We can put the alternative in another image altogether, and I will call this not the ceramic
 image, not the fully automatic image, but the dramatic image. Consider the world as
 a drama. What's the basis of all drama? The basis of all stories, of all plots, of all
 games. It's the game of hide and seek. You get a baby. What's the fundamental first game
 you play with a baby? You put a book in front of your face, and you peek at the baby like
 this. The baby starts giggling, because the baby is close to the origins of life. It comes
 from the womb, really knowing what it's all about, but it can't put it into words. See,
 what every child psychologist really wants to know is to get a baby to talk psychological
 jargon and explain how it feels. But the baby knows. You do this and this, this, this, and
 the baby starts laughing, because the baby is a recent incarnation of God. And the baby
 knows, therefore, that hide and seek is the basic game.
 See, before, when we were children, we were taught 1, 2, 3, and ABC. But we weren't sat
 down on our mother's knees and taught the game of black and white. That's the thing
 that was left out of all our educations. That life is not a conflict between opposites,
 but a polarity. The difference between a conflict and a polarity is simply, when you say about
 opposite things, we sometimes use the expression, "These two things are the poles apart."
 You say, for example, with someone with whom you totally disagree, "I'm the poles apart
 from this person." But your very saying that gives the show away. Poles. Poles are the
 opposite ends of one magnet. And if you take a magnet, there's a north pole and a south
 pole. Right, chop off the south pole, move it away. The piece you've got left creates
 a new south pole. You never get rid of the south pole. Things may be the poles apart,
 but they go together. And you can't have the one without the other. That's the basic idea
 of polarity. But what we are trying to imagine is the encounter of forces that come from
 absolutely opposed realms. They have nothing in common when we say of two personality types
 that they're the poles apart. We are trying to think eccentrically instead of concentrically.
 And so in this way, we haven't realized that life and death, black and white, good and
 evil, being and non-being, come from the same center. They imply each other so that you
 wouldn't know the one without the other. Now I'm not saying that that's bad. That's fun.
 You're playing the game that you don't know that self and other go together in just the
 same way as the two poles of a magnet. So that when anybody in our culture slips into
 the state of consciousness where they suddenly find this to be true and they come on and
 say I'm God, we say you're insane. Now it's very difficult. You can very easily slip into
 the state of consciousness where you feel you're God. It can happen to anyone. Just
 in the same way as you can get the flu or measles or something like that, you can slip
 into the state of consciousness. When you get it, it depends upon your background and
 your training as to how you're going to interpret it. If you've got the idea of God that comes
 from popular Christianity, God as the governor, the political head of the world, and you think
 you're God, then you say to everybody, well you should bow down and worship me. But if
 you're a member of Hindu culture and you suddenly tell all your friends I'm God, instead
 of saying you're insane, they say congratulations, at last you found out. Because their idea
 of God is not the autocratic governor. When they make images of Shiva, say he has ten
 arms, how would you use ten arms? It's hard enough to use two. You know, if you play the
 organ you've got to use your two feet and your two hands, and you play different rhythms
 with each member. It's kind of tricky. But actually we're all masters at this, because
 how do you grow each hair without having to think about it? Each nerve. How do you beat
 your heart and digest with your stomach at the same time? You don't have to think about
 it. In your very body you are omnipotent, in the true sense of omnipotence, which is
 that you are able to be omnipotent. You are able to do all these things without having
 to think about it. When I was a child I used to ask my mother, of course, all sorts of
 ridiculous questions that every child asks, and when she got bored with my questions she'd
 say darling, there are some things we're just not meant to know. I said, will we ever know?
 She said yes, of course, when we die and go to heaven God will make everything plain.
 So I used to imagine on wet afternoons in heaven we'd all sit around the throne of grace
 and say to God, well now why did you do this and how did you do that? And he would explain
 it to us. Heavenly Father, why are the leaves green? And he would say, because of the chlorophyll.
 And we'd say, oh. But in the Hindu universe you would say to God, how did you make the
 mountains? And he would say, well I just did it. Because what you're asking me for, when
 you ask me how did I make the mountains, you're asking me to describe in words how I made
 the mountains. And there are no words which can do this. Words cannot tell you how I made
 the mountains any more than I can drink the ocean with a fork. A fork may be useful for
 sticking into a piece of something and eating it, but it is no use for imbibing the ocean.
 It would take millions of years. So it would take millions of years. In other words, you
 would be bored with my description long before I got through it, if I put it to you in words.
 Because I didn't create the mountains with words. I just did it. Like you, open and close
 your hand. You know how to do this, but can you describe in words how you do it? But you
 do it. You are conscious, aren't you? Do you know how you manage to be conscious? Do you
 know how you beat your heart? Can you say in words, explain correctly, how this is done?
 You do it, but you can't put it into words, because words are too clumsy. And yet you
 manage this expertly for as long as you're able to do it.
 This concludes Session One of Out of Your Mind, Essential Listening, from the Alan Watts
 Audio Archives. Our program continues with Session Two.
 [MUSIC]


{END}
Wait Time : 0.00 sec
Model Load: 0.63 sec
Decoding  : 0.42 sec
Transcribe: 745.13 sec
Total Time: 746.18 sec