Alan Watts: Out of the Trap Pt. 1 – Being in the Way Podcast Ep. 22 – Hosted by Mark Watts

the idea that we are all subjects of the Divine King whilst you might say a political model based on the organization of the Great city-states of the ancient near East and that image you see has absolutely haunted Western man throughout his whole development because he has felt that he is in this universe on probation on sufferance he doesn't quite belong here [Music] welcome to the Alan Watts being in the way podcast I'm your host Mark watts and today and in the coming weeks we're going to bring something special to you which is some of my father's radio talks from the 90s being in a half hour format these radio programs are a little shorter than what we've been doing in the past and so even though you may be spending a little bit less time with us I hope that you'll enjoy the program and seek out our other offerings at Alan watts.org where you'll find a variety of selections including offerings from our new streaming Channel you'll also find the podcast there and a variety of other offerings including biographic material about my father and his Rich Legacy he had started in public radio in 1953 in a little Community radio station in Berkeley kpfa and within a few years he was on the air in Los Angeles 1959 and by the early 60s he'd become very popular in the Bay Area the program was known as the hangover cure because he recorded it Saturday nights but it was re-aired on Sunday mornings so much of the Bay Area was waking up to the sound of his voice in the early 60s he began to record himself in the field and so wherever he went whether it was a seminar or a public lecture or east coast lecture tour he would take his tape deck along and at the end of a tour there might be a half a dozen or a dozen recordings and these would soon be put on the radio station and then sent down to LA and soon these live broadcasts have become much more popular and so they were mailed from LA to Dallas and from Dallas to New York and from New York to Boston and then back to Portland before coming home by the mid-60s counterculture kids all over the country were listening to these broadcasts and heading out west to San Francisco and I was one of them I headed back to Sausalito where my father lived and began working on the radio show and compiling the broadcasts and we created lecture series that we called electronic university courses at the time when my father passed on in 1973 working with my father's longtime archivist Henry Jacobs and we produced 2000 LPS and set these all over the place to expand his reach there wasn't much interest in philosophy of any kind in the 80s but in the 90s that came back and the series began to be more popular and we actually produced a new series called love of wisdom and that was ended up being about 117 different broadcasts that went out at that time we were producing on studer tape decks and high quality cassettes were going out to radio stations which they just love for their convenience and we ended up on about 35 stations Nationwide with another other 50 stations airing occasionally so today and in coming weeks and months we're going to dip into this wonderful Archive of recordings and we're going to revisit some of these historic broadcasts that brought audiences to my father's work before the Advent of the popular internet boastings and podcasts that have now reached billions of viewers today we're going to start with out of the trap part one It's Curious very very odd and yet nobody realizes it that human beings are brought up to feel as if they were strangers in the world we are given a sense of our own existence that is in flat contradiction to the facts of nature although in its own way there is something natural about that because nothing can happen at all it is not in some way connected with an elaborate scheme not a scheme that as it were had a plan in mind but nevertheless a scheme that his musical in its nature and even our delusions are part of that but nevertheless they are sometimes extraordinarily odd and we are given by our society by our tradition and upbringing by our culture a very weird sensation of our own existence and that is the sensation of strangeness of being somebody who as we say comes into this world whereas when you are born you should say that you came out of this world you don't come into it where else is there to come from in us the philosophy that we've inherited however and that underlies our common sense there are some ideas which account for this sensation of strangeness and I'm going to spend the first session examining the history of that but what I want to say to make things clear from the outset especially to those of you who are strangers to these seminars is that strictly speaking you that that which you feel most inwardly and intimately to be yourself is obviously part and parcel of the works we might say the plays but what there is we could say in a slangy way the which then which there is no Witcher the Hindus say tatvamasi which is in Sanskrit saying that thou art you're it only you're playing you aren't and that's what it was always doing but basically never fear what is absolutely Central and fundamental to you is what the Christians might call God or the godhead and uh you're pretending you aren't and you're pretending very cleverly so that the illusion is extraordinarily convincing or if we put it in terms that do not require these what we today call mythological concepts of God of Brahman or whatever we can simply say that every individual is what the total Cosmos is doing at a place called here and now or a place called I I is a pronoun of position like this here so on and so that's the way things actually work and anyone can see it and it can be proved to the satisfaction of anybody by purely