Alan Watts - Way Beyond The West

===== Way Beyond The West - 01 - The Constitution Of Nature =====

Then thirdly, there is the organic view, characteristic of China.

In this, there is no real thought of there being a divine creator or a divine actor behind the world.

But rather, the world is thought of as being self-moving and self-creating.

The word for nature in Chinese means what is of itself so.

So, when in the West, a child asks its mother, who made me?

And she replies, darling, God made you.

And the child asks, but who made God?

She has to say, nobody made God.

And that is a great puzzle to the child, who thinks of the world as a construct.

And it may be explained to the child, if you like, that God makes himself.

He exists of himself because he is existence.

To put it in more theological language, he has the attribute called arseity, from the Latin, arse, by himself.

Perhaps some kind of enfant terrible would ask the question,

well, if that's true of God, why couldn't it be true of the world in the first place?

Why did you have to make that additional step?

If he did so, he would be thinking more or less in the Chinese way,

which does not think of the world either as an artifact of some maker or as a mask or appearance worn by some sort of deeper reality.

He doesn't, in other words, have a two-level view of nature as an appearance,

underneath which there is something else to explain it.

He sees it all rather as self-evident,

as being something which regulates itself and indeed orders itself.

There is a certain sense, you see, in which the Chinese view is fundamentally,

or you could almost call it anarchical,

or if you don't like that word, you could call it democratic.

A world which is self-governing,

not even through a president,

but self-governing in every way,

a great and colossal anarchism,

which moves itself in the same way as you and I move our fingers

without directing them in the sense that we know exactly what we are doing and how we move them.

We don't.

Now, I've said that the Western view

is probably what made it possible

for us to develop our highly advanced technology.

By thinking about the world as a construct,

we could think about the laws

or principles or plans or regularities

upon which it was based.

We could think, for example, of the calculus, of number,

as the basic characteristic of the law

upon which nature is based.

By doing that,

we caught on to the idea

of thinking of all things

as reducible to atoms,

to parts,

to bits.

And then by thinking of bits,

we found that we could measure

the world very accurately,

describe its regularities very accurately.

And that gave us an astonishing degree of control over it.

This is a point of view which is successful

to a certain degree.

It goes well up to a certain level

after which it begins to develop complications.

For one thing,

you could say it has complications

which are psychological on the one hand

and practical and technical on another.

From the psychological point of view,

its complication is that

when it becomes commonsensical to us

to look at the world as a mechanism,

we begin as humans,

as people capable of feeling and love,

to feel the external world

rather alien to us.

Yes, it's a machine.

It's a great, big, automatic,

mechanical arrangement

which, in essence,

is simply stupid energy.

We thereupon feel

that it has nothing in common

with ourselves.

And perhaps even though we try

to give the same sort of account

of ourselves

and try to reduce our brains and emotions

to some kind of neurological computer mechanism,

that makes us, in a way, hate ourselves.

For as soon as we start thinking of ourselves

as automata,

we begin ethically, psychologically,

treating ourselves as automata.

We lose respect for ourselves.

Thereupon feel

that what is central to us,

the feeling center, the person,

is trapped

in a cosmos

that is a mechanical nightmare,

foreign and strange.

We can see ourselves

as a kind of ghastly accident.

I don't wonder that this

engenders

certain kinds of suicidal tendencies

in our culture.

So much for the psychological point of view.

From the technical point of view,

the analogy of nature

with mechanism

develops its own disadvantages

after a certain point.

That is to say,

the disadvantage

of trying

to manage

the physical universe

as if it were, indeed,

an assemblage

of separate parts

or separable parts.

for the first sort of person

to notice this mistake

would be

the extreme surgical

or medical specialist

who knows, for example,

all about hearts

or about stomachs,

but very little

about brains

or lungs

or glands,

and who treats

one organ at a time

and becomes unaware

of the imbalances

inflicted upon other organs

by what he's done

to the organ

in which he specializes.

Also, in the same way,

the specialist

always tends

to see

the units of nature

and to be unaware

of their connections

or relationships,

which are, after all,

inseparable relationships

with all the other parts.

There is, you might say,

also another technical disadvantage,

again, which develops only

in the course of time

to this particular

mechanical analogy,

and that is

that when you begin

to rely more and more

upon minute

and careful description

of the world

for dealing with it,

and that, of course,

involves the reduction

of the world

to describable units,

the world then becomes

terribly complicated,

and it becomes

increasingly difficult

to keep track

of all the minute units

that you've described.

Hence, the difficulty

of specialists

in the various sciences

communicating with each other

and the difficulty

of the scientific specialist

in communicating

with the layman.

The whole thing becomes

much too complicated

to manage.

This, then,

means that

is left.

Okay,

.

===== Way Beyond The West - 02 - The Game Of Yes & No =====

Now, it has been announced that I would speak this evening about the Yijing. I should just say then, briefly, that the Book of Changes is thought to be the oldest of the great Chinese classics, and to date from, perhaps, as early as 1300 B.C.

Although, perhaps, the figures, of which this classic is a discussion, may be much earlier than that, they may go back to the earliest phases of human thought, because the Yijing really is the ground plan of the way in which the Chinese think, and not only the Chinese.

It is almost a mapping of the thinking processes of man. It may surprise you to know that the system of arithmetic, which is used by digital computers, came from the Yijing.

We have a binary system of arithmetic, in which all numbers may be represented by zero and one, in various arrangements, is, you, is, or is, you, ain't.

So, there is a sudden, unexpected link between the most sophisticated mathematical machinery, and a book originating at least 1300 B.C.

But what the Yijing really goes into, is this question of, is you, is, or is you, ain't.

It sounds terribly simple. Black or white.

And we keep saying to people, you know, life isn't just black and white, or black or white.

There are many shades of grey.

But, against some backgrounds, grey is dark.

In another context, grey is light.

And really, all colours, in fact, all information whatsoever, can be translated into terms of yang and yin.

For example, when you look at colour television, the signals are broadcast to your set as a stream of pulses.

They could be put on magnetic tape, in terms of an arrangement of pulses, indicating either yes or no.

This technique has reached such sophistication that, with the aid of laser beams, we can translate a physical object, let's take a complicated one, let's take a dandelion flower gun to seed, a dandelion clock.

You take a dandelion clock about so big, it can be turned into a formula, passed through channels, enlarged to any size, say this big, and with laser beams cut in solid plastic, in a matter of moments.

So you can get this reproduction of a three-dimensional object, but the transition between the two was handled simply in terms of pulses.

So, likewise, the nervous system is so constituted that the neuron carrying a message either fires or does not fire.

If it is fired, if it fires, or if it is activated, that registers as a yes.

If it is not fired, the absence of firing is represented as a no.

And so you could say that all your perceptions, in all their variety and in all their color, are made up of a vast composite of little yeses and little noes, in every conceivable variation.

So, out of these two come everything.

Yang means the positive, and yin, the negative.

Yang is identified with the south or sunny side of a mountain.

Yin with the north or shady side.

And note, at this moment, that you cannot have a one-sided mountain.

Imagine it.

And this, then, is the crucial thing that one must understand about the Yang-Yin philosophy.

And it is represented in the symbol of a circle crossed with an S-curve, one side of which is black and the other side is white.

And so they are like two fishes.

And in the head of the black fish is a white eye.

And in the head of the white fish, there is a black eye.

These two sides are interdependent because the black one is outlined by the white one, and the white one is outlined by the black one.

And they chase each other in the form which is really the double helix, the pattern of the spiral nebulae, and also the pattern of lovemaking between many, many kinds of creatures.

The spiral folding into itself.

Black chasing white, and white chasing black.

Now, obviously, white and black are as different as different can be.

When we say of someone that he's an awful liar and a con man, you say why he could prove to you that black was white.

But strangely enough, black is white in a certain sense, and white is black.

If you take the copulating word is to mean implies, because black implies white, and white implies black,

or positive implies negative, and negative implies positive.

Because you can't have the one without the other.

So, to put this into clear words, we can say, explicitly, black and white are different.

But implicitly, that is to say, by implication, they are one.

So, exoterically, outwardly, the positive and the negative of life are very different.

Life is different from death, and good is different from evil.

But, esoterically, the secret is, that they are one.

As God says through the prophet Isaiah,

I am the Lord, and there is none else.

I form the light, and create the darkness.

I make peace, and create evil.

I, the Lord, do all these things.

But that information is not normally handed out from the book.

So, we have to begin, then, seriously considering, yang and yin, black and white.

First of all, if I have a black background, somehow I am tempted to make a white mark on it.

If I have a white background, I am tempted to put a black mark on it.

Because, if there were nothing to see but black, that would be tantamount to being blind.

Because, there would be no difference.

Nothing would matter.

Nothing would make a difference.

So, there wouldn't be anything.

Likewise, if everything were white, it would be as good as being blind.

For, there would be no difference.

It is only by contrast, when black and white are put together, that we know black as black, and white as white.

However, now, when I look at a small white circle, or disc on a black background,

or, a small black disc on a white background,

I once get this in my thought.

Which is positive, and which is negative?

Does black represent the negative, because it's dark?

But, when I look at the black dot, on the white background,

I think, the black dot is the thing there.

So, that must be positive.

It was put on.

And, therefore, the white represents negative, because it suggests nothing.

No mark.

Like white paper behind the print.

Blank.

Blanche.

The English blank, and the French blanche, which means white, it's the same.

Blank.

Negative.

Isn't this mysterious, you see, that both white and black can play the negative role?

But then, let's think of white as light, and it's playing the positive role.

And, when we think of black as the thing, the mark, then it's playing the positive role.

See?

Both can play the negative, and both can play the positive.

But, still, you can't have one without the other.

I look at the black with the white dot, and I say,

Is that a white glowing sun in the night?

Or, is it a hole through a wall?

In which case, the black will be the thing, and the white the absence.

