library / Alan Watts / Alan Watts - Myth and Religion

Alan Watts - Myth and Religion

Alan Watts / audio 5:21:18 ~215 MB opus 94 kb/s

In this complete six-talk edition of his Myth and Religion radio series, recorded in Chicago around New Year 1971, Alan Watts traces a single argument through images of God, Jesus, authority, selfhood, and sex. He opens with Democracy in the Kingdom of Heaven, asking whether a monarchical, patriarchal image of God still makes sense to a democratic, scientifically literate age, and describes a Christianity backed against the wall turning ever more intently to the figure of Jesus of Nazareth. In The Image of Man he distinguishes myth as a working image from myth as falsehood, contrasting the Western picture of the universe as an artifact made by a divine craftsman with the Indian picture of the universe as a drama played by a single divine actor. Jesus His Religion then turns to the New Testament itself, arguing against treating scripture as an infallible rulebook and siding instead with early theologians who read its miracle stories, including the resurrection, for their meaning rather than their literal history. Not What Should Be But What Is examines the ordinary sense of I as a hallucinated boundary between a supposedly intelligent self and a supposedly mechanical, indifferent universe, a split Watts traces to nineteenth century science and to Freudian psychology's hydraulic model of the unconscious. In Spiritual Authority he disavows the role of guru, arguing that any teacher's, scripture's, or church's authority ultimately rests on the individual's own consent to believe it. He closes with Sex and the Church, arguing that Christianity is uniquely fixated on sexual sin among world religions, and connecting that fixation to a deeper unease about attachment to an impermanent physical body and world. Across all six talks the recurring move is the same, treating inherited religious images as useful maps rather than literal truths so that their real, often overlooked meaning can come through.

transcriptmachine-transcribed, unedited

===== Myth And Religion - 12 - Democracy In The Kingdom Of Heaven =====

Welcome to another talk from the Alan Watts Radio Series, number 5, Myth and Religion.

This is part one of a two-part program drawn from the Oriental Philosophy in the West seminar

recorded at the Cold Mountain Institute in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1969.

Here, Alan Watts asks the questions,

Does a monarchical religion make sense in a democratic society?

Is the idea of a divine patriarch still plausible?

It's called Democracy in the Kingdom of Heaven, Part 1.

Here's Alan Watts.

Now, as you know, this is the great discussion going on in what we call today the new theology,

the revolution within standard brand Christianity.

Because you see, for years and years, the clergy, the ministry of the various churches,

such as Episcopalian, Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, Unitarian,

even in some cases, Disciples of Christ and Lutherans,

their theological seminaries have been discussing religion in terms utterly different

than you will normally hear from the pulpit.

And every graduate of an intelligent theological school

has a sense of intense frustration

as he has to get out to work

in a community or parish church

because he does not believe

what he is supposed to preach.

And this has, in a way, been true

for a long, long time.

Clergy, except in the Roman Catholic Church,

where the situation is somewhat different,

are very heavily controlled by the laity

because he who pays the piper calls the tune.

And therefore, they are in a state of constant frustration

because those who contribute most heavily

and therefore are most interested in the church

tend to be conservative-minded people

and they want that old-time religion.

Although, as a matter of fact,

what they call the old-time religion is really quite modern.

But still, that's what they want.

And there are people who, as I would say,

would tend to be conservative

in their whole attitude to life.

Because, you see,

people of a more liberal disposition

couldn't care less about going to church.

In the British Army,

they have a thing called church parade.

And there's a famous story about a drill sergeant

who got all the troops up for church parade

on a Sunday morning

and used to call out,

Catholics to the right,

Protestants to the late,

fancy religions in the middle.

And to the degree you see

that intelligent people in our culture

have any religion at all,

it tends to be a fancy religion.

Something in the new kinds of things

that may be unity,

Christian science,

Theosophy,

Buddhism,

Vedanta,

or some kind of special Protestant

offshoot,

such as the Fellowship Church in San Francisco

or the Community Church in New York

and things of that kind.

Very liberal,

very left-wing theologically.

So the new theology comes at this time

to a very large extent

because

the clergy are fed up,

Christianity has its back to the wall.

And the Pope knows this better than anybody.

And so hand in hand with this ecumenical movement,

there goes along a reconsideration

of what on earth it's all about.

Is there a God?

Is there God?

And a lot of people are boldly saying

that is to be abandoned.

As an English priest,

Father Maskell,

put it,

it is the basic assumption

of the secularist movement

in Christian theology

that life

is a journey

between

the maternity ward

and the crematorium

and that is what there is.

That's it.

And that,

and that only

is the life

that the

Christian religion

has to do with

and to encounter.

and therefore

more than ever

being a Christian

if it is an abandonment of God

or of the idea

that the universe

is supernaturally controlled.

The Christian religion

fastens itself

therefore

with peculiar

and increased fervor

to the figure

of Jesus of Nazareth.

As one wit put it,

there is no God

and Jesus Christ

is his only son.

Because you see,

what otherwise

makes you a Christian

is something strange

about Christianity.

in that

it shares with Islam

and Judaism

what we might call

theological imperialism.

Christians

are of even

the most liberal stripe

fervently believe

that their religion

is the best religion

and they will state it

by saying

either Jesus Christ

is the only son of God

that's an orthodox way

it is a matter of fact

it isn't really

an orthodox way

of saying it

but it's the way

orthodox people

do say it

or they will say

Jesus is the greatest

man that ever lived

the point is

that you make a commitment

to the following of Jesus

as an historical

personage

and for some reason

or other

people who commit

themselves

to this exclusive

kind of following

of Jesus

become exceedingly

obstreperous

because

they will either

damn other religions

outright

or far more

insidiously

damn them

with faint praise

old Buddha

taught some

very good things

you know

and we all

are indebted

to his great

moral principles

but

and then

comes this pitch

you see

for the sole

following of Jesus

as the Lord

and Master

head and shoulders

above all

well the trouble

with that

has always been

that

when you get

into a theological

argument

with a person

who is a Christian

you get into

a situation

where the advocate

and the judge

are the same person

that is to say

Jesus is judged

the best man

in the world

by the standards

of Christianity

because those

are the standards

with which

this kind

of person judges

and therefore

and you'll find

that people

who leap

to these judgments

usually don't

know very much

about any other

kind of religion

the courses

on comparative

religion

in theological

schools

are shockingly

superficial

and grossly

inaccurate

and

so this

is coming

to the front

now

you see

in order

to be

to belong

to the church

really

is to be saved

and to be saved

is to belong

to the innest

in-group

you have to have

an in-group

you see

if you want

to know

who you are

you have to

belong to something

say if you want

to distinguish

yourself

because you know

who you are

because of the

people who aren't

like you

there you get

a contrast

now this is

this is the

basic arrangement

for a church

so you see

if you want

to be in some

kind of an in-group

you must put

everybody else

beyond the pale

St. Thomas Aquinas

gave the show

away

actually

because he said

that the blessed

in heaven

will often walk

to the battlements

and look down

and delight

in the justice

of God

being properly

carried out

in hell

but you may not

believe in hell

you may be

very liberal

and after all

it's not nice

or sophisticated

nowadays

to believe

in everlasting

damnation

but we have

new words

for it

such as

failing to be

a real person

sinking below

the human level

or entering

into final

and irremediable

psychosis

all these are

new words

either for

damnation

or heresy

and

you join

and you know

you're saved

only

if somebody

else

isn't

if somebody

else

damn

very difficult

to believe

or even

to imagine

a state

of affairs

where everyone

and everything

is saved

you have to be

a mystic

even to think

about that

because it

requires

having a state

of consciousness

which transcends

oppositions

and you can't do

that along the line

of ordinary logic

you have to have

a new kind of logic

which takes over

at a certain point

and this logic

I'm using at the

moment

by pointing out

that damned

people and saved

people

need each other

they are in a

symbiotic relationship

with each other

they go together

in the same way

as the back

and the front

of something

because if something

has a front

it has to have

a back too

and so

the very fact

that fronts

and backs

go together

indicates

that there is

a unity

between

these two

opposed sides

so also

there is a unity

between the

damned

and the saved

and it's only

as you begin

to realize

that you need

the damned

people in order

to be saved

and that the

damned people

need the saved

people in order

to be damned

that you start

laughing about it

and that laughter

is very subversive

and it's

you know how it is

you're not supposed

to laugh in church

and not in courts

of law either

there are places

where laughter

makes people nervous

because it's supposed

to be a sign

of disrespect

now it may not

be so at all

Dante said

that the song

of the angels

in paradise

sounded like

the laughter

of the universe

but in church

especially any

rather more

serious kinds

of church

laughing is

very bad form

why

because if you

look at the

design of a

catholic church

you will notice

that it is based

upon the design

of the courtroom

of a king

and if you look

at a protestant church

you will see

that it is based

upon the design

of a law court

indeed the protestant

minister wears

exactly the same

robes as an

american judge

and all those

pews

and box-like

stalls

are the same

you will find

in the old-fashioned

court

with a witness box

jury box

and all that

kind of thing

but you see

the original idea

of the christian

church

these ancient

roman churches

are called a

basilica

that means

the courtroom

of a king

the throne room

the altar is

the throne of god

now in a courtroom

the king is very

nervous

because anybody

who takes it

upon himself

to govern

other people

and rule them

had better

watch out

and therefore

he always has

his back to the

wall

and he is

flanked by

attending guards

and high ministers

of state

and just so that

nobody will get

up and make

trouble

he has them

either on their

knees or flat

on their faces

when they come

into his presence

and of course

no one must laugh

they'll be laughing

at mr big

and so this was

the pattern

this was the model

upon which

the judeo-christian

idea of god

was based

it is a

political model

and the title

of god

is taken

from the

supreme

emperors

of persia

the dian khan

the king

of kings

the lord

of lords

and so

in the english

church

at morning

prayer

the clergyman

gets up

and says

almighty

and everlasting

god

the only ruler

of princes

king of kings

lord of lords

who dost from

thy throne

behold all dwellers

upon earth

most graciously

deign to behold

our gracious

sovereign lady

queen elizabeth

and all the royal

family

that's the picture

and the metaphor

you may not believe

literally

that god

sits on a throne

or even has a body

to put on one

or that he wears a crown

or that he has a beard

but the image

colors

your feeling

about the character

and imagery

is much more powerful

than intellectual

concepts

you may know

it says

in the prayer book

that god

is the spirit

without body

parts

or passions

omnipresent

to all places

eternal

through all time

and therefore

one thinks

as haeckel does

of the gaseous

vertebrate

or else

of an enormously

diffused

sea

of luminous

jello

filling all

time and space

everybody

uses images

but behind

those images

are the old

images

that influenced

us in childhood

and if you still

attend a church

and you use

that imagery

you still think

emotionally

you feel

towards god

as one would

if you took

it literally

so this political

model

of god

has dominated

the west

and the world

is related

to god

as subjects

to a king

or as artifacts

to a maker

we have of course

a ceramic

model

of the universe

because

it's said

in the book

of genesis

that god

made adam

out of the dust

of the ground

in other words

he made a clay

figurine

and then

blew

the breath

of life

into the nostrils

of the figurine

so that it came

to life

now

the hindus

don't have

that model

of the universe

to cope with

because

they don't

look at the universe

as god's creation

in the sense

of being an artifact

they look at it

as god's drama

because they see

the world

as acted

not created

god is

that which is

pretending to be

all this

and everybody

is really god

is a mask

of god

who is

playing

that he's you

but he's doing

it so well

that he's taken

himself in

because he's

the audience

as well as

the actor

it's a really

successful play

because the good

actor

although you know

a play

is just a play

a good actor

is going to try

and make you

think it isn't

he wants to

get you crying

he wants to

get you sitting

on the edge

of your seat

in anticipation

and god

as the best actor

has convinced

himself

completely

that the

act is real

the chinese

again have a

different model

their model

is an organic

one

it is a great

organism

it is alive

it grows

it is an

intelligent order

so those are

the three great

models of the

world

when the west

stopped believing

seriously in god

a long time ago

they however

retained the idea

of the world

as an artifact

and so we

graduated from

the ceramic

model of the

universe

to the fully

automatic model

which is

actual common

sense

for most

people living

today

i return to

the point

then that

the clergy

and the church

people don't

really believe

in god

in the old

fashioned sense

of the word

god at all

if they did

believe the

christian religion

in some of its

orthodox forms

seriously

they would be

screaming in the

streets

and even the

most far out

lunatic fringe

jehovah's

witnesses

are even more

or less polite

when they come

and call at your

house

because if they

really believed

that you were

going to hell

they would make

more fuss about

you than if you

had the

bubonic plague

but nobody really

takes it that

seriously any longer

and that means

they don't believe

in it

they know they

ought to believe

in it

in fact many

sermons are

exhortations to

have more faith

which means that

we all recognize

that we don't

really believe in

this and we

ought to

we feel very

guilty about it

we don't have

the moral strength

to believe in

this

but it isn't

only a matter

of moral strength

it's a matter

of being asked

to believe

what most people

feel is nonsense

that the world

is run

on the lines

of a state

how for example

can you be a

citizen of the

united states

having taken

an oath

that a republican

form of government

is the best

form of government

and believe

that the universe

is a monarchy

so what has

happened

intelligent people

have always

realized

that this

political model

for the cosmos

won't do

now actually

no serious

theologian

ever did believe

that god was

an old gentleman

with whiskers

on a golden

throne

never

what the bishop

of woolwich

says in his book

honest to god

you know

that there isn't

some sort of

someone out there

is very naive

in a way

because he could

have taken

huge quotations

out of

saint thomas

aquinas

out of the

great fathers

of the church

from oregon

from clement

of alexandria

from saint gregory

nazianzus

from saint john

of tabascus

from saint basil

the great

from saint augustine

from saint ambrose

from bernard of

clervaux

and albert the great

he could have

quoted all those

perfectly orthodox

very correct

theologians

and shown that

they never believed

in a god like

that with whiskers

and he could have

come forward

and said you see

this is a perfectly

orthodox book

and i'm not a

revolutionary

i'm just going back

to the real old

time religion

he didn't do that

and do you know

why

he told me

he never read

those writers

in theological

school

with ever so many

people

one of the reasons

why so many people

turned to an oriental

religion

was

that the level

the intellectual level

at which oriental

religions were first

presented in the west

was so much higher

than the intellectual

level at which

christianity was

presented

at the local church

if you lived in india

or uh

ceiland

of course

there would be

the local buddhist

monastery

and it would be

just as junky

as the stuff

was around

the local church

they don't tell

people all about

the great void

and how to practice

meditation

and those things

that's for specialists

the minority

all they care about

is gaining merit

mostly by making

contributions

to the clergy

for better circumstances

in your next life

or getting out

of evil karma

that's the real

thing

that popular buddhism

is about

but you see

the trouble in the west

is that everybody

is getting educated

there's a terrific

literacy

and therefore

the public

has to be treated

as if it were

intelligent

you can't say

the public

be damned anymore

there's too many

intelligent people

now

let's look at the

lineup

what sort of a

situation is this

really

for my part

I would say

the god that is

dead

is this political

model god

however conceived

the divine

paternalistic

authority

who rules

the universe

and to whom

you as an ego

are related

as a subject

to a king

by analogy

see

now that one

just isn't holding

but what's the

alternative

especially

think about

what could be

an alternative

for western

people with a

christian background

what other

kind of god

could we have

well one possibility

is none

and this is what

people like

altizer

are discussing

he's on the

far left

of this new

theology

I would say

a man like

james pike

is on the

right

of the new

theology

he very

definitely

believes in

god

he's a

theist

but

he doesn't

believe in

anything with

whiskers on

nor does

he really

believe in

the political

model

are we going

to settle

then for

the fact

that the

universe

is just

what it

appears

to be

are we

going to

have a

very refined

conception

of god

which will

be called

instead

of he

that makes

a lot

of difference

very powerful

what pronoun

you use

or even

he she

the christian

scientists

talk about

the father

mother

it's sort

of complicated

people

feel that's

a little bit

weird

it is rather

simple

but then

when you

say it

does it

mean that

god is

something like

electricity

which doesn't

seem to have

any independent

intelligence of

its own

you can use

it intelligently

but it's just

energy

it does

something

go zoom

see

is that

god

is god

like that

or what

it's a

funny thing

but it's very

difficult to be

a complete atheist

real atheist

like in the

house of parliament

in england

when in 1928

the church of england

wanted a new

prayer book

a revised

prayer book

because the church

and the state

are inseparable

in england

and the houses

of parliament

had to vote

on whether this

prayer book

might be used

and somebody

got up and

said this is

perfectly ridiculous

an assemblage

which contains

a number

of atheists

voting on

the inner

politics

of the church

of england

and another

member got up

he said

oh i don't

think there are

any atheists

here

not really

we all

believe in

some sort

of a something

somewhere

now you see

in the theological

world

it just doesn't

do to believe

in some sort

of a something

somewhere

because one

thing that

theologians

detest

is vagueness

you should

listen to them

even no god

at all

because that's

clear and precise

no beating

around the bush

old man

you know

it's just

fuzzy thinking

to have

the great

universal mind

the undifferentiated

aesthetic continuum

that's all

some sort

of a something

somewhere

woolly thinking

either no god

or a god

with a definite

character

and a clear

moral will

and precise

standards

who will not

be pushed

around

the biblical

god

bowie

what do you

do you put

your mind

into two

watertight

compartments

one of which

you're abreast

of science

and the

modern world

and all

that kind

of thing

and the

other compartment

which simply

had nothing

to do

with that

is a completely

cut-off

thing called

religion

where you

believe in

absolutely

ludicrous

propositions

a lot of

people do

that

but a lot

of people

want a

religion

which is

difficult to

believe in

because that's

a kind

of a test

of faith

whether you

can swallow

you've been

listening to

democracy in

the kingdom

of heaven

part one

with alan watts

from the

alan watts radio

series number

five myth

and religion

for information

how to obtain

the radio series

on cassette

tape

call

1-800-969-2887

or you can

write to

the electronic

university

p.o. box

san anselmo

california

when you

call or write

please indicate

the name of

your local

station

now you

heard the

program

democracy

in the

kingdom of

heaven

from the

alan watts

radio series

number five

myth and

religion

again the

phone number

1-800-969-2887

that's

1-800-W-O

watts

the love

of wisdom

with alan watts

is produced

by the

electronic

university

i'm neil

harvey

thank you

for listening

welcome to

another talk

from the

alan watts

radio series

number five

myth and

religion

this is the

conclusion of

the two-part

program drawn

from the

oriental

philosophy

in the

west

seminar

recorded at

the cold

mountain

institute

in vancouver

british columbia

in 1969

in which

alan watts

compares

various images

of the godhead

in the light

of the world's

religious traditions

it's called

democracy

in the kingdom

of heaven

part two

here's alan watts

you put your

mind into two

watertight

compartments

one of which

you're abreast

of science

and the

modern world

and all that

kind of thing

and the other

compartment

which simply

had nothing

to do with

that

is a completely

cut off

thing called

religion

where you

believe in

absolutely

ludicrous

propositions

a lot

of people

do that

but a lot

of people

want a

religion

which is

difficult to

believe in

because that's

a kind of a

test of faith

whether you

can swallow

it's like

the story

about

abraham being

told to

sacrifice his

son isaac

and he was

about to

do it

because you

do what

you're told

it's a

test of

faith

people like

the security

of a

definite

religion

i mean

you've got

to believe

in and

this is

the truth

i was once

having an

argument with

a jehovah's

witness

and he

said don't

you think

that if

were really a loving God who was concerned about the human race, that he would provide us with an

infallible textbook that would tell us how to live, I said he would do nothing of the kind.

It would completely destroy the human mind. You know, you'd never have to think if that was the case.

So while there is that, here is then this possibility. See, is it to be no God? Is life

just this trip from the maternity ward to the crematorium, and that the issue of religion

is to improve that trip. That is to say, through social concern, through getting rid of poverty and

war and exploitation and disease, is that the whole business of religion or is there something else?

Those who take this view, which we will call the secularist position in theology, are of course

strongly influenced by contemporary philosophy, especially in that form which is called scientific

empiricism or logical positivism, which maintains that the idea of God is not a fallacy,

but is a meaningless idea. That, in other words, the proposition that there exists God,

of God, and that God is the origin and creator and governor of everything that is happening,

they maintain that those sentences are utterly devoid of meaning, as much so as if I were to say

everything is up. Because they will say no logical proposition can be made about all processes

whatsoever, because all propositions are labels on boxes, and you can't have the box containing all boxes,

because this box would have no outside, and therefore it wouldn't be a box.