physical evidence only we are trained to feel the exact opposite you see that we are little creatures sort of looking over our shoulders and wondering where the hell we are and what's going to happen next and that this isn't our Arrangement at all and that we're caught in a great Cosmic trap oh thou who dids with Pitfall and with Jinn the set the road I was to wander in you know that kind of idea now what accounts for this how could we possibly have come to feel this way well there are a lot of reasons but the two that I want to concentrate on this morning are two mythologies that have influenced everybody's thinking in the western world the first we'll call the Jewish Christian mythology and the second the Newtonian mythology or mechanistic mythology and the latter of course has a far more dominant influence on educated people today than the other one but let's look and see what they really involved in our feelings about the world and about our place in it first of all in the Jewish Christian mythology we are here in a relationship to the Ultimate Reality which is comparable to the relationship between a great king and his subjects this King is modeled on the ideal type of a great near Eastern King who might have lived say around four or three thousand BC you remember don't you in reading about the fact that when those kings died all their families and servants and many of their subjects were buried with them they were killed outright by being well buried alive in the in the Royal tomb and Thomas Mann made the observation that in those days it seemed as if human heads had no backs to them as if one was simply a mask and that what was behind you was something altogether Beyond you so that you were completely identified with your tribe with your Human family and so yeah it's uh the King was like a queen bee the ABS well we would say the Kingpin upon which everything depends and when that's blown out everybody collapses with it only later did we grow backs to our skulls and then begin to feel enclosed that was a very important step but a Troublesome one we don't feel in the lines of GK Chesterton but now a great thing in the street seems any human nod where move in strange democracy the million masks of God we don't feel that we see we feel all by ourselves but we can get it back this sensation of being uh absolutely one with the whole and at the same time retain everything that we have won by the development of western style personality the ego so then this this model of the world based on the idea that we are all subjects of the Divine King was you might say a political model based on the organization of the Great city-states of the ancient near East and that image you see has absolutely haunted Western man throughout his whole development because he has felt that he is in this universe on probation on sufferance he doesn't quite belong here because there's this great big giant spirit who say to him now you watch out you're just a miserable little worm and I evoked you here out of nothing of course I love you because I'm I am love I am a very good father and everything that I do however much it hurts is for your good but you watch out and don't you dare look me in the eye so everybody does this see all those Customs where the ruler is faced this way with with head down and so no looking at him directly is based on this mythology and of course it's base two on some political facts because when a big man does attain to eminence everybody is against him secretly they hate him for it so he has to be surrounded with gods and secret police and people all lie with their faces on the floor so that they're in a position where they can't attack that's the whole idea and that's why in the Royal Court the throne has its back to the wall there is nothing behind the throne there are just guards on either side who can be watched a little you see so in a church when the altar or the Episcopal Throne is right with its back to the wall this really indicates a situation of fear but if I am not afraid of you uh I shouldn't really have my back to the wall at all here in this situation uh only rooms are designed our whole architecture uh following the design of original courthouses is made that way after all one should walk out into the middle of people and uh have people behind you if you can trust them [Laughter] so uh this model I call it a model of the universe based on the kingly court uh did certain very important things for us it gave us the idea for example of universal law it lies at the roots of many of our best ideas of Justice but it bugged us it really bugged us because you felt that you were never never free from the penetrating glance of an All-Seeing Eye that watched everything you do I have a friend who is a humorous Catholic and in her toilet she has old-fashioned kind with a tank and the pipe going down to the seat and right on that pipe there is a little tile with an eye on it and written underneath in Gothic letters it says Thou God seest me so everywhere There Is No Escape at the most intimate moments or in the most intimate thoughts you are under judgment you are being watched big father is watching you you see now that made the Western World more and more and more uncomfortable they couldn't stand it they felt that this was the Paradox involved to believe in that kind of a god a personal God has this good thing about it that it's saying that the Ultimate Reality that which underlies everything that happens is intelligent and not only intelligent but uh beneficent even if in a rather a Stern and authoritarian way but at least it's alive the universe in other words has a heart but we switched to the opposite mythology because we couldn't stand it and in the course of the 18th and 19th centuries evolved the idea that the universe doesn't have a heart at all that