Just a short resume about this morning. I was discussing the various meanings of the
 word maya, which in Sanskrit means illusion, or at least that's the way it's generally
 translated. Now I was trying to explain that it doesn't necessarily mean illusion in a
 bad sense. When we say a person is suffering from delusions, hallucinations, and so on,
 it's always a put-down word. But maya is not so necessary. So I showed you how it has the
 meanings of measurement as when we pretend that the world is divisible, actually, into
 feet or inches or seconds or degrees, and divide things from each other by these measurements,
 that is to say, by the cutting power of thought. Thought, in the Latin, skio, means to cut.
 And so thought is, you see, what you have to understand is that everything is really
 a think. A thing is a unit of thought in the same way as an inch is a unit of measurement.
 We divide the wiggly, continuous, wobbly, wild, Rorschach blot of the physical universe
 into things so that we can think about it. And one thinks by a process which is essentially
 the calculus, calculate. Calculus, what was it originally? So the word calculus means
 a pebble, originally. So I count, I remember something, one, two, three, four times, four
 pebbles, like using your fingers. Rosaries have been used for this purpose. And so later
 the abacus is a kind of amazing rosary. That's calculation, you see. Pretending that the
 world is a collection of bits. But the world isn't a collection of bits. The world is
 continuous in the sense that every bit of it is interrelated as much as a human body.
 You realize, you know, if you magnify the human body to an enormous degree so that you
 are looking at its individual molecules, one molecule of our body is the size of my fist,
 say, you know, magnified to that size, the next one would be the other side of the room.
 Now what joins them together? I move my hand, all those vastly separated molecules all move
 together. They haven't any strings tied between them. And it's the same way when the little
 birds fly. In my boat, in Sausalito, we have a lot of little tiny, tiny sandpipers. And
 they fly having one mind. They become a total organism when they fly, and they change direction
 instantly. I mean, it isn't that they turn like this and follow the leader. They're going
 like that, and then they go like that. And they're only individuals when they start pecking
 on the mud. Then they wander around all over the place and giddy giddy giddy giddy giddy
 but the slightest movement, BAM! They're all in the air again and going as one mind. Now
 that's how your molecules move in your hand. So, but so calculus pretends that the molecules
 are separate. They're not. They're related to each other by the space between them. And
 space is relationship. Space is order. I remember this once, a very vivid illustration. I had
 a friend who was giving a lecture, and she wanted to use her studio for the lecture.
 And she had some, those canvas chairs that you pull open like that, and they have arms,
 canvas back and canvas seat. You know, movie directors' chairs. And she got them all lined
 up across the room, this way, zz, zz, zz, zz, and she said, "I can't possibly get all
 the people in here." I said, "Wait a minute. Space is order." She said, "You don't have
 enough space, you do." So I put the speaker at that side of the room, and I arranged all
 the chairs around, coming across like that. Then the next row, then the next row, and
 the next row, and there were far more seats in there than they had before, you see. So
 uh, space is order. And space is terribly important. But the Maya that I pointed out,
 you see, is that we ignore it. So Maya is measurement. Thinking. Chopping things into
 bits so as to count them. Number two, Maya, is play. That is to say, it's um, it's a game.
 It's hide and seek. The universe is playing peek-a-boo with itself. Now you see it, now
 Now you don't. And the basis of that is the throb of vibration, up and then down, up then
 down, which is male female positive negative, light darkness, this side, that side, see
 everything is going ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya and it's going so fast that
 it seems to be continuous. But now you see it now you don't, see, solid space, here and
 now. Everything is that. See if I put my hand on your knee and you leave it there, you cease
 to remember I'm there. But if I do this, you know I'm there all the time. Because each
 time it's renewed. So, it's play. Maya is also magic and I gave the illustration of
 the theatre, of creating the illusion that the drama is reality. All the illusory possibilities
 of the theatrical art. Then I meant specifically Maya is art. Maya is skill in creating something.
 And I showed how the artist can give us all kinds of different visions of the universe.
 From the vision of, let's say, Giotto, with it's amazing transparency. To Rembrandt, with
 it's density. To the great Flemish painters like Van Eyck, who begin a photographic realism
 on to the similar painters of the 19th century and then through Picasso and so on to splashers
 like Jackson Pollock. All enabling us to see the world in different ways by their revelation.