I look at the black dot on the white background, and say,

Yes, obviously, the black dot is the thing, but on the other hand,

it may be a picture of a white box with a hole in it.

You see?

They're reversible.

Therefore, some reflections about these.

It isn't easy, for a human being, the way we've been trained,

to notice that you can't have one without the other.

Because our attention has difficulty in seeing both sides at once.

You know that gestalt image, where you get two faces in profile,

and they are drawn as black silhouette.

So you get two faces, in profile, about to kiss.

But then look again, and you notice the white ground between them,

and it is a cup, like a chalice.

What have we got here?

Kissing faces, or chalice?

People have difficulty in seeing both together.

You must have one or the other.

Either will do, but make your choice.

It's like, are you going to be a boy or a girl?

Either will do, but you have to choose one of them.

And yet, bodhisattvas are always represented as hermaphrodite,

as being, as it were, bisexual, transcending sexual differentiation.

Because, after all, everybody who exists is the result of a boy and a girl.

Boys can't be boys without girls, and girls can't be girls without boys.

They are very different.

But, by nature, by reason of their interdependence, they are one.

Talking of the bees and the flowers, where there are bees, there must be flowers.

And where there are flowers, there must be bees, or some sort of insect equivalent.

And this implies that the bee and the flower are really one organism.

The head of the body looks very different from the feet, just as the bee looks different from the flower.

But a complete body requires both head and feet.

So the head and the foot are obviously one organism.

It's less obvious with the bee and the flower, but they are one organism.

What is very difficult for us to see, however,

is that solids are all of a piece with spaces.

Now, here comes the thing you see.

Take a situation in which we say, of a given figure-ground relationship,

that the black is the thing.

The black letter on the white page.

We say, yes, it's the black letter that's important.

That's the thing.

But supposing it's a white letter on a black page.

Still, we say the letter's the thing.

That's important.

All right.

So we say, we look out in the sky at night and we see the stars and the planets.

We say, that's what's there.

That's the thing.

Around them is darkness and nothingness,

corresponding to the area of the magnetic tape which isn't magnetized,

which delivers no message and therefore the message is zero.

But that, you see, does deliver a message.

Absence speaks.

Nothingness is important.

But we are brought up.

We are so brainwashed.

We are so baboozled.

We are so hypnotized that we don't know that.

That's the whole trick that we've played on ourselves.

We don't know that nothing is something.

And it's important.

Lao Tzu put it this way.

The usefulness of a vessel is not so much in the clay surround,

but in the empty space in which something can be carried.

The usefulness of a window is not so much in the frame as in the empty space through which light can be seen.

It sounds odd and paradoxical and almost a little contradictory,

but nevertheless, there it is.

The space is, after all, not nothing.

I had an argument with Buckminster Fuller about this,

and he had to grant me that I was theoretically correct,

because he said, so far as I'm concerned, space is just negative event.

Just negative event.

The fallacy wasn't in the word negative event.

That's a beautiful phrase.

It was in the word just, only.

As if space could be dismissed.

And so in exactly the same way.

When we don't recognize that side of life,

people can play all kinds of tricks on us.

The main trick is, I can scare you with death.

You won't be, see?

I can remove you.

You're going to get removed anyway one of these days,

and you just won't be.

Oh, that'd be awful.

That'd be just terrible.

You know, supposing you won't be.

You'll be nobody to realize how terrible it is.

But this is the thing, that this is one of the great tricks of life,

and you have to be watching for this,

as people use it, because they've all been taught to use it.

It's really the fall of man.

It was not to recognize the other side.

So everything that we think of as nothing.

Space, empty space, death, sleep, dissolution, decay, any sort of weakness.

Anything that goes against structure, that is, against the thing.

Anything that we think is bad, bad, bad, bad.

And we're trying to get a world where that side of things is rendered impotent.

Nothingness must no longer constitute a threat to somethingness.

In other words, we want to play black and white.

And if we'll call white the light and the positive,

white must win.

That's the game we're trying to play.

Not realizing that there cannot be winning without losing.

If white must win, black must lose.

But if black loses,

we can congratulate black for having helped white to win.

Because unless black loses, white won't win.

We can translate this into the difficult and thorny question of race relations.

How would you know you were free, white, and 21?

How could you be proud of being a white man?

Unless you were black men.

You wouldn't know you were living on the right side of the tracks.

Unless you were people living on the left side of the tracks.

You know, there's an IQ thing that says,

up is to down,

as blank is to left.

Or left is to blank.

You're supposed to fill in.

I would put taken.

Anyway, taken and left.

Right and left.

Right and wrong.

These opposites get tricky.

But the point is,

people are afraid of the negative one.

Don't be negative.

Power of positive thinking.

All nonsense.

The negative is the source of the positive.

This is absolutely fundamental to the I Ching.

This is why in the hexagrams of which the I Ching is about,

64 combinations of six black and white symbols.

Actually, they use an unbroken line for the positive and a broken line for the negative.

Six such lines.

There are 64 combinations of groups of six, or hexagrams.

And in all those, there is not one bad one.

There is no sign of the I Ching,

which you can draw,

and the oracle tell you,

this is just plain bad.

Because you can get to the very end of the night,

that black is pitch black,

and it is precisely at that moment that the Yang,

the positive element, is reborn.

As you see,

it is recognizing that energy is waves,

energy is pulsation.

You can't have a pulse without a vibration.

It sounds, if I go,

something without a nothing.

But actually,

if you listen very closely to that sound,

you'll hear,

you'll hear pulse.

Because without that little chunk,

which is a pulse,

nothing happens.

So this table,

which is level and solid,

and philosophers learn it,

are always talking about tables,

because they always have tables in front of them in classrooms.

But here is some solid,

but this thing is going,

at a terrific clip inside it.

Howie, look at that.

And we find that there are

cellular structure in wood.

Realize that,

molecules.

And when we find to our amazement,

if you take a molecule out of this table,

and it's about the size of my fist,

blow it up to that,

the next molecule will be,

why, way over the other side of the room,

at that level of magnification.

Say, what's in the molecules?

Take an atom the size of my fist.

Well, the next one will be,

somewhere in Los Angeles.

You know,

I was talking fancy shapes and figures.

Anyway,

a long way away.

What's inside the atom?

Ooh,

electrons,

protons,

mesons,

et cetera.

And they,

at the size of my fist,

we don't even know if they're particles or waves,

so it's difficult to talk about this,

but they are a long,

long way from each other,

so we suddenly find that in this solid table,

there's more space than there is anything solid.

It means a little bit of solid,

but as you ferret it out,

and you go step,

step down,

it's like approaching a limit,

in mathematics,

when you have a curve,

who's sweeping towards an axis,

supposing it's an asymptotic curve,

it's always getting nearer and nearer and nearer to that axis,

but never actually collides with it.

So we get nearer and nearer as we study substance.

We get nearer and nearer to finally,

what is the shell round the emptiness?

We get nearer,

we never quite catch it.

Solid disappears,

turns into space,

as at this level of magnification,

the space has disappeared into the solid.

See,

if I just have one finger,

or a better illustration,

if I take a lighted cigarette in the dark,

I've just got one point,

but I whizz it around,

and you see a continuous circle.

That's how you see a solid table.

Because everything's going,

so fast,

that your eye can't catch the spaces between.

Too little,

too quick.

Looking at things from one point of view,

we find a lot of emptiness.

Looking at them from another point of view,

we find a lot of solid.

But what you have to realize is,

that the solid is based on the emptiness,

just as much as the emptiness is based on the solid.

So don't be afraid of nothing.

It can't bite you.

It's only something that can bite you.

There's nothing to be afraid of in nothing.

And yet, mysteriously,

nothing is the source of something.

It's like the womb and the seed.

Yang and yin go together.

Through not seeing this,

and the whole of our life is, as I said,

geared to the thought that we might be able

to make the yang side win,

to have white without black.

And so,

in every sort of human enterprise,

we are trying,

connects with what I was trying to get across this afternoon,

when you talk about improving the world,

you are meaning, presumably,

that you want it more white than black.

Or whichever one you call the good one.

Maybe you think the black is the good.

That side makes sense.

It makes the slightest difference.

You know,

which side are you going to take in the game of chess,

the black or the white?

It doesn't make much difference,

except white gets first move.

Well, I'll always wait to see what you're going to do.

Could we get rid of it?

It never works.

You think now,

I'll do the other one.

Now, as you know,

in all matters of practical living,

I never know whether,

you know,

there's going to be sickness.

I've been miserable all this time,

because I haven't had enough money.

I never know whether I can make the payments on the car.

And in the transition,

from one stage to the other,

whoops,

you feel very elated.

Of course, you feel elated.

You're going,

if only I had a little more money,

I'd really feel great.

So you get it.

Bring up.

$5,000 a year,

say.

It makes a difference.

When you've gone up,

then, of course,

you're on the level again.

And no longer do you have to worry about

making the payments.

But you get a new worry.

Supposing I get sick

and die of it.

Supposing

someone robs me,

takes it away from me.

Worry about that.

You say,

oh, I'd feel so much happier

if I had a medical examination.

You go to a fancy doctor.

He says,

I can't find anything wrong with you.

Then always there might be burglars.

So you get an alarm system

and new locks.

And finally you go to the homeless patrol

and get a private guard to watch you.

And that makes you feel better for a while.

Except then he begins to nag you.

See, if I have that homeless patrol man out there,

they'll know I've got something.

Maybe I'd better have two men.

So,

it grows.

You worry.

Because you found out

that you didn't get yang without yin.

You've got a new yang,

a bigger yang,

instead of the former little one you have,

but you've got a big yin with it.

It's no joke getting rich.

It implies a great deal of responsibility.

And you've got more to worry about.

Don't envy rich people.

Don't envy anyone.

So, in the same way,

Joanza puts it thus.

He's Laoza's successor.

Peace is correlative wrong.

Do not understand the basic principles of the universe.