it is essentially stupid and that we sensitive intelligent beings capable of love and all sorts of feelings are an accident a really deplorable accident for what a monstrous system in which the tender sensitive nervous systems that we are could appear in a world that consists principally of rock and Fire that is an impersonal vast gyrating nonsense which has no consideration for us men whatsoever now why did such an idea possess the Western world why could it be that in the 19th century Freud could talk about the basic energies of the psyche as libido and compare them to the blind forces of brute emotions you know think of that language at the same time the unstable and t.h Huxley and uh so on were thinking about uh the world as the manifestation of energy uh say only bergson with the idea of the Elan vital uh what was the nature of this energy which manifested everything essentially it was something like electricity now electricity it does wonderful things for us but essentially electricity is rather dumb you'll switch it on and switch it off supposing I could just switch you on and switch you off you see but just like that say please don't bother me anymore and you would vanish but that's you see they thought of the world as having as being just a surge of like this you see but completely stupid only after they how on Earth they ever got our intelligence out of this is a miracle but they did by explaining that if you gave it enough time it would eventually become intelligent well that's the most nonsensical idea anybody ever thought of that if just time you see would make things more complicated now I want you to this is the thing that is difficult today because that idea of the Mechanical Universe that is essentially dead is a very persuasive one and most intelligent people today who are products of the college and that particular system of propaganda and indoctrination really feel that this is the case that they are strangers in an alien world and that when you die it'll just be like you were a caterpillar that was squashed and that will be that you're in other words an interlude of Consciousness between eternal darknesses and that's all there is it doesn't mean anything it is just that and not much of that anyway not much of a vat now what is important is to understand that this is a myth there aren't just as the other thing about the great Cosmic King is also a myth there is no foundation for it in fact whatsoever but it's a way you see of putting the world down when it had been put up too much it's a reaction the world had been put up too much by being made embarrassingly intelligent you see here was that All-Seeing Eye who was saying to you every minute you see better a dead world than one watching me like that see somebody looks at you and they look at you and look at you either you've got to make love to them or get rid of them you've got to do something about it it becomes embarrassing otherwise so uh in the same way we had to transfer to this other idea now let's look at certain elements in the 19th century myth the Newtonian myth that are very interesting first of all let's consider what it says about the nature of human consciousness of the mind of being aware it has generally said there really is no such thing as a mind the the what we call mind and life is a kind of scum that grows after a long time on the top of rocks you see it looks upon the human being as a cell-infested skeleton just as it looks upon the Earth as a life-infested rock it sees no real connection between the rock which is the Earth or the fiery metallic ball and the life that's creeping on its surface that's an expression now Expressions means something that grows out of but look how we use the word an expression said something it sounds almost like excrement we use it in a deprecatory way and you've got to watch very much how people use words and the tone of voice they put into them because that shows you what game they're playing so when they say life is an expressionist or they've got another word they have at those times an Epi phenomenon a mere epiphenomenon note the word mere that word does more damage in philosophy than any other one I know it's merely energy you know you were all the matter with you is it's your merely nervous you know something like that so uh in this system of things they they explained that the whole world is merely mechanical but that we are here is a sort of accident and we are an Expressions we are a fungus we're a sort of growth like lichen on rocks and uh that's all we are now uh this was to say on the one hand that man is a product of nature he's not the special creation of a supernatural God but they didn't as a result of feeling that man is a product of nature become friendly with nature as you would have supposed they might they hated nature all the more and all the more furiously for bringing us forth and therefore waged and initiated the war against nature that began with the 19th century and has been pressed into the 20th the idea in other words that the only hope there is for the human spirit is to beat the environment into submission because it's an alien environment it's a hateful mechanical stupid bunch of nonsense and if we don't get in there with our cleverness and power and smash it into submission we have no future we're just going to be wiped out one day when the sun gets too hot and blows up and that'll be that but before that happens which will maybe a million years from now we'll expect to inhabit other galaxies to have the sun under control you know all sorts of wires fixed into it and things and so it'll behave itself and then we'll we'll rule the roost now look when you explain Consciousness as a form of mechanism that's one way of looking at things isn't it but supposing you turn the tables and say that geological objects