 And so the possibilities of artistry are infinite. More and more artists will come and notice
 the world in different ways. And there are probably infinitely many ways in which the
 world can be noticed. Only the human mind works at a certain pace. It seems incapable
 of bringing more than a few at a time. It doesn't assimilate them. And then I discussed
 the final question. Does that mean that the world is nothing but our imagination? That
 is to say, going back to the analogy of the Rorschach blot. We say in testing a person
 on a Rorschach blot that he projects a story or a picture into the blot. And that reveals
 not something about the nature of the blot, but about the condition of his psychological
 structure. Are we going to have to say that in the same way, all scientific knowledge
 about the universe is a projection? You see, that's been very cogently argued. It's argued,
 for example, that laws of nature do not exist in nature, but are methods of measuring nature.
 In other words, to say that stones always fall downwards to the center of the earth,
 we invent for that the law of gravity. Now, is that a law? Is there something called the
 law of gravity which stones obey? Well, many scientists would say no. If the stone didn't
 fall to the ground, it would be a balloon. It obeys no law, it does that. And we make
 a law out of it simply because it happens regularly. If I regularly do what you tell
 me to, that becomes in human affairs a law. For nobody tells the stone that it's got to
 fall down. It just does so because that's part of the definition of being a stone. If
 it didn't, it would be a balloon, you see, or a feather in the wind. So laws of nature
 are regarded by some scientists as tools invented by human beings, and to say that there is
 a law of gravity is neither more nor less true than saying there are three feet in a
 yard, because we arranged it that way, or 24 hours in a day. Laws are simply observed
 regularities, and we make these regularities by the way we look at things. We might not
 even notice that stones fell to the ground unless it was significant to us. But the difficulty
 of pushing that theory too far is that it makes the human mind ridiculously independent
 of the physical world. To say that everything is a projection out of the human mind would
 be to say that the human mind isn't really part of the world, but it is. Our being is
 continuous with the being of the whole universe, as I explained. Each one of us is something
 we're doing, just as every wave is something that the sea is doing. And well, we are waves
 of the universe, and it's waving and saying, "Yoo-hoo! I'm here!" And I'm called Alan Watts
 right now, but it's called so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so all around the room, but it's
 all the same thing doing this jazz. And I explained how we have been taught to ignore
 that, and to be under the illusion that we're all different. Now, that was what we were
 talking about this morning. Now, I want to press one aspect of this theme, particularly
 this afternoon, which is the aspect of play. The distinction, you see, the whole point
 is that a man who knows, a woman, it's objectionable to you that we have to use "man" as the general
 word for human beings, anyway, that the person who knows that this is Maya is, as I said,
 somewhat disconcerting because we know that he doesn't take life seriously. That is to
 say he doesn't take it absolutely seriously. He takes it seriously up to a point. But as
 we might say, when it really comes down to it, he doesn't. Now, you might think that
 such a person would be extremely undependable, and therefore he's ethically suspect. If he
 knows that all the distinctions between good and evil, and between life and death, between
 the valuable and the non-valuable, if he knows that all those distinctions are illusory,
 would he not be, we're afraid, a very dangerous person? Would he fail to keep his contract?
 When he felt like it, would he bump somebody off when it suited his convenience? Isn't
 it more trustworthy for human beings to believe that there are absolute laws, that it matters
 absolutely that you never kill anybody, etc.? Now, this is a very fascinating question.
 And I want to suggest to you, first of all, that a person who believes in absolute laws
 is liable to be quite dangerous. Because he puts rigid structures in a place of higher
 honor than, oh, such a good old word that no longer used, "inwit." I-N-W-I-T, inwit.