One might just as well speak,

people who speak

of having good government

without its correlatives,

misrule,

or right without it

of having yang without yin.

And such people must be

either knaves or fools.

Of course,

how would we know we were wise

unless there were knaves and fools?

But here it is, you see. You cannot beat the game.

You can have the temporary illusion of winning,

but by compensation you will ever so often have the temporary illusion of losing.

When you go down a step from yang to yin you'll feel I've lost something.

When you go up a step from yin to yang you'll feel I've gained something.

How would you know game without loss?

How would you have the sensation of more and less in relation to the sensation less?

For sensation is simply awareness of contrast.

That's what life is.

Now if we realize that we get the same feeling of frustration as I wanted to give you this afternoon

in trying to make it clear that so far as the improvement of ourselves and of the world is concerned

there's absolutely nothing we can do about it.

And this is simply another way of saying the same thing.

You cannot have more yang than yin.

You cannot play a game which is win and no lose or a game in which everyone wins.

If we recognize that, applying yang and yin to all the possible situations of life,

we get this awful feeling of so what's the use?

You're stuck with it.

Now, in just the same way, I mean, what do you expect me to do?

Jump into the river and drown?

Do we get the feeling of oh what's the use?

Simply because we've found that our favorite game won't work.

And we think that is the only thing for which there is any use,

is the game in which whitelists win.

But why not, um, change them around?

Isn't that a good game?

Because you go boing boing boing boing boing boing boing boing, like this.

Goes in and out. It's the undulation of a wave, the crest and the trough.

Every kid likes a rollercoaster ride.

It's great.

It's the game.

See, it's no game.

What we think is the game isn't a game at all.

To win all the time.

Win, win, win.

That's no game.

Because the game is always the highest.

And the whole idea of drama is to make it seem to the audience

that the villain absolutely must win.

Doesn't seek.

Now you see.

Now you don't.

The game is the story in which the villain might win.

There's no way out.

And then suddenly, for who?

The secret, uh, thing is revealed and the hero wins.

Or if you want vitality.

Unless there's that negative element.

The villain, the devil, the nothing, the death,

a good cry, have a tragedy, and the villain wins.

But don't you see?

There is no way out.

You've lost.

Finish.

See, if that's not there, then the other one isn't there.

And you're always winning.

The person you know, you sit at home with your wife

and you play cribbage.

Lots of married couples try to forget holy deadlock

by playing games at once.

The game ceases to be of interest.

And if one partner, be it wife or husband, always wins at cribbage,

tells every good player likes a sprightly opponent who sometimes wins.

He wins just a little bit less than me, mind you,

but he wins a great deal of the time.

Yes, it's okay.

See, just a little bit.

No?

So, if you don't have the unknown space, death, dark mind to make white win,

you didn't sit down and weep because it's negative, you don't have the light.

But the art of life consists rather in something else than when somebody tells you you can't make white win

all the time, forever and always, so that black doesn't exist.

Well, the very fact that it doesn't exist is its power.

Non-existence is the necessary...

because black vibes very nature is darkness and it doesn't exist.

You're trying to make it not exist.

It's a condition for existence.

It's just like you have to have a front before you can have a back.

Or a back before you can have a front.

They come into being together.

So do existence and non-existence.

So what are you afraid of in trying to get rid of nothing,

which is already gotten rid of?

So we think, hmm.

But surely this is rather monotonous.

It goes up and down, up and down, up and down, seesaw.

Life, death, life, death, life, death.

Or birth, death, birth, death, birth, death.

Isn't there some way of...

I mean, must we play this game?

It's like the game of one-upmanship I showed you earlier this afternoon.

You can't get out of it.

You're always playing it.

If you say I won't play it means I've got a more interesting game than yours.

Which is just the same game all over again.

Would there be a way somehow to transcend black and white?

So we've got black and we've got white.

That makes it even.

A tertium quid.

A new, new possibility.

So that we can have a three basis instead of a two basis.

And somebody comes up and says,

Huh.

Alright, you're black and white.

A and B.

You constitute the two ends of the base of a triangle.

And I'm the apex.

How about that?

And they say, that's odd.

Because it's odd because the first two were even.

I mean, when something happens, that's one.

And that's odd.

See, it's odd that anything should have happened.

Very odd.

It's queer.

Would it have been easier for them to be nothing?

But then something happens.

And then they say, that's odd.

Then they recognize there's something and nothing.

And then they say, alright, that's right.

We're even.

So the third fellow comes along and says,

Now, what about it?

And they say, you're odd.

Oh, wait a minute.

You stand over against us.

That makes two.

We're even.

And you're odd.

Alright, so that makes two out of three.

Three equals two.

Because we're together.

We're two.

We recognize that we're black and white.

You can't have one without the other.

So we're together.

And you say you want to be different.

That makes black and white different from whatever you say you are.

So we've got the new yang and yin.

You can't get out of it.

Make four.

And it's the same all over again.

Make five.

It's the same all over again.

This was how Leibniz reasoned.

An arithmetic that could represent any number using nearly zero and one.

Can't we get out of this?

Hey, what would it be if you were allowed five minutes with God.

And you're allowed to ask one question.

What do you want to know?

Because you know.

You've thought this over now.

You know about the opposites.

About the yang and the yin.

And you know you can't ask God and say,

Hey big daddy, will you give me a tip to beat the game?

It won't work.

And what shall I ask God?

It seems to think, of all the things you might ask for.

An electric guitar and a million dollars.

And you know that wouldn't be the answer.

Because that would be yang.

There would be a big yin along with it somewhere.

Maybe I don't know what to ask.

So you go in and say,

God, beyond positive and negative, what is reality?

And God says,

My childhood question has no meaning.

Oh dear, you thought, there it's gone.

My one chance lost.

What do you think?

You get a friend of yours and say,

Hey, look, you go in.

And tell me what he says.

You ask him, what question should I ask you?

He goes and says,

Oh God, what question should I ask you?

And God says, so you do want a problem.

Well, you've got one.

You thought it out.

You wanted the game in which white only wins.

There's your problem.

You made it up.

You have to have that problem.

Because otherwise, if you don't have a problem,

you wouldn't know you were here.

It's like, you can't be yourself without something you call other.

How will you know you were you unless somebody else is somebody else altogether?

In other words, the sensation that I hear, living, sensitive, the lie, peeking out, beady-eyed out of my skin,

entirely is with reference to something over there, which isn't me.

I don't know what it is, but it works all by itself.

And this is pretty scared of it.

And there it is.

But I can't have this feeling without that feeling.

There's the same hocus-pocus going on here.

If I can't feel me without having other, that's the exoteric.

Esoteric means I am the other.

They're inseparable.

How can you have self without other?

How can there be other without self?

You other on me and self on yourself.

I self on me and other on you.

But you can't, as it says, you can't have one without the other.

Yang and Yin.

So in the same way, I say, well, this other, I'd like to manage it.

I'd like to control it.

Now, I know all these people around messing up my life.

I don't want them to be that much other.

I'm going to fix you.

Then I get on a power kick.

And there are all kinds of power kicks, let me warn you.

It's not just politics and economics and business.

The worst power kicks are spiritual.

Like astrology.

Would you like to know the future?

Would you really?

It's a power kick to know the future so that you can control it.

No surprise.

If you know the future, it's already past.

But if you want to know something and have knowledge,

then there must be the unknown.

Just as if you want self, you must have other.

So the future is always the unknown.

The past is the known.

And what we witness, as our present,

is the magical appearance of the known from the unknown.

You know what's going to happen the next second.

I mean, there might be another big earthquake right underneath us.

See?

Any minute now.

Or the Russians might decide to release the A-bomb.

You have a heart attack.

Drop dead.

Watch.

Watch this thing happen.

It's incredible.

Just watch it.

You, it.

The self, other.

It's this vibration going on.

You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you.

And you think also now, wait a minute.

Self and other.

That means voluntary versus involuntary.

What I do and what happens to me?

What do I do?

Well, I walk.

I think.

I talk.

I move my hands.

I can be nice to you or nasty to you.

I would regard both as my doing.

But what about my, um, blood circulation?

I normally think that that happens to me.

I mean, if my heart would have stopped, I wouldn't say I'd done it.

I would have said that it happened to me.

But Buddhists will say, your heart stopped, that was your karma.

And karma means nothing else except doing.

It's your doing that your heart stopped.

You know, that doesn't mean, don't take it literally in a superstitious way that because

you, um, spat in someone's face in a past life, you're having heart failure as a punishment

for it this time around.

The universe is not geared to be a kind of judicial system.

I mean, a lot of priests figure it that way in order to frighten people.

But karma means simply, if you die in a plane crash or have a heart attack, it's your

doing.

And that simply means you've got to rethink what you mean by doing.

Now, I've already proved to you that black is white.

So now I'm going on to prove to you that what you do is what happens to you.

And what happens to you is what you do.

Because you can't tell the difference between doing.

You can't tell what you mean by doing unless something happens to you, to contrast it with

and vice versa.

You can't tell something that happens to you unless it feels different from something

you do.

Now let's take a look at our breath.

Are you doing it or does it happen to you?

If you do breathing exercise, you can feel I'm doing it.

Just I'm breathing in just as I might raise my hand.

But after a while I breathe out.

And I feel I'm breathing out.

And I forget all about it and it goes on.

And it happens to me.

That's why in yoga, which means, yoga means union, joining.

Same as the Latin, ungere.

While in yoga you breathe.

Breathing is the main thing in yoga.

That is to teach you that there's no difference between what you do and what happens to you.

You learn that through breathing.

You can make the very best breath.

We'll get into Christian terms here.

The Holy Spirit.

Spirit means breath.

See?

Spiritus in Latin.

Mathema in Greek.

Roach in Hebrew.

Now there's ordinary breath.

Yeah, most people's normal breathing.

Forced breath.

Or, you know, when people try to sing and their voice is forced.

But then the next breath is called Holy Spirit.

Holy breath.

