Alan Watts speaking at UCLA 2/21/1973

what I think I want to do today is to talk to you about the things which are of major interest to me now the origin of a person who is defined as the philosopher is one who finds that existence itself is exceedingly odd I mean we have an opposition between odd and even and it would be even that say flattened out if nothing existed door I mean it would be so simple no effort no trouble no not but strangely enough we have the strange conviction that something exists that we're here that we're real and from earliest childhood that has been an extreme puzzle to me that just something exists at all and I discovered the nature of the puzzle the nature of the puzzle is that I was persuaded by my culture to translate this phenomenon into words or numbers that I had to represent what is going on in nature in terms of the English language the French language the Latin language the Greek language and finally the Chinese language and I found the letter than unsuitable but nevertheless this is the puzzle when you want to understand something where you want to know what is it all about what you mean is that you need a translation of what is going on into language and that's the purpose of a university you're all here studying to translate what is going on in the physical world into words and even when I say the physical world but that is a purely philosophical conception it's an idea about the world propagated largely from the 17th 18th and 19th centuries of European scientific thought physical we all know what physical is don't we I mean its material and what does the word material mean well of course it's the same word as Mother Latin mater Greek meteor also metre measure and finally Sanskrit Matra which also means to measure and is the root word behind my yah which is illusion so no the physicists you know finally abandoned the quest for finding out what matter is because they found out that when they investigated matter they had to describe it in terms of form when they found out they just gave it up in other words the idea that there was some kind of basic stuff underlying everything was nothing more than an illusion because the strict precise physicist described structure and he finds that matter is after all only a matter of form it's only the form that matters wowie ah now we all we've all been brought up in the common sense of the 19th century this is the background this is the unconscious belief system underlying most of our judgments and that is well we had to belief systems you see we had first of all the Christian or the Jewish in which there was Big Daddy up the top the sky now I don't want to offend anybody but there are very probably some of you here who've studied some Thomas Aquinas and have a very very profound deep conception of the Christian God or you may have studied Kabbalah or Hasidic Judaism and have a very deep realization that goes beyond Big Daddy but Big Daddy is the image which influences your emotions and your basic feelings and so the Big Daddy thing became much too oppressive and it was absolutely essential for very many people especially intellectuals to get rid of it because you didn't want to be supervised all the time judged all the time looked at all the time by somebody criticizing everything you did so we got rid of it nobody really believes in it anymore an enormous number of people think they ought to believe in it but they don't and that's what certain theologians call the death of God but instead of that we supplanted Big Daddy with another image which is justice mythological and that was the image of the world as a mechanical phenomenon a thing that goes tick tick tick tick tick tick in various ways all that is a randomness of particles or wavicles that occasionally produces order in the same way that a million monkeys typewriting on a million typewriters for a million years would probably at some point reproduce the Encyclopedia Britannica but the real reason lying behind that vision of the world was a declaration of personality that is to say I'm the kind of fellow who doesn't believe that there's someone up there who cares that's for little old ladies I am a tough guy I believe that life is at root meaningless and I'm going to face the hard facts incidentally nobody ever talks about soft facts so I'm I believe it's all empty and that the only thing is that the meaning of life of human life consists in the heroic conflict with tragedy we're all going to end up in the dustbin excuse me the ashcan and there is no future finally it's empty and then we come across Buddhists because the world is all closing in you see people on the other side of the world who think that emptiness is a great thing why are we they sail our weather shouldn yata in sanskrit emptiness if you can understand that you are basically emptiness you're a Buddha you're enlightened you're awakened isn't that weird from a Western point of view that seems absolutely crazy we call it nihilism that's awful but the basic formula of Buddhism is shaky so cozy coo coo so cozy shaky that which is emptiness is also precisely form that bridges form is also precisely emptiness now what does that mean well they all get and sit together in the Zen monasteries and elsewhere and they chant this sutra rohan Johanna meet 13 yo all that gives us a shaky soco's a cuckoo so cozy a cheeky etcetra etcetra etcetra bong-bong-bong finally ends up the kana got a got a para got a para Sangams raha whoo there was it what what's all that about excuse me I have a little cough because I've just been to London and picked up the London flu so but now think about this what do you mean by the idea of character clear the word clear in English can be spelt