 What is inwit? The Chinese have a word which has to be the gift and the essential virtue
 of a good judge, a good judge in the law course. And this word, like this, you know, is pronounced
 li. There are several kinds of li in Chinese. But this one means an innate sense of fair
 play, of equity, which can't be written down in laws. It can't be formulated. They also
 have a word for laws that can be formulated, which is zi. Looks like that. Because that
 character was originally this. And they have picture writing. Two bars of time, that's
 right. And that's a picture of a bronze cauldron with a knife beside it. Because in very ancient
 times, when people brought sacrifices to the sacrificial cauldrons, the rulers caused the
 laws to be engraved on the cauldrons so that they would read them. And the sages said that
 was a bad idea. Because the moment the people know what the laws are in literal terms, they
 will develop a litigious spirit. They will start haggling over words. So, although there
 has to be the zi, the formulated law, a good judge must know a lot more than the written
 law. He must have a sense of equity. Because every case that comes to his attention is
 really different. There's no way of describing exhaustively all the possible relationships
 between man and man. And so a judge has to have this sort of rule of thumb, like a good
 gardener has to have a green thumb, which is something beyond anything you can read
 in a book. So, a li is the sense of justice. Zi would be belief in absolutes, in that you
 must never do so and so, or you must always do so and so. Thou shalt, thou shalt not.
 So a person who holds to absolute rules will be an inflexible fool when it comes to the
 test. He is reliable up to a point. But this is what you get in bureaucracy. I'm sorry
 to say it, but there is a specially offensive kind of, usually female secretary of some
 government department, who is utterly unreasonable, totally goes by the book, and will not, under
 any circumstances, do anything one way or the other beyond the letter. Well, people
 like that have a certain use. But they have the same sort of use as machinery. Machinery
 which is foolproof, which does the same everything every time, and can't be changed. But there
 must always be some boss over this kind of person, who can consider the case from a different
 point of view, and say, "Well, obviously, in this case, the rules are unreasonable, and
 they have to be altered." So you see, a person who takes the laws absolutely seriously becomes
 inflexible, and therefore mechanical, and therefore inhuman. Now, it's like the Roman
 Catholics when they get on this bit about birth control, or divorce, or something like
 that. They get utterly inflexible, and they seem to enjoy being inflexible, because they
 think it's a mark of tough-mindedness. You know, I've been most... There's theological
 controversies going on these days. I don't know if you know it. Perhaps some of you don't
 read these things. But I have a certain interest in Christianity, and I love reading the theological
 controversies. Well, there's a character called the Bishop of Woolwich in England, who's written
 a book that's stirred everybody up. There's not really anything new in it, but he's just
 suggesting that God isn't an old gentleman with a beard. And it seems to have created
 a terrific turmoil. And people, though, who stand in the opposition to all this, want
 to say, "All this liberal thinking is vague, and therefore wishy-washy and gutless. To
 prove that you have guts, you've got to believe something absurd. And stick to it! See? Come
 hell or high water, you believe that the Virgin Mary was sucked up bodily into heaven." You
 know? And she really went up! See? And brrrr! All these other people are weak-minded because
 they reduce these eternal dogmatic truths to mere myths and symbols. See? And they get
 a sense of masculinity out of this, just in the same way as some people get a sense of
 masculinity out of being fascists. They believe we've got a real tough political theory. Colonel
 Dammit Shoot 'Em All, we used to call 'em in England. And they stick to this, and they
 think, "Oh, I feel like a man!" See? Or, "I feel like a real businesswoman, like Ayn Rand."
 Or whatever. You know? They like to be, "Brrr!" "I'm an individual!" You see? Like that. But
 these people are inflexible fools, because they have no give. They don't know when to
 give. And the whole art is to have a certain rigidity in life, but always to know when
 to give. See? That's judo. So in the same way, a person who takes life absolutely seriously
 doesn't know when to give. And he has this idea, you see, that life is a contest. And
 that we've got to win. And we've got to win! Now, if you go into a battle with the idea
 that you've got to win, you get nervous. It's like walking across a wall with a big drop
 on one side, feeling that you've got to stay steady. You start worrying. And, like someone
 once told me when I was a boy, that there was a certain examination, and I simply must
 not fail it. It's just, I had to get it. You know? I got absolutely nonplussed by the whole
 situation. Because, you see, you've got to have a certain flexibility, so that when you
 know it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, then you can really play. This is the
 secret of all gamesmanship. To play golf, you know, pshh! You stop caring. You've got
 to learn some technique first, whatever it is. But then stop worrying. How do you think
 you drive a car? You learn the basic things to do, and then you go zooming along. It's
 terribly dangerous to drive a car. Much more unsafe than taking a ride in a plane. And
 yet we all do it. Nobody seems to worry much about it. Well, that's how to drive. But if
 you get nervous on the road, you react too fast, and you're all over the place, you're
 a mess and a nuisance. So you mustn't take it quite seriously. So then, the fellow who
 regards life as fundamentally an illusion, would on the whole then be more reliable than
 the person who is in dead earnest. Because he has basically at his heart the most valuable
 human trait, which is the ability to come off it. You know, you say to someone, "Oh,
 drop it!" You know? And in the end, you see, a man who can come off it, who may make a
 terrific case for some point of view, but has a certain twinkle in his eye. You see,
 this is a true human being. And has what Confucius would call "ren", spelled J-E-N for some reason.