So all propositions, all words, must refer to classes of some kind,

and you can't have the class of all classes. And also, they would say, the notion that there is a God

is meaningless because it doesn't help you to make any prediction. Or they can ask it in this way,

what evidence, supposing somebody could bring it forward, would completely satisfy you as disproving

the existence of God. And no believer in God can think of any evidence that would conclusively prove

that there wasn't a God. Just like psychoanalysts are completely incapable of thinking of any evidence

which would disprove the existence of the Oedipus complex. So they, on logical grounds, take this

position. And so, since many theologians are, in fact, influenced by modern philosophy,

take these arguments seriously, they would like to secularize the whole conception of religion.

Or, to put it in Bonhoeffer's words, have Christianity without religion. Well now, when you might say,

there is nothing to life except the trip between the maternity ward and the crematorium, that's what there is.

I've heard something like that before. When asked what is the Buddha, the Chinese master replied,

It's windy again this morning. Another Buddhist master, on his deathbed, wrote the poem,

From the bathtub to the bathtub, I have uttered stuff and nonsense. The bathtub in which the baby is washed

at birth, and the bathtub in which the corpse is washed before burial. All the time between, he said,

I was going yakety-yak. Now, what about those poems? Do they mean what they say? Well, not quite.

There's something different here, because they are based on a life devoted to the discipline of a very

particular kind of meditation, culminating in a completely shattering experience, which is very

difficult to talk about. But generally speaking, it is the encounter with eternity, with the eternal.

Not necessarily in the sense of that which goes on and on and on through time, but

the eternal is the timeless. That which transcends time is beyond measurement in terms of hours and days.

And when a person who is in that state of consciousness, or has been through it, looks at

the ordinary everyday world, it's true he sees the ordinary everyday world, as we see it,

but with a very, very extraordinary difference. And if we would have to put that difference into some

sort of Western Christian-influenced language, he would perhaps say, don't you realize that sitting

around here in this room, with our ordinary everyday faces and clothes and personalities,

we are sitting smack in the middle of the beatific vision, and that this sitting here in

this room is infinity and eternity precisely. It is it. And this is the beatific vision. This is God.

And it feels that way too. It really does. Or something like it. But in this kind of religion,

they still have temples, they have Buddhas, and they chant sutras, and offer incense, and ring gongs,

and all that kind of thing. But they're always saying that the highest religion,

really to get there, you have to kill the Buddha. Supposing a clergyman got up one day in the pulpit,

and said, every time you say Jesus Christ, you have to wash your mouth out. Or, if you meet God the Father,

kill him. If you meet God the Son, kill him. If you meet God the Holy Spirit, kill him. If you meet the

Pope, kill him. If you meet Saint Augustine, kill him. If you meet your father and mother, kill them.

Kill them all right away. All right. But what I've been saying is simply translating into Christian

terms a Buddhist teacher, talking about the year 800 AD. That's what he said. Only he put the Buddhist

names in where I put the Christian ones in. But I don't think this is what is happening in the movement of the

new theology. I think that what's happening there is that they are just getting rid of God. This is not

this other thing I'm talking about, which could be called the religion of no religion. You see,

if you, you could take this right into Christianity, because to the extent that every Christian is a Jew,

you who are supposed to believe in the Ten Commandments. And one of them says, Thou shalt not make to thyself any

graven image of anything that is in the heavens above, or the earth beneath, or the waters that are under the

earth, thou shalt not bow to them nor worship them. And that is what this thing I've been talking about is. It is a

destruction of idols. Because the most dangerous graven images are not those which are made of wood and stone.

They are those which are made of ideas. And it is well known to the great mystical tradition of the

world, all over the world, that the sort of supreme vision can only come when you have got rid of every

idea of God whatsoever. It would be like, as I've often used this image, cleaning a window on which

somebody has painted blue sky. Well, to see the sky, you've got to scrape off the paint. Well, you say,

my goodness, you shouldn't take that nice blue painting off. It's very good. It was done by a great

artist. See how pretty the clouds are. You mustn't do that, because we won't have in that blue sky

anymore. See? So, in that spirit, the great mystics have always ceased to cling to God. That is,

because the only God you can cling to is the idea of God. In order to discover God, you have entirely

to stop clinging. You, you see, why does one cling to God? For safety, of course. You want to save

something. You want to save yourself. I don't care what you mean by saved. Whether it just means feel

happy, or feel that life is meaningful, or, uh, you know, there's somebody up there who cares.

So, one clings. And if you don't cling to God, you cling to something else. The state, money, sex,

yourself, power. These are all false gods. But there has to come a state when clinging stops.

And only then does the state of faith begin. People who believe in God don't have any faith,

because they want something to hold on to. So, real faith is when you do not hold on to anything

anymore. In the Christian tradition, this is called the cloud of unknown. There is a book at that point,

written by a 14th century British monk, Anonymous. And he got it from Dionysus, the Areopagite,

who assumed the name of St. Paul's Athenian convert. He was a Syrian monk living in the sixth century.

Both Meister Eckhart, St. Thomas Aquinas, John Scotus Origina, and many other great medieval theologians

studied Dionysus, the Areopagite. He wrote a book called the Theologia Mystica, in which he explains

that in order to come to full union with God, you must give up every conception of God

whatsoever. And he enumerates them. Don't think that God is oneness, or threeness, or unity, or spirit,

or any kind of anything that the human mind can conceive. He is beyond all that. In what is called,

this is called apophatic theology. This is a Greek term contrasted with cataphatic.

When you speak cataphatically, you say what God is like. So this man, Dionysius, wrote two books. One

was called The Divine Names, and that was cataphatic theology. The other was called The

Mystical Theology, which is apophatic. Cataphatic, what God is like according to analogy. He is like a

father. We do not say God is a cosmic male parent, but God is in some respect like a father, like spirit.

Like we say nowadays, like man, it's like it's raining. You know, there's a certain relativity to

that statement. So this is the cataphatic language. The apophatic says what God is not.

And all those theologians in the following of Dionysius said the highest way of talking about God is in

negative terms. Just as, to use Dionysius's own image, when a sculptor makes a figure, he does it

entirely by removing stone, taking something away. So in the same way, St. Thomas Aquinas said,

because God, by his infinity, exceeds every idea to which the human mind can reach, the best way to

speak of him is by remotion. That is to say, by removing from our view of God every inadequate concept.

This is what the Hindus call neti neti, saying of the Brahman of the supreme reality, it is not this,

it is not this. But this intellectual operation of destroying concepts must go hand in hand with a,

shall we call it, psychological operation, which is ceasing to cling to any image whatsoever. Or

simply ceasing to cling. Now why? Well, because there's no need to. There's no need to cling.

Because when you were born, you were kicked off a precipice. And it was a big explosion. A lot of

other things are falling down with you, including some pretty large lumps of rock. One of them is

called the earth. And it won't help you to cling to the rocks when you're falling off the precipice.

It may give you an illusion of safety. But everything is falling. It's falling apart.

That's what the ancients said when all is transient.

All flows, in the words of Heraclitus. And you can't cling to anything. It's like grabbing at smoke

with a non-existent hand. That's all that clinging will ever achieve. All it does is make people anxious.

So when you come to the realization that you cannot cling to anything, that there is nothing to cling to,

there transpires an inner change of consciousness, which we can call either faith or letting go.

And then suddenly, the thing hits you. In Sanskrit, they put it this way. Tattvamasi means literally,

that art thou, or as we would say, you're it. And if you are God, then you can't have an idea of God

any more than you can chew your own teeth. You don't need one. The sun doesn't need to shine on itself.

Knives don't need to cut themselves. Your eyes don't need to look at themselves. What color is your head

to your eyes? It isn't black, is it? You can't see anything. Matter of fact, the way it feels inside

your head is what you call what it looks like outside. All these things you see outside are states

of the nervous system in the brain. That's how it feels. That's how it looks inside the head. And you

said, well, I thought that was what was outside. True. Same way. When the Zen master suddenly discovered

that carrying the pail, with water in it, was a miracle, he discovered that. He realized there

isn't anything except God. And boy, you don't, if you really know that, you see, you don't need to

have a religion. But you can have one, because it's a free world. I mean, if you want to try and

express this in some way, and all religion is pure gravy, after that. See? Any outward

manifestation of religion. You know, it's like a man with lots of money making some more.

Only it's quite unnecessary. But so, according to the very best theologians, it was never necessary

for God to create the world. It didn't add anything to him. He didn't have to do it. He was under no

compulsion. So he did it out of what, uh, Dionysus the Areopagite calls, uh,

hyperpleres. Or we would anglicize it. Hyperpleres. Superfulness. In other words, for kicks. I mean,

you know, we don't, we don't like using that language, but it's completely contemporary and

exactly right. Uh, that's what the Bible says. Only it puts it in a more sedate way. It says,

his majesty did it for his pleasure. Well, that's the way you talk about somebody who

is the king. This great Victoria said, you know, we are not amused. And, uh, it says in the book of the

Proverbs, that where the divine wisdom speaks, and speaks, you see, as an attribute of God, standing

aside from God. Sort of primitive polytheism. And wisdom says that in the beginning of the world,

her delight was to play before the divine presence. And especially to play with the sons of men.

The word in Hebrew is play. But in the King James translation, it is rejoice. Because that is a

more sedate word than play. You may rejoice in church, but not play. You may not have fun in church,

but you may rejoice. See the difference. So then, uh, the, the, the, the point of the matter is then,

there was no reason to make the world. And it was done for making celestial whoopee. That's why the

angels are laughing. They're just splitting their sides. Only, when you hear it in church,

everybody's forgotten what hallelujah means. It's allowing. Don't you see? Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

Uh, it's like, um, you know, it's just burble. And it's like bird song. Bird song isn't about anything.

It's just for kicks. Uh, why do you sing? Why do you like dancing? What's music for?

That's what this hallelujah is. So when nothing is being clung to, when one gets to that point,

everything blows up. This is what's meant by Satori in Zen. Sudden, uh, awakening. And you suddenly see,

good heavens! What was I making all that fuss about? Because here we are. It's what we've been looking

for all the time. And so it's right here. And, uh, that's, that's the thing. And you realize that,

that you, any, you basically, through and through, are all this. Only you got into a kind of a funny

illusion. I think that we get into that illusion, uh, in rather a complicated way,

through our upbringing as children. Uh, because that many little children know from the beginning,

what it's all about. Only they haven't got words to put it in. See, that's the whole problem with

child psychology. What child psychologist is ideally looking for is an articulate baby.

I can explain what it's like to be a baby. You never get there. By the time you teach, by teaching

the child to speak, you, you, you mess it up. You give it this language, and you can't think big

thoughts like that with this funny limited language. Especially with the words they start

children out with. And then finally, when they've got the poor thing completely hypnotized,

they tell it the most preposterous things. They tell it that it must be free. They say to you,

you child, are an independent agent, and you're responsible. See? Now, therefore, we command you

to love us. And, uh, you, we, in other words, we require that you do something which will please us

only if you do it voluntarily. Do you wonder people are mixed up? So, uh, but I'm afraid you

see that the new theology isn't on to this. The new theology really is serious about there not

being any God, and that the universe is therefore a rather pitiful predicament in which we've caught

has some compensations. But what all this is a continuation of the 19th century philosophy,

the fully automatic model, which is that this is an essentially stupid universe.

It's a mechanism. It is a gyration of blind energy in which human intelligence and values

happens to be a fluke, and a rather uncomfortable one. Because nature doesn't give a damn about us.

And so we have to fight it. And now all that is pure mythology. It is grossly unscientific.

And, uh, but most people believe it. It's common sense for today. But what an opportunity, though,

there is in the new theology, and in this whole ferment going on, to get them to see this other

point of view. And realize that when you get rid of God, you are all you are doing is you're destroying an idol.

And all idols must be destroyed respectfully. Not like those wretched, uh, Puritans who went

around destroying all the saints figures and the stained glass in the medieval churches. That was

disrespectful iconoclasm. Respectful iconoclasm would be, for example, every Easter Sunday the Bible

should be ceremoniously burned. Because if Jesus is truly risen from the dead, you don't need the Bible

anymore. He's around. Available. You don't need the books. You burn it up, ceremoniously, with great

respect. Because suddenly God doesn't take himself seriously. If he did, I shudder to think what would

happen. You've been listening to Democracy in the Kingdom of Heaven, part two, with Alan Watts, from

the Alan Watts radio series number five, Myth and Religion. For information on how to obtain the radio

series on cassette tape, call 1-800-969-2887. Or you can write to The Electronic University,

P.O. Box 2309, San Anselmo, California, 94979. When you call or write, please indicate the name of your

local station and that you heard the program Democracy in the Kingdom of Heaven, from the Alan Watts radio

series number five, Myth and Religion. Again, the phone number is 1-800-969-2887. That's 1-800-W-O-WATTS.

The Love of Wisdom with Alan Watts is produced by The Electronic University.

I'm Neil Harvey. Thank you for listening.

===== Myth And Religion - 13 - The Image Of Man Entire =====

Welcome to another talk from the Alan Watts Radio Series, No. 5, Myth and Religion.

This is part one of a two-part program in which Alan Watts explores different mythologies

by asking the question,

Are we the ceramic figure into which God has breathed life,

or are we the divine manifestation of the dreams of the Godhead?

Recorded at Pasadena City College on January 11, 1965,

it's called The Image of Man.

Part one.

Here's Alan Watts.

I want to start by giving what may be to many of you a new definition of the word myth.

As normally used, the word myth means an idle tale, a fable, a falsehood,

or an idea that's out of date, something untrue.

But there is another, older, and stricter use of the word myth,

whereby it doesn't mean something untrue,

but it means an image in terms of which people make sense of life and of the world.

Supposing, for example, you don't understand the technicalities of electricity,

and somebody wants to explain them to you,

he wants to explain about the flow of currents,

well, to do that, he compares electricity with water.

And because you understand water, you get some idea about the behavior of electricity.

Or if an astronomer wants to explain to you what he means by expanding space,

he'll use the metaphor of a balloon, a black balloon with white spots on it.

The white spots represent the galaxies.

And then if you blow up the balloon,

they all get further away from each other at the same speed as the balloon blows up.

Now, in neither case are we saying that electricity is water,

or that the universe is a balloon with white spots on it.

We are saying it's something like it.

And so, in the same way,

the human being has always used images

to represent his deepest ideas

of how the universe works

and what man's place in it is.

And tonight I'm going to discuss

certain aspects of two of the greatest myths

in this sense of the word

which have influenced mankind's thinking.

First of all, the myth

of the universe

as an artifact,

as something made,

as a carpenter makes

tables, chairs, and houses,

or as

a potter makes pots,

or as a sculptor

makes figurines,

and on the other hand

the image of the world

as a drama

in which

all the things in the world

are not made

but acted

in the same way

as a player acts parts.

For these are the two great images

which govern respectively

the religions of the West

descending from

Hebraism,

that is to say

Hebraism itself,

Christianity,

and Islam,

and on the other hand

the myth

which governs

those religions

which have had

their origin in India,

most particularly

Hinduism itself

and to a lesser extent

Buddhism.

And I want to make it

perfectly plain

before I go any further

that in talking about

these two great

religious traditions

in terms of images

I am talking about

the way they express themselves

at a rather popular level.

Sophisticated Christians

and sophisticated Hindus

think beyond images.

For example,

a Christian may think

of God

as the Father

but a sophisticated

and educated Christian

does not imagine

that God

is a cosmic male parent

with a white beard

sitting on a golden throne

above the stars.

Nor does a Hindu

imagine literally

that God

is the super showman

the big actor.

These images

are what it is like

not what it is.

And perhaps

when I get through

with discussing them

we'll be able

to ask the question

as to whether

any of these images

still make sense

to us

in this 20th century

when we have

a view of the world

so powerfully shaped

by Western science.

Now let me begin

then with a few things

about

the image of the world

and thus

the image of man

as it comes to us

from the Hebrew Bible.