in different ways CL EA r CL e re si le ve r CL e RG y they're all on the same route a clergyman a cleric a clerk was supposed to be someone who's clear in like ron Hubbard he invented the word clear you see used it for somebody who had developed Dianetics proficiency clear what do we mean by this word when you say it's a clear day it means it's no smog and so the air is empty and as a result of the fact that the air is empty all the forms are articulate in detail when your head is clear when your vision is clear all the details can be made out so that is why emptiness equals form that's marvelous so therefore I think that the most essential ingredient of an academic discipline is to clear our heads some reason my lectures are always attended by dogs now to clear our heads now how do you do that this is the most important adjunct to intellectual discipline I say this most urgently because here we are we're at the University of California and we are all presumably intellectuals and we need to further the intellectual life we need to further the disciplines of learning languages of psychology of science of physics and chemistry medicine and so on and so forth but underlying that there must be a background in other words you need plain white paper in order to write something and so in the same way underlying all our thinking there must be emptiness and that's what we call in Asia gianna which means the practice of meditation you can also call it yoga these are really over little nitpicking details we might make between them but they're really equivalent words jhana yoga Zen and of course also the Sufi disciplines are all the same thing but they are largely missing in Western religion because Western religion is excessively talkative excessively didactic and does not really practice silence the nearest thing we have I mean we have some Catholic orders like Trappists and we have the Quakers who practiced silent disciplines but I am rather inclined to believe that they talked to themselves while they're silent real silence Jonah is stopping talking to yourself inside your head is to get real mental silence now that doesn't mean that you have a blank mind you are vividly aware of what is only you don't give it any name now if you for the moment would experiment with this by closing your eyes and listening to all sounds whatsoever that are going on but don't try to identify or name them listen to the susurrus of the world in the same way as you would listen to classical music without asking what it means if you find yourself thinking compulsively unable to stop naming what is going on don't try to stop it listen to yourself doing that in the same way as you would be listening to the air-conditioning yeah and as and when I say anything don't try to make sense of it just listen to the sound of the voice and I asked you listening to what is can you hear anything past or anything future can you hear yourself as a listener it's amazing how many things there are that aren't so and just for a moment also be aware of your breath are you doing it or is it happening to you or both or neither listen and feel the breath as it wants to go as your ears want to respond to the waves and don't be uptight about cuffing or shifting a position or you know doing whatever nature wants you to do it's all part of the symphony just listen ears only and breath only this is your method of testing out what reality is you're a baby you have no ideas nobody's ever told you anything you have no theories about the universe and if you're anxious about that you know you've checked your theories at the door you can pick them up when you go out just feel it I think I've got you into the state of meditation at least that's the way it feels I remember in this state we are not looking for any result nothing at all to be accomplished in the future we are simply experiencing what is now here the trip down and we are abandoning the project momentarily of forming any concepts about it watch it don't ask who is watching it because that's a merely grammatical question because the verb has to have a subject according to the conventions of our language there is a watching you'll feel it like that this is called taffeta in sanskrit that that all right now what you are now experiencing is what I'm trying to tell you and I want you to now to return to your state of normal restlessness and if any of you in this company has questions to ask God be very happy to try and answer them to the best of my ability yes well I feel that he cheated its see he was what is called a Mountie I said the practicing silent yoga but yet he always used to talk on a leather board and if you're going to be a true Mountie you have to stop writing also and be absolutely in silence it's a very difficult exercise and I don't recommend that anybody do it for much more than a month to go on doing it forever so many years is really a rather egocentric performance yeah I'm so different remember everybody else and one should never overdo yogic practices they are all yogic practices meditation practices are wrong if they are not fun and true meditation should be an absolute delight an absolute delight delight the light yes astral projection and this is astral projection is not important it's a astral projection is a new form of jet propulsion yes there's a saying ego less people have very strong characters yes there's this funny kind of humorous roly-poly Buddha Lightford yeah okay then there are two senses of the word identity first we mean getting our identity together yes we become yes the second meaning is kind of in the sense to identify with to become one and that's the same which mystics usually want to know is sense one a strong sense