 This is human-heartedness. And that is human-heartedness because it is at the heart of the nature of
 things, and the nature of things is play. Now, we contrast here, you see. The two fundamental
 views of life, as set forward in the drama, you remember the comic and the tragic masks.
 The tragic view of the world is that the world is a, you can take it from two points of view,
 they really come to the same thing, but one of the points of view is that in the tragic
 idea, the world contains the possibility of an irremediable disaster. Things can go wrong,
 wrong, wrong, wrong, and the most vivid representation of the tragic view in all history is, of course,
 Christianity. Orthodox, old-fashioned Christianity, in which there is the possibility of eternal
 damnation. See, that is things going wrong always. It isn't the thing that is not just
 a failure, that you die and cease, but that you are tortured forever, without hope of
 respite, forever and ever and ever and ever. That's the maximum tragic view of the world.
 So in that view of the cosmos, things are very serious indeed, because that might happen
 to you. And you must not let it happen. That's absolutely necessary to be avoided.
 Now on the other hand, you see, although the Hindu and Buddhist mythologies have their
 various purgatories rather than hells, there's one called Avici, which is the deepest of
 all these purgatories, and the souls that get lost in Avici are there for an unendurably
 long time, many kalpas, and a kalpa is 4,320,000 years. But in the end, they get out. In other
 words, when they've paid for their bad karma that gets them there, they get out and begin
 again. So it isn't quite serious. It's very serious, but not absolutely serious, you see?
 And that's the difference. So in this Hindu view, the Lord, in his Maya creation of the
 world, creates terribly serious situations. He scares himself out of his own wits by playing
 that he's all of us, and imagining, forgetting who he is, you see, or what he is, and imagining
 that he's us, and he is terrified, or thinks he is, by all the situations of life. And
 nevertheless, in the end, it turns out it was all a game. It was all hide and seek.
 Now what about that, you see? When we think of that as a point of view, let's not ask
 whether or not it's true. No serious philosopher asks anymore whether things are true or not.
 He only asks whether they're plausible. We can say no more. It would be arrogance to
 say more. Truth is a dimension where we stop talking, you know. We know things in another
 way than words. But it is plausible because we could say, well, does a thing have to be
 absolute to be important? It's important that we make a distinction between good and bad.
 It's not good to murder people, generally speaking. You see? That's important. But to
 make it important, do we really have to make it absolutely important? See, I tell you,
 the religious mentality, or not only the religious mentality, but the kind of mentality you find
 around, what's the real secret of it is it loves to have something to condemn. One of
 the most, one of the biggest kicks a person can have is to feel righteous indignation.
 And also, people who go to church love to be lectured and scolded. A real scoldy sermon
 from a Baptist preacher is a big, big bang. They come out feeling so satisfactory. So
 supposing, then, we say, well, in the end, all the sinners and the dreadful people who
 lived in the world will realize that they were manifestations of God like everybody
 else. Some people stop and think about that and say, oh dear, very dangerous doctrine.
 What they're really worrying about is that they are not going to have the satisfaction
 of seeing those people they don't like writhing in torment forever and ever. Now who ought
 to be fried in hell? No? And so this is saying, you see, that if a thing is not important,
 when it's not eternal, say there was no point in singing a song because it came to an end.
 No, there was no point in marrying this girl because she eventually died. There was no
 point in anything that's finite in time, you see. That's the argument. But it obviously
 is important that a song be sung even though it ends, that a person live even though they
 die because that's the rhythm of life.