That's when the breath is no longer forced.

It happens.

When it's nirvana breath.

Blow out.

Same thing as Holy Spirit.

And then that, you see.

The unforced one.

Go on and on.

When monks chant.

Or devotees of any kind chant.

They have the idea that I am a flute.

And the breath, the prana, the spiritus of the divine flows through it.

That's what chanting is all about.

Make yourself a tube for the divine wind.

But that also means realize the unity of the voluntary and the involuntary.

That's really what's meant by doing the will of God.

Do the will.

It's one reason why we get confused in English.

As to whether we mean will or whether we mean shall.

I will drown and no one shall save me.

So, think.

Behind what you call voluntary.

You decide.

Having reviewed the evidence, I've decided it would be best to buy this brand of detergent.

How did you make a decision?

Well, I reviewed the evidence.

I ended up the price.

I came to the computer.

Yeah, I know all that.

How did you work the machinery?

The computer in your head.

You know, you pushed all these buttons.

But what's underneath the buttons?

Oh, I don't know.

I never looked.

So, you see, that involuntary growth called the brain underlies your voluntary decision.

Because when you decide, you don't first decide to decide and decide to decide to decide.

You just decide.

That means there's something else behind it.

Well, you think that's terrible because if what I do happens to me and it isn't really

doing at all, then I'm in a fatalistic scene.

I'm in a fatalistic scene.

Yes, but I said, on the other hand, what happens to you is what you do.

It was equally that way.

You know, you have an earthquake and the thoughts in your head drift about like clouds in the sky.

Well, you can't do anything.

So, in the same way, this whole strain, the futility of the strain to make white wind and to improve the world.

That entire futility.

The frustration of it is what you mean by I.

Now it goes.

It won't work.

And the I collapses.

Everybody is terrified of this happening.

Suddenly finding out that you don't have an ego.

Heaven preserve me from that because I've been building up this personality of mine all these years.

I've been very carefully nurtured this personality.

You tell me it doesn't exist.

No, because your personality is a phantom even more insubstantial than your body.

Personality is a work of art.

It's like music, which vanishes as soon as it's played.

===== Way Beyond The West - 03 - Buddhist Fundamentals Entire =====

I'm continuing this program with talks on some of the fundamental ideas of oriental philosophy.

But before going on, I want to refer back to something that I said in the last program

in which I was talking about Hinduism, which may possibly have been misunderstood.

At the end of the program, I was referring to certain trends in modern Hinduism,

which I described as being of a somewhat namby-pamby nature.

Perhaps that wasn't quite the right phrase, because that suggests weakness.

What I really wanted to suggest was bloodlessness, lack of earthiness, or excessive spirituality.

And I think this arises in certain schools of thought

from a wrong interpretation of the great commentator Shankara.

Shankara and Ramanuja are probably the two of the greatest medieval Indian commentators

on the Upanishads and the traditional scriptures.

And the way some people interpret this is somewhat as follows,

that there is but one reality, which is Brahman,

which is without form, without any quality that the mind can imagine,

following the usual method of description by negation.

And that this being so,

it excludes there being any reality whatsoever

to the seeming multiplicity of the physical world.

In other words, the physical world that we perceive with our senses

is in reality simply not there.

And there is even no cause within reality for it seeming to be there.

I mean, this is rather like the Christian science doctrine of mortal mind

producing the error of suffering and physical existence,

that it has no reality at all.

And our seeing of it,

its seeming to be real,

again, has no basis within the divine reality,

which is the sole thing that exists.

Now, this is an interpretation of Shankara,

which I believe to be fundamentally wrong.

I don't believe that Shankara can correctly be interpreted as saying

that the world of sense experience,

which this, to my mind,

wrong interpretation of his school identifies with maya,

I don't believe that this is the way he ought to be understood.

Maya, I can think of passages in Shankara

where maya is given a much more positive sense,

where the world is not to be considered identical with Brahman

in the sense that it's not really there

and Brahman is the only reality which exists,

but rather that the world is maya or is illusory

only in the sense that we do not see it to be one with Brahman

just as it is.

The seeing of its oneness with Brahman

does not involve its disappearance.

And if it does,

then we've got not a non-dualistic doctrine at all,

we've got an extremely dualistic doctrine.

Because, after all,

if there is the seeing of an illusion,

supposing you say what you see as the illusion

isn't really there,

but you can't deny the fact that you see it.

And then if that seeing of it has no basis in reality,

if that in turn is an illusion,

and the illusion that one sees an illusion is an illusion,

then you've got a principle

that is fundamentally distinct from the supreme reality

and in a way stands against it,

is not explained by it,

is not grounded in it.

And therefore this is a highly dualistic form of thought.

And as a result,

all fundamental dualisms lead to

consequences in feeling and in conduct

which are world-hating.

And this seems to me

why there are trends in modern Hinduism

to be excessively spiritual.

to regard

all sense knowledge

as basically evil

in the sense of being fundamentally

and I mean fundamentally unreal.

And this, in other words,

is what I wanted to indicate

about these trends in modern Hinduism

which I do not feel

are representative at all

of either Shankara's doctrine

or the doctrine of the Upanishads.

upon which the whole tradition of Hinduism is based.

Now then, today,

I want to go on to the subject of Buddhism.

Buddhism originates in India

somewhere between 6 and 500 BC.

There is always some conjecture about the exact dating of individuals at this time.

But it was during this period that there lived a man called Gotama.

And Gotama was the son of a king or perhaps tribal chieftain

who lived very close to modern Nepal in the north of India.

And Buddha is a title given to this man.

It wasn't his proper name, just as Christ is not, as it were, the surname of Jesus.

As when we say Jesus Christ, we should correctly say Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Anointed One.

And in the same way, one should say not Gotama Buddha, but Gotama the Buddha.

For Buddha means an awakened one.

A man who woke up, who, in other words, you must understand this term within the whole Hindu tradition,

a man who is no longer spellbound by Maya,

by the seeming separateness of all the things in this world.

That's one of the forms of Maya.

And so, a Buddha is not a unique historical character.

There can be, and it is supposed that there have been, innumerable Buddhas.

But the idea of a Buddha is related to the Hindu idea of an avatar,

which means an incarnation of the Godhead in human form.

Buddhists don't think of a Buddha as an incarnation of the Godhead,

because they, although not rejecting the idea of God or gods,

relegate all gods to the world of Maya, to the world of relative reality.

And in this sense, a Buddha is felt in some way to be superior even to the gods.

Let's put it in this way. Perhaps some of you have seen what is a sort of fundamental illustration of the principles of Buddhism,

a diagram or map-like thing called the Wheel of Life.

And in Tibetan versions of the Wheel of Life, you will notice that the Wheel is divided into six realms.

And these six realms include human beings, gods, or perhaps angels would be a better term for devas,

spirits of wrath called Ashuras, personifications of the destructive forces of nature,

animals, then what are called Naraka or purgatories,

pretta or tormented, frustrated spirits with tiny mouths and immense bellies,

having, in other words, immense appetite but very little means of satisfying it.

And then again, humans.

And the basic idea of Buddhism is that awakening, Buddhahood, can be attained only from the human state,

deliverance from the vicious circle which the wheel represents,

life considered as a vicious circle.

The gods are too powerful and too happy to concern themselves to be delivered.

At the opposite extreme, the people in the Narakas, the tormented souls in purgatory, as it were, are too miserable,

the animals too dumb, the Ashuras too angry, the pretas too frustrated.

You can take this wheel, as a matter of fact, not as referring to any actual worlds other than ours of ghosts or gods and purgatories,

but you can take these six realms as representing states of the human mind,

and the human state as representing even-mindedness, what is called in Sanskrit Upeksha, equanimity.

Now, when it is said then that one can become a Buddha only from the human state,

it means, you see, that a Buddha stands above the gods as being released from the wheel.

In very popular Buddhism, of course, as in popular Hinduism,

the idea of the wheel is taken rather literally.

It is, in other words, believed that the individual passes from life to life.

And it's rather funny that although Buddhism actually denies the existence of an individual soul as an enduring reality,

nevertheless, in Buddhist countries it is popularly believed that some sort of equivalent of the soul

passes from life to life, and that if your present life is miserable, it is a result of foolish actions in the former life.

But if in this life you act wisely, your birth in the next life is to be more fortunate,

and you may get up, of course, to the heaven worlds, the world of the gods.

But human birth is the thing that is always regarded as most fortunate.

Because you can be tied to the wheel not only by chains of iron, that is to say, by acting wrongly,

you can also be bound by chains of gold, that is, by acting wisely so as to inherit good fruits.

Now, of course, very sophisticated Buddhists, not only in modern times but in ancient times,

did not take this idea of reincarnation literally.

They looked upon it in quite a different way,

and just as they regarded the six worlds as states of the human mind,

so they regarded reincarnation as something happening in this life.

Those of you who've read T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets will remember the passage, perhaps, where he says

that those who have just left the platform of a station on a railway train are not those who will arrive at any destination.

Those who, in other words, walked in at the door of the room and are now sitting down in chairs

are not the same people as those who stepped in at the door.

We are, in other words, constantly changing.

Just as we know, physiologically speaking, that our bodies are in all their molecular structure

completely changed every seven years or so, so that we are, as it were, not enduring entities

but rather something like a university where the faculty and the students and the very buildings themselves

may change completely within a span of years, and yet somehow the university or something by way of a pattern goes on.

And so, in this sense, freedom from reincarnation would be, by very sophisticated Buddhists, interpreted as freedom from the illusion

that the person who came in at the door is the same one now sitting in a chair.

And that, in its turn, signifies freedom from an emotional habit, the habit of grasping at one's own life,

at seeking for continuity.

And, you see, the idea of continuity in Buddhist philosophy is that we desire continuity in order to perpetuate our past.

In our past, in other words, we have accumulated various things, experiences, material goods, knowledge, virtues, power, so on.