one necessary to achieve a strong sense to AHA now I hope you all heard this question no all right now he's raised the question of two meanings of the word identity the first meaning is the separate identity that each one of us tries to find in the course of our education where we know who we are as an ego the second sense is to be identical with the universe as a mystic discovers that he is excuse me ladies for using the word he but it's shorthand don't forget that the word man doesn't mean male it comes from the sanskrit manu from which we get Manas mind and the Latin mums and handy has nothing to do with sex so these two senses of identity the particular who I am and the fact that I also realize that I am finally identical with what there is you know the whole thing what's going on I mean the two go together they're not antithetical in any way the more the first the second one the second one is basic because that's the way you felt when you were a baby you have what Freud calls the oceanic feeling and you knew that you were you didn't have words to put it in but knew that you were this jazz whatever it is that is and you made no distinction between the knower and the known the voluntary and the involuntary the doing in the happening long as this this jazz you knew that perfectly well as the baby but then they came and put it on you that you were different see they wanted you to be something particular the war so you learned that well they put it on you so heavily that you forgot the first thing so but the whole point of sanity is to have them both at the same time it's just the same as as I described the white paper behind the print the mirror behind its reflections because if you don't get both going at the same time you get a kind of myopia of getting not being able to see the forest for the trees of forgetting your own origin and if you forget that you each one of you is an incarnation of God if you don't know that you will try to become God by effort and therefore will become impossible a demon an aggressive obstreperous nuisance but if we all know that basically we are God and I don't mean God in the grandfather sense of the judeo-christian image which is an idol but in the sense that we can't define see you can't define yourself just like you can't bite your own teeth you don't know who you are and you know all the science of neurology is trying to go out make out what is finally consciousness indicator what is the brain all about and they don't know the other people most of all who know they don't know we don't know because each one of us is an aperture through which the universe is observing itself but of course it couldn't observe itself completely and totally because that would be a bore to understand absolutely to be totally in control of everything would be like screwing a plastic woman who wants that see all always there needs to be an element of mystery so the thing that is is mysterious to itself but not completely because if it were completely mysterious to itself nothing would happen that would be to everything being even what we need is something odd if we can't have something odd without the even yeah that's the nature the way it works yang Ying in next question yes the question is whether it is possible for a Jew or Christian to follow a yogic philosophy without abandoning the tradition no it is perfectly possible to put the two together I am this weekend going to a community of nuns to show them how to practice Christian yoga and this is entirely possible because it's perfectly obvious if you understand Jesus Christ as a historical figure that he was a realized person who knew that he was an incarnation of God in the same way as you are only he was embarrassed by the language of the religious tradition which was the only one he knew because in the language of that tradition to be the Son of God was to claim like I'm the boss's son because they had a boss image of God now on the other hand if he had been in India and he suddenly announced that he was the incarnation of God everybody would have said of course we all are and so likewise in China the image there you see the dowel is not a bus image Lao Tzu says the great dowel flows everywhere both to the right and to the left he loves and nourishes all things that does not lord it over them and when good things are accomplished it lays no claim to them so the image of the Dow and the image of the Brahman the Atman Brahman behind the Hindu universe is not something that gets up and says bore bore bore bore bore no as its back to the wall but it's something invisible subtle always self effacing now however there are grounds for this in Christianity there is a passage in st. Paul's epistle to the Philippians which I'm going to translate in a slightly different way from the King James let this state of consciousness be in you which was also in Christ Jesus who being identical with God thought not identity of God a thing to be clung to but emptied himself then made himself of no importance and was found in fashion as a man and became submissive to death even to the death of the cross crazy if you really understand what he's saying he's saying let this state of consciousness be in you that was also the state of consciousness of Jesus who being identical with God Atman is Brahman didn't think that something that you had to you know make a great scene about take it natural play it cool and said let's see what happens if we don't cling to this permanent state but we let everything go and we get into a weird thing called death now what would you do without death Norman Brown made the point very cleverly in his book life against death that it is only that we die that we have individuality death