 Who take this point of view that what isn't ultimately serious isn't serious at all are
 simply crude in their thinking. They just plainly lack judgment. They're like children
 who have to believe that two and two are always and invariably four because they might say
 one day they were five. These children are delimitable. So then, the idea of Maya suggests
 two things really which are very difficult things for most of us to accept because they're
 so outrageous in comparison with our accustomed viewpoints. The one side of what it suggests
 is that life is not ultimately serious. If you fall far enough, you'll find there's no
 concrete to hit because you are one with a free-floating universe that has nothing outside
 it. I sometimes say, you know, that when God created the world, what he really did, I gave
 you one other version of it this morning, but he said, "Have a ball." What are you going
 to do with this ball? There's no way to put it. It can't get lost. There it is. It's the
 ball of being, you see. Have a ball, you see. So, the thought that all this life which is
 so intensely involved and tragic and struggle is really diaphanous, it's like a dream. Would
 you dare believe that? This is a test of nerve. The other side to the doctrine is that you
 in your heart of hearts are really the Lord, playing but being you. Will you dare believe
 that? I mean, we often say that's the touchstone of madness in our culture. A person who thinks
 he's God is really out of his wits. Only, of course, it depends what kind of a God you're
 thinking about. If you're thinking about Mr. Know-It-All, who can explain how everything's
 done, that would be one story. You'd be pretty much of a megalomaniac. But God, as the Hindus
 and Buddhists think of God, it's really wrong to use the word God, perhaps, for this being,
 or both neither being or not being. But in their idea, you see, the Lord doesn't have
 to know how things are done. He just doesn't, the same way you grow your hair without knowing
 how to. And so, a person who realizes he is the Lord in disguise does not therefore claim
 to know all the answers to all possible scientific questions. But the conviction, you see, that
 you are somehow within the inmost depth of your being. The works, the reality of everything
 that there is, you see. You are it. Tantra-vamasi it's said in Sanskrit, "That art thou." Now,
 what is that? See, these two things, it isn't serious, and you are it. We react in our cultural
 background against these things because they seem to be haughty. They seem to be fantasy,
 fantastic, claiming too much, getting too big for one's boots, because we are used to
 feeling that we are right if we cringe. The moment we start talking ourselves down and
 saying, "Well, I'm just a little fragment of dust. I come into being, I disappear, I'm
 a mess, I'm imperfect, I don't know anything, etc., etc., etc." We feel safe when we do
 that. It's like feeling that you are right when you hurt. "Oh, I bless the good Lord
 for my boils, for my mental and bodily pains, for without them my faith all congeals and
 I'm doomed to hell's near-ending pains. How very good it is for me to hurt so much." We
 have been brought up to feel that way, and also to be very careful about letting anyone
 know we are happy. The gods might overhear, "It's not good for you to be happy." You might
 get upish, you might have highbris pride and start boasting to the heavens, and then the
 old gentleman would get annoyed because the old gentleman was pretty insecure, and he
 doesn't like the children rushing around and stabbing their feet. Something might happen.
 They might go too far, you see. So, to you. So then if we can, "Oh, but I, excuse me,
 pardon me for having the disgusting effrontery to exist, but you see this is fake, it's as
 fake as it can be, it's phony, it's another kind of pride. How good I am at being humble,
 and it's terribly dishonest." And it is something that our cultural attitudes take very seriously.
 And the trouble is that having taken this seriously, and having felt for so long, through
 literature, through schooling, through attitudes of teachers and preachers and parents, that
 it's good for us to be humble. When we revolt against it, we go and make the opposite mistake,
 you see, of being unnecessarily cocky. Because that's compensation. There is no need, you
 see, to take on the universe and say, "I am man, I am the works, I am the lord in disguise,
 and all this can get lost." You don't need to do that. If you really know, you see, as
 I said at the end of this morning's talk, to believe that you are the disguised lord
 is unnecessary. It's a form of doubt. So in the same way to assert it in a kind of defiant
 way is also a form of doubt. Although, please remember, you're perfectly free to do that.
 Don't get caught in it by feeling that you oughtn't to. You know, I remember when I was
 a child, we used to read that the sin against the Holy Ghost was unforgivable. I just wonder
 what the sin against the Holy Ghost was. And there'd be a little thing at the back of your
 mind whispering, "Damn the Holy Ghost!" It's a hell of a Holy Ghost, you know? You're absolutely
 sucked into it by the very prohibition, the kind of vertigo where a person looks over
 a precipice and feels he's got to throw himself down. That's a funny thing in human psychology.