The desire for continuity is the desire for the perpetuation of a past self or string of selves with which we identify ourselves.

Buddhist insight involves the recognition that the past is perpetually vanishing.

There really is no past to continue.

And, therefore, to cling to it, to identify oneself with it, is to perpetuate an illusion resulting in incessant frustration,

resulting indeed in that very vicious circle which the symbol of the wheel represents.

Now, Gotama made it very easy to summarize his teaching.

He was really quite an adept in what we call mnemonics,

in putting things in simple forms so that they could easily be remembered.

And he summed up the whole of his doctrine in what is called the Fourfold Noble Truths.

And, although it becomes sometimes awfully boring to read fundamental texts on Buddhism,

which just go over these things again and again,

I think it's only boring if one goes over them in a very formal way that these texts adopt.

Really, it's a very skillful outline of the nature of Buddhism.

And it's based on an old medical formula.

In ancient India, as in almost all ancient cultures,

every activity was ceremonialized.

And when a physician came to pay his call, he gave his diagnosis in a ceremonial way.

He made four pronouncements.

The first pronouncement was the name of the disease.

The second, the cause of the disease.

The third, the curability of the disease.

Can it be cured? Yes or no.

And if it can be cured, the fourth pronouncement is the giving of the prescription.

And that's exactly the form of Gotama's summary of his doctrine.

He said, in other words, the first principle is that mankind, and indeed all forms of life, suffer from a disease,

which is called in Sanskrit, Dukha.

And the most general translation of that word is suffering.

Dukha means suffering in all its forms.

Moral, physical, spiritual.

But Western interpreters of Buddhism have sometimes represented him as saying that life is suffering, period.

In other words, of enunciating a highly pessimistic and world-hating doctrine.

That to be alive is to suffer.

And that, in other words, the amount of joy, of positive pleasure in life, is after all so negligible that the game is not worth the candle.

Now, if one studies the method of teaching of sages in ancient India,

you have to realize that one of their fundamental pedagogical gambits is to arrive at the point of view they wish to inculcate by a zigzag method.

When we walk, you know, we put down maybe first the left foot, then we shift to the right foot, then the left foot, then the right foot.

And in this way we go along, neither to the left nor to the right, but straight ahead.

And you find, too, that in thought, that the human mind tends to go from position to position,

but it always, when it settles on any fixed position, we can always point out that that position is an extreme.

For example, in scholastic philosophy in the Middle Ages, when St. Thomas Aquinas fastened on the idea that God is fundamentally ends or being,

a Buddhist philosopher would point out that he had settled upon an extreme that has an opposite, non-being.

And that, therefore, his position needs to be corrected by the opposite position.

Somebody else should get up and say, no, no, God is not being, God is non-being.

And from this facing of opposites with each other, we arrive at what Buddhism is sometimes called the middle way.

It doesn't mean the compromise position.

The middle way is the doctrine of relativity, of showing that all positions or experiences which we can formulate must always be perceived or known by contrast with their opposites.

So, in other words, Buddha's doctrine that life is fundamentally dukkha or suffering is an antithesis directed towards those people who believe that the object of life is to attain sukha or sweetness.

He is saying, in other words, you cannot experience pleasure except in reference to non-pleasure.

And therefore, the more you pursue pleasure, the more non-pleasure will arise to frustrate you.

The more you pursue permanence, the more you will feel the impermanence of things.

And so it is, for after all, when we are bent on enjoying ourselves, we become, at that very moment, curiously aware of how rapidly time is slipping by.

When, on the other hand, we are not enjoying ourselves, we become curiously aware of how time is dragging.

So then, dukkha, arising from an exaggerated pursuit of sukha its opposite, becomes the basic characteristic of life.

And he goes on to say, in his second principle, that the cause of this is krishna or grasping, sometimes translated desire.

And indeed, I believe the word krishna does underlie etymologically the English word thirst.

Krishna is not quite desire.

For example, one's appetite.

When you haven't eaten for some time and you get hungry, this is not krishna.

It's a perfectly natural occurrence.

Krishna is based, in turn, on avidya, which means, on wisdom,

which is the way the Tibetan scholar around here, Alex Wayman, likes to translate it.

It's a good translation, on wisdom, or simply lack of insight, lack of consciousness, lack of, well, a special sense of ignorance,

not the ordinary sense of ignorance, of not being informed, but ignorance.

Action based on ignoring something.

And ignorance is not realizing the relativity of experiences, not realizing the inseparability of pleasure and pain, existence and non-existence, life and death, up and down, good and bad.

So that, as a result of such ignorance or unwisdom, people try to separate these opposites from each other,

to corral, to gain the good ones, and to exclude and annihilate the bad ones.

And as a result of that, because these opposites exist mutually, they go round in circles.

And that mutual existence of these opposites is really, seems to me, the basic meaning of the doctrine of karma, which is involved in Buddhism.

The doctrine of conditioned action, which Buddha epitomized in the phrase, this arises, that becomes.

In other words, without this on the one hand, or this on the one hand always implies that on the other.

Good on the one hand implies bad on the other, and so on.

And so, if a person becomes involved in karma, involved in conditioned action leading to a vicious circle,

if he is ignorant of the interdependence of all states of experience.

So then the third truth, the cure of this dukkha, or suffering, is the truth about nirvana.

Nirvana is the most grossly mistranslated word in all foreign languages, probably.

Because we are early scholars of Buddhism translated it as annihilation, and nowadays nirvana means a state of being doped up to most people.

It's popularly used as being in ecstasy, or in a kind of dreamy bliss.

And nirvana doesn't mean that at all.

It's a state of being very, very wide awake.

A state of being completely aware.

But the etymology of the word is disputed.

There are several etymologies that you can offer, and so I just choose the one I like.

And that is to blow out.

As when, having tried to hold one's breath, you discover that you can't hold it.

You lose your breath by holding it.

Therefore, you expire.

You despirate.

And so, you heave a sigh of relief.

And so nirvana is the sigh of relief.

The expiration or despiration.

In other words, the giving up of the attempt to clutch at life, to hold it in a fixed form, to resist change,

to separate the good side of things from the bad side and annihilate the bad side.

It is the giving up of that fundamentally contradictory, self-contradictory kind of conduct.

And so then in the fourth truth, there is set out the Noble Eightfold Path, Buddha's prescription for Dukva.

And the Noble Eightfold Path is really in three divisions.

One of which concerns itself with understanding.

I might almost say intellectual understanding of the doctrine.

The one is concerned with conduct.

And the third part of it is concerned with state of consciousness or meditation.

To summarize them briefly, one, the first stages of the path such as a right view,

or I prefer to translate the word samyak, not so much as right,

but as perfect in the Greek sense of telos or complete.

And thus, to have a complete view is a view which does not take sides,

which takes the middle path, which in other words does not go off to extremes, and so on.

The part of the Eightfold Path that is concerned with conduct.

Buddhism is often represented as having a very exalted ethical system.

And this is true in a way it does.

But also one must recognize that the difference between Buddhism and Christianity,

as at any rate as Christianity is ordinarily taught,

is that these ethical ideas are not commandments.

They are really forms of expedient conduct.

The Buddha counseled his followers to take upon themselves certain obligations,

say of not killing, of not stealing, of not exploiting the senses,

of not getting drunk or intoxicated with poisons, not lying.

Because, not because these were against the will of God,

or against the fundamental laws of the universe,

but because they are inexpedient forms of conduct for a person who wants to wake up.

For if you get thoroughly doped up,

you are not liable to be very wide awake.

And then, finally, the end of the path,

the last stages of it are concerned with one's state of consciousness,

with being the process of what is sometimes called meditation,

or of bringing one's mind to its maximum awareness through clear recollection.

And then, finally, the attainment of what is called samadhi,

which means integrated consciousness.

Consciousness no longer under the influence of abhidya,

no longer bamboozled and fooled by the apparent separateness of things,

which are really inseparably interlinked.

And thus, samadhi could be called integrated,

a unified consciousness in which it is seen that the subject, the knower,

is inseparable from the object, the known,

that man is inseparable from the totality of life,

and so on and so forth.

So that samadhi, at the end of the Eightfold Path,

might be described as being the entry to or realization,

the making real of the state of Nirvana,

which constitutes, in turn, being a Buddha.

And that was Alan Watts with a program called The Fund.

===== Way Beyond The West - 04 - Buddhist Mysticism =====

Just this month a new book has been published by Dr. D.T. Suzuki

called Mysticism, Christian and Buddhist.

I'm not intending to devote this program to a review of this book as such,

but I call attention to it.

Incidentally, it's published by Harper's in New York for $3.50.

But I rather want to call attention to a particular theme

which the book deals with,

the theme of a peculiar type of Japanese mysticism, I suppose you'd call it,

associated primarily with the type of Buddhism which is called Shinshu.

Shinshu, or to know it by another name, Jodo, or pure land Buddhism,

is one of the most popular forms of Buddhism in the Far East,

spreading over China, Japan, down in Tibet,

originally had some following in India,

but has undergone a very marked and special type of development in Japan.

And what makes it so popular

is that in contrast,

or apparent contrast, I should say, with other forms of Buddhism,

it stands as a kind of easy way,

as distinct from a difficult way.

In Japanese technical terms,

the two types of Buddhism are respectively called Jiriki and Tariki.

Now, Ji means one's own, or self,

and Ta means other,

and Riki means power.

And so the schools of Buddhism which call themselves Jiriki,

ways of deliverance,

which one follows by one's own will,

one's own power, one's own strength.

Whereas on the other hand,

the type of Buddhism called Tariki,

is where you rely on the power of another.

And this other is, usually speaking,

if I may put it in somewhat mythological terms,

a great supramundane Buddha

known as Amitabha,

or in Japanese as Amida.

And the story goes that in incalculable ages

in the most distant past,

this great Buddha made a vow

that he would not enter into the state of complete Buddhahood

until any human being upon the face of the earth

who pronounced his name in faith

would, after his death,

be reborn in the Western paradise

over which Amitabha presides.