is what creates our individuality now one always thinks of death as something lying in the future I want you to think of it in another way of something in the past how would you know you were alive unless you had once been dead this sense that we are here that we are real that you know depends upon the fact that at the contrast all knowledge is contrast that we go back in our memories and we find a place we can't remember anything well that's just the same place that you go to when you think well what would it be like to go to sleep and never wake up again clunk it's the end take the last look at your creators blessed son but you need that know in order to have yes you need that void in order to have foam they go together it's all over the pits and if you understand that you at peace yes yes this is an important point the question is if we this acceptance of the void and of death can lead to a certain kind of optimism which would be as it were socially destructive in other words to a lack of concern for the torments and problems of underprivileged people it could do so but it wouldn't necessarily do so now I find myself as an individual that I have some limited but very intense social concerns I mean I count as an individual concern myself about everything going on in the world because I don't have the power as an individual to do all the things that need to be done but I'm very concerned about prisons about mental hospitals and the reform of the police and these are things for which I work extremely actively but I'm also sympathetic to people in all sorts of other fields but this has to be understood Gary Snyder the poet said once to me you cannot work effectively in the realm of good ecology unless first you realize that it doesn't matter if you have the primary realization it doesn't matter then you are in the position of a surgeon who can operate with a steady hand if your surgeon is so concerned about you that his hand shakes when he operates you don't want a surgeon like that but surgeons who are excellent and very competent make all sorts of funny jokes while they're operating upon very important people and they talk to the nurses and flirt with them and no carry on as if nothing mattered and safe therefore have absolutely accurate and precise work they're not anxious they don't shake they don't ask to be or not to be is that you know it's go right ahead and so in the same way in order to do good work politically and so on and so on we have first of all to realize that it doesn't matter then we have the energy to go into it you can't lift yourself up by your own bootstraps it won't work it won't happen so you can't improve yourself you can't improve the world forget it but then suddenly you have the energy available to do things that can be done as Voltaire said univocal TV no ADA we should cultivate our gardens will you remove them now is it yes now this question is how can one make the deceased eight route that in all the great religious traditions there is a basic common denominator experimentally at the end of August last we had a conference at a Benedictine monastery where the good fathers invited a gaggle of gurus to be present there were twelve of them with a hundred and fifty students who were priests nuns monks ministers educators goodness only knows we have this great audience and what we did was that instead of being merely talkative we started at 4:30 in the morning to practice each other's disciplines you know we attended the the dancing and chanting of a Sufi master we attended the Jesus Prayer of a Greek Orthodox master we attended the zazen sessions of a Zen master we had the services of two great Yogi's Swami's Sajid Ananda etc and three rabbis who were Hasidic and we all joined in how I know likewise also we attended the mass of the Benedictines and the Divine Office which is the chanting of the Psalms and we found in about one and a half days we had five days in all that there was nothing to argue about we even had a black girl present who was a Southern Baptist who'd worked with Martin Luther King and she was a real swinger and I got together with her very quickly even though the language was so different our with the the only sort of holdout was the Greek Orthodox who wasn't really approving of this extreme human ism I said to him the end look I'm closer to your style of religion in feeling in my gut than I am to this black Southern Baptist I love the style of your liturgy the beauty of your ritual but would you tell me one thing what does your belief in the soul preeminence of Jesus Christ do to your state of consciousness would you work that out because if you would be so kind we'd all like to know he said I'll think that one over it was a very learning theologian and you know well he were he when he started out his sessions he had a young man there in front of him teaching pranayama breath control according cells to be able to chant the Jesus Prayer now what it is when you get beyond words which was what I was trying to show you when you get into that state of consciousness where you are not talking to yourself but you are simply experiencing what is then you begin to be at the level of the divine now I think this is it for now talking and discussing these things is very much like the art of cookery and you can overdo it and so there comes a certain time when the souffle is it's just right and when I have a feeling that that is so I think we should conclude okay you

Channel: UCLACommStudies

Views: 54,196

Rating: 4.9062834 out of 5

Keywords: Alan Watts (Author) University Of California, Los Angeles (College/University)

Id: Ro0bjhfg4mg

Length: 47min 19sec (2839 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 01 2014