It's said in the book

of Genesis

that

the Lord God

created man

out of the dust

of the earth

as if he had made

of Adam

a clay figurine

and then he blew

the breath of life

into its nostrils

and the figurine

became alive

and it's said

that the figurine

was made in the image

of God

for God

who is conceived

in this particular

image

as personal

as a living

intelligent spirit

creates in man

something like that

but you must note

very definitely

that this is a creation

as the potter

makes a pot

out of clay

for the creature

that the Lord God

has made

is not God

the creature

is something

less than God

something like God

but not God

and you will see

some very interesting

consequences

follow from this idea

of the world

as an artifact

what follows

from it is

that

the whole universe

is seen

as a marvelous

technical accomplishment

and if it is made

there must be

an explanation

of how it is made

and the whole

history

of western thought

has in many ways

been

an attempt

to discover

how the creator

did it

what were

the principles

what were the laws

laid down

what in other words

was the blueprint

that underlies

this creation

and this image

has therefore

persisted

throughout western history

and continues on

into a time

when very many people

do not believe

in Christianity

or Judaism

or Islam

they are

you might say

agnostics

or atheists

but they still

carry on

something of this

idea of the world

as an artifact

if you are a Christian

or a Jew

you believe that the world

is the artifact

the creation

of the intelligent spirit

called God

but if in this culture

you are an atheist

or an agnostic

you believe that the world

is an automatic machine

without a creator

something

which made itself

we might say

then that our

original model

of the universe

was the ceramic model

and the bible

is full of references

to God

as the potter

who makes the world

out of obedient clay

but when

western thinkers

in the 18th century

began to drop

the idea

of a personal God

they kept the idea

of the artifact

and so we could say

that after the ceramic model

of the universe

we got the fully automatic model

and still you see

underlying our way

of thinking about things

is the question

how are they put together

and if you want to find out

one of the obvious ways

to proceed

is to take them to pieces

everybody knows

that if you want to find out

how something is made

you unscrew the parts

and see

what the secret is

inside the box

and so

western science

in its beginnings

took everything apart

it took animals apart

it took flowers apart

it took rocks apart

and then when they got it

reduced to its tiniest pieces

they tried to find

methods of taking those apart too

so that we could eventually discover

what the very smallest

small things were

and so know

what building blocks

the creator

or the fully automatic model

used

in order to put it all together

hoping that

that would lead us

to an understanding

of how life works

man himself

in all this

was looked upon

as a creation

something made

only

there were some difficulties

about this

because

if you believe in the world

in accordance with the idea

of the fully automatic model

you've really got to admit

that man too

is fully automatic

in other words

he's a machine

rather than a person

man is something

in other words

that says

doffs its hat to you

and says

how do you do

I'm a person

I'm alive

I'm sensible

I talk

I have feelings

but you wonder

do you really

or are you just

an automaton

am I real

or am I just an automaton

the general result

the western image

of man

hasn't been quite that

what it's come down to

under the dispensation

of the fully automatic model

is this

we are

living beings

we're very sensitive

and inside the human skin

by an extraordinary fluke

of nature

there has arisen

something called reason

and there have also

arisen values

such as love

but this was a fluke

because it happened

inside a fully automatic universe

which is stupid

because it's merely automatic

you won't in other words

find anything really intelligent

outside human skins

and therefore

if that is so

the only thing

that people can do

if they want to

maintain

reason

and love

in this universe

is to fight nature

and beat

the stupid

external world

into submission

to the human will

and so

the war

against nature

is the great project

thus far

of western technology

because you see

each one of us

because we

we have

inherit

from

thousands of years

of history

a view of man

as something made

and almost

of a

sort of breath

breathed into a pot

of clay

or an image of clay

a kind of

each one feels himself

as a globule

of consciousness

or mind

living inside

a vehicle

called my body

and

since the world

outside that body

is stupid

we feel

estranged

from the world

when we find out

how enormous

the universe is

that makes us

as individuals

feel extremely

unimportant

and rather lonely

because you see

we consider ourselves

our basic image

of ourselves

is of a soul

or an ego

or a mind

all by itself

in its little house

looking out

at a world

that is strange

and that is not

I am therefore

a brief interval

of consciousness

between the darkness

and the darkness

and that

isn't too happy

I would like to be able

to believe that it was

more than that

if I could

so many of us say

if I could only

still believe

that there is

an intelligent

and eternal God

in whose eyes

I am important

and who has the power

to enable me

to live forever

that would be

very nice

but for many people

that's an extraordinarily

difficult

thing to believe

now I want to

contrast this

image of the world

with another

what I call

the dramatic image

as distinct

from the image

of the potter

or the ceramic image

and this will be

the presiding image

of Hinduism

their idea is this

that God

didn't make the world

like a technologist

but he acted it

that is to say

every person

and everything

for that matter

every tree

every flower

every animal

every star

every rock

every grain of dust

is a role

or part

which the Godhead

is playing

you must understand

of course

that the Hindu image

of God

is a little bit

different

from the Jewish

the Christian

and the Islamic

when I was a boy

little boy

I used to ask

my mother

interminable questions

and when she got

sick of it

she said

my dear

there are some things

in this life

that we're just

not meant to know

well I said

will we ever know

she said yes

if you die

and then go to heaven

God will explain it all

and so I used to hope

that on wet afternoons

in heaven

we would all be able

to sit round

the throne of grace

and say to the Lord

why did you do this

and why did you do that

and he would explain

every child in the west

asks his mother

how was I made

and nobody knows

but they know

likewise

if anybody

gets mentally deranged

and claims to be God

we always humor

such people

by saying

by asking them

technical questions

how did you make

the world

in six days

or if you're God

why couldn't you

change this plate

into a rabbit

but that is because

in our popular image

of God

God is the supreme

technocrat

he knows

all the answers

he understands

everything in detail

and could tell you

all about it

but the Hindus

don't think of God

that way

if you ask

the Hindu God

how did you create

the human body

he would say

look

I know how I did it

but it can't be

explained in words

because words

are too clumsy

in words

I have to talk

about things slowly

I have to string them out

because words

run in a line

and lines add up

to books

and books add up

to libraries

and if I explain

to you

how I made

the human organism

it would take

all eternity

for me to tell you

unfortunately

fortunately for me

I don't have to

understand things

in words

in order to make

them happen

nor do you

you don't have

to understand

in words

how you breathe

you just breathe

you don't have

to understand

in words

how to grow

your hair

how to shape

your bones

how to make

your eyes

blue or brown

you just do it

and somebody

who does understand

to some extent

may be a physiologist

he can't do it

any better

than you can

so that you see

is the Hindu idea

of divine omnipotence

and that is why

their images

of the gods

very often

have many arms

you'll often

see the god

Shiva

with ten arms

or the buddhist

Avalokiteshvara

with one thousand arms

and that is because

their image

of the divine

is a sort

of centipede

a centipede

can move

a hundred legs

without having

to think about it

so Shiva

can move

ten arms

very dexterously

without having

to think about it

and you know

what happened

to the centipede

when it stopped

to think

how to move

a hundred legs

it got all

balled up

so in this way

the Hindus

do not think

of God

as being

a technician

in the sense

of having

a verbal

or mathematical

understanding

of how the world

is created

it's done

in a simpler way

just like that

only if we had

to describe

the simple way

in words

it would be

very complicated

but God

in their idea

doesn't need

to do so

but the remarkable

difference is

that

the Hindu

doesn't

see any

fundamental

division

between God

and the world

the world

is God

at play

the world

is God

acting

now

how could you

possibly arrive

at such an idea

very simply

when

he tries to

think

why

there is

a world

at all

because

if you

think about it

it is

extraordinarily

odd

that there

is anything

it would have

been much

simpler

and required

a great deal

less energy

for there

would be

nothing

but here

it is

and why

well

what would

you do

if you

were God

or let me

put it

in a simpler

way

supposing

that every

night

you could

dream

any dream

you wanted

to dream

what would

you do

well

first of all

I'm quite

sure

that most

of us

would dream

all the

marvelous

things

we wanted

to happen

we would

fulfill

all our

wishes

and we

might go

on that

way for

months

besides

you could

make it

extraordinarily

rich

by wishing

to dream

75 years

in one

night

full of

glorious

happenings

but after

you had done

that for a

few months

you might

begin to

get a

little tired

of it

and you

would

say

what about

an adventure

tonight

in which

something

terribly

exciting

and rather

dangerous

is going

to happen

but I'll

know I'm

dreaming

so it

won't be

too bad

and I'll

wake up

if it

gets too

serious

so you

do that

for a

while

you

rescue

princesses

in distress

from dragons

and all

sorts of

things

and then

when you've

done that

for some

time

you say

now let's

go out

a bit

further

let's

forget

it's a

dream

and have

a real

thrill

ooh

but you

know you

wake up

and then

you get

after you've

done that

for a while

you get

more and

more nerve

until you

sort of

dare yourself

as to how

far out

you can

get

and you

end up

dreaming

the sort

of life

you're

living

now

why

does one

do that

why would

one do

that

the reason

the hindu

would say

is that

the basic

pulse

of life

the basic

motivation

of existence

is what

we call

the game

of hide

and seek

now you

see it

now you

don't

you see

everything's

based on

that

because all

life is

vibration

pulsing

light

is a

pulsation

of light

darkness

sound

is a

pulsation

of sound

silence

everything

is going

at various

speeds

and in

order

to have

say

it's

the

motion

wave

now

wave

consists

two

pulses

the

crest

and

the

trough

you

can't

have

crests

without

troughs

you

can't

have

troughs

without

crests

they

always

together

you

can't

have

hide

without

seek

you

can't

have

seek

without

hide

just

for

example

you

can't

have

here

without

there

you

can't

have

without

isn't

because

you

don't

know

what

you

mean

unless

you

also

know

what

you

mean

isn't

and

vice

versa

that

way

they

think

that

hide

and

seek

wakes

and

finds

out

who

that

was

relief

and

then

after

rest

period

which

everything

course

peace

starts

all

over

again

because

the

spirit

adventure

springs

eternal

now

then

the

Hindus

had

extremely

vast

ideas

space

and

time

for

their

period

history

and

they

have

the

4,320,000

years

period

called

kalpa

k-a-l-p-a

sanskrit

and

then

the

seek

part

that

say

let

put

this

way

the

dreaming

part

followed

the

waking

part

the

dreaming

the

hiding

where

the

godhead

imagines

that

it's

all

then

for

another

4,320,000

years

there's

period

awakening

and

then

the

that

again

begins

the

dream

now

the

dreaming

period

further

subdivided

into

four

stages

the

first

stage

the

longest

and

it's

the

best

during

that

stage

the

dream

beautiful

the

second

stage

not

quite

long

and

it's

little

unsettling

there's

element

instability

certain

touch

insecurity

the

third

stage

which

not

again

long

the

forces

light

and

the

forces

darkness

good

and

evil

are

equally

balanced

and

things

are

beginning

to look

rather

dangerous

and

in the

fourth

stage

which

the

shortest

them

all

the

negative

dark

evil

side

triumphs

and

the

whole

thing

blows

the

end

but

then

that's

the

bang

the

dream

and

then

there's

waking

period

before

the

whole

thing

starts

again

but

you

will

notice

you

compute

haven't

gone

into

the

mathematics

but

you

the

fundamental

principles

drama

consider

drama

here

stage

and

over

the

stage

here

what

call

the

proscenium

arch

and

out

there

the

audience

now

you're

supposed

to be

the

world

reality

let's

suppose

this

isn't

lecture

tonight

but

show

and

you

come

outside

into

the

show

and

you

know

you're

real

people

living

the

real

world

but

you're

going

see

play

which

isn't

real

there

are

actors

coming

the

stage

but

behind

the

scenes

here

they're

real

people

you

but

they

that

you

don't

see

them

that

way

they're

going

put

their

costumes

and

their

makeup

and

then

they're

going

come

out

and

front

here

and

pretend

various

roles

but

you

they're

weeping

roaring

with

laughter

because

he's

almost

persuaded

you

that

what

the

stage

really

happening

that

the

greatness

his

art

take

the

audience

and

course

the

same

way

the

Hindu

feels

that

the

Godhead

acts

his

part

yourself

enjoying

anything

because

you

mustn't

admit

that

would

give

the

show

away

now

it's

funny

thing

when

you

say

I'm

person

the

word

person

word

from

the

drama

you

know

when

you

open

play

that

the

script

you

see

the

list

the

actors

and

it's

called

dramatis

personae

the

persons

the

drama

and

the

word

person

latin

persona

that

means

through

sound

something

through

which

sound

comes

because

the

persona

greco-roman

drama

was

the

mask

worn

the

actors

and

because

they

acted

open

air

stage

the

mouth

was

shaped

small

megaphone

and

that

would

project

the

sound

the

person

the

mask

isn't

funny

now

how

forgotten

that

and

harry

emerson

fosdick

could

write

book

called

how

real

person

which

translated

literally

how

genuine

fake

because

the

old

sense

you

see

the

person

the

role

the

part

played

the

actor

but

you

forget

you

see

that

you

are

the

actor

and

you

think

you're

the

person

you're

enrolled

you're

bewitched

spellbound

enchanted

so then

look at

something else

about the

drama

and its

nature

in the

drama

there has

to be

villain

unless

of course

you're

acting

some kind

of a

non-play

which

doesn't

have

any

story

but

all

fundamental

stories

start

out

with

the

status

quo

where

everybody

saw

of going along and then something has to come in to upset everything and the interest of the play is

how are we going to solve it it's the same when you play cards supposing you're playing solitaire

you start by shuffling the deck and that introduces chaos and the game is to play order against chaos

so in the drama somebody has to be the villain and play the dark side and then the hero plays

against him if you want if you go to the theater for a good cry then you let the villain win and

you call it a tragedy if you go for a thrill you let the hero win if you go for laughs you call it

a comedy there are different arrangements then between the hero and the villain but in all cases

when the curtain goes down at the end of the drama the hero and the villain step out hand in hand

and the audience applaud both they don't boo the villain at the end of the play they applaud him

for acting the part of the villain so well and they applaud the hero for acting the part of the hero

so well because they know that the hero role and the villain role are only masks and so you see behind

the stage two there is the green room where after the play is over and before it begins the masks are taken

off and so the hindus feel that behind the scene that is to say in reality under the surface you are all

the actor marvelously skilled in playing many parts and in getting lost in the mazes of your own minds

and the entanglements of your own affairs as if this were the most urgent thing going

but behind the scenes in the green room you might say in the very back of your mind and the very depths of

your soul you always have a very tiny sneaking suspicion that you might not be the you that you

think you are the germans call it a hintergedanker a thought way way back in your head that you will

hardly admit to yourself because of course you've been brought up most of you if you were brought up

in the hebrew christian tradition it would be very wicked indeed to think that you were god

that would be blasphemy and oh oh oh don't you ever dare think such an idea

which of course is all as it should be because the show must go on until of course the time does come

to stop now you will see that this involves two quite different ways of dealing with the fundamental

question two fundamental questions one what is man that is who are you and in the hebrew christian answer

we more or less say well i'm me i'm alan watts i'm john doe i'm mary smith and i firmly believe i am

because i really oughtn't to think anything else ought i and that me is a finite ego or a finite mind

whatever that is on the other hand the hindu will say that the real self which he calls atman a-t-m-a-n

is what there is it's the works it's the which than which there is no witcher the root and ground of

the universe and of reality the next problem that this that where they differ so sharply

is well why have things gone wrong why is there evil why is there pain why is there tragedy

now the in the in the christian tradition you have to attribute evil to something else besides god

there god is defined as good

and he originally created the scheme of things without there being any evil in it but there was

a mysterious accident in which one of the angels called lucifer didn't do what he was told

uh man there was a fall of man man disobeyed he went against the law of god

and from this point evil was introduced into the scheme of things and things began to go wrong

that is to say against the will of the perfectly good creator now the hindu thinks in a different way

he feels that the creator or the actor is uh the author of both the good and the evil

for the reasons that i explained to you you have to have the evil for there to be a story

and in any case it isn't as if the creator had made evil and made someone else its victim

it isn't like saying god creates the evil as well as the good and poor little us are his puppets

and he inflicts evil upon us the hindu says nobody experiences pain except the godhead

you are not some separate little puppet which is being kicked around by omnipotence you are omnipotence

in disguise and so there is no victim of this no helpless uh defenseless poor little thing

even the baby with syphilis is the dreaming godhead now this makes people brought up in the west

extremely uneasy because it seems to undercut the foundations of moral behavior

and say well if if good and evil are created by god isn't this a universe in which just anything goes

i mean if i'm god in disguise surely if i realize that i can get away with murder

well think it through didn't i point out that in the game as the hindus analyze it the evil part has

one third of the time and the good part has two thirds what sort of a game do you want anyway

you will find out you see that all good games games that are worth playing and that arouse our interest

are constructed like this if you have the good and the evil equally balanced

the game is boring nothing happens it's stalemate the irresistible force meets the immovable object

on the other hand if it's all good and there's hardly any evil maybe just a weeny little bit of

a fly in the ointment it also gets boring just in the same way for example supposing you knew the future

and could control it perfectly what would you do you would say

let's shuffle the deck and have another deal

because for example when great chess players sit down to a match and it suddenly becomes apparent to

both of them that white is going to mate in sixteen moves and nothing can be done about it they

abandon the game and begin another they don't want to know there wouldn't be any hide in the game

any element of surprise if they did know the outcome so a game with good and evil equally balanced isn't a

good game a game with the positive or good forces uh clearly triumphant isn't an interesting game

what we want is a game where it always seems that the good side is about to lose i'm really serious danger

of losing but manages always to sneak out you know how it is in serial stories when they get the hero

at the end of an installment in some absolutely impossible position where it seems that uh he's

going to be run over by a train because he's tied with his girlfriend to the rails and you know somehow

in the next installment the author's going to get them out of the difficulty only he mustn't do it

too obviously because he won't go on reading the next installment so then what's necessary is

a system in which the good side is always winning but never is the winner where the evil side is always

losing but never is the loser that's a very practical arrangement for a successful ongoing game

which will keep everybody interested and you must watch this in practical politics every in group or

group of nice people needs an out group of nasty people otherwise they wouldn't know who they were

and you must recognize then that this out group is your necessary enemy whom you need he keeps you on

your toes but you mustn't obliterate him if you do you're in a very dangerous state of affairs so you

have to love your enemies in this sense regard them as highly necessary and to be respected chivalrously

we need the communists and they need us the thing is to cool it and play play what i call a contained

conflict when conflicts get out of hand all sides blow up oh of course i suppose then there's another deal

maybe a million years later now let me see if i can for a moment put these two visions of the world together

it seems that if you believe that christian hebrew islamic view that you can't admit the hindu view

because if you're a christian you the one thing you cannot believe if that's if you say you're at all

orthodox you're a orthodox protestant bible type or if you're a roman catholic you can't believe that you

are god and so that excludes hinduism apparently but let's go back to judaism for a minute

and ask this question if judaism is the true religion can christianity be true too no no because

there's one thing in christianity that the jew can't admit and that was that jesus christ was god

that is unthinkable for a jew that any man was was indeed god in the flesh all right second question

if christianity is the true religion can judaism be true too the answer is yes because all christians

are jews that is to say they have taken in the jewish religion lock stock and barrel in the old

testament into their own religion every christian is a jew plus something else which is his particular

attitude to jesus of nazareth now then let's play this game once again if christianity is true can

hinduism be true the answer is no for the reason that we've seen the christians will

say jesus of nazareth was god but you aren't i'm not now then if hinduism is true can christianity be

true the answer is yes because it can include it but how what would be the attitude of a hindu

to a very sincere and convinced christian he would say bravo absolutely marvelous what an act

here in this christian soul god is playing his most extraordinary game he is believing and really

feeling that he's not himself and not only that but that he is living only one life

and in that life he's got to make the most momentous decision imaginable

in the course of this four score years and ten he's got to choose between everlasting beatitude

and everlasting horror and he's not quite sure how to do it because in christianity there are two

sins to be avoided among others one is called presumption and that is knowing surely that you are saved

the other is called despair which is knowing surely that you're damned there's always a margin of

doubt about this work out your salvation in fear and trembling so you might say that this is preeminently

the gambler's religion imagine you know at some great casino late at night there is some marvelous

master gambler who's been winning winning winning all night and then suddenly he decides to stake his

whole winnings on whether the ball lands on red or black sensation everybody gathers from all over the

casino to watch this terrific gamble so in the same way the predicament in which the christian soul

finds itself is this colossal gamble which is saying this universe can possibly contain in it ultimate

tragedy there could be such a thing as an absolute final irremediable mistake and what a horror that thought

is and so the hindu is sitting in the audience fascinated by this christian's extraordinary reckless gamble

he says that's a beautiful game the christian doesn't know it's a game but the hindu suspects it is

and he's a little bit admiring it but not quite involved now you would say perhaps now you ought to be

involved give your whole self to this make an act of commitment you know once to every man and nation

comes the moment to decide in the strife tricks truth and falsehood for the good or evil side

then it is the brave man chooses while a coward stands aside etc that sounds great isn't it commitment

stand up and be counted it is a virtue but on the other hand you see another virtue what we call being a

good sport if your enemy in the battle of life is to be regarded as an absolute enemy who is pure evil

black as black could be you can't be a good sport and you can accord him no chivalry no honors of battle

you've got to annihilate him by any means possible fair or foul and that leads to some pretty sticky

situations especially when he has the means of annihilating you in just the same way but if on

the other hand in all contests you know that while you're going to take it seriously and regard it as

very important in the back of your mind in that little hintergedanker you know it is not ultimately

important although very important and this saves you this enables you to be a good player you may worry

about the word play because we often use the word play in a trivial sense oh you're just playing is life

you mean life is nothing but a game the hindus indeed call the creation of the universe the leela

or the game or the play of the divine but we also use play in other senses when you see hamlet which

is by no means trivial you are still going to a play in church the organist plays the organ

and in the book of proverbs it is written that the divine wisdom created the world by playing

before the throne of god play also you see has a deep sense when we say music even the music of bach

as a great master of what we call serious music is still playing and so in the deeper sense of play

the hindu sees this world as play and therefore that the intense situations personally socially

and so on that we are all involved in are seen not as bad illusions but as magnificent illusions so

well acted that they've just about got most of the actors fooled so that they've forgotten who they are

and man thinks of himself when he's been fooled as a little creature that comes into this world which

is all strange and foreign and he's just a little puppet of fate and he's forgotten that

the whole thing has at its root the self which is also yourself you've been listening to the

conclusion of the image of man with alan watts from the alan watts radio series number five myth and

religion for information on how to obtain the radio series on cassette tape call 1-800-969-2887

or you can write to the electronic university p.o box 2309 san anselmo california 94979

when you call or write please indicate the name of your local station that you heard the program the image

of man from the alan watts radio series number five myth and religion again the phone number is

1-800-969-2887 that's 1-800-w-o watts the love of wisdom with alan watts is produced by the electronic university

our music is by zakir hussein courtesy of moment records i'm neil harvey thank you for listening

===== Myth And Religion - 11 - Jesus His Religion =====

Some years ago, I had just given a talk on television in Canada

when one of the announcers came up to me and said,

you know, if one can believe that this universe is in charge of an intelligent and beneficent God,

don't you think he would naturally have provided us with an infallible guide

to behavior and to the truth about the universe?

And of course, I knew he meant the Bible.

I said, no, I think nothing of the kind,

because I think a loving God would not do something to his children that would rot their brains.

Because if we had an infallible guide, we would never think for ourselves.

And therefore, our minds would become atrophied.

It is as if my grandfather had left me a million dollars.

I'm glad he didn't.

And we have, therefore, to begin any discussion of the meaning of the life and teaching of Jesus

with a look at this thorny question of authority

and especially the authority of Holy Scripture.

Because in this country in particular,

there are an enormous number of people

who seem to believe that the Bible

descended from heaven with an angel in the year 1611,

which was when the so-called King James,

or more correctly authorized version of the Bible,

was translated into English.

I had a crazy uncle

who believed that every word of the Bible was literally true,

including the marginal notes.

And so whatever date it said,

it said in the marginal notes

that the world was created in 4004 BC

and he believed it as the word of God.

Until one day,

he was reading, I think, a passage in the book of Proverbs

and found a naughty word in the Bible.

And from that time on,

he was through with it.

You know, how Protestant can you get?

Now, the question of authority needs to be understood

because I am not going to claim any authority

in what I say to you.

Except the authority, such as it is, of history.

And that's a pretty uncertain authority.

But from my point of view,

the four Gospels

are, I think, to be regarded on the whole

as historical documents.

I'll even grant them miracles.

Because speaking as one heavily influenced by Buddhism,

we're not very impressed by miracles.

The traditions of Asia,

Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, and so forth,

are full of miraculous stories.

And we take them in our stride.

We don't think that there are any sign

of anything in particular

except psychic power.

And we in the West

have, by scientific technology,

accomplished things

of a very startling nature.

We could blow up the whole planet.

And Tibetan magicians

have never promised to do anything like that.

And I'm really a little scared

of the growing interest in psychic power

because that's what I call psychotechnics.

And we've made such a mess of things

with ordinary techniques

that heaven only knows what we might do

if we got hold of psychotechnics

and started raising people from the dead

and prolonging life insufferably

and doing everything we wished.

In the whole answer to the story of miracles

is simply imagine that you're God

and that you can have anything you want.

Well, you'd have it for quite a long time.

And then after a while,

you say, this is getting pretty dull

because I know in advance

everything that's going to happen.

And so you would wish for a surprise

and you would find yourself

this evening in this church

as a human being.

So, I mean, that is the miracle thing.

I think miracles are probably possible.

That doesn't bother me.

And as a matter of fact,

when you read the writings

of the early fathers of the church,

the great theologians like St. Clement,

Gregory of Nyssa,

St. John of Damascus,

even Thomas Aquinas,

they're not interested

in the historicity of the Bible.

They take that sort of for granted,

but forget it.

They're interested in its deeper meaning.