 So in many forms of symbolism that you find in the Orient, there is the idea of the liberated
 man, who he is. As a man who can't be fazed, you know, for example, that Bodhidharma, who's
 supposed to have brought Zen to China, is made into a toy in Japan, which is like a shmoo,
 only it's this shape. And it's weighted so that you can't knock it over. Push it down,
 but it always springs up. And this is the sort of figure of this. It says a poem, "Seven
 times down and eight times up, such is life." Or it may be the image in Hindu literature
 of the tightrope walker, the man walking the path of the razor's edge. It's the balance
 again, you see. But the Bodhidharma is in a way more flexible. He can be pushed right
 to the floor, but the minute you let go, he's back up. Or the Italist image of water. You
 can squeeze it, you can jump on it, you can cut it, but you can't hurt it. It always comes
 together again. Look, for example, I gave the illustration this morning of a human being
 as something like a whirlpool in water. Constantly changing, but always the same. Now what happens
 if you chop up a whirlpool? You know, you can smash it, you can put your fist through
 it, and you can make it disappear for a while. But after a while, there's the pattern again.
 So in the same way we think we can solve problems with violence, we think we can, that killing
 people is an answer to a problem. It's only temporary. As if you knock out, say, a Hitler,
 another one comes up. Because you haven't understood the problem of this sort of manifestation.
 Anything that's destroyed with violence eventually recurs again. Because the persistence of life
 in its continuity is a persistence of patterns. So long as the, for example, the principles
 of surface tension hold true, or the principles of crystallization, you're going to get crystals
 everywhere. Anywhere in the universe you're liable to get a crystal of something or other.
 Well life is the same kind of thing. It's a pattern, which is going to keep cropping
 up. Doesn't matter how long it has to wait. A million years is nothing. You blot it out
 here, it'll turn up somewhere else. It's only a matter of time. Because it's in the nature
 of the patterns. So in this sense, then, let's review these two ideas. It's, first of all,
 seriously speaking, sincerely speaking I should say, is it demoralizing to believe
 that it's all play? That at the last minute, you know, when the screaming meanies are right
 on and everything is awful, at the very last minute will you wake up and find it's a dream?
 You could say, I hope so. I hope so. But life sometimes gets so black that it's impossible
 to hope so. You know it's the end. Now I remember once a marvelous conversation with Count von
 Dürkheim, who is a kind of German Zen master. And he said, you know, during the war people
 have the most utterly soul-searing experiences. He said, the three general kinds of experience,
 of course, in the air raids, when you heard the whistling bomb right above you and you
 knew that was the end. But sometimes it was a dud. But, and it didn't go off. But you
 resigned yourself as you heard that scream and completely accepted the fact that you
 were about to cease to exist. Or else you were in a concentration camp and you saw absolutely
 no hope of ever getting out alive. Absolutely none whatever and you gave up. Or he said
 you were displaced. The town where you worked and you had your occupation was erased. And
 you were a person with absolutely no background, no career, no future, nothing. And you accepted
 it. Now he said, so often in all these cases the individual concerned had the most extraordinary
 experience. They had, in other words, the cosmic consciousness. Satori. They woke up.
