It’s All Around Us But People Don’t See It - Alan Watts On The Illusion of Reality

[Music] when all the world knows beauty to be beautiful there is already ugliness when all the world knows goodness to be good there is already evil thus to be and not to be arise mutually do you see that you can't have a front without a back that you can't have a top without a bottom that you can't have the idea of long without the idea of short you don't have a world in which there are bees without flowers or flowers without bees because you see bees and flowers are really the same organism they look different just as your head looks very different from your feet but you don't have human beings who have heads and no feet or feet and no heads they go together now of course they're rather obviously joined by skin and bone but bees and flowers float apart bees buzz and flowers send out smell and color but they are the same organism because they're Inseparable they require each other so this is the whole idea of arising together so that in other words to be and not to be the whole notion of is and isn't depend on each other now this is contrary to our Common Sense we think that being is really there and non-being isn't but we are at the same moment afraid that being may end up as non-being there's so much more non-being than there is being in other words there seems to be so much more space than there is solid and since whatever is solid in the world requires energy and since energy eventually runs out we're afraid that it may all end up as nothing that we may end up as nothing and everything else and we are scared stiff of that because we don't understand that space or emptiness and solid are two aspects of one reality just as front and back just as bees and flowers they have to go together you cannot possibly conceive a solid without a surrounding space you cannot conceive space without solids occupying it because space is as a matter of fact nothing but the relation ship between solids it's like an interval in music you can't hear Melody unless you hear intervals but the intervals aren't there there are the tones the intervals are in a way an illusion but they the hearing of intervals that is to say the steps between tones is absolutely necessary for being able to hear Melody if you don't hear the intervals you only hear a succession of noises you are then toned deaf or tuned deaf so you see how important the interval is and any architect any artist knows that space is real we talk about the functions of space astronomers and physicists talk about properties of space curved space and so on and so forth but in the ordinary common sense that most people have they think space just is isn't there solids are there reality is therefore identified with the solid with the energy and unreality with the emptiness and there is this therefore fundamental anxiety that arises from the fact that the moment you know you exist you know you could not exist and therefore all through one's life there is a sort of Sword of Damocles hanging over you that at any minute you might not be woe and that's a real scare until you understand that to be or not to be is not the [Music] question because to be cannot be without not being just as not being cannot be without being the Yang and the yin the Yang means the south side of a mountain which is in the sun and the yin means the north side of a mountain which is in the shade and so they come to mean positive and negative black and white male and female but you see the whole secret is that the yin and the Yang are inseparable let's say when we were little children and everybody taught us 1 2 3 and ABC they didn't teach us the lesson of black and white this belongs in a way in our culture to the hushed up side of things the lesson of black and white is this if you realize that all your senses are really one sense a kind of touching you touch light with your eyes you touch air vibrations with your eardrums and get sound then smell is touching gases and dust in the air taste is touching the texture of food and things but do you realize that all sensation whatsoever is a vibration it goes on and off [Music] but if it goes fast enough you don't notice the off you only notice the on but all things are like that you see on and off and you can't have the vibration unless it's a wave pattern the crest of the wave is on the trough of the wave is off now you can't have a wave which is half a wave in other words no wave exists with a Crest alone there must be a trough if if you don't understand that if you don't realize that on off constitutes a unity and although they are different they're Inseparable like the two poles of a magnet if you don't realize that you get scared that off may win and if you get scared that off may win you start another game the game on must win and then the game degenerates into a fight and you don't understand the relationship of Yang and Yin so it is the inner connection or rather the inseparability of Yang and Yin which is what is meant by Dao that's why da cannot be explained and the reason again if I may put it in another way is that all thinking is classification it's asking is you is or is you ain't is it this or is it that because after all if you want to say something is inside it requires an outside you can't have an inside without an outside or an outside without an inside which is it and we've magnified this into a nightmare where the ultimate consequence and Destiny of the cosmos is are you saved or are you D forever what people don't understand is that you don't know you belong to the saved group unless there's also a damned group in every American town there are the nice people who live on one side of the tracks and not so nice people who live on the other in my town which is selito there are the people who live on the hill and they are the nice people and then there are the people who live on the waterfront who are Bohemians and beatniks and goodness only knows what well now when the nice people on top of the hill meet for their cocktail parties the main thing that they discuss is how the whole town is deteriorating and how the awful people are proliferating and uh fouling the bay up and so on and uh they feel that this boosts their Collective ego because they know they're the nice people meanwhile the Bohemians and beatniks get together at their parties and they play like they're the real ingroup because all those squares and Bourgeois who live up on the hill are engaged in a business Rat Race doing work which is of no interest in order that they may buy toy rocket ships and have wall-to-wall carpets and horribly clean houses and so Bohemians and beatniks boost their Collective ego by arguing against the people on top of the hill what neither side realizes is they need each other you don't know who you are if you want to belong to an ingroup unless you define an outg group it is the same with philosophy one side is called prickles and the other is called goo and prickles people are people who like things to be sharp and clear and definite and everything well in order and they look upon other people who they think are vague and sloppy and unrealistic and Wishful and they say you're just goo or the goo people turn around and say well you're just bones you just rattle you have no skin on you you know the words yes but you don't know the music you have no finer feelings prickles people want to believe that the ultimate constituents of the material Universe are particles goo people prefer to think of it as waves the thing is that they don't realize that you wouldn't know the standpoint of prickles unless you knew goo as a contrast and vice versa because the real world is gooey prickles and prickly goo any way you look at it so you see that's is the gang and the Y the Yang is prickles and the yin is goo and they're Inseparable but quite different and the thing is that to see wisdom is to understand the secret conspiracy between the Opposites that you wouldn't know one without the other that is it were Tweedle Dam and Tweedle D agreed to have a [Music] b that under all explicit opposition there is implicit Unity [Music] [Music]

Channel: T&H - Inspiration & Motivation

Views: 230,147

Keywords: alan watts, alan, watts, alan watts speech, alan watts lecture, alan watts motivation, alan watts meditation, alan watts inspiration, motivation, inspiration, t&H, t&h inspiration, t&h motivation, best of alan watts, speech, alan watts talk, alan watts t&h inspiration, allen watts, meditation, mindfulness, t&h watts, t&h alan watts, simply live now, be here now alan watts, tao, opposites, philosophy, taoism, It’s All Around Us But People Don’t See It - Alan Watts On The Illusion of Reality

Id: l9fonD4qbRQ

Length: 11min 16sec (676 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 30 2024