And therefore,

they always interpret

all the tales like Jonah and the whale.

They don't bother even to doubt

whether Jonah was or was not

swallowed by a whale

or other big fish.

But they see in the story

of Jonah and the whale

a prefiguration of the resurrection of Christ.

And then even when it comes

to the resurrection of Christ,

they're not worrying about

the chemistry or the physics

of a risen body.

What they're interested in

is that the idea

of the resurrection of the body

has something to say

about the meaning

of the physical body

in the eyes of God.

That the physical body,

in other words,

is not something worthless

and unspiritual,

but something which is an object

of the divine love.

And so,

therefore,

I'm not going to be concerned

with whether or not

miraculous events happened.

It seems to me entirely

beside the point.

So I regard the four Gospels

as, on the whole,

as good a historical document

as anything else we have

from that period,

including the Gospel of St. John.

And that's important.

It used to be fashionable

to regard the Gospel of St. John

as late.

In other words,

at the turn of the century,

the higher critics

of the New Testament

assigned the Gospel of St. John

to about 125 A.D.

And the reason was just simple.

Those higher critics

at that time

just assumed

that the simple teachings

of Jesus

could not possibly

have included

any such complicated

mystical theology.

And therefore,

they said,

well,

it must be later.

Now, as a matter of fact,

in the text

of the Gospel of St. John,

the local color,

his knowledge

of the topography

of Jerusalem,

and his knowledge

of the Jewish calendar

is more accurate

than that

of the other three writers,

Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

And it seems to me

perfectly simple

to assume

that John recorded

the inner teaching

which he gave

to his disciples

and that Matthew,

Mark, and Luke

record the more

exoteric teaching

which he gave

to people at large.

Now,

what about then

the authority

of these scriptures?

We could take this problem

in two steps.

A lot of people

don't know

how we got the Bible

at all.

We Westerners

got the Bible

thanks to

the Catholic Church.

the Catholic Church

and members

of the Church

wrote the books

of the New Testament

and they took over

the books

of the Old Testament

which even by

the time of Christ

had not been

finally decided upon

by the Jews.

The Jews did not

close the canon

of the Old Testament

until the year

100 A.D

or thereabouts

at the Synod of Jamnia

and then they

finally decided

which were

the canonical books

of the Hebrew Scriptures

and embodied them

in the Masoretic text

the earliest copy

of which

dates from

the 10th century

early in the 10th century

A.D.

The books

to be included

in the New Testament

were not finally

decided upon

until the year

382 A.D.

again

at the Synod of Rome

under Pope Damasus.

So it was the Church

the Catholic Church

that promulgated

the Bible

and said

we are giving you

these scriptures

on our authority

and by the authority

of the informal tradition

that has existed

among us

from the beginning

inspired by the Holy Spirit.

So you receive

historically

the Bible

on the Church's

say-so

and the Catholic Church

insists therefore

that the Church

collectively

speaking

under the presumed

guidance

of the Holy Spirit

has the authority

to interpret

the Bible

and you can take that

or leave it

because obviously

the authority

of the Bible

is not

first of all

based

on the Bible

itself.

I can write a Bible

and state

within that book

that it is indeed

the Word of God

which I have received

and you are at liberty

to believe me

or not.

Hindus

believe

that the Vedas

are divinely revealed

and inspired

with just as much

fervor as any Christian

or any Jew.

Muslims believe

that the Quran

is divinely inspired

and some Buddhists

believe

that their

sutras

are also

of divine

or rather

a Buddhic

origin.

the Japanese

believe

that the ancient

texts of Shinto

are likewise

of divine origin

and who is

to be judge

if we are going

to argue

about this

as to which

version of the truth

is the correct one

we will always

end up

in an argument

in which the judge

and the advocate

are the same person

and you wouldn't want

that if you were brought

into a court of law

would you

because if I say

that well

thinking it all over

I find that Jesus Christ

is the greatest being

who ever came

onto this

this earth

by what standards

do I judge?

why obviously

I judge by the sort

of moral standards

that have been

given to me

as somebody brought up

in a Christian culture

there is nobody

impartial

who can decide

between all the religions

because more or less

everybody

has been

in one way or another

influenced by one of them

so if the church

says the Bible

is true

it finally comes

down to you

are you going to

believe the church

or aren't you?

if nobody believes

the church

it will be perfectly

plain won't it

that the church

has no authority

because

the people

is always

the source

of authority

that's why

de Tocqueville

said that

the people

gets what

government

it deserves

and so

you may say

well God

himself

is the authority

well

how are we

to show that

that's your opinion

well you say

well you wait and see

the day of judgment

is coming

and then you'll find out

who's the authority

yes but at the moment

there is no evidence

for the day of judgment

and it remains

until there is evidence

simply your opinion

that the day of judgment

is coming

and there is nothing else

to go on

except the opinion

of other people

who hold the same view

and whose opinions

you bought

so really

I won't

deny anybody's

right to hold

these opinions

you may indeed

believe

that the Bible

is literally true

and that it was

actually dictated

by God

to Moses

and the prophets

and the apostles

that may be

your opinion

and you are

at liberty

to hold it

I don't agree

with you

I do believe

on the other hand

that there is

a sense

in which the Bible

is divinely inspired

but I mean

by inspiration

something utterly different

from dictation

receiving a dictated message

from an omniscient authority

I think inspiration

comes

very seldom

in words

in fact

almost all

the words

written down

by automatic writing

from a psychic input

that I've ever read

strike me

a bit thin

when a

psychic

begins to try

and write

of deep mysteries

instead of

telling you

what your sickness is

or who your grandmother was

he begins to get superficial

and psychically communicated

philosophy

is never as interesting

as philosophy

carefully sought out

but divine inspiration

isn't that kind of communication

divine inspiration

is for example

to feel

for reasons

that you can't really understand

that you love people

divine inspiration

a wisdom

which it's very difficult

to put into words

like mystical experience

that's divine inspiration

and a person who writes out of that experience

could be said to be divinely inspired

or it might come

through dreams

through archetypal messages

from the collective unconscious

through which

the holy spirit

could be said to work

but

since

inspiration always comes

through a human vehicle

it is liable to be distorted

by that vehicle

in other words

I'm talking to you

through a sound system

and it's the only one now available

now if there's something wrong

with this sound system

whatever truths

I might utter to you

will be distorted

my voice will be distorted

and you might mistake

the meaning of what I said

now so therefore

everybody who receives

divine inspiration

and I'm using that

in a very loose way

you can mean anything you like

by divine

that's your option

but anybody who receives it

will express it

within the limits

of what language he knows

and by language here

I don't only mean

English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew

or Sanskrit

I mean language

in the sense of

what sort of terms

are available to you

what is

what kind of religion

were you brought up with

now you see

if you were brought up

in the Bible belt

you came out of Arkansas

somewhere

and that's all the religion

you knew

and you had a mystical experience

of the type

where you suddenly discover

that you are one with God

then you're liable to get up

and say

I'm Jesus Christ

and lots of people do

well

the culture that we live in

just can't allow that

there's only one Jesus Christ

and sort of

you don't look like

you were Jesus Christ

coming back again

because it's said in the scriptures

that when he comes back

there'll be no doubt about it

he'll appear in the heavens

with legions of angels

and you're not doing that

you're just

old Joe Doakes

that we knew years ago

and now you say

you're Jesus Christ

well he says

that when Jesus Christ

said he was God

nobody believed him

and you don't believe again

you know

you can't answer that argument

but you see

he says it that way

because he is trying to express

what happened to him

in terms of a religious language

which is circumscribed

by the holy bible

he's never read the Upanishads

he's never read the Diamond Sutra

he's never read the Tibetan Book of the Dead

or the I Ching

or the Lao Tzu

and therefore

there is no other way

in which he can say this

but if he had read the Upanishads

he would have had no difficulty

and nor would the culture

the society in which he was talking

have any difficulty

because it says in the Upanishads

we are all incarnations of God

only they don't mean by the word God

in fact they don't use that word

they use Brahman

they don't mean the same thing

that a Hebrew meant by God

because

the Brahman

is not personal

Brahman is

we would say

supra-personal

not impersonal

because that is a

negation

but I would say

supra-personal

Brahman is not he or she

has no sex

Brahman

is not the creator of the world

as something underneath and subject to

Brahman

but the actor of the world

the player of all the parts

so that everyone is a mask

which is the meaning of the word person

in which the Brahman

plays a role

and like

an absorbed actor

the divine spirit gets so absorbed in playing the role

as to become it

and to be bewitched

and this is all part of the game

into believing

I am that role

when you were babies

you knew who you were

psychoanalysts refer to that as the oceanic feeling

they don't really like it

but they admit that it exists

where the baby

cannot distinguish between

the world

and the way it acts upon the world

it's all one process

which is of course the way things are

but we learn very quickly

because we are taught very quickly

what is you and what is not you

what is voluntary

what is involuntary

because you can be punished for the voluntary

but not for the involuntary

and so

we unlearn

what we knew in the beginning

and in the course of life

if we are fortunate

we discover again

what we really are

that each one of us

is what would be called in

Arabic

or Hebrew

the son of God

and the word son of

means of the nature of

as when you call someone

a son of a bitch

or in Arabic you say

which means son of a dog

son of a donkey

a son of Belial

means an evil person

son of God

means a divine person

human being

who has realized union with God

now my assumption

my opinion

is that Jesus

of Nazareth

was a human being

like Buddha

like Sri Ramakrishna

like Ramana Maharshi

etc

who

early in life

had a colossal experience

of what we call

cosmic consciousness

now you don't have to be

any particular kind of religion

to get this experience

it can hit anyone

anytime

like falling in love

there are obviously

a number of you

in this building

who've had it

in greater or lesser degree

but it's found

all over the world

and when it hits you

you know it

sometimes it comes

after long practice

of meditations

and spiritual discipline

sometimes it comes

for no reason

that anybody can determine

we say it's the grace

of God

that there comes

this overwhelming conviction

that you have mistaken

your identity

that what you thought

what I thought

was just old Alan Watts

who I know very well

is just a big act

in a show

but what I thought

was in

that you know

was only completely

superficial

that I am

an expression

of an eternal

something or other

a name that can't be named

as the name of God

was taboo

among the Hebrews

I am

and that

I suddenly

understand why

exactly why

everything is

the way it is

it's perfectly clear

furthermore

I feel

no longer

any boundary

between what I do

and what happens

to me

I feel that

everything

that's going on

is my doing

just as my breathing

is your breathing

voluntary

or involuntary

do you do it

or does it

happen to you

so you can feel

it both ways

but you feel

everything like

breathing

and it isn't as if

you had become

a puppet

there is no longer

any separate you

there is just

this great happening

going on

and if you

have the name

in your background

you will say

this happening

is God

or the will of God

or the doing of God

or if you don't

have that word

in your background

you will say

with the Chinese

it is the flowing

of the Tao

or if you're a Hindu

you will say

it is the Maya

of Brahman

the Maya means

the magical power

the creative illusion

the play

so you can very well understand

how people

to whom this happens

feel genuinely inspired

because very often

there goes along with it

an extremely warm feeling

because you see

the divine in everybody else's eyes

when Kabir

a great Hindu Muslim mystic

was a very old man

he used to look around at people

and say

to whom shall I preach

because he saw the beloved

in all eyes

and could see

sometimes I look

into people's eyes

and I can look right down

and I can see that beloved

in the depths

of those pools

and yet the expression

on the face

is saying

what me?

that's the funniest thing

but there is everybody

in his own peculiar way

playing out

an essential part

in this colossal

cosmic drama

and

it's so strange

that one can even feel it

in people you thoroughly dislike

let's suppose then

that Jesus

had such an experience

but

you see

Jesus

has a limitation

that he doesn't know

of any religion

other than those

of the immediate near east

he might know something

about Egyptian religion

a little bit maybe

about Greek religion

but mostly

about Hebrew

there is no evidence

whatsoever

that he knew anything

about India

or China

and we

people who think

you know

Jesus was God

assume

that he must have known

because he would have been

omniscient

St. Paul makes it

perfectly clear

in the epistle

to the Philippians

that Jesus

renounced

his divine powers

so as to be man

let this mind

be in you

which was also

in Christ Jesus

who being

in the form of God

thought not equality

with God

a thing

to be hung on to

but humbled himself

and made himself

of no reputation

and was found

in fashion

as a man

and became obedient

to death

theologians call that

kenosis

which means

self-emptying

obviously

an omnipotent

and omniscient man

would not really

be a man

so even if you take

the very orthodox

catholic doctrine

of the nature of Christ

that he was both

true God

and true man

you must say that

for true God

to be united

with true man

true God

has to make

a voluntary

renunciation

for the time being

of omniscience

and omnipotence

and omnipresence

for that matter

now therefore

if Jesus

were to come

right out

and say

I am the son

of God

that's like saying

I'm the boss's son

or I am

the boss

and everybody

immediately says

that is blasphemy

that is subversion

that is trying

to introduce democracy

into the kingdom

of heaven

that is

you are a usurper

of the throne

no man

has seen God

now

Jesus

in his exoteric teaching

as recorded

in the synoptic gospels

was pretty cagey

about this

he didn't come

right out there

and say

I am the father

are one

instead

he identified himself

with the

Messiah

described

in the second part

of the prophet

Isaiah

the suffering servant

who was despised

and rejected of men

and this man

is the

the non-political

Messiah

in other words

it was convenient

to make that

identification

even though

it would get him

into trouble

but to his

elect

disciples

as recorded

in St. John

he came right out

and said

before Abraham

was

I am

I am the way

the truth

and the life

I am the resurrection

and the life

I am the living bread

that comes down

from heaven

I and the father

are one

and he who has seen me

has seen the father

and there can be no mistaking

that language

so the Jews

found out

and they put him to death

or had him put to death

for blasphemy

this is no cause

for any special

antagonism to the Jews

we would do exactly

the same thing

it's always done

thank you

It happened to one of the great Sufi mystics in Persia, who had the same experience.

Now what happened?

The apostles didn't quite get the point.

They were awed by the miracles of Jesus.

They worshipped him as people do worship gurus.

And it's, you know, to what lengths that can go, if you've been around Guruland.

And so the Christians said, okay, okay.

Okay, Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God, but let it stop right there.

Nobody else.

So what happened was that Jesus was pedestalized.

He was put in a position that was safely upstairs,

so that his troublesome experience of cosmic consciousness would not come and cause other people to be a nuisance.

And those who have had this experience and expressed it during those times when the church had political power,

were almost invariably persecuted.

Gordiano Bruno was burnt at the stake.

John Scotus Origina was excommunicated.

Meister Eckhart's theses were condemned.

And so on, and so on.

A few mystics got away with it because they used cautious language.

But you see what happens.

If you pedestalized Jesus, you strangle the gospel at birth.

And it has been the tradition in both the Catholic Church and in Protestantism to pass off what I will call an emasculated gospel.

Gospel means good news.

And I cannot for the life of me think what is the good news about the gospel as ordinarily handed down.

Because look here.

Here is the revelation of God in Christ.

In Jesus.

And we are supposed to follow his life and example.

Without having the unique advantage of being the boss's son.

Now, the tradition, both Catholic and Protestant fundamentalist, represents Jesus to us as a freak.

Born of a virgin, knowing he is the son of God, having the power of miracles, knowing that basically it is impossible to kill him.

He is going to rise again in the end.

And we are asked to take up our cross and follow him, when we don't know that about ourselves at all.

So what happens is this.

We are delivered, therefore, a gospel which is in fact an impossible religion.

It's impossible to follow the way of Christ.

Alright.

Many a Christian has admitted it.

I'm a miserable sinner.

I fall far short of the example of Christ.

But do you realize?

The more you say that, the better you are.

Because what happened was, that Christianity institutionalized guilt as a virtue.

You see, you can never come up to it.

Never.

And therefore, you will always be aware of your shortcomings.

And so, the more shortcomings you feel, the more, in other words, you are aware of the vast abyss between Christ and yourself.

You will have your opportunity to speak in the question period, madam.

So, you go to confession.

And if you've got a nice, dear, understanding confessor, he won't get angry with you.

You'll say, my child, you know you've sinned very grievously.

But you must realize that the love of God and of our Lord is infinite.

And that, naturally, you are forgiven.

As a token of thanksgiving, say three Hail Marys.

And you know, you've committed a murder and robbed a bank and fornicated around and so on.

And the priest is perfectly patient and quiet.

Well, you feel awful.

I have done that.

To the love of God, I have wounded Jesus, grieved the Holy Spirit, and so on.

But you know, in the back of your mind, you're going to do it all over again.

You won't be able to help yourself.

You'll try.

But there's always a greater and greater sense of guilt.

Now, the lady objected that I was putting up a straw man and knocking it down.

This is the Christianity of most people.

Now, there is a much more subtle Christianity of the theologians, the mystics, and the philosophers.

But it's not what gets preached from the pulpit.

Grant you.

But the message of Billy Graham is approximately what I've given you.

And of all what I will call fundamentalist forms of Catholicism and Protestantism.

What would the real gospel be?

The real good news is not simply that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God,

but that he was a powerful Son of God

who came to open everybody's eyes to the fact that you are too.

And this is perfectly plain.

If you will go to the 10th chapter of St. John, verse 30,

there is the passage where Jesus says,

I and the Father are one.

And this is, there are some people who are not intimate disciples around,

and they're horrified.

And they immediately pick up stones to stone him.

He says,

Many good works I have shown you from the Father,

and for which of these do you stone me?

And they said,

For a good work we stone you not,

but for blasphemy,

because you being a man make yourself God.

And he replied,

Isn't it written in your law,

I have said you are gods?

He's quoting the 82nd Psalm.

Is it not written in your law,

I have said you are gods?

If God called them,

those to whom he gave his word,

gods,

and you can't deny the scriptures,

how can you say I blaspheme?

Because I said,

I am a son of God.

Well, there's the whole thing in a nutshell.

Because if you read the King James Bible,

that descended with the angel,

you will see in italics,

in front of these words,

son of God,

the son of God.

Because I said I am the son of God.

And most people think that the italics are for emphasis.

They're not.

The italics indicate words interpolated by the translators.

You will not find that in the Greek.

The Greek says a son of God.

So it seems to me here perfectly plain.

That Jesus is,

got it in the back of his mind,

that this isn't something peculiar to himself.

So when he says,

I am the way,

no man comes to the father but by me,

this I am,

this me,

is the divine in us.

which in Hebrew would be called

the Ruach Adonai.

This,

a great deal of made of this

by the esoteric Jews,

the Kabbalists and the Hasidim.

The Ruach

is the breath

which God breathed

into the nostrils of Adam.

It is differing from the soul.

The individual soul in Hebrew

is called

Nefesh.

And so we translate the Ruach

into the Greek

Pnefma

and the

Nefesh

into Psyche

or Psyche.

The spirit,

and you ask the theologian

what's the difference

between the soul and the spirit

and he won't be able to tell you.

But it's very clear

in St. Paul's writings.

So the point is that

the Ruach

is the divine

in the creature

by virtue of which

we are

sons of

or of the nature of God.

Manifestations of the divine.

This discovery

is the gospel.

That is the good news.

But this has been

perpetually repressed

throughout the history

of Western religion.

Because all Western religions

have taken the form

of celestial monarchies

and therefore

have discouraged

democracy

in the kingdom of heaven.

Until

as a consequence

of the teaching

of the German

and Flemish mystics

in the 15th century

there began

to be such movements

as the Anabaptists

the Brothers of the Free Spirit

and the Levellers

and the Quakers.

A spiritual movement

which came to this country

and founded

a republic

and not a monarchy.

And how could you say

that a republic

is the best form

of government

if you think

that the universe

is a monarchy?

Obviously

if God

is top on a monarchy

monarchy is the best

form of government.

But you see

ever so many citizens

of this republic

think they ought to believe

that the universe

is a monarchy

and therefore

they are always

at odds

with the republic.

It is from

principally

white

racist

Christians

that we have

the threat

of fascism

in this country.

Because you see

they have

a religion

which is militant

which is not

the religion

of Jesus

which was

the realization

of divine sonship

but the religion

about Jesus

which pedestalizes

him

and which says

only this man

of all the sons

of woman

was divine

and you had better

recognize it.

And so it speaks

of itself

as the church militant.

The onward

Christian soldiers

marching us to war

utterly exclusive

convinced

in advance

of examining

the doctrines

of any other religion

that is the top religion.

And so it becomes

a freak religion

just as it has

made a freak

of Jesus

an unnatural man.