 They realized suddenly that there was nothing to worry about at all. That I, the real I,
 not the superficial ego, the real I is the whole cosmos. Then he said their friends,
 they tried to explain this to their friends afterwards. And their friends said, oh you're
 crazy. You were under such strain that you got a little touched. And so they would try
 to forget it and put down this experience. He said most of my work is in reviving this
 and telling people that this is an authentic experience. So that's what I mean that the
 gamble that it isn't really serious. If you don't at the last moment, you see, as it were,
 call in the police. If you don't scream for help. I'm using that as a metaphor. To accept,
 well I'm going to die. See? That's it. There's nothing to hold on to, you see. The moment
 you really stop holding on to anything because you see there is nothing to hold on to, what
 happens? You become the ball. Now the ball, it has nowhere to bounce, you see. You become
 the ball with nothing to hold on to. But you can only see that when you're not holding
 on to anything anymore. When you've given up. Resignation or whatever it is. In other
 words that urgency to succeed, to be something, to get there, to make it, to be right. When
 you see you can't and you give up. You get reborn because that's with death. The real
 meaning of going to heaven after death has nothing to do with literal death. It has to
 do with this death. Now the other side of the picture. What about the notion that you're
 it. Not only that it isn't serious, but that fundamentally, right at the root of things,
 you are the ultimate reality. Not you, as I repeat, as this apparently separate ego
 that is a kind of phantom like the equator, the social institution. But the you, which
 as I say grows the hair and blues or browns the eyes and so on. Now the difficulty of
 our common sense, and it does present a difficulty to our common sense, is that we've all been
 brought up to feel alienated from the world. In the sense that it is something we came
 into and it is something that we confront. A meeting. We face it. So we face facts, we
 face reality. We encounter. Martin Buber's emphasis on dialogue, on I-thou, the confrontation,
 you see. That's a silly notion. At least it's silly if it doesn't have something undergirding
 it. In other words, you can't have a relationship without an underlying unity. You can't have
 a battle even between the tiger and the shark because they have no common ground. And Tweedledum
 and Tweedledee agreed to have a battle. So underlying all conflict in nature is common
 ground. Unity. Because even when we say that two things are the poles apart, that's a way
 of saying they're connected. Because the whole earth joins the two poles. The whole magnet
 joins the north and the south poles. So just as we have been taught to ignore the background
 behind the figure, the space behind the solid, so also we've been taught to ignore the joining
 link between the two poles. I once said that the way most of us think, somebody asks for
 a banana, he ought to be satisfied that just the two ends of the banana. When you can go
 so fast from San Francisco to New York that the intervening United States is abolished,
 San Francisco and New York become the same place. And so there's no point to going to
 New York. But just if there's a distance between them, there's some difficulty in getting from
 one place to the other. So not everybody in New York can go to San Francisco, not everybody
 in San Francisco can go to New York, then they're different places and it's worth going
 there. So also for the two ends of the banana to have any significance, you've got to have
 the banana of which the two ends are ends. So in the same way, each individual isn't
 something that comes into the world from nowhere and confronts it or from somewhere else altogether.
 And the universe is not a kind of heap of flotsam and jetsam that happened to collect
 in space like a bunch of old rubber tires and broken logs in some little nook on the
 San Francisco Bay. Because there was the Bay underneath the whole thing, you see, actually.
 So in the same way, to think, see the Christians and the Jews to some extent have gone over
 this idea that we are created out of nothing. Now of course there's an esoteric sense to
 that. In a way a maya, an illusion, is a creation out of nothing. Suddenly the magician makes
 a fantasy to appear in the empty room. In a way that's a creation out of nothing, see.
 He does it, say, by hypnosis, magic. But this idea of being created out of nothing has certain
 psychological and moral overtones or undertones in which you are supposed to be nothing down
 to the marrow and core of your existence. See what that means is, psychologically, that
 the someone wagging his finger at you and saying, "Never forget that you are really
 a jerk," you see, "that you're a little worm, you don't deserve anything, you exist entirely
 by the grace and pleasure of another. And the sooner you grovel suitably to acknowledge
 this, the better." Because the consequences of saying this and the meaning of saying this
 is what's going to be done about it. So there's the choice, you see, in your thinking, in
 your myth-making, in your imagination. Do you want to settle for a completely schizoid
 universe in which there is a gulf between the Lord and the illusion, the Brahma and
 the Maya, so total that forever and ever the one is not the other? Or would you rather
 have a unified, integrated universe in which the Maya is something that the Lord is doing,
 it's his act, his play, or its act, if you don't like the masculine personal pronoun.
 Her act, the great mother. And it seems to me that these two views are sort of like this,
 you see, with a diagram. See, one person is looking at the universe this way. Here is
 the domain of existence, being. And everything comes into it thus, from nowhere. See? That's
 one way of looking at things. How this ever got together, you can't even think, you have
 to turn your mind inside out and get this kind of collected Flotsam and Jetsam idea.
 The other diagram is this. Here again is the domain of being. But it's like a star, it
 is. The whole of it radiates each individual point of focus. You see? Now there you've
 got an integrated situation. And that's what things look like. Stars look like that, crystals
 look like that, octopuses look like that, spiders look like that, human beings stick
 out like that. It all works that way. Because underneath the differences, there are the
 differences all the way around, is the unity. If you don't know unity, you don't know you're
 different. They go together. This is KPFK Los Angeles. We've just heard Alan Watts with
 Part 4 concluding the seminar, Reality, Art and Illusion.


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