And find therein

far greater ease of spiritual development,

of awakening, of becoming a Buddha,

than is to be found on the face of this difficult earth.

And all this, of course, derives from the ancient Indian idea

that the present epoch of the world's unfoldment

is the darkest of dark ages,

called the Kali Yuga.

And in the Kali Yuga,

or the Mapo, as Buddhists call it,

it is peculiarly difficult

to advance towards any kind of spiritual development

because it's an age of decadence,

the end of which will witness the total destruction of the world

prior to its remanifestation in some future time.

And therefore, the story goes on to say

that this great Buddha, Amitabha,

did in course of time attain to complete Buddhahood,

signifying the fact that his vow is fulfilled

and that anyone who simply repeats the formula,

Namo Amitabhaya in Sanskrit or in Japanese,

Namo Amidabhutsu,

which is roughly translatable in English

as the name of Amitabha Buddha,

or Namo is used in Sanskrit or Japanese,

somewhat as the French say,

where they just say name,

meaning hail, I suppose, in English.

We have no real equivalent of it.

But the idea is that anybody

who repeats the name of the Buddha,

Amitabha,

in perfect faith,

will without any other effort,

any other kind of spiritual endeavor

on his own part,

however evil,

however depraved he may be,

he will be reborn after death

in this spiritual state

in which the task of becoming a Buddha

is rendered so easy

as to be, as we should say,

a perfect cinch.

And of course,

all commentators on Buddhism say,

well, this of course

is how religions degenerate.

They become popular,

high-in-the-sky selling organizations

where absolutely nothing

is required of the faithful

except an occasional contribution.

And the easier you make it

in contrast to the other sects

which make it more difficult,

the more people will flock

to your following,

the fatter the contributions will be,

and it all ends up

with a prayer wheel

where all you have to do

is make the thing revolve,

you don't even have to think about it,

and incalculable supernatural merits

are stored up on your behalf.

But it's very dangerous

to jump to conclusions of this kind

about this type of religious

or spiritual manifestation

because in practice

the Shin school of Buddhism

has had some of the most remarkable adherents

and produces a type of personality

which is known in Japan

as a myokonin.

Literally translated myokonin

means a wonderful, fine man.

That's just a literal translation

which doesn't at all convey

the sense of this kind of personality,

the myokonin.

But the myokonin,

a man like Shinran himself

founded the Shin school of Buddhism

in Japan

is a man

who has in a way

understood the profounder meaning

of the doctrine of this school.

And perhaps before I talk

about the personal characteristics

of the myokonin

I should try and indicate

what may underlie,

what may be the deeper meaning

of this seemingly decadent,

highly popular

and easy form of Buddhism.

Perhaps the best way to do this

is by means of the critique

which this particular school

uses against those

who follow the other way,

who follow the way of jiriki

or self-power.

The followers of the Shin school

would say

that a person who attempts

to make spiritual progress

by his own efforts

is battling against

the worst possible obstacle

to any progress at all.

And that is that

in thinking that he can do it himself,

he's like a person

trying to lift himself up

by his own bootstraps.

Or to put it in another way,

he suffers from the pride

of imagining

that his own will,

his own energy

is sufficient

to change himself.

After all,

if he needs changing at all,

it is precisely

the character

and the motivation

of his own will

and his own energy

that needs changing.

And how is this change

going to be achieved

by that very will

which so stands

in need of change?

To put it in the

more usual language

of this school of thought,

they say that

the average human being

is so weighted down

by karma,

that is,

if we put it

into more modern terminology

we would say,

he is so fundamentally conditioned

by his upbringing,

by his social environment,

by the temptations

of the world,

the flesh and the devil,

that there's really

nothing he can do

to make himself any better.

And everything

that he does do

is simply a manifestation

of the same conditioning,

masquerading like a wolf

in sheep's clothing.

Therefore,

if the human being

cannot transform himself,

if he is to be

transformed at all,

he must rely

on some power

greater than his own.

Now, of course,

this other power

may be represented,

figuratively speaking,

like we represent God

in the Christian tradition

as a spiritual entity

or force

or intelligence

quite other than

and apart from man,

or it may be represented

on the other hand

as other than us

in just the same way

that the functioning

of our own bodies,

the beating of the heart

and the operation

of the lungs

goes on

quite independently

of the conscious will

and is other

in that sense,

although in another sense

those unconscious

and automatic

or spontaneous

functionings

of our organism

could be understood

as more fundamentally

and truly ourselves

than the things

that go on

in our rather

superficial consciousness.

And if you interpret it

in that latter way,

the idea of

kariki

or reliance

on the power

of another

is really

reliance

on something

deeper

in yourself

than your surface

consciousness.

and that I think

is the sense

in which the

profounder followers

of the school

of Buddhistic thought

understand the doctrine.

So the Myokonin

or as I said

literally

the wonderful

fine fellow

is the kind

of personality

which

this doctrine

engenders.

Now what is he?

He's the kind

of person

who

has realized

through and through

the fallibility

of his own humanity.

He's the kind

of person

who knows himself

thoroughly

who has

a rather

wry and humorous

view

of his own

oh shall we say

his own

high motivations

and ideals.

He knows himself

thoroughly

for the rascal

that he is

and doesn't pretend

to be anything else.

And this

if that were

all the word to it

is a very likable

former fellow

from my point

of view

I always feel

uncomfortable

with people

who don't have

this realization

of their own

inherent rascality.

The people

who have

pretensions

to holiness

and righteousness

who are so

deceived

as not to know

that in their

heart of hearts

they are after all

rapacious

and selfish

human beings.

But the Myokonin

makes no bones

about this.

He knows

that's what he is

and he knows

that by the exercise

of his own will

and of his own

intention

and his own

conscious effort

he can't be

anything else.

And so there is

in him

a kind of

fundamental

honesty and

sincerity

from the start.

What he goes

on to be

beyond this

is

something a little

different

because Myokonin

is called

a marvelous

fine fellow

because somehow

or other

he does seem

to transcend

the ordinary

kind of human

rascality

to become

a truly

unselfish

a truly

human being

loving others

understanding

others

sympathizing

with others

a wonderful

compassionate

man

because he

has been

enabled

to love

himself

to accept

himself

in the

profoundest

possible

way.

For if you

translate

into

more modern

and less

symbolic

language

this idea

that

by the mere

repetition

of a formula

by the mere

act of faith

in the power

of a transcendent

divine being

one is able

to be saved

or made

a Buddha

or perfected

just as you

are by an

act of magic

which lifts

you up

and transfers

you to another

realm.

If you

translate that

as I said

into a more

contemporary

way of talking

it would be

to say

something like

this

that the

intent

of the

symbology

is to

say

that the

condition

of growing

psychologically

and spiritually

is to let

yourself alone

and not to

fight against

what you are.