It claims uniqueness

not realizing

that what it does teach

would be far more

credible

if it were truly

catholic

that is to say

restated again

the truths

which have been known

from time immemorial

which have appeared

in all the great

cultures of the world

but even

very liberal

protestants

still want to say

somehow

so as I suppose

to keep the mission

effort going

or to pay off

the mortgage

yes these other

religions are

very good

God has no doubt

revealed himself

through Buddha

and Lao Tzu

obviously

it is a matter

of temperament

you can be loyal

to Jesus

just as you're loyal

to your own country

but you are not

serving your country

if you think

that it's necessarily

the best of all

possible countries

that is doing

a disservice

to your country

it is refusing

to be critical

where criticism

is proper

so of religion

every religion

should be self-critical

otherwise

it soon

degenerates

into

a self-righteous hypocrisy

if then we can see this

that Jesus speaks

not from

the situation

of a

historical

deus ex machina

a kind of

weird

extraordinary event

but he is a voice

which joins

with other voices

that have said

in every place

and time

wake up man

wake up

and realize

who you are

now I don't think

you see

until

churches get

with that

that they're going

to have very much

relevance

you see

popular

Protestantism

and popular

Catholicism

will tell you

nothing about

mystical religion

the message

of the preacher

52 Sundays

a year

is dear people

be good

we've heard it

ad nauseum

or believe in this

he may occasionally

give a sermon

on what happens

after death

the nature

of God

but basically

the sermon

is be good

but how

as Saint Paul

said

to will

is present

with me

but how to do

that which is good

I find not

for the good

that I would

that I do not

and the evil

that I would not

that I do

how are we going

to be changed

obviously

there cannot be

a vitality

of religion

without vital

religious experience

and that's something

much more than

emoting over singing

onward Christian soldiers

but you see

what happens

in our ecclesiastical

goings on

is that we

we run a talking shop

we pray

we tell God

what to do

or give advice

as if he didn't know

we read the scriptures

and remember

talking of the Bible

Jesus said

you search the scriptures

daily

for in them

you think you have life

Saint Paul

made some rather

funny references

about the spirit

which giveth life

and the letter

which kills

I think the Bible

ought to be ceremoniously

and reverently

burned every Easter

we need it no more

because the spirit

is with us

it's a dangerous book

and to worship it

is of course

a far more dangerous

idolatry

than bowing down

to images of

wood and stone

because you can

nobody in his senses

can confuse

a wooden image

with God

but you can very easily

confuse a set of

ideas with God

because constructs

are more rarefied

and abstract

so with this endless

talking in church

we can preach

but by and large

preaching

does nothing but

excite a sense

of anxiety

and guilt

and you can't love

out of that

no scolding

no rational demonstration

of the right way

to behave

is going to inspire

people with love

something else

must happen

or we'll say

what are we going to do

about it

do about it

you have no faith

be quiet

even Quakers

aren't quiet

they sit in meeting

and think

at least some of them

but supposing we are

really quiet

we don't think

be absolutely silent

through and through

we say

well you'll just fall

into a blank

never tried

I feel

I feel then

you see

that it's enormously

important

that churches

stop being talking

shops

they become

centres of

contemplation

what is contemplation

contemplum

it's what you do

in the temple

you don't come to the

temple to chatter

but to be still

and know

that I am God

and this is why

if the Christian religion

if the gospel of Christ

is to mean anything

at all

instead of just being

one of the forgotten

religions

along with Osiris

and Mithra

we must see

Christ as the great mystic

in the proper sense

of the word mystic

not someone who

has all sorts of

magical powers

and understands

spirits and so on

a mystic

strictly speaking

is one

who realises

union with God

by whatever name

this seems to me

the crux

and message

of the gospel

summed up

in the prayer

of Jesus

which St John

records

as he speaks

over his disciples

praying

that they may be one

even as you

father and I

are one

that they may be

all one

all

realise

this

divine sonship

or oneness

basic identity

with the eternal

energy of the universe

and the love

that moves the sun

and other stars

o name

need

the

earth

confess

that they may see

the earth

as they may be on this

in the world

and the zrob

that they may be on this

===== Myth And Religion - 09 - Not What Should Be, But What Is =====

I wonder what you mean when you use the word I.

I've been very interested in this problem for a long, long time,

and I've come to the conclusion

that what most civilized people mean by that word

is a hallucination.

That is to say, a false sense of personal identity

that is at complete variance with the facts of nature.

And as a result of having a false sense of identity,

we act in a way that is inappropriate to our natural environment.

And when that inappropriate way of action

is magnified by a very powerful technology,

we swiftly begin to see the results

of a profound discord between man and nature.

As is well known,

we are now in the process of destroying our environment

as a result of an attempt to conquer it and master it.

And we have not realized, therefore,

that our environment is not something other than ourselves.

In assuming that it is,

we have made a great mistake

and are now paying the price for it.

But most people would agree with the lines of the poet

who said,

I, a stranger and afraid

in a world I never made.

Because we have the strong sensation

that our own being inside our skin

is extremely different from

the world outside our skin.

That while there may be intelligence inside human skins,

and while there may be values

and loving feelings,

outside the skin is a world of mechanical process

which does not give a damn

about any individual

and which is basically unintelligent,

being gyrations of blind force

and so far as the merely biological world is concerned,

gyrations of libido,

which is Freud's word for blind lust.

There are many people

who say they don't believe that the world is like that,

but under the control

of a wise, just and beneficent God.

Although many people say

that they believe that to be the case,

very few people in fact believe that to be the case.

A great many people believe

that they ought to believe in God,

but they don't, actually.

Because the idea of God

as handed down

in popular Christianity and Judaism and Islam

has become implausible to most educated people.

They would love to believe it, but they can't.

And what has become the common sense

of the average person

is the avant-garde thinking

of the 18th and 19th centuries of the West,

which is the mechanical universe,

and most of them have not even caught up

in their common sense

with the universe of modern physics,

because we think about the world

in Newtonian categories

and not so much in the categories

of quantum theory.

Psychoanalysis, for example,

is a Newtonian conception

of our psychological mechanisms.

Notice that we speak

of unconscious mental mechanisms.

And think of the libido

in the same way as Ernst Haeckel

thought of the energy of the universe

as blind, unconscious.

Psychoanalysis is really

psychohydraulics

because of its analogy

between psychic energy

and the flow of water.

In all this,

the view of the 19th century

is that the human psyche,

the mind,

the ego,

the superego,

the id,

all this is basically

a mechanical functioning.

You see, the 19th century

strove

to take an objective attitude

to nature,

to be the very opposite

of what we presume

to call primitive animism,

the point of view

which sees everything as alive,

of people who hold converse

with animals and plants

and rivers and mountains

and stars.

That, said the 19th century,

is the pathetic fallacy,

the projection

of intelligent human characteristics

upon unintelligent entities

in nature.

We withdrew that projection

in the 19th century

and said,

let's look at everything

objectively

as it is.

And then we turned

that attitude

onto ourselves

and studied

human physiology

and human psychology

as object.

and when we discovered

ourselves

to be objects

we decided

that that was that

and the time

had come

for suicide.

Simply because

all objects

as the name implies

are, of course,

objectionable.

I found that phrase

which I thought

I had invented myself

in the writings

of Weston Labar

who is a great

anthropologist

but definitely

of the psychoanalytic school

who

this 19th century

philosophy

of so-called

scientific naturalism.

And he

uses the phrase

the objectionable

objective world.

And so you see

when everything

is deprived

of subjectivity

and regarded

as simply

a mechanism

as it were

with nobody home

then the world

is seen

as futile.

and we are

indeed

preparing

to destroy

the planet

with nuclear

energy

and other

processes.

Now I submit

that this

19th century

view

of the world

is pure

mythology

and not very

good mythology

at that

but that it is

fundamentally

based

on a

hallucination

that we have

about our

own existence.

it should be

obvious

that the

human being

goes with

the rest

of the universe

even though

we say

in popular

speech

I came

into this

world.

Now it is

not true

that you came

into this

world.

You came

out of it

in the same

way as a

flower comes

out of a

plant

or a

fruit

comes out

of a tree

and as

an apple

tree

apples

the solar

system

in which

we live

and therefore

the galaxy

in which

we live

and therefore

the system

of galaxies

in which

we live

that system

peoples

and therefore

people are

an expression

of its energy

and of its

nature.

If people

are intelligent

and I

suppose we

have to grant

that if

then

the energy

which people

express

must also

be intelligent

because

one does

not gather

figs from

thistles

and grapes

from thorns

but it

does not

occur

you see

to the

ordinary

civilized

person

to regard

himself

or herself

as an

expression

that we

cannot exist

except in

an environment

of earth

air

water

and

solar

temperature

that all

these things

go with

and are

as important

to us

albeit outside

our skins

as our

internal

organs

heart

stomach

brain

and so forth

now if

then we

cannot

describe

the

behavior

organisms

without

at the

same

time

describing

the

behavior

their

environments

should

realize

that we

have a

new

entity

description

not the

individual

organism

alone

but what

would now

be called

a field

of behavior

which we

must call

rather clumsily

the

organism

environment

you

go with

your

environment

in the

same

way

your

head

goes

with

the

rest

your

think

that the

feet

the

legs

the

behind

the

torso

all

that

somehow

irrelevant

but you

see

here's

this

truncated

face

that's

the

person

the

face

like we

say

put a

good

face

on it

save

face

front

and

oddly

enough

the

very

word

person

the

which

sound

passes

and

refers

the

megaphone

mask

worn

actors

greco-roman

drama

the

dramatis

person

the

list

the

characters

appear

the

play

originally

the

list

masks

that

will

worn

and

therefore

your

person

your

personality

your

face

your

mask

and

the

question

therefore

what

behind

the

mask

well

notice

that

the

whole

body

goes

with

this

face

you

not

find

nature

faces

arriving

the

world

sui

generis

they

with

body

but

also

bodies

not

arrive

world

which

would

for

example

plain

ball

that

will

not

grow

bodies

there

soil

for

bodies

there

complexity

environment

which

body

producing

bodies

with

very

complicated

natural

environment

and

the

head

goes

with

the

body

and

the

body

goes

with

the

environment

the

body

much

deceptive

course

because

the

human

being

not

rooted

the

ground

tree

human

being

moves

about

and

therefore

can

shift

from

one

environment

another

but

these

shifts

are

superficial

the

basic

environment

the

planet

remains

constant

and

the

human

being

leaves

the

planet

has

take

with

him

canned

version

of the

planetary

environment

now

this

upon

taking

thought

and

due

consideration

does

occur

yes

indeed

need

that

environment

but

the

ordinary

way

don't

feel

that

say

don't

have

vivid

sensation

belonging

our

environment

the

same

way

that

have

vivid

sensation

being

and

little

way

behind

the

eyes

and

since

feel

that

way

and

not

the

way

exist

this

why

call

hallucination

and

issues

these

disastrous

results

the

ego

which

according

19th

century

common

sense

feels

that

status

intelligent

fluke

the

geneticists

are

now

saying

and

many

others

are

now

saying

that

man

must

take

the

course

his

evolution

into

his

own

hands

can

longer

trust

the

wiggly

random

and

unintelligible

processes

of nature

to develop

him

society

and

that

sort

thing

now

this

submit

ghastly

error

because

human

intelligence

has a

very

serious

limitation

that

limitation

that

scanning

system

conscious

attention

which

linear

that

say

examines

the

world

rather

you

would

pass

the

beam

flashlight

across

room

spotlight

that's

why

our

education

takes

long

takes

long

because

have

scan

miles

lines

and

regard

that

you

see

basic

information

now

the

universe

does

not

come

lines

comes

which

everything

happening

all

together

everywhere

once

and

comes

much

too

quickly

translated

into

lines

other

information

however

fast

they

may

scanned

and

that

our

limitation

so far

the

intellectual

life

and

the

scientific

life

concerned

the

computer

will

greatly

speed

linear

scanning

but

it's

still

linear

scanning

and

long

are

stuck

with

that

form

wisdom

cannot

deal

with

than

a few

variables

once

now

what

take

music

when

you

play

Bach

fugue

and

there

are

four

parts

you

have

four

variables

you

have

four

moving

lines

and

you

can

take

care

that

with

two

hands

organist

using

two

feet

can

put

two

variables

and

have

six

going

and

you

may

realize

you've

ever

tried

play

the

organ

that

it's

quite

difficult

make

six

independent

motions

once

the

average

person

cannot

that

without

training

the

average

person

cannot

deal

with

than

three

variables

once

without

using

pencil

now

when

study

physics

are

dealing

with

processes

which

there

are

millions

variables

this

however

handle

statistics

the

average

age

death

however

this

prediction

does

not

apply

any

given

individual

any

given

individual

will

live

plus

minus

years

and

the

range

difference

may

very

wide

indeed

course

but

this

alright

the

guess

alright

when

you're

doing

large

scale

gambling

and

that's

the

way

the

physicist

works

predicting

the

behavior

nuclear

wavicles

but

the

practical

problems

human

life

deal

with

variables

the

hundreds

thousands

here

statistical

methods

are

very

poor

and

thinking

out

linear

consideration

impossible

with

that

equipment

then

are

proposing

interfere

with

our

genes

and

with

that

equipment

also

said

are

trying

solve

our

political

economic

and

social

problems

and

naturally

everybody

the

sense

total

frustration

and

the

individual

feels

what

earth

can

not

seem

know

way

calling

upon

our

brains

because

our

brains

can

handle

enormous

number

variables

that

are

not

accessible

your

glands

the

behavior

millions

cells

doing

all

that

without

thinking

about

that

say

without

translating

the

processes

handling

into

consciously

reviewed

words

symbols

numbers

now

when I

use

the

word

thinking

mean

precisely

that

process

translating

what

going

nature

into

words

symbols

numbers

because

both

words

and

numbers

are

kinds

symbols

bear

the

same

relation

the

real

world

that

money

bears

wealth

you

cannot

quench

anybody's

thirst

with

the

word

water

just

you

cannot

eat

dollar

bill

and

information

from

about

using

symbols

and

using

conscious

intelligence

scanning

has

proved

very

useful

has

given

such

technology

have

but

the

same

time

has

proved

too

much

good

thing

the

same

time

we've

become

fascinated

with

that

thought

about

talked

about

and

figured

about

that

say

with

the

world

described

and

the

difference

between

these

two

vast

and

when

are

not

aware

ourselves

except

symbolic

way

are not

ourselves

all

are

people

eating

menus

instead

dinners

and

that's

why

all

feel

psychologically

frustrated

then

get

back

the

question

what

mean

well

first

all

obviously

mean

our

symbol

ourselves

now

ourselves

this

case

the

whole

psychophysical

organism

conscious

and

unconscious

plus

its

environment

that's

your

real

self

your

real

self

other

words

the

universe

centered

your

organism

that's

you

say

let me

just

clarify

that

little

for

one

reason

what

you

also

doing

your

environment

your

behavior

its

behavior

much

its

behavior

your

behavior

it's

mutual

could

say

transactional

you

are

not

puppet

which

your

environment

pushes

around

nor

the

environment

puppet

which

you

push

around

they

together

they

act

together

the

same

way

for

example

have

wheel

one

side

of it

going

down

the

same

the

other

side

of it

going

when

you

handle

the

steering

wheel

of a

car

are

you

pulling

are

you

pushing

you're

doing

both

aren't

you

when

you

pull

down

this

side

you

are

pushing

that

side

it's

all

one

there's

push

pull

between

organism

and

environment

are

feeling

that

everything

that

happening

his

own

doing

the

opposite

that

feeling

and

isn't

doing

anything

but

that

all

his

doings

his

decisions

and

forth

are

happenings

nature

you

can

feel

either

way

you

can

describe

these

two

completely

opposite

ways

but

you're

talking

about

the

same

experience

you're

talking

about

experiencing

your

own

activity

and

the

activity

nature

one

single

process

and

you

can

describe

you

were

omnipotent

God

were

completely

deterministic

and

you

hardly

existed

all

but

remember

both

points

view

are

right

and

we'll

see

where

that

gets

but

don't

feel

that

ordinarily

what

feel

instead

identification

ourselves

with

and

that's

the

person

the

ego

you

play

role

you

identify

with

that

role

play

role

it's

called

Alan

Watts

and

know

very

well

that

that's

big

act

can

play

some

other

roles

besides

Alan

Watts

necessary

but

find

this

one

better

for

making

living

but

assure

you

it's

mask

and

don't

take

seriously

the

idea

holy

the

ordinary

sense

welcome

another

talk

from

the

Alan

Watts

radio

series

number

five

myth

and

religion

this

part

two

the

two

part

series

which

Alan

Watts

asks

the

question

the

traditional

western

idea

God

still

intellectually

plausible

recorded

Philadelphia

April

it's

called

not

what

should

not

what

might

but

what

here's

Alan

Watts

know

I'm

not

that

but

most

are

taught

think

that

are

whom

are

called

and

when

you're

a little

child

and

you

begin

learn

role

and

your

parents

and

your

peers

approve

your

being

that

they

know

who

you

are

you're

predictable

you

can

controlled

but

when

you

act

out

role

and

you

imitate

some

other

child's

here

everybody

points

the

finger

and

says

you're

not

being

true

yourself

Johnny

that's

not

you

that's

Peter

and

you

learn

stay

Peter

stay

Johnny

but

course

you're

not

either

because

this

just

the

image

you

it's

much

you

can

get

into

your

conscious

attention

which

precious

little

your

image

yourself

contains

information

about

how

you

structure

your

nervous

system

contains

information

about

your

blood

chemistry

contains

almost

information

about

the

subtle

influences

society

upon

your

behavior

does

not

include

the

basic

assumptions

your

culture

which

are

all

taken

for

granted

and

unconscious

and

you

can't

find

them

out

unless

you

study

other

cultures

see

how

their

basic

assumptions

differ

includes

all

kinds

illusions

that

you're

completely

unaware

that

time

real

and

that

there

such

thing

past

which

pure

hokum

but

nevertheless

all

these

things

are

unconscious

and

they

are

not

included

our

image

ourselves

nor

course

included

our

image

ourselves

there

any

information

about

our

inseparable

relationships

with

the

whole

natural

universe

this

when you

ask

person

what

did

you

yesterday

they'll

give

you

historical

account

of a

certain

number

events

in which

they

participated

and a

certain

number

things

which

they

saw

used

were

clobbered

but

realize

at once

that

this

history

leaves

out

most

what

happened

trying

describe

what

happens

this

evening

will

never

able

describe

because

there

are

many

people

here

that

were

talk

about

everyone

whom

I've

seen

what

they

were

wearing

what

color

their

hair

was

what

sort

expressions

they

had

their

faces

would

have

talk

till

doomsday

instead

this

rich

which is very rich indeed i have to attenuate it in memory and description to saying oh i met a lot

of people in philadelphia and there were men and there were women and lots of them were young and

some of them were old you know it's most utterly impoverished account of what went on so therefore

in thinking of ourselves in this way what i did yesterday what i did the day before in terms of

this stringy mangy account all i have is a caricature of myself and you know the caricaturist doesn't

draw you all in he just puts certain salient features whereby people will recognize you

they're sort of skeleton so we can we are as it were conceiving ourselves as a bunch of skeletons

and they got no flesh on them just a bunch of bones

and no wonder we all feel inadequate we're all looking for something to the future to bring us

a goodie we know we ought to have there's a golden goodie at the end of the line somewhere

there's a good time coming be it ever so way far away that one far off divine event to which all

creation moves we hope and therefore we say of something that's no good it has no future

i would say it has no present but everybody says it has no future now isn't that plainly ridiculous

here we are as it were psychically starved and always therefore looking for looking seeking seeking

seeking and this confused seeking is going on everywhere we don't know what we want

nobody knows what they want we say yes we think of what we want in vague terms pleasure money wealth

love um fulfillment personal development but we don't know what we mean by all that

if a person really sits down to figure out write a long essay 20 pages on your idea of heaven

it'll be a sorry production you can see it already in medieval art whether it did pictures of heaven

and hell hell is always much better than heaven although it's uncomfortable it's a sadomasochistic

orgy wowee you know hell is really rip roaring whereas all the saints in heaven are sitting

you know very very smug and demure like they were in church and you see also the multitudes of the

saved instead of this writhing wormy thing you can see all their heads which the artist has drawn to

abbreviate them just the tops of their heads in masses they look like cobblestone street

flattened out so what has happened then is this that our eye is an illusion it's an image and it is no

more ourself than an idol is the godhead but we say it can't be so because i feel i really exist

it isn't just an idea in my head it's a feeling i feel me well what is it that you feel

when you feel i i'll tell you what do you do when you were a child and still do when somebody says

pay attention like i said to you in school what do you do what is the difference between looking at

something and taking a hard look at it or between hearing something and listening intently what's the

difference what's the difference between waiting while something goes on and enduring it why the

difference is this that when you pay attention instead of just looking you screw up your face you frown

and stare that is a muscular activity around here when you listen intently you start doing some

squeezing around here when you will you grit your teeth or clench your fists when you endure or control

yourself you pull yourself together physically and therefore you get uptight you hold your breath you do all

all kinds of muscular things to control the functioning of your nervous system and none of them have