like metal and rocks are forms of consciousness why can't you do that just as well as the other way after all you can put it like this A rock has a very simple kind of consciousness when you hit it it goes clunk and that clunk is a very primitive conscious response a human being has all that Jello a very complex organization inside his skull and so when you hit the human being the most extraordinary things happen but a rock only goes clunk but that is a simple honest response and The Rock vibrates all the way through and vibration is a very elementary form of Consciousness after all Consciousness is complicated vibrations so look upon the rock as a living being why not so that you get a spectrum of Consciousness in which shall we say at the red end of the spectrum where we have a terrific hot activity going on that's the human mind at the Violet end of the spectrum where things are pretty cool that's the Rock and uh but it's all in one world you don't have to have a world in which mind is divided from body you just have a world which is all one sort of Continuum but it's a spectrum where you've got a what you might call a gross end and a subtle end and you must be careful of using a word like gross unless you're using it in German you see gross in English means is is a put down word you've got to be very careful of loaded semantic words so you see what happened the people who want to say about existence hooray it's a great affair we'll put the emphasis on the conscious end of the spectrum and say that is the the thing that's great the people who want to say oh fui yeah the the life is a drag they'll put the emphasis on the so-called material end of the spectrum and try to make out that really it all reduces to that end whereas the other people will want to say but it all reduces to the other end now you see these two schools of thought are people playing different roles one person is playing the role that he's tough that he faces facts and life isn't a pretty business at all it's a ghastly trap and what is needed in that is courage see courage or suicide one or the other whereas the person playing the other role is wanting to say now come off it look here um is this really a trap is it is it so awful you know uh supposing it isn't that awful supposing it's playing it being awful and sometimes is awful pretty successfully by way of being a play but fundamentally would it be here at all if it wasn't worth being here I mean as we say the game must be worth the candle doesn't it astonish you sometimes that there is something rather than nothing at all I mean really that is a flabbergasting thought it would be so much easier for there not to be anything I mean after all existence is effort and to make an effort is something you see and and it'd be much easier not to have had any effort just nothing you see so uh game rules are terribly important to think about when you say that is The Game worth the candle obviously yes otherwise it wouldn't go on now we can invent games that won't work and people become bored with them as I've said before tic-tac-toe really isn't a very good game because it reduces itself to tossing coins who gets to start first anyone who starts tic-tac-toe first can win it so you may as well just reduce it to time casting but in time excuse me kind tossing there's no skill there is no uh there is a there is Randomness yes because uh we don't ever know at any point which face is going to turn up but we do know that within 500 plays it'll distribute itself equally between heads and tails or will tend to do so but we never know at any moment which one it's going to be well that's not very interesting okay now you see when you play cards you Shuffle the deck and you create disorder and the object of the game is to play certain orders against that disorder take Solitaire where you Shuffle the deck and you're going to arrange it uh a row of cards and then you're going to put them in order say alternating red and black running down the value scale in four rows until you've got the four suits if it comes out but that's what you're playing now look at this if it comes out every time you do it you'll give the game up say well that's no longer interesting if it never comes out you'll give the game up because you say it's too difficult I can't do it or there's something Impossible about it but if it teases You by coming out every so often but not too much then you think it's a good game now you see in these motivations in the human head that we feel about things like games these aren't what some people call Purely man-made ideas projected onto the world you must understand that our feelings our symptoms of nature itself see your brain is something in and of the external world from my point of view I'm looking at a world outside me but that includes you and your world outside you includes me I am something in your external world just as much as the sun the moon and the stars and you are to me so we're all out there or if you want to say it it's all in here it doesn't make any difference which way you put it you've been listening to Alan Watts in another offering from the being in the way podcast I hope you'll visit us at Alan watts.org and there you'll find a great selection of recordings including previews from our new streaming Channel along with biographic materials and links to these podcasts in video form this program has been produced in conjunction with the ramdas be here Now podcast Network and our theme music is by Zakir Hussein courtesy of moment records for more offerings by moment please visit momentrecords.com this is Mark Watts thank you for listening foreign [Music]

Channel: Be Here Now Network

Views: 53,650

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: iOBxs74lu_k

Length: 31min 51sec (1911 seconds)

Published: Wed May 24 2023