The more

you try

to make

yourself great

to make

yourself

unselfish

to make

yourself

loving

you are

simply

tying yourself

psychically

into a knot

a kind

of paralyzed

state

which makes

it impossible

for you to

be anything

except as we

might say

all fall

up

but if

on the

other hand

you let

go of

yourself

and do

not try

to change

yourself

you relieve

yourself

from this

inattention

you as it

were unblock

the conduits

of psychic

energy

within yourself

by not

straining

on them

and are

therefore

enabled

to grow

naturally

like a tree

or a plant

and this

is exactly

the attitude

of the

I think

that one

of the

most

fascinating

of these

characters

is one

who

as a matter

of fact

did not

actually

belong

to the

Shin

school

of Buddhism

although he

has in many

ways

entirely the

same

spirit

because at

root

there is not

so much

difference

between this

profounder

understanding

of the

Shin

school

and other

types

of Buddhism

such as

Zen

is ordinarily

understood

to represent

the extreme

of the

Jiriki

way

of

fighting

along

by one's

own

strength

but the

intent

of the

Jiriki

emphasis

of Zen

the self

power

the

willful

striving

sense

is something

like this

to

exert

one's

will

to the

utmost

in order

to realize

its

futility

to make

the most

desperate

attempts

to change

one's

motivation

and one's

conditioning

in order

to discover

that in

the last

analysis

it can't

be done

and that

it is

merely

a futile

struggle

to lift

yourself

up by

your own

bootstraps

and so

as a result

of this

the Jiriki

form of

Buddhism

produces

very often

the same

type of

personality

as

the

Tariki

and one

of the

most

marvelous

examples

of this

spirit

is a

monk

or

I'd rather

call him

a hermit

and poet

by the name

of Ryokan

who lived

between

and 1831

a man

who is

extraordinary

in all

the annals

of

sagehood

and sanctity

for the

reason that

everybody

loved him

I don't

think he

had any

enemies

at all

and this

is really

a very

remarkable

achievement

after all

it's so

easy to

be so

holy

that you

are

a

challenge

to the

world

and that

everybody

feels

uncomfortable

in your

presence

feels

accused

by your

sanctity

and given

a bad

conscience

and the

result

of that

you get

loathed

you make

all sorts

of enemies

and finally

you get

crucified

but it's

really a

very remarkable

achievement

indeed

to be

all that

and lovable

too

to be

without enemies

the friend

of everybody

and yet

involving

absolutely

no compromise

with one's

integrity

and honesty

such a man

was Ryokan

really marvelous

and many

many stories

are told

about him

and I think

these anecdotes

about him

describe his

personality

more delightfully

than anything

I could say

by way of

a character

analysis

or comment

in that fashion

first of all

it must be

understood

that the

myokonimora

type of person

like Ryokan

is one who

has truly

become again

as a child

he's not

senile

he's not

in second

childhood

in that sense

but a person

who is

really full

of a genuine

wonderful life

who has

so accepted

himself

so let go

of himself

is so

not pretending

and gives himself

no airs and graces

that he can relax

and be perfectly

natural

and so the story

is told

that one day

Ryokan was

going along

baking his food

and he met a friend

who invited him

to spend the night

at his home

well in the room

where he stayed

there was a picture

of a tiger

hanging on the wall

and Ryokan

looked for a long

time at the picture

and was so

intrigued by it

that after a while

he came to feel

that he himself

was a tiger

he fell to the floor

and all

running around

on all fours

he growled

at the tiger

in the picture

he said

and the tiger

seemed to look

at him

and answer him

Ryokan again

shouted

and the tiger

seemed to answer

and appeared

to be going

to approach him

and Ryokan

getting a great deal

of fun out

of this game

repeated it

many times

but just then

a maid

of the house

appeared

and was

quite astonished

when she saw

the priest

on the floor

for a moment

she didn't understand

what had happened

and was very frightened

and then she

recognized him

oh Ryokan

Sama

so it is you

who frightened me

so much

what are you

doing there

startled by her voice

Ryokan

stopped his game

of imitation

and shamefacedly

spoke to her

on his knees

did you see

what I was doing

he asked

you did

oh that annoys

me very much

but good mate

please keep it a secret

otherwise

I won't know

what to do

for people

will think

I'm crazy

and then

there's another story

which tells

of

servant boy

who came

to the little

hermitage

where he lived

in the mountain

bringing a letter

from one of his

friends

and just at that

moment

Ryokan

was absorbed

in trying

to juggle

his begging bowl

on the top

of the pole

when the messenger

called out

and delivered

his letter

Ryokan

stopped his juggling

for a brief interval

glanced over the letter

and wrote his answer

the bearer

made his departure

and Ryokan

resumed his play

his bowl

time after time

slipped down

to the floor

but

again and again

he had set it up

on top of the pole

many hundred times

did he struggle

to accomplish this feat

and after some time

the messenger returned

Ryokan

was so engrossed

in his play

that he felt annoyed

at this interruption

and did not pay

any attention

to his visitor

while the boy

waited for some time

and finally called out

in a loud voice

Ryokan

look here

what does this answer mean

my master

is angry with me

and has ordered me

to ask you

to take back

the letter you wrote

before

and give me

your real answer

please do so

Ryokan

then had

taken the intruder

and opened the letter

he had written

only a short time before

and what was his surprise

when he read

the bowl

turns round and round

he broke into laughter

oh dear me

excuse me

I've made a mistake

he exclaimed

he then wrote

another letter

but as his mind

was filled with thoughts

of the bowl

and its play

the answer didn't come easily

the great delight

of Ryokan

was playing with children

in the village

where he went down

to bake his food

and one fine autumn day

when he was going

quietly through the village

he was suddenly disturbed

by the sound of a voice

apparently coming

from a persillin tree

and turning his eyes

to the place

where the sound came from

he discovered a boy

clinging in great fright

to the topmost branches

and crying for help

oh wait a moment

my boy

he said

I'll help you down

and then I'll pick

some of the fruit

for you

Ryokan

brought the boy

safely to the ground

and then began

to pick the coveted fruit

he plucked one persimmon

and was about

to hand it to the child

when he decided

that it would be well

to taste it first

in order to give away

the very best

the first persimmon

was therefore

thrust into his own mouth

mmm

how sweet

he exclaimed

he picked another

and again stuffed it

into his mouth

mmm

good

again and again

persimmons found their way

into his mouth

accompanied by the exclamation

mmm

sweet

how sweet

to himself

oh dear me

he said

pardon me

do forgive me

I shall pick the best

for you now

the very best of all

and as many as you like

saying this

Ryokan

dropped persimmons

to the boy

one by one

all red

and very sweet

and then there was

once someone

who told him

that

if you picked up

money on the road

it made you feel

very happy

so one day

as he was traveling

back to his hermitage

he thought he would try

to see what it was like

accordingly

he took some of the coins

which he had begged

from the villagers

and let them drop to the ground

he then picked them up

one by one

but though he did this

many times

he didn't experience

any particular feeling

of joy

I can't understand it

he said

they tell me

that it is pleasant

surely they wouldn't

deceive me

he tried it again

and again

but always without

any result

in the process

of dropping

and picking up

his money

he gradually lost

all he had

in the grass

for a long time

he had to search

for the money

but he found it at last

and then with a cry

of joy

he exclaimed

ah

I understand now

to find money

is certainly a delight

and once

when he was invited

to stay

in the home

of some friends

they had to go out

and they asked him

to watch the house

and he got kind of sleepy

that the cat

was going to sleep

on his lap

and suddenly

he heard a funny noise

he thought it was the cat

but there was the cat

asleep on his lap

what was that sound

he stole quietly

to the paper screen

which separated

the veranda

from his room

and peeped through it

with childish curiosity

and there in his room

he saw a shabbily

dressed man

searching in a chest

of drawers

and taking clothes

out of it

uh oh

he's a sneak thief

thought Ryokan

of course Ryokan

didn't want a thief

to take clothes

from his friend's house

so he made up his mind

to frighten the robber

and drive him away

he therefore crept

into the room

and stood behind

the thief

and the robber

utterly ignorant of this

went out of the room

with a package of clothes

and hastened into another room

to look for more

and Ryokan

followed stealthily

stepping always about

ten feet behind him

and when the robber

turned to the left

he also quickly

went to the left

and if the thief

turned to the right

Ryokan did the same

always just behind him

another slight turn

brought the robber

almost in Ryokan's direction

but the priest

was so quick

that the thief

didn't see him

it seemed to Ryokan

as if he were playing

a game of blind man's buff

so absorbed

did he become in the game

that before he knew it

the thief had slipped away

with a stolen package

the priest

suddenly came to himself

and realized

what a serious mistake

he had made

but his concern

was not so much

over the lost things

his heart was full

of pity for the thief

as he thought

of his shabby clothes

and his sad face

late in the evening

when the family returned

and were full of dismay

when they saw

what had happened

Ryokan just sat in silence

and smiled as usual

among his written effects

was found this curious

little document

it just said

favorite things

cotton cap

towel

paper

fan

money

ball

and marbles

necessities

bamboo hat

gloves

stick

bell

things for travel

some clothes

an oil paper cape

a bowl

and a bag

don't forget to read this

before starting

otherwise you will suffer

from want

he liked to smoke too

he was very fond

of tobacco

and he always had

a shabby old skin

tobacco pouch

which he kept

his tobacco in

very often it was empty

then he would go out

on the streets

with his tobacco pouch

tied at the end

of a long string

down his back

people knew at once

what he meant

when they saw

the pouch dangling

behind him

and would hasten

to fill it with tobacco

among other things

Ryokan was very famous

as a calligrapher

his handwriting

was greatly prized

and there was a barber

to whom he used to go

to be shaved

who very much

wanted a specimen

in his writing

to hang on a kakemono

a hanging scroll

on his wall

but Ryokan just

wouldn't give it to him

well one day

in the middle

of shaving his head

the barber stopped

and left him half shaved

and said

now I won't go on

and finish shaving

unless you give me

the piece of writing

I want

so immediately

Ryokan wrote it for him

and then the barber

finished shaving him

the barber couldn't read

and some days later

when somebody

who could read

came into his shop

said why

this inscription is incomplete

there's a word missing

so next time

Ryokan came by

the barber said

but you didn't write

the full inscription

oh no I know

he said

I didn't write

the full inscription

because you didn't

shave all of my head

the missing word

you will find

I've written

the same inscription

but put the missing word

in twice

at the home

of an old widow

who always gives me

extra bean curd

when I need it

such

by anecdotes

is the temper

of a man

who is

profoundly at home

in the world

difficult to think about

difficult to talk about

because to praise

such a character

is to tempt one

to imitate him

and one can only

imitate him

by not doing so

at all

but by being

just completely

one's self

that was

Alan Watts

with a discussion

of Buddhist

mysticism

from the

Philosophy

East and West

series

a discussion

of Buddhist

mysticism

for information

on the Alan Watts

radio series

and also

some

um

===== Way Beyond The West - 05 - Return To The Forest =====

Electronic University presents Return to the Forest with Alan Watts.

During the past few months, I have been studying an extraordinarily interesting paper written by Joseph Campbell,

whose name will be familiar to many of you as the author of a book on mythology called The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Joseph Campbell is also the editor of the posthumous works of Heinrich Zimmer,

which have been published by the Bollingen Foundation.

And as a matter of fact, an extraordinary amount of those works is his own original writing,

since they were compiled from Heinrich Zimmer's notes.

But the particular paper I mention now was presented, I think, in 1957 in August

at the Aronofs Conference in Ascona in Switzerland,

a meeting of scholars and philosophers and psychologists and scientists,

which gathers every year under the auspices of a lady who has for a long time been interested in the work of C.G. Jung.

And the particular paper which Joseph Campbell presented at this conference was called The Symbol Without Meaning.

It isn't published in this country as yet,

and only appears in the Aronof Jahrbuch for 1957, which is published in Switzerland.

And I expect it will shortly be forthcoming in the excerpts from the papers delivered at those conferences,

which are published by the Bollingen Foundation.

Now this particular paper, The Symbol Without Meaning,

is an exploration of an extraordinary phenomenon in the history of religions,

which you might call the beginning, the development, and the dissolution of cosmologies,

of great views of the world under religio-philosophical auspices,

which are the, as it were, languages about the universe devised by various cultures.

Now he distinguishes two great phases in man's religious history,

which he equates with two styles of culture,

which predate our own technological style of culture.

And these are, respectively, the hunting cultures and the agrarian cultures.

He points out that the kind of religion which is characteristic of a hunting culture

is what now generally goes by the name of shamanism.

Although this particular word is distinctive of Mongolian styles of so-called primitive religion,

nevertheless, the phenomenon known as shamanism is found distributed all over the planet.

Shamanism is characterized by the fact that it's a very individualistic type of religiousness.

That is to say, the religious experience of the shaman

is not something which he gets from an authoritative priesthood.