the slightest effect on the proper operation of the nervous system if you stare at things you will

rather fuzz the image than see them clearly if you listen intently by concentrating on muscles

around the ears you will be so much attending to muscles here that you won't hear things properly

and you may get singing in the ears if you tighten up with your body to pull yourself together

all you do is constrict yourself i remember in school i sat next to a boy who had great difficulty

in learning to read and what they always say to children is try if you can't do something it was try so

the boy tries and what did he do when he's trying to get out words he grunts and groans as if he were

lifting weights and the teacher's impressed the boy is really trying gives him b for effort

all he's doing

has nothing to do with it now we all make this muscular straining

with the thought that it's achieving psychological results the sort of psychological results it's

intended to achieve now all this amounts to is it's like you're taking off in a jet plane

you're gonna a mile down the runway and the thing isn't up in the air yet you get nervous

so you start pulling at your seat belt

that's what it is now that is a chronic feeling we have it in us all the time and it corresponds to

the word i that's what you feel when you say i you feel that chronic tension because when an organ

is working properly you don't feel it if you see your eye you've got cataract if you hear your ears

you've got singing in your ears you know getting in the way of hearing when you are fully functioning

you are unaware of the organ when you're thinking clearly your brain isn't getting in your way

actually of course you are seeing your eyes in the sense that everything you see out in front of you

is a condition in the optic nerves at the back of the skull that's where you're aware of all this

but you're not aware of the eye as the eye i'm talking about the optical eye

so when we are aware of the ego eye we are aware of this chronic tension inside ourselves and that's

not us it's a futile tension so when we get the illusion the image of ourselves married to a futile

tension you've got an illusion married to a futility and then you wonder why i can't do anything why i

feel in the face of all the problems of the world impotent and why i somehow cannot manage to transform i

now here we get to the real problem because we're always telling each other that we should be different

i'm not going to tell you that tonight why not because i know you can't be

nor can i that may sound depressing but i'll show you it isn't it's very heartening but everybody you

see who is at all sensitive and awake to their own problems and human problems is trying to change

himself we know we can't change the world unless we change ourselves if we are all individually selfish

we're going to be collectively selfish if we don't really love people and only pretend to somehow we've

got to find a way to love after all it said in the bible thou shalt love the lord thy god

and your neighbor as yourself you must love yeah we all agree sure but we don't and this is particularly

becomes appalling when we enter into the realm of higher things by which i mean spiritual development

everybody these days is interested in spiritual development and uh wisely because we want to

change our consciousness many people are well aware that this egocentric consciousness is a hallucination

and that they presume it's the function of religion to change it because that's what the zen buddhists and

yogis and all these people in the orient are doing they are changing their state of consciousness to get

something called satori or mystical experience or nirvana or moksha or what have you and everybody

around here is really enthused about that because uh you don't get that in church i mean there have been

christian mystics but the church has been very quiet about them but the average church all you get is

talk there's no meditation no spiritual discipline they tell god what to do interminably as if he didn't know

and then they tell the people what to do as if they could or even wanted to and then they sing

religious nursery rhymes and then to to cap it all the roman catholic church which did at least have

an unintelligible service which was which was you know it was real mysterious and suggested vast magic

going on they went and put the thing into bad english and they took away incense and they took away they

became a bunch of protestants and the thing was terrible so now all these catholics are at loose

ends as claire booth loose put it not to be a pun but she said you know it's no longer possible to

practice contemplative prayer at mass because you're being advised exhorted edified all the time and that

becomes a bore think of god listening to all those prayers i mean do have i mean talking about grieving

the holy spirit it's just awful people have no consideration for god at all so but in in pursuing

these spiritual disciplines yoga and zen and so forth and also psychotherapy there comes up a big

difficulty and the big difficulty and the big difficulty is this i want to find a method whereby i can change

my consciousness but the therefore to improve myself but the the self that needs to be improved is

the one that is doing the improving and so i'm rather stuck i find out the reason that i think i believe

say in god is that i sure hope that somehow god will rescue me in other words i want to hang on to my own

existence and i feel rather shaky about doing that for myself but i just hope there's a god who'll take

care of it or if i could be loving i would have a better opinion of myself i'd feel better about it i could

face myself as people say if i were more loving so the unloving me somehow by some gimmickry has to

turn itself into a loving me and this is just like trying to lift yourself off the ground with your own

bootstraps it can't be done and that's why religion in practice mainly produces hypocrisy and guilt

because of the constant failure of these enterprises oh people go and study zen and they come back and say

wow getting rid of your ego is a superhuman task i assure you it's going to be very very difficult to

get rid of your ego you're going to have to sit for a long time and you're going to get the sorest legs

it's hard work and all you wretched kids who think you're getting rid of your ego one

part or something or other and uh easy yoga you don't know what you're in for when it really comes

down to the nitty-gritty well you know the biggest ego trip going is getting rid of your ego and the

joke of it all is your ego doesn't exist there's nothing to get rid of it's an illusion as i tried

to explain but you still want to ask how to stop the illusion and who's asking i mean do you think in

the ordinary sense in which you use the word i how can i stop identifying myself with the wrong me

well the answer is simply you can't now the christians put this in their way when they say that mystical

experience is a gift of divine grace man as such cannot achieve this experience it is a gift of god and if

god doesn't give it to you there's no way of getting it now that is solidly true you can't

do anything about it because you don't exist well you say that's pretty depressing news but the whole

point is it isn't depressing news it is the joyous news there's a zen poem which puts it like this talking

about it me it means the mystical experience satori the realization that you are the eternal energy of

the universe like jesus did it says like this you cannot catch hold of it nor can you get rid of it

in not being able to get it you get it when you speak it's silent when you're silent it speaks now in

not being able to get it you get it because this whole feeling what krishnamurti is trying to explain

to people for example when he says uh why do you ask for a method there is no method all methods are

simply um gimmicks for strengthening your ego so how do we not do that he says you're still asking for a

method there is no method if you really understand what your eye is you will see there is no method

because this is so so sad but it's not this is the gospel the good news because if you cannot achieve

it if you cannot transform yourself that means that the main obstacle to mystical vision has collapsed

that was you what happens you can't do anything about it you're at your wit's end what are you going

to commit suicide but supposing you just put that off for a little while wait and see what happens you

can't control your thoughts you can't control your feelings because there is no controller you are your

thoughts and your feelings and they're running along running along running along just sit and watch them

here they go you're still breathing aren't you still growing your hair still seeing and hearing

are you doing that i mean is is breathing something that you do do you see i mean do you organize

the operations of your eyes and know exactly how to work those rods and cones in the retina if you do that

it's a happening it happens so you can feel all this happening your breathing is happening

your thinking is happening your feeling is happening you're hearing you're seeing the clouds are happening

across the sky the sky is happening blue the sun is happening shining there it is all this happening

and may i introduce you this is yourself this begins to be a vision of who you really are

and that's the way you function you function by happening that is to say by spontaneous occurrence

and this is not a state of affairs that you should realize i cannot possibly preach it to you because the

minute you start thinking i should understand that this is this stupid notion again that i should bring

it about when there is no you to bring it about see that's why i'm not preaching you can only preach

to egos all i can do is to talk about what is it amuses me to talk about what is because it's wonderful

i love it and therefore i like to talk if i get paid for it then i make my living and sensible people

get paid for doing what they enjoy doing so this is not on earth you see this is the whole approach

here is not to convert you not to make you over not to improve you but for you to discover that if

you really knew the way you are things would be would be sane but you see you can't do that

you can't make that discovery because you're in your own way

so long as you think i'm i so long as that hallucination blocks it and the hallucination

disappears only in the realization of its own futility when at last you see you can't do it

you cannot make yourself over you cannot really control your own mind see when we try to control

the mind a lot of yoga teachers try to get you to control your own mind mainly to prove to you that you

can't do it there's nothing you know a fool who persists in his folly will become wise so they what

they do is they speed up the folly and so you get concentrating and you can have a certain amount of

superficial and initial success by a process commonly called self-hypnosis and you can think you're making

progress and a good teacher will let you go along that way for a while until he really throws you with one

why are you concentrating see buddhism works this way buddha said if you suffer you suffer because

you desire and your desires are either unattainable or always being disappointed or something so cut out

desire so those disciples went away and they stamped on desire jumped on desire cut the throat of desire

and threw out desire but then they came back and buddha said but you are still desiring not to desire

they wanted how to get rid of that so when you see that that's nonsense there naturally comes over

you a quietness in seeing that you cannot control your mind you realize there is no controller

what you took to be the thinker of thoughts is just one of the thoughts

what you took to be the feeler of the feelings which was that chronic muscular strain is just one of the feelings

what you took to be the experiencer of experience is just part of the experience

so there isn't any

thinker of thoughts feeler of feelings we we get into that bind because we have a grammatical rule that verbs have to have

subjects and the funny thing about that is that verbs of processes and subjects and nouns which are supposed

to be things how does a noun start a verb how does the thing put a process into action obviously it can't

but we always insist that there is this subject called the knower and without a knower there can't be knowing

well that's just a grammatical rule it isn't a rule of nature

in nature there's just knowing like you're feeling it and i have to say you are feeling

it as if you were somehow different from the feeling when i say i am feeling what i mean is

there is feeling here when i say you are feeling i mean there is feeling there

i have to say even there is feeling i have to say even there is feeling what a cumbersome language we have

===== Myth And Religion - 10 - Spiritual Authority =====

Welcome to another talk from the Alan Watts Radio Series No. 5, Myth and Religion.

This is part one of a two-part program in which philosopher Alan Watts asks,

What is the source of spiritual authority?

And how do we empower our beliefs, our religion, and our gods?

Recorded in Chicago on New Year's Day, 1971, this is part one of Spiritual Authority.

Here's Alan Watts.

I may take the liberty of beginning by saying something about myself and my role in talking to you about philosophical matters

because I wanted to be understood perfectly clearly that I am not a guru.

In other words, I talk about what we call these things, and that comprises a multitude of interests concerning oriental philosophy, psychotherapy, religion, mysticism, etc.

I talk about these things because I'm interested in them and because I enjoy talking about them.

And every sensible person makes his living by doing what he enjoys doing.

And that explains me.

Now, in saying, therefore, that I am not a guru, that means also that I am not trying to help you or improve you.

I accept you as you are.

I am not out, therefore, to save the world.

Of course, when a stream, a bubbling spring, flows out from the mountains, it's doing its thing.

And if a thirsty traveler helps himself, well, that's fine.

When a bird sings, it doesn't sing for the advancement of music.

But if somebody stops to listen and is delighted, that's fine.

And so I talk in the same spirit.

I don't have a group of followers.

I'm not trying to make disciples.

Because I work on the principle of a physician rather than a clergyman.

A physician is always trying to get rid of his patients

and send them away healthy to stand on their own feet.

Whereas a clergyman is trying to get them as members of a religious organization

so that they will continue to pay their pledges,

pay off the mortgage on an expensive building,

and generally belong to the church, boost its membership,

and thereby prove, by sheer weight of numbers, the veracity of its tenets.

And my objective is really to get rid of you

so that you won't need me or any other teacher.

I'm afraid some of my colleagues would not approve of that attitude

because it is widely believed and said

that in order to advance in the spiritual life, whatever that is,

it is essential that you have a guru

and that you accord to that guru perfect obedience.

And so I'm often asked the question,

is it really necessary to have a guru?

I can answer that only by saying,

yes, it is necessary if you think so.

In the same spirit as it is said

that anybody who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.

Of course, there is more in that saying than meets the ear.

Because if you really are sincerely concerned with yourself

and are in such confusion

that you feel you have to go to a psychiatrist to talk over your state,

then, of course, you need to go.

Likewise, if you are in need of someone to tell you what to do

to practice meditation or to attain a state of liberation,

nirvana, moksha, or whatever it may be called,

and you feel that necessity very strongly,

then you must do it.

Because, as the poet William Blake said,

the fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

However, I do want to point this out.

What is the source of a guru's authority?

He can tell you that he can speak from experience,

that he has experienced states of consciousness

which have made him profoundly blissful,

or understanding, or compassionate, or whatever it may be.

And you have his word for it.

And you have the word of other people

who likewise agree with him.

But each one of them, and you in turn,

agree with him out of your own opinion

and by your own judgment.

And so it is you that are the source

of the teacher's authority.

And that is true whether he speaks as an individual

or whether he speaks as the representative

of a tradition or a church.

You may say that you take the Bible as your authority

or the Roman Catholic Church.

And the Roman Catholic following very often says

that the individual mystical experience

is not to be trusted

because of its liability to be interpreted

in a whimsical and purely personal way,

and that it has to be guarded against excesses

by the substantial and objective traditions of the church.

But those traditions are held to be substantial

and objective

only because those who follow believe it to be so.

They say so.

And if you follow it, you say so.

So the question comes back to you.

Why do you believe?

Why do you form this opinion?

Upon what basis does all this rest?

Well, of course,

almost everybody is looking for help.

Unless, when I was younger,

so much younger than today,

I never needed anybody's help in any way.

But there is this feeling

of a certain helplessness,

of being alone and somewhat confused

in an unpredictable,

wayward,

external world of happenings.

And this world of happenings

includes

an enormous amount of suffering,

tragedy,

and we wonder why we're here,

how we got here,

and in short,

what to do about the capital P problem

of capital L life,

to which should be added death,

because it seems to be certain

that we're all going to die,

and that death may be a painful process,

that those we love are going to die,

and so what about it?

Is there any way

in which we can become

masters of the situation?

Well, there are all sorts of ways

of trying

to escape from the human predicament

predicament of being

a lonely, isolated consciousness

in the midst of this enormous

and wayward not-self.

We can, of course,

try to beat the game

on a material basis

by becoming very wealthy

or very powerful.

we may resort

to all kinds of technology

to get rid of our sufferings,

hunger, pain,

sickness, and so forth,

but it will be noticed

that as we succeed

in these enterprises,

we're not satisfied.

In other words,

if you feel at this moment

that an increase in income

would solve your problems,

and you've got an increase in income,

this would give you

a pleasant feeling

for a few weeks.

But then, as you well know,

if that's ever happened to you,

the feeling wears off.

And you may stop worrying

about paying your debts

and start worrying

about whether you will get sick.

There is always something

to worry about.

And if you are very rich indeed,

you've still got the anxiety

about sickness and death

and also anxieties

about revolutions

and about whether

the Internal Revenue Service

will take it all away from you

or catch you

for cheating on your taxes

or put you in prison

for no good reason.

Now, there is always this worry.

And so you realize

that the problem of life

does not really consist

in your external circumstances

because you worry

whatever they are.

The problem consists in,

rather,

in what you call your mind.

Could you,

by some method,

control your mind

so that you won't worry?

And how on earth

would you do that?

Well,

there are those people

who tell you

that the best answer

is to think positive thoughts,

to be peaceful,

to breathe slowly

and hum gently

and get yourself

into a peaceful state of mind

by repeating affirmations

such as,

all is light,

all is God,

all is good,

or whatever it may be.

But unfortunately,

it doesn't always work

because you have

a nagging suspicion

in the back of your mind

that you're simply

hypnotizing yourself

and whistling in the dark.

What the Germans call

a hintergedanker,

which is a thought

concealed way,

way back

behind your intellect,

but it has

annoying persistence.

What if?

And so you realize

that this matter

of controlling the mind

is no superficial undertaking

because although

you may be able

to smooth the ruffles

of your consciousness,

there is beneath that

a vast area

of unconsciousness

which erupts

as unpredictably

as events

in the external world.

And so you consider

seriously

the possibilities

of psychoanalysis

to go down

and get into those depths

and see if oil

can be put

on those troubled waters.

And then, of course,

you get into

the guru business.

You have to go

to someone

against whose mirror

you can reflect

those aspects

of yourself

of which you are

not directly aware.

So as the process

goes on,

you find

there is something

awkward about all this.

And this awkwardness

can be expressed

in many different ways.

One of them

is this.

How on earth

are you to get

at yourself

to do something

about yourself?

Because it's a project

not unlike

trying to pierce

the point of the pin

with the point

of the same pin.

In other words,

if you feel

that you could do

with some sort

of psychological

or spiritual improvement,

obviously,

you are the character

who's going to have

to bring this about.

But if you are

the one who needs

to be improved,

how are you going

to accomplish

the improvement?

You're in the predicament

of trying to lift

yourself up

off the floor

by pulling at

your own bootstraps.

And as you all know,

that cannot be done.

And if you attempt

to do so,

you're likely to land

with a bang

on your fanny

and be lower down

than you were

in the first place.

So that problem

continually arises

and it has arisen

historically

in all the great

religious traditions.

We find it

in Christianity

in the debate

between St. Augustine

and Pelagius.

And Pelagius said

that if God

had given us

a commandment

to love him

and to love

our neighbours,

he would not

have done so

unless we could

obey it.

St. Augustine

counted and said,

yes,

but the commandment

was not given

in order for it

to be obeyed.

God never expected

that it would

be obeyed

because we were

incapable of loving

anyone but ourselves.

The commandment

was therefore given

to convince us

of our sinfulness

from which we

could be rescued

only by divine grace,

that is to say

by the infusion

of our souls

with a power

beyond them.

And that was

more or less

the doctrine

for which the church

settled.

The puzzle

has always been

therefore

how to get grace

because grace

is apparently

freely offered

to all

but some

people seem

to get it

and some don't.

With some

the medicine

takes

and with others

it doesn't.

Why?

Well,

apparently

you have the power

to resist grace

but if you do

you also have

the power

not to resist it.

We would like

therefore to know

how not to resist it

and to be obeyed.

And there you see

we are back

at exactly

the same problem

as which we began.

It's like saying

you must relax

damn you.

Let go.

Give in.

And I know

I ought to give in.

I know I ought

to let go

and abandon my will

to the divine will

but as St. Paul

put it so well

to will is present

with me.

But how to do

that which is good

I find not

for the good

that I would

I do not

and the evil

that I would not

that I do.

In other words

we all come down

to a basis

in ourselves

which we will call

first of all

since we are

in a Jewish temple

the Yetzir Hara

or the wayward spirit

which God is supposed

to have put

into the soul

of Adam

or in my translation

our element

of irreducible

rascality

where we are

all basically

scams

and if you

haven't found

that

you are very

unconscious

I know

all sorts

of people

who are full

of outward love

but of course

it always turns

up that they

need money

and when it

comes to money

the virtue

flies out

of the window

so we do

have that element

in ourselves

we know it

very well

and the question

is therefore

once again

how can it

be transformed

but if the

transformer

is the one

who is afflicted

who transforms

the transformer

it's the old

problem

of who guards

the guards

who polices

the policeman

who governs

the government

and it seems

perfectly

insoluble

for that reason

alone

that it is

a vicious circle

there is a

great deal

of talk

about two

selves

the lower

self

or ego

the higher

self

called the

spirit

or the

atman

and the

duty

of the

atman

seems to

to transform

the wretched

little ego

well sometimes

it does

but a lot

of times

it doesn't

so we ask

why doesn't

so and so's

atman

succeed in

getting

through

is his

ego

too strong

if so

who will

weaken it

is his

atman

too weak

and if so

why

for surely

aren't all

atmans the

same

the puzzle

remains

so let's

take a look

at what we're

trying to

accomplish

we're trying

to get

better

we are out

after that

type of

experience

which we

will call

the positive

the good

the light

the living

and to

get away

from the

negative

the evil

the dark

and the

dead

unfortunately

however

human

experience

human

consciousness

knows

contrast

are

equipped

with a

nervous

system

where the

neurons

either

fire

or don't

fire

all that

we are

aware of

is made

up of

an extremely

complicated

arrangement

of yes

and no

and by

recording

on magnetic

tape

impulses

there are

areas where

there is a

pulse

and there

are areas

where there

is not

a pulse

and by

so doing

we can

tape

almost

any

form

human

experience

in other

words

we can

put

colored

television

tape

so that

it is

all

reduced

to a

matter

yes

and

and you

will

understand

of course

that that

is the

philosophy

of the

Chinese

book

yang

positive

principle

and the

yin

or the

negative

principle

interestingly

enough

a latin

translation

of the

yijing

was read

by the

philosopher

leibniz

and from

this he

invented

binary

arithmetic

wherein all

numbers can

be represented

by zero

and one

and that

is the

number

system

used by

the

extension

of the

nervous

system

which is

based on

the same

principle

but you

see what

we are

trying to

we are

trying to

have

yang

without

yin

we are

trying to

arrange

a life

game

in which

there is

winning

without

losing

now how

can you

arrange

such a

state

affairs

a game

in which

everybody

wins

would end

W.S.

