow himself a little time in life to be insane to let go to stop trying to control everything to stop trying to be God and just go in whatever way you want see so when you go to church on Sunday that's what you're supposed to do you're supposed to take off from all this thing of laying it on but what we've we've made the mistake when we go to church on Sunday present company accepted but most preachers lay it on so they say this is what you ought to do that's what you ought to do you haven't been conducting this right and so on and so on and nobody gets a vacation yeah nobody gets a holy day holiday a Sabbath time off so when you go the whole idea of church is that this is the place where we can get back to the fundamental sanity of nonsense and sing Alleluia with the angels around the center of the universe which is actually manifesting these Stars these galaxies for what it's a firework display it's a celebration you say today there will be at 11 o'clock on Sunday or whatever other time it is a celebration of the Holy Communion do you celebrate or do you compart yourselves as if you were attending a funeral I used to be a chaplain in a university and I used to say there will be a celebration of the Holy Communion such and such a time on Sunday and incidentally if you come here out of a sense of Duty we don't want you better be lying in bed or going swimming or something because what this is is we are going to have Celestial Whoopi and uh we're going to enjoy it that's what you're supposed to do instead of coming in and saying ah you know you're going to go to this thing and you're gonna feel how awful you are how undootiful you've been how absolutely terrible you've been and uh however can you expect to be anything more than terrible if you don't really enjoy your religion that's what's going to give you the strength and the power to be something other than terrible but if you just go in and make your religion and occasion of saying oh we've been terrible and we're awful sick and we need help and here's the Holy Communion which is your medicine and I hope it tastes nasty you know that's awful it doesn't get to the center of the thing you see which is uh just didn't put it in another poem where he said it's called the song of the children and it says of Jesus that he taught to the adults he taught them laws and watch words to preach and struggle pray but he taught us deep in the Hayfield the games that the Angels play had he stayed here forever their world would be wise as ours and Kings be cutting Capers and Priests be picking flowers because that's the sense of the thing fundamentally that everything that's going on is a sort of jazz everything in the world the flowers the trees the mountains and we have pipe to you and you have not danced we have mon to you and you have not wept you won't join the game because you human beings think you're so special and so serious and you've got to make sense of it all there isn't any sense to it just join in come on the whole thing and find you'll be singing halleluia with the angels [Music] today's talk and other talks in this part of the series are from the early radio talks and that 12 part series can be found in its entirety through the Alan Watts site go to ellenwoods.org and look for audio recordings and you'll see it among the seminars classic Radio recordings and thank you once again for joining us [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Be Here Now Network

Views: 150,767

Keywords: alan watts, dharma talk, dharma talks, bhnn, be here now podcasts, be here now podcast network, bhnn podcasts, spiritualty, buddhism, G. K. Chesterton, GK Chesterton

Id: mHBZqEOwpnM

Length: 44min 42sec (2682 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 25 2022