Gilbert

put it

when

everybody

somebody

then

one

anybody

are

all

equally

happy

impossible

know

that

are

happy

because

certain

flatness

comes

over

everything

lifted

all

valleys

and

lowered

all

mountains

should

have

the

sort

thing

they

are

attempting

the

biblical

prophecy

that

every

valley

should

exalted

and

every

mountain

laid

low

and

the

rough

places

made

plain

and

I'm

sorry

say

was

Isaiah

who

made

that

remark

but

the

same

Isaiah

also

said

something

that

at least

Christians

do not

often

quote

which

this

following

sentence

the

Lord

and

there

none

else

form

the

light

and

create

the

darkness

make

peace

and

create

evil

the

Lord

all

these

things

spite

which

everybody

busy

trying

unless

there

were

sinners

sages

unless

there

were

fools

and

there

way

out

that

dilemma

that

why

Buddhism

represents

existence

in terms

of a

wheel

called

the

bhava

chakra

the

wheel

becoming

of birth

and death

and

on the

top

that

wheel

there

are

deva

people

whom

would

and

the

bottom

the

wheel

there

are

naraka

tormented

people

purgatory

and

you

round

and

round

now

this

way

now

that

way

it's

really

squirrel

cage

where

you're

running

and running

to get

to the

top

and yet

you have

to run

faster

and

faster

stay

where

you

are

and

that's

why

there

always

seed

any

scale

either

worldly

spiritual

progress

the

you

have

the

haunting

feeling

that

you're

still

the

same

place

you

think

now

there

must

some

way

out

that

perhaps

there's

something

ambitious

and proud

and wrong

in aspiring

to be

enlightened

efforts

could

make

myself

into

buddha

saint

and

therefore

perhaps

the

thing

try

eliminate

all

desire

not only

the desire

for worldly

success

but likewise

the desire

for spiritual

success

for the

buddha

proposed

that

desire

was the

root

suffering

and therefore

suggested

to his

hearers

that if

they

clinging

they

might

cease

from

suffering

but

you

must

realize

that

the

called

teachings

the

buddha

are

not

doctrines

in the

sense

that

the

jews

and

the

christians

and

the

muslims

have

doctrines

they

are

proposals

they

are

the

opening

steps

in a

dialogue

and

you

away

and

try

not

desire

any

way

you

will

very

quickly

discover

that

you

are

desiring

not

desire

and

very

rapidly

come

situation

where

you

discover

that

with

regard

your

own

transformation

everything

you try

to do

about it

doesn't

work

it may

have

some

sort

temporary

success

to make

you feel

better

but

again

and

again

you

come

back

the

same

old

gnawing

problem

and

that

why

people

interested

spiritual

things

tend

move

from

one

sect

another

from

one

teacher

another

always

hoping

that

they

will

meet

one

who

has

the

and

immediately

think

and

you

come

the

dismal

conclusion

that

you

can

neither

achieve

what

you

want

achieve

that

say

liberation

from

the

alternation

the

opposites

striving

nor

can

you

achieve

not

striving

and

thereby

you

have

learned

that

you

cannot

concentrate

purpose

it's

trying

to be

unself

conscious

genuine

purpose

love

purpose

when

you

say

ought

love

well

that

puts

you

double

bind

and

say

person

well

he's

trained

himself

deliberately

unself

conscious

has

very

disciplined

spontaneity

but

believe

that

there

are

such

people

children

but

they

don't

know

how

interesting

they

are

and

when

they

find

out

they

become

brats

welcome

another

talk

from the

Alan Watts

radio

series

number

five

myth

and

religion

this is

the

conclusion

of the

two-part

program

recorded

Chicago

New

Year's

Day

Alan Watts

has been

exploring

the

question

what

the

source

spiritual

authority

now

discusses

the

suspension

judgment

prerequisite

faith

here's

Alan

Watts

for a

moment

that it

was your

privilege

to have

a brief

interview

with

God

in the

course

of which

you were

allowed

to ask

one

question

what

would

you

ask

now

you

would

have

think

this

over

very

carefully

because

this

golden

opportunity

would

come

try

God

out

with

zen

buddhist

koan

such

beyond

the

positive

and

the

negative

what

reality

and

the

Lord

would

turn

you

and

say

dear

child

your

question

has

meaning

and

you

wouldn't

have

the

insoluble

problem

trying

win

without

losing

now

long

you

can

keep

that

problem

you

will

busy

only

however

until

you

see

that

can't

solved

but

there

are

all

sorts

ways

presenting

that

problem

such

way

that

you

cannot

see

that

it's

meaningless

and

the

better

gurus

are

very

clever

bringing

these

ways

out

you

may

see

for

example

you

are

invited

practice

intense

concentration

that

after

while

you

find

yourself

thinking

about

concentrating

and

therefore

that

your

concentration

somewhat

divided

may

ask

you

why

are

you

concentrating. What is your motivation for this activity? And you find out that it's

your element of irreducible rascality. So, however, the teacher, once he's seen that

we've mastered that lesson, has something still more ingenious. He says, now you have

met, you've actually made progress, because finding out that you could not really concentrate

was valuable because it began to prick the illusion of your ego. But you've only got your

foot in at the door. Beyond this are many, many higher things to be learned, and you must

redouble your efforts. So, of course, you apply yourself all the more, again and again, on

all sorts of tricks that these old gentlemen can come out with. And you will keep at it

just as long as he can make you fall for it. But in the end, you see that it was all

tricks. As the great Zen master Rinzai said, well, after all, there was nothing much in

Obaku's Buddhism. And he went on to explain to his students that the art of Zen, or teaching

Zen, is like deceiving a child with an empty fist. You know how you can intrigue the child

by pretending you've got something very precious in your fist. And you can play a game for an

hour, provoking the child to ever greater enthusiasm to find out what you've got. And in the end,

the revelation is that there was nothing there. So many people say, in the course of their Zen

training, I realized there was nothing to realize. It was all there from the beginning.

Because, you see, standing opposite to the realization that you can't do anything about

it, equivalently that you can't do nothing about it, comes, of course, the awakening that

the reason for that is there is no you separate from you. In other words, when you try to control

your thoughts or control your feelings, there is no difference between the thoughts and

the controller. Because what you call the thinker is simply your thought of yourself. The thinker

is a thought among thoughts. And the feeler is a feeling among feelings. And trying to control

thoughts with thoughts is like trying to bite your own teeth. So you found that out. Well, then,

the other side of the picture is, of course, that if you do find that out, you discover that the

project of controlling yourself was unnecessary because you were yourself a Buddha from the very

beginning. That's what the Upanishads mean when they say, quite simply, Tatva Masi. You're it.

You, as you are. Now, how can you conceive that? Supposing you let your imagination go and really think through

what you would like to happen. Imagine the most gorgeous state of bliss that you can conceive, where there are

no worries, no anxiety, no haunting future with unpleasant consequences. You're in control of the whole

works and you're sitting on your lotus, perfectly content. And I ask you seriously, is that really

what you want? Are you quite sure that's what you want? Imagine now, let's get this situation straight.

You've got everything you want. You're in the highest possible spiritual state that you can conceive.

And yet, I haven't really surrendered myself, because I know it all. Something I don't know.

So please the surprise. You know what would happen? You would find yourself sitting here,

in this building, tonight, feeling exactly the way you feel. There's your answer. Because after all,

don't you have it all? Look, you have the feeling of yourself. But the feeling of self depends on their

being at the same time, a contrast, the feeling of other. The self has a certain sensation of being

in control of life to some extent, through voluntary action. The will seems to have a certain freedom.

And yet, on the other hand, there are limits to that. And it seems in the end, life sweeps us away,

and we are overwhelmed by the involuntary. And yet, the voluntary keeps popping up. New

voluntaries come into the world with every baby. So you see, you couldn't have the experience you call

being a voluntarily acting self, without the contrast of the involuntary happening.

Now, do you want to be without the involuntary happening? Do you want to get rid of that?

All right. If you get rid of it, you won't have the experience of the voluntary self.

Or would you like to turn it the other way around? Would you like to have the experience

of no voluntary self? And on the other hand, everything just happens. Well, then you say,

well, I'm not sure about that. Because then, I would feel at first that I was floating. See,

that I had no further responsibilities, that I was just walking on air. And we do get that feeling

sometimes. If you take the ideas of determinism and fatalism to their final conclusion, you do have

that sense of freedom from all responsibility, freedom from worry and care. And you float along

for a while, but it wears off. You don't somehow seem to be able to follow out that philosophy consistently,

especially if you have children. And somehow, a society begins to push on you to be responsible,

as it pushes on children to be responsible. And so this nagging duality keeps coming back.

But I cannot realize the nice, irresponsible condition of involuntary behavior, unless I have

the contrast of the possibility of the voluntary, and vice versa. What does that mean? Obviously,

it means that these two aspects or sides of our experience, which we can call the voluntary,

and the involuntary, the knower and the known, the subject and the object, the self and the other,

although appearing to be two, are indeed one. Because you can't have one without the other.

And when that state of affairs arises, you know at once that there's a conspiracy. That two things,

which look as different as different can be, are for that very reason the same. Now,

you can detect even under those actions of yours, which you call voluntary, the voluntary movement

of the muscles or of the mind, that there are processes which are not voluntary. You do not

will your blood to circulate. You do not control by intention the synapses in your nervous system,

and yet you would be incapable of any voluntary action unless those involuntary processes were going on.

So you see these two things go together, and you begin to realize something which is rather difficult

to do, that what you call your experience is a do happening. We don't have good words for this. We

have some words which have this sort of sense, like the word cleave, which means to stick together,

or to hold together, and also to split. And the word sacca in Latin means holy and accursed. And so I would

like to propose we all should find some word for a do happening, because it's all a do happening.

That's what Buddhists mean when they talk about karma. The word karma means action. And when something

happens to you, be it good or bad, they say it is your karma. That means quite simply, it is your doing.

But you say, I didn't mean to do that. No. One school of thought will explain it by saying, but you see,

you did something in a former life, or at a former time, which now has this consequence. But that's a very

superficial understanding of karma. You don't need to believe in reincarnation to understand karma. Karma is simply

that you don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. That with one aspect,

you are doing what you call the environment, and with the other aspect, you are doing what you call

the organism, the me, this living body. But as you cannot conceive, possibly, the existence of a living

body, with no environment, that is the clue that the two are basically one. Like the two poles of a magnet,

north is quite different from south, and yet it's all one magnet. So in precisely the same way,

you are both what you do, and what happens to you. So that you have a little game in which you play,

that what happens to you, that you're not responsible for. That's not you, see? You're only responsible for

this side of it, and then you can compete with the other side. What it's like is this. Get two knitting

pins, one in each hand, and have a fencing match with yourself. And really, sincerely, try to stick

the other hand. But that other hand must really, sincerely be trying to stick the first one, and also

to defend itself. It's like playing chess with yourself, you see? Now, it won't work. You'll come to

a sort of standstill, unless you decide for your right hand that that's the one that's really going

to win. But then you've broken the rule of the game, you see? Well, that's what we do. That's what

is called by both the Hindus and the Buddhists, avidya, ignorance, which really better means ignorance.

So what it comes down to, you see, is basically this, just in the same way that the authority of the

guru is your authority. You did. So the place where you are in life is where you've put yourself.

Just as on the surface of the sphere, every point may be regarded as the center of the surface.

So every place may be regarded as the true place, and everyone's in his true place. Everybody, in other

words, put it in what language you will, is the manifestation of the divine. Playing this game,

that game, and the other game. And you're not knowing it, if you don't know it, is part of the game.

Makes it all the more fun. Get lost. You say to yourself, and lost you get. Like children love to play

hide-and-seek. To get lost. Like we all like to go to a play, see a horror movie, and have the coal

shivers because we think the awful, awful is going to happen. Something is going to be seen on the screen

which we can't stand to see. Oh, won't that be a thrill if it happens? We all expose ourselves to that,

just as children and young people are always exposing themselves to dreadful things.

And the parents get absolutely, they get the heebie-jeebies. They think if it isn't getting

drunk, or driving hot rods, they take drugs. And that may ruin their sanity for life. How horrible

can it be? And if they don't take drugs, they'll do something else. Always to see how close to the

point of danger you can get. And most people who go in for racing cars usually end up in a crash.

And they know it. But the life is all the sweeter for being played dangerously. So I would say to those

among you who are the most deadheads, in the sense of unspiritual and square, if there are any here,

real stuffy people. Congratulations. You see, you're playing a very far out game.

See, you're so lost, you don't even know where you stood.

That's taking a gorgeous risk. Why, because of you, we might even blow up the planet.

How close are we going to get to that one? Just in the same way, as that car racer watches the needle

going up, up, up, up, up, up. There are these people feeling more and more and more righteous.

Determine that good shall prevail. Watching that needle go up, it's getting hotter and hotter and

hotter. And finally, they go out in a blaze of glory. And when the dust settles, that was the close

quick. I mean, that was quite a dream we've woken up from. See, where will we go next? See,

because that's the point, isn't it? That's why I would say that my function is liberative. I want

you to see that it's you. It's not me. It's not Swami so-and-so. It's not Buddha so-and-so. It's not

saint so-and-so. It's you. You do it. As Sir Edwin Armand put the words into the mouth of the Buddha,

you suffer from yourselves. None else compels. None other holds you that you live and die and

whir upon the wheel and hug and kiss its spokes of agony, its tire of tears, its navel of nothingness.

And when one of the old Zen masters went to his teacher and said, what is the way to liberation?

The teacher said, who is restraining you? He said, no one. If so, why should you ask for liberation?

It all bounces back to you. What do you want? Do you know what you want? Can you think it through?

Say exactly what you want. And invariably you'll get back to the place where you are. Because what you

say you want is always the symptom, the expression of what you are now. If then that is the case,

that it's all there because you're doing it. Why meditate? Why do anything of a so-called spiritual

nature? People don't understand really what meditation is. They take it up. Like they take

up psychotherapy or a course in weight reduction in order to be better. But if you do that, you are

not practicing what is called jhana or yoga or Zen. That's not it at all. Meditation is the one

human activity which has no purpose. Buddhas, who are supposed to have attained everything,

are invariably shown in some sort of meditation posture. Why should they meditate anymore? Because

that just happens to be the way that a Buddha sits when he sits. When he sits, he sits. When he walks,

he walks. He isn't going anywhere. He's just going for a walk. Because he digs. See, to dig, the very

word, is not merely to appreciate, but to penetrate. To go to the heart of the matter and to penetrate

the moment. To get right to the root of the moment is nowhere else than the center of you,

where you are. It's where you start this whole thing. So get, I mean, to get with yourself is

to get at the moment where you begin all this questioning. Where does the question come from?

Where does the desire spring from? Well, that's you. And that you is the point from which the whole

universe is created. Flowing back into the past like the wake of a ship. Wake doesn't drive the ship.

It's the ship that makes the wake. So here you are, producing it. Meditation is just sitting and

watching it happen. It's not done because it's good for you. It's done for fun. I might even say,

meditation is a fun thing. And if it isn't, you're not meditating. There's an awful game that

meditators play, which is competitive suffering. Now they go to some place where they sit for hours on

end until their legs ache and practically fall off. And then come back and brag about they sat through

all those hours of leg aching. Now it's very difficult to put down people who are suffering.

Because after all, one has a natural sympathy for pain. But I sometimes want to say, for goodness sake,

don't throw your suffering at me in that way and in that spirit. Don't brag about it. Don't one up me by

saying, well, I've suffered more than you have. People do things like that. They say, well, I'm more aware of

my shortcomings than you are. I'm more tolerant than you are. I recognize more than you do what a

rascal I am. So every kind of way of one-upping somebody else in order to play the game in which

I always win. So once we get into that kind of thing with the meditation scene, we get into hierarchies

and ranks and degrees and who has attained number seven, who has attained number nine. And the expert

guru will always put a stage higher than anyone anybody's thought of. It serves to see how far

your ambition will run. And so this goes on endlessly, endlessly, endlessly, until you suddenly wake up and

begin real meditation by realizing that you were there. That you do really meditate all the time

by virtue of existing all the time. Only you miss that eternal now by always looking for something next

minute, expecting a result. Now you can say, let me not expect a result because one does anything. And so you may

just as well sit and enjoy it. You've been listening to the conclusion of Spiritual Authority with Alan

Watts from the Alan Watts radio series number five, Myth and Religion. For information how to obtain the

radio series on cassette tape, call 1-800-969-2887. Or you can write to The Electronic University,

P.O. Box 2309, San Anselmo, California, 94979. When you call or write, please indicate the name of your

local station and that you heard the program Spiritual Authority from the Alan Watts radio series number five,

Myth and Religion. Again, the phone number is 1-800-969-2887. That's 1-800-W-O-Watts.

The Love of Wisdom with Alan Watts is produced by The Electronic University. Our theme music

is by Zakir Hussain, courtesy of Moment Records.

===== Myth And Religion - 14 - Sex And The Curch =====

I don't think I need to tell you that in a very special and peculiar way, Western man

is hung up on sex.

And the major reason for this is that he has a religious background quite unique among the

religions of the world.

I'm thinking specifically of Christianity and in a secondary way Judaism, insofar as Judaism

in Europe and the United States is strongly influenced by Christianity.

But Christianity is, of all religions in the world, the one uniquely preoccupied with sex.

More so than priapism, more so than tantric yoga, more so than any kind of fertility cult

which has ever existed on the face of the earth.

There has never, never, never been a religion in which sexuality was so important.

And there are certain very simple standards by which this can be judged.

In popular speech when you say of a given person that he or she is living in sin, you know very

well that you do not mean that they are engaged in a business to defraud the public by the sale

of, uh, badly made bread or, uh, anything of that kind.

You know that they're not, uh, setting up a check forgery business.

No.

People who are living in sin are people who have an irregular sexual partnership.

In the same way when you say something is immoral, uh, it pretty much means that it's

something sexually irregular.

I remember when I was a boy in school, we used to have a preacher.

He came to us every year, the same man once a year, and he always talked on the subject

of drink, gambling and immorality.

And I remember the way he rolled it round his tongue and it was very clear what immorality

was.

And also, I might point out that the present company accepted the Unitarian Church being

somewhat unusual.

Most churches in America and in England and in other parts of, uh, the Western world are,

frankly, sexual regulation societies.

They occasionally get excited about other moral issues, but really not very much.

In other words, when you ask what can people get kicked out of church for, let's supposing

you consider important ministers, bishops, priests, and so on, uh, they can live in envy,

hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, and be in perfectly good standing.

But the moment anything about their sexual life becomes a little unusual, out you go.

And that's about the only thing you can go out for.

You study, for example, a Roman Catholic manual of moral theology.

These manuals of moral theology are technical books about sins of all kinds, just exactly

what they are, how they're done, how grave they are, for mostly for the advice of confessors.

And they're always arranged according to the Ten Commandments.

And, uh, when they get to the commandment, Thou shalt not commit adultery, the volume expands

like this.

In fact, it occupies two-thirds of the whole book, all the details.

So we have, in a very special way, got sex on the brain, which isn't exactly the right

place for it.

Now, this needs going into, because it is not as simple as it looks.

There are really two roots of the whole problem.

One of them is the problem of why sexual pleasure of all pleasures, as a kind of really supreme

pleasure, is singled out for religious people to be particularly afraid of.

This is not only true in Christianity, I say Christianity emphasizes it in a certain way.

But in, uh, Asian religions also, especially in India, there is a prevailing view that if

you want to attain real heights of spirituality, the one thing you must give up is sexuality,

in the ordinary sense of, uh, genital sexual relationships with man or woman, as the case

may be.

And this reflects in part, you see, an attitude to the physical world.

Because it is, after all, through sexuality, that we have, along with eating, our most fundamental

relationship to materiality, to nature, to the physical universe.

And it is the point at which we can become most attached to the body, to the physical

organism, to material life.

That's one reason why it's problematic.

The other reason why it's problematic is more subtle.

And that is that sexuality is something which you cannot get rid of.

Do what you may, life is sexual, in the sense, for example, that you are either male or female.

There are various other gradations, uh, but basically they are forms of maleness and femaleness.

And also that every one of you is the result of sexual intercourse.

And this feature of life, uh, can be looked at in one of two ways.

You can say, on the one hand, that all man's higher ideals, his spirituality and so forth,

is simply repressed sexuality.

Or on the other hand, you can say that human sexuality is a manifestation, a particular form

or expression of what is spiritual, metaphysical, divine, or whatever you want to call it.

I hold to the latter view.

I don't think that religion is repressed sexuality.

I think, however, that sexuality is just one of the many forms in which, uh, whatever all

this is expresses itself.

But you see, if this thing is something you cannot get rid of, and if you realize that,

indeed, a way of life in which sexuality is in some way put down or repressed, is nonetheless

an expression of sexuality, then we come to a view of a religion in which sex is a very

special taboo, which is rather unusual.

It's normally said, you see, yes, that Christianity is a religion in which sex is taboo.

And this has simply no getting around it.

I know up-to-date ministers today are, think sex is all right.

It's perfectly okay if you're married and you've got a mature relationship with a woman.

Uh, it's all right.

And they kind of damn it with faint praise.

But if you read anything of Christian writings prior, shall we say, to 1850, to set a date

rather arbitrarily, you will find that it's not all right.

Not at all.

It's tolerated between married couples and strictly for the procreation of children.

But on the whole, to do without it is best.

As St. Paul put it, it's better to marry than to burn.

To burn with the fire of lust and ultimately to burn in hell.

But always, consistently, there is simply no getting away from it.

In all the writings of the Church Fathers, from St. Paul himself right through to St. Ignatius

Loyola or any of the great relatively modern, uh, leaders of Catholic spirituality.

Or you can look at Calvin, you can look at, uh, great Protestants, John Knox.

On the whole, sex is sin and sex is dirt.

And you can say very simply that this is all bad and something very wrong, but I want to

point out that there is another side to all this.

There is no way of making a hedge grow like pruning it.

There is no way of making sex interesting like repressing it.

And as a result of all these centuries of sexual repression and associating it with dirt,

the West has developed a peculiar form of eroticism.

But that is a, an aspect of this whole problem, which I don't think is really very profitable

to explore.

I just want to mention it in passing, that the whole attitude of anti-sexuality in the

Christian tradition is not as anti as it looks.

It is simply a method of making sex prurient and exciting in a kind of dirty way.

And I suppose is to be recommended for people who are not feeling very frisky and, er, need

to be pepped up.

The other side of the problem is much more interesting.

That is to say, er, the first thing I mentioned.

Why it is that there has been a problem for human beings about pleasure and we'll take sexual activity

as a supreme pleasure, as a supreme involvement of oneself with the body and with the physical world.

Why should there be a problem here?

Well, the point is simply, isn't it, that the physical world is transient, it's impermanent, it falls apart and bodies that were once strong, smooth and lovely in youth begin to wither and become corrupt and turn at last into skeletons.

And if you cling on to one of those and it suddenly turns into a skeleton in your hand, as it will

if you speed up your sense of time a little, you feel cheated.

And there has been for centuries a lament about this, that life is so short that all the beauties

of this world fall apart.

And therefore, if you are wise, you don't set your heart on mortal beauty, but you set your

heart on spiritual values that are imperishable.

Even that supposed tipler and rake Omar Khayyam says that the worldly hope men set their hearts

upon turns ashes or it prospers, and anon like snow upon the desert's dusty face, lighting

a little hour or two is gone.

And so don't bet on that horse.

And read any kind of spiritual literature you want to, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist,

all of them seem to emphasize the importance of detachment.

From the body, from the physical world, so that you won't be engulfed in the stream of

impermanence.

The idea being, you see, that to the degree that you identify yourself with the body and

with the pleasures of the body, to that degree you are simply going to be something that is

sucked away in the course of transiency.

So therefore, hold yourself aloof.

As in, for example, the advice of many Hindus in the practice of yoga, you are advised to

look upon all sensory experiences as something out there which you simply witness.

You yourself identify yourself with the eternal, spiritual, unchanging self.

The witness of all that goes on, but who is no more involved in it than, say, the smoothness

or the color of a mirror is affected by the things which it reflects.

Keep your mind like a mirror, pure and clean, free from dust, free from flaws, free from stain.

Just reflect everything that goes on, but don't be attached.

You will find this all over the place.

But it has always seemed to me that that attitude of essential detachment from the physical universe

has underlying it a very serious problem.

The problem being why a physical universe at all in that case.

If God has a man is in some way responsible for the existence of the creation.

And if this creation is basically a snare, why did he do it?

And of course, according to some theologies, the physical universe is looked upon as a mistake,

as a fall from the divine state.

As if something went wrong in the heavenly domain.

And causing spirits such as we are to fall from their high estate and to become involved with

animal bodies.

And so there is an ancient analogy of man, which runs right through to the present time.

That your relationship to your body is that of a rider to a horse.

Saint Francis called his body rather ass.

That you are a rational soul in charge of an animal body.

And therefore, where if you belong to the old fashioned school, you beat it into submission.

As Saint Paul said, I beat my body into submission.

Or if you are a Freudian, you treat your horse not with a whip, but with lumps of sugar.

Secondly, but still it's your horse.

Even in Freud, there is a very, very strong element of puritanism.

Read Philip Reif's book on Freud, the mind of the moralist.

And how he shows that Freud basically thought that sex was degrading.

But nevertheless, something biologically unavoidable, something terribly necessary, which couldn't

just be swept aside.

It had to be dealt with.

But there is, you see, that heritage of thinking of ourselves as divided.

The ego as the rational soul of spiritual origin, and the physical body as the animal component.

And therefore, all success in life, spiritual success, requires the spiritualization of the

animal component, the sublimation of its dirty and strange urges.

So that it's thoroughly cleaned up.

I suppose the ideal sexual relationship of such persons would be held on an operating table

under disinfectant sprays.

Now it is, of course, true that the physical world, its beauty, and so on, is transient.

We are all falling apart in some way or another, especially after you pass the peak of youth.

But it's never struck me that that is something to gripe about.

That the physical world is transient seems to me to be part of its splendor.

I can imagine nothing more awful than, say, attaining to the age of 30 and suddenly being frozen, in

that age for always and always.

You would become a kind of, we would all be a sort of animated waxworks.

And you would discover, as a matter of fact, that people who had that physical permanence

would feel like plastic.

And that is, as a matter of fact, what is going to be done about us, by technology,

in order to attain perpetual youth.

All the parts of us that decay and fold up are going to be replaced by very skillfully

manufactured plastic parts.

So that in the end, we will be entirely made of very, very sophisticated plastic.

And everybody will feel like that.

And everybody will be utterly bored with each other.

Because the very fact, you see, that the world is always decaying and always falling

away, is the same thing as its vitality.

Vitality is change.

Life is death.

It is always falling apart.

And so there are certain supreme moments, you see, at which in the body we attain superb

vitality.

And that's the time.

Make it then.

It's the moment, just like when an orchestra is playing, the conductor wants to get a certain

group of, say, violins to come in at a certain moment, and he's conducting, and he's got to

now make it.

And they all have to go, right now, you see?

Of course.

That's the whole art of life.

To do it at the right time.

To do it in time.

Like you dance or you play in time.

And so in the same way, when it comes to love, sexuality, or equally so, in all the pleasures

of gastronomy, timing is of the essence.

And then it's happened and you've had it.

But that's not something that one should look upon with regret.

It only is something regrettable if you didn't know how to take it when it was timely.

And this is really the essence of what I want to talk to you about.

Because you see, to be detached from the world, in the sense that Buddhists and Taoists and Hindus

will often talk about detachment, does not mean to be non-participative.

You can have a sexual life very rich and very full, and yet all the time be detached.

By that I don't mean that you just go through it mechanically and have your thoughts elsewhere.

I mean a complete participation, but still detached.

And the difference of the two attitudes is this.

On the one hand, there is a way of being so anxious about physical pleasure, so afraid

that you won't make it, that you grab it too hard, that you just have to have that thing.

And if you do that, you destroy it completely.

And therefore, after every attempt to get it, you feel disappointed.

You feel empty.

You feel something was lost.

And therefore, you want it again.

You have to keep repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating, because you never really got there.

And it's this that is the hang-up.

This is what is meant by attachment to this world in an evil sense.

But on the other hand, pleasure in its fullness cannot be experienced when one is grasping

it.

I knew a little girl to whom someone gave a bunny rabbit.

She was so delighted with a bunny rabbit and so afraid of losing it, that taking it home

in the car, she squeezed it to death with love.

And lots of parents do that to their children, and lots of spouses do it to each other.

They hold on too hard.

And so take the life out of this transient, beautifully fragile thing that life is.

To have it, to have life, and to have its pleasure, you must at the same time let go of it.

Then you can feel perfectly free to have that pleasure in the most gutsy, rollicking, earthy,

lip-licking way, one's whole being taken over by a kind of undulated, convulsive ripple,

which is like the very pulse of life itself.

This can happen only if you let go.

If you are willing to be abandoned, it's funny that word, abandoned.

We speak of people who are dissolute as being abandoned.

But we can also use abandoned as a characteristic of a saint.

A great spiritual book by a Jesuit father is called Abandonment to the Divine Providence.

There are people like that who just aren't hung up.

They are the poor in spirit.

That is to say, they spiritually are poor in the sense they don't cling on to any property.

They don't carry burdens around.

They're free.

Well, just that sort of spiritual poverty, that let go-ness, is quite essential for the enjoyment

of any kind of pleasure at all, and particularly sexual pleasure.

Now, when I was a boy in school, I'll go back to this, because my experience may not be...

I don't know how typical it would be of children brought up in the United States in a religious

environment.

But my experience in England was quite fascinating about, you know, when one is baptized as a

child, and you don't know anything about it, and your godfathers and godmothers are your

sponsors.

Then there comes a time when you are about to enter into puberty, when you are confirmed.

When you undertake for yourself your own baptismal vows that were made on behalf of you.

And in England, confirmation into the Church of England, which is Episcopalian in this country,

confirmation is preceded by instruction.

And this instruction consisted very largely of lessons in Church history, because the British

approach to religion is peculiarly archaeological.

It is based on the great past, the great Christian saints and heroes.

And it's really quite interesting, because it somehow associates you, puts you in the tradition

of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and all that sort of thing.

But the time comes when every candidate for confirmation has a private talk with a school

chaplain.

And obviously in every process of initiation into mysteries, from time immemorial, there has

been the passing on of a secret.

And so there's a certain anticipation about this very private communication.

Because you would think, if you were being initiated into a religion, what the secret

consists of is some marvellous information about the nature of God, or the fundamental reason

for being, and so on.

But not so in this case.

The initiatory secret talk was a serious lecture on the evils of masturbation.

What these evils were, were not clearly specified.

And so, but it was vaguely hinted that ghastly diseases would result.

And so we used to, sort of in a perverse way, enjoy tormenting ourselves with imaginations,

as to what kind of terrible venereal diseases, epilepsy, tuberculosis, and the great Siberian

itch would result from this practice.

Now the extraordinary thing about it is this, that the very chaplain who gave these lectures

had in his own upbringing been given the same lecture by other chaplains, and this went

back some distance in history, I imagine.

And they all knew perfectly well that one of the characteristic behaviour patterns of adolescence

is ritual defiance of authority.

But you have to make some protest against authority, and in this you are in league with all your

contemporaries, your peer group.

And nobody of course would dream of giving anybody else away, because that would be to

be a tattletale, a skunk, definitely not one of the boys.

And so therefore, quite obviously, masturbation provided the ideal outlet for this ritual defiance.

because it was fun it was also an assertion of masculinity and it was very very wicked

so i've meditated on this sometime as to why the system continued

and i came to the realization that the christian put down of sex is an extremely mysterious thing

in the religious background of the western world we have in the main two traditions

one semitic and one greek so far as the semitic tradition is concerned

the material world and sexuality are definitely good things both jews and muslims

think that god's creation of beautiful women was a grand idea

in the arabic book which is their islamic version of the karma sutra known as the perfumed garden

the book opens with a prayer to allah which is a thanksgiving a very full detailed thanksgiving

for the loveliness of women with which allah has blessed mankind

and in the book of proverbs we are enjoined to enjoy our wives while they are young

but uh on the whole it is the semitic

belief that sexuality is justified solely for purposes of reproduction of the species

this uh makes it good in the eyes of god and sexual energy should not really be wasted for other

purposes that's the limitation put on it now on the other hand we have a greek tradition

which is peculiar in that it is strongly influenced by a dualistic view of the universe

in which material existence is conceived as a trap

as a fall into turgid clogging matter which is antagonistic to the lightness and freedom of the

spirit and therefore for certain kinds of greek religion among which we must name the orphic mysteries

the neoplatonic point of view and the late agnostic points of view being saved means being delivered

from material existence into a purely spiritual state from this point of view sexual uh involvement

is the very archetype of material involvement martyr mother matter matter are really the same word

and so the love of woman is the great snare this is intrudently a doctrine invented by men

and it goes back to the words of adam the woman that thou gavest me she tempted me

and i did eat now in the development of christian theology from approximately the time of saint paul

through the beginning of the renaissance it was universally held

that sex was a bad thing you should read saint augustine on this

he said that in the garden of eden before the fall reproduction took place

in just the same way and with just the same lack of excitement as one excretes

or passes water and there was no uh shameful excitation of the sexual parts

and uh the whole attitude of the church fathers in those centuries was that the virgin state

was immensely superior spiritually to the married state

and that sexual relationships were excusable only within the bonds of marriage and for the sole

purposes of reproduction and the manual the moral penitentiaries of the theologians of the middle ages

list all sorts of penances that must be said even by married couples who performed sexual intercourse

on the night before attending mass were still before receiving holy communion

and of course it must utterly be avoided on certain great uh church festivals so although in theory

marriage is a sacrament which somehow blesses this peculiar relationship

there is a definite attitude that it is after all dirty and not very nice

it is now you must realize too that in those days the institution of marriage was not what it is today

marriage at the time of the rise and development of christianity was a social institute institution

for alliances between families you did not marry the person of your own choice except under the most

peculiar circumstances you married the girl your family picked out for you and they thought it over carefully

from its political point of view as well as from the point of view of eugenics and uh whether this

was a good healthy girl and whether this was a good healthy man and they had an economic bargaining

about it and you married this girl you weren't necessarily in love with her

and it was perfectly well understood in the secular world that on the side uh you had other arrangements

uh you had if you could afford them concubines or even second and third and fourth wives

and these uh subsidiary wives were um there was a somewhat more choice open to you in getting those

then in the first one first one is definitely a family arrangement now that's the context of it don't

forget that so what the church was saying was only that woman should be your bedfellow

whose marriage has been arranged by paternal authority the idea of romantic love does not arise

in connection with marriage until the troubadour cults of southern france of provence in the late middle ages

when there begins to be this idea of the idealization of a woman as the inspiring

uh goddess almost of the knight errant dante's beatrice is the inspiring woman

who leads him to heaven now historians are not agreed as to whether the lady loves of the chivalrous

knights were in fact their mistresses or whether they were simply idealized women

but the influence of the cult of romantic love on the west was profound and it brought about a weird

combination of ideas one the notion of the married state being the only licit relationship in which

sexual uh play might be carried on and two the notion that the girl you marry should be the one you've

fallen in love with two more ill-adjusted ideas could hardly be put together because naturally when you

love someone very much indeed in the enthusiasm and ardour of youth you say things that are

hardly logical or rational you stand up before an altar and you say my darling my sweetheart my perfect pet

i adore you so much that i will live with you forever and ever until death do us part and that's the way

you feel at the time in a rather similar mood ancient peoples would hail their kings and say oh king live

forever obviously this was not literally meant they were just wishing him a long life but to live forever no

sir no mortal does that so the trouble was you see that when certain kinds of extravagant poetic expressions

got in the hands of people like augustine and tertullian who were rather influenced by roman literalness

they wrote it into the law books and so this amazing situation came about

but we still have not fully explored the subtlety of it let us consider certain periods when uh

this attitude of prudism towards sexuality was in us in an ascendancy nearest to our times

is the bourgeois uh revolution you might call it in victorian england and the united states

we all say victorian uh as an adjective to indicate grundyism uh extreme monogamy uh a definite

disgust for all things sexual and yet when we really go into the history of the victorian period

we find that it was an extremely lascivious epoch one has only to look at the lushness

of victorian furniture to realize that chairs are disguised women that the way even piano legs are shaped

i mean this kind of thing is throughout victorian art forms and the conduct of the british aristocracy

during that period beggared description people like freud and have a lock ellis made certain mistake

uh they said about the church and about religion in general that it was nothing but a form of sublimated

sex they said these people for curious reasons suppress sex and therefore it becomes a very powerful force

for them you must remember of course that they worked on a hydraulic analogy of human psychology that they

liken it all to a river if you damned it up it would burst the dam it doesn't actually follow that human

psychology is hydraulic but this is the metaphor they used now they said the church has repressed sex

but actually if you look at its symbolism it is nothing but an expression of sex

everything is reduced to libido as the fundamental reality

and the church replied it's nothing of the kind we deny this we think that this reduction of everything

to sex is just a way of uh attacking holy things and on the contrary we would say that people who are

fascinated with sex and make it their god are repressing religion now the problem in this debate everybody

missed the boat uh the church should have been in a position to say to freud well of course

thank you very much uh yes indeed our symbolism is sexual the steeples on our churches the uh vesicle

shaped windows and uh heraldic shields on which we put images of the crucifix or the virgin mother of god

so these are all quite plainly sexual but you see the sexual biology in its term reveals the mysteries of

the universe sex is not mere sex sex is a holy thing and is uh one of the most marvelous revelations of the divine

divine but imagine the church just couldn't say that if you look at tibetan buddhist iconography

their images or you look in hindu temples you will find things that europeans and americans have never

been able to understand here are images of buddhas and of the gods engaged in amazing diversions

with their female counterparts and everybody thinks that these are kind of dirty sculptures

now they're nothing of the kind they are saying to the people who look at them the play of man and woman

is on that level on the level of biology a reflection of the fundamental play of the cosmos

the play of the positive and negative principles of the light and the dark of the mental and the material

they all play together

and the function of sexual play is not merely the survival and utilitarian function of reproducing the

species as it is among animals to a very large extent what peculiarly distinguishes human sexuality

is that it brings the partners closer and closer to each other in an intense state of united feeling

in other words it is a sacrament the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace

bringing about love and so if that is peculiar to human beings it is perfect nonsense to degrade human sexuality

by saying it should only be carried on in the way that the animals do theirs because they have not yet

as it were evolved to the place where sex is the sacramental expression of man and woman's love

and this love in that sense is a kind of enthusiasm which means a being possessed by the divine

falling in love although considered by practical people to be a sort of madness

is actually the same sort of thing as the mystical vision

uh a grace and in its light we see people in their divine aspect when as the song says

every little breeze whispers louise uh there is a sort of extraordinary state of mystical intoxication

in which the ideal woman has become the goddess which is from one point of view what every woman is

if you see her with the scales of your eyes and likewise every man seen with the scales of her eyes

so what happened then as a result of this historical situation was mutual name calling

between between the proponents of religion and the proponents of uh scientific naturalism such as

freud and uh havelock ellis and in our own times albert ellis uh and people of that kind they've never got

together because they've never understood neither the church nor the opponents of the church have

clearly understood that the secret or unconscious motivation of sexual repression is to make it all

the more interesting and on the other side it has not been clearly understood that the sexual

biology and all that goes with it is a figuring forth on the level of biology of what the whole universe

is about ecstatic play so as a result there has been a kind of compromise today in ecclesiastical circles

sex is being damned with faint praise people are saying after all yes sex was made by god and we should

remember the jewish point of view and uh it is uh perhaps for something more than reproduction to bring

about the cementing of the marriage ties between husband and wife but still in practice it remains

the frightening taboo on the other hand the opposition to christian prudery goes overboard

and always moves in the direction of total license you see what's going on as a contest between the

people who want the skirts pulled down to the floor the people who want them pulled up to the neck

and you you know you've got to draw the line somewhere but the play between these forces is

where are we going to draw it well that's very exciting provide neither side wins i mean imagine

what it would be like if the libertines won and they took over the church so that on wednesday evenings

the young presbyterian group would meet for prayer through sex

every child would go to the school physician for a course in hygienics and they would have classes

and they have plastic models and all the children would do it in class in very clean hygienic

circumstances all sprayed with rubbing alcohol everything would be fine imagine how boring it would

all become so you see the people who say no modesty is important have something right about them but

they mustn't be allowed to get away with it but they mustn't be obliterated you see life works that way

let's take an entirely different analogy let's take a given biological group a species we'll call a

it has a natural enemy b now one day a gets furious at the natural enemy b and says let's obliterate it

and they gather their forces and they knock out their natural enemy well suddenly after a while they

begin to get weak they get overpopulated there's nobody around to eat up their surplus creatures

and they don't have to keep their muscles tensed against any enemy and they begin to fall apart

because they destroyed their enemy what they should do is cultivate the enemy that's the real meaning

of love your enemy there is such a thing as a beloved enemy and if you don't have a beloved enemy

in other words if the flies and the spiders don't go together you're going to be too many spiders

or too many flies and these balances uh keep the course of nature going well it's exactly the same

thing as between the libertines and the prudes they need each other and you should thank if you've got

a prudish father and mother you should be very grateful to them for having made sex so interesting

so don't defy them completely don't go around campus with placards bearing four-letter words

because that's going to spoil the show

so but every generation must react to the one before you see to keep this tension going

and it is by this tension this play of the opposites that we have the love that makes the world go round

files 2

streamalan-watts-myth-and-religion.oggopus 48kHz stereo, 94 kb/s~215 MBget ->transcriptfull transcript (machine)~199 KBget ->