It's not something handed down from generation to generation

for which he goes to a human teacher.

The shaman is a solitary

medicine man,

man of power,

who invariably has to find his experience for himself.

Usually it is by

going alone into

the dangers of the forests or jungles,

or

holding himself up

for some days in his own hut.

and undergoing some kind of ordeal,

not necessarily on the physical level,

so much as on the psychic level.

Going through an adventure

in

the psychic world,

the world of spirits.

And when he comes through the ordeal,

he comes out

and initiates

of power.

The reason why

one must attach so much importance

to the individual character

of this experience

is that it goes along

with the general style of a hunting culture

in which

every individual man

contains the whole culture.

That is to say,

it's not the kind of culture

in which specialized functions are needed,

in which there is a division of labor.

The hunter

spends much of his time

on his own,

and he has to learn

to take care of himself

in the forests

without any

other human aid.

And although there are

societies

and social groups,

they are composed of men

with their women and children,

men who are

equals

because of the type of

life that they follow.

Now, an entirely different

state of affairs

arises

when we get a settled

agrarian culture.

Here,

because the style of life

is more complex,

the division of labor

is required.

And you begin to get

not only a separation

of human beings

into various

castes

and various functions,

but also the necessity

of devising

far more complex

complex languages

and institutions

to provide communication

between them.

And this always involves

a very, very powerful

socialization

of the individual.

Spending his time

more and more

in a settled place

and therefore having

greater intercourse

with other people,

he has to learn

to think in accordance

with common patterns,

whether these patterns

be based on

language

or on

the

type of work,

the geographical

features

of the

area

which he inhabits,

whatever they may be.

Each individual

has to subordinate

himself

more and more

to

a socially

implanted

view of life

because only

under these conditions

is communication

between the individuals

possible.

And so it comes about

that the style

of religiousness

which one associates

with an agrarian

as distinct

from a hunting culture

is a traditional

and authoritative

style of religion

in which the individual

derives his experience

from a tradition

usually embodied

in a priesthood.

And Campbell

goes on to point out

that the first

historical

instances

of the

appearance

of the

familiar

circle symbol

which is called

in Sanskrit

the

mandala

is associated

with

the agrarian

cultures.

No example

of this kind

of symbol

is found

archaeologically

prior to

the

development

of

an agrarian

community.

I might say

something about

the mandala

as a

world

mythological symbol

although anybody

who's studied

the works

of C.G.

Jung

is very familiar

with it.

The mandala

is essentially

a circle

usually divided

into four quarters

or multiples

of four

and has in it

as it were

the general theme

of the integration

of

a community.

It is not

unlike

for example

a stockaded

village

or city

a ring

of defense

around the

center

and

Campbell

shows

that

the

symbol

represents

the formation

of the kind

of society

we're talking

divided into

four

groups

just as

in medieval

European society

we had

the spiritual

power

the priesthood

the temporal

power

the nobility

the commons

and the

serfs

so in

ancient

Indian society

we had

the

Pramana

caste

the priesthood

the Kshatriya

caste

rulers

and soldiers

the Vaishya

caste

the commons

or merchants

and the

Shudra caste

the laborers

so these

four

castes

represented

as it were

represented

by the

four

divisions

of the

mandala

the

common

integrated

encircled

community

the important

point that he

makes about

its religiousness

is as I

said

that it

was an

experience

carried

down by

tradition

an

experience

in which

a priestly

caste

was the

authority

and

which

had to

be

a

common

experience

just because

the whole

style of

life in a

community

of this

kind

depended

upon

communication

and

we can

communicate

with each

other

by virtue

not only

of sharing

a common

language

but also

more importantly

by sharing

a common

view of

the world

a common

type of

sensuous

experience

which is of

course why

those who

have

the type

of sensuous

experiences

which we

call

hallucinations

and illusions

do not fit

easily into

a community

but every

so often

his paper

goes on

to show

social

cosmologies

views of

the world

held in

common

by societies

tend to

break up

and

actually

he starts

the paper

in the

15th century

when through

the expansion

of the

western world

through

not only

exploration

of the

surface

of the

globe

but greater

knowledge

of astronomy

begins to

break up

the

geocentric

view

of

the

Ptolemaic

universe

the view

of the

world

under which

Christianity

itself

had come

to birth

and this

he looks

upon as

a breaking

up

of the

mandala

a breaking

up

of

the

communal

agreed

stable

picture of

the world

by means

of which

men were

able to

communicate

with each

other

and a

breaking

up

therefore

which

involves

a

disruption

of all

our

means

of

communication

and a

throwing

of

culture

into

fundamental

confusion

it is

perhaps

if this

be true

just

because

of the

breaking

up

of the

unified

world

view

and an

entry

into the

confused

world

of the

relativistic

world

of modern

thought

that

the

western

peoples

have

become

interested

in

other

and

former

attempts

to deal

with

life

as it

must be

lived

when

the

mandala

as it

were

breaks

up

for

after

all

the

idea

of

going

beyond

the

communal

view

of the

world

and

somehow

managing

to get

along

even

still

in

modern

Indian

society

that

when

a man

has

done

his

work

in

society

and

is

able

to

hand

over

his

caste

duties

whether

they

be

priestly

or

political

or

professional

to his

son

or

sons

that

as I

think

you all

know

he

as it

were

abandons

the

world

and

gives

up

we

speak

of that

usually

as

holy

man

or

hermit

or

spiritual

devotee

of some

kind

but what

is of

particular

interest

in this

connection

is that

the

abandonment

of caste

is also

called

entering

into the

state

of

vanaprastha

in Sanskrit

means a

forest

dweller

and in

this

sense

the man

who gives

upcast

goes

back

as it

were

to

the

style

of

life

that

predates

the

agrarian

culture

he

goes

as it

were

back

to

shamanism

and

this

is true

not only

in

Indian

culture

but

also

in

Chinese

for

whereas

the

Confucian

way of

life

represents

the

community

delten

shan

that is

what

the

mandala

corresponds

to

the

enclosed

nice

little

tight

little

world

in

which

we

feel

we

understand

each

other

and

understand

our

environment

in

China

the

Taoist

philosophy

is

the

philosophy

corresponding

to

the

Indian

search

for

liberation

or

moksha

liberation

that is

to say

from

the

socially

conditioned

view

of the

world

and

there

is

evidence

to

show

that

the

Taoist

solitary

sage

has

some

sort

of

ancestral

connection

with the

shaman

and it

is possible

that the

words

shramana

in Sanskrit

and

shaman

in Chinese

both have

their origin

in the

term

shaman

and the

shramana

indicates

the

sannyasin

the man

who has

given up

social

life

in the

world

and

likewise

the

shaman

in

Chinese

is

the

lonely

sage

in quest

of

immortality

who has

gone by

himself

into the

mountains

and the

forests

of course

we should

not suppose

that the

entry into

the stage

of

Vana

Prastha

or the

return to

the

forest

by the

Taoist

sage

is in

the

strict

sense

of the

word

a

regression

it's

no more

a regression

than when

we speak

of

a wise

man

as one

who has

become

again

as a

child

we don't

mean that

he has

literally

become

childish

that he

has forgotten

how to

think and

speak and

behave in

human

society

and in

exactly the

same way

the person

who enters

in the

stage of

Vana

Prastha

does not

as it

were

become a

wolf

man

a

sort

of

wild

savage

who runs

around in

the jungle

naked and

wears no

clothes and

eats his food

off the ground

with his teeth

he doesn't do

anything of the

kind

but there's some

sort of analogy

in other words

between

going back to the

shaman's religion

going back to the

life of the hunter

and at the same

time going

beyond

the place

where we find

ourselves in a

society

where the

worldview

is a

conditioned

social

pattern

now in

what sense

and in

just what

way

is this

going

beyond

and

likewise

how does

it apply

to our

own

situation

where we

are not

as it

were

going

voluntarily

beyond

a

nice

clear

authoritative

and comfortable

view of the

world

but rather

being forced

beyond it

by the

very pressure

of events

by the

uncertainty

of our

times

and by

the

confusion

and

instability

of

modern

thought

which offers

us no

secure

and

humanly

comfortable

picture of

the

universe

well first

of all

it must be

obvious

that

one of the

things that

is principally

involved

by

a social

system

of

is a

form

of

what

Korzybski

has

called

time

binding

the

whole

possibility

of

thought

and

language

involves

a

codification

of

experience

it

involves

a

form

of

thinking

about

life

which is

basically

after all

description

now

description

is

a way

of

coding

putting

into

symbols

the

events

that

go

by

us

and

as

we

begin

to

be

able

to

put

events

into

symbols

we

develop

most

peculiar

powers

of

memory

it

becomes

much

easier

to

recollect

and

to

formalize

what

has

happened

to

us

and

along

with

this

naturally

there's

the

ability

to

project

our

recollection

into

thoughts

about

the

future

course

of

events

and

this

apparently

is

something

which

primitive

very

primitive

types

of

human

beings

which

animals

do

not

do

to

any

great

extent

but

the

price

that

is

always

paid

for

this

ability

to

describe

and

to

prefigure

what

is

going

to

happen

to

us

is

that

by

being

able

to

think

about

all

sorts

of

future

possibilities

to

experience

the

emotions

appropriate

to

those

possibilities

as if

they

were

present

happenings

in

other

words

the

civilized

man

tends

to be

in a

state

of

chronic

worry

and

fear

and

anxiety

because

he's

always

confronted

not

with

the

simple

actuality

of

what

is

happening

before

him

but

with

the

innumerable

possibilities

of

what

might

happen

and

since

because

of

this

his

emotional

existence

tends

to be

in a

chronic

state

of

anxiety

and

tension

he

loses

increasingly

the

ability

to

relate

to

the

concrete

world

as

it

manifests

itself

to

him

in

the

actual

present

in

which

he

lives

he

becomes

so tied

up

inside

that

as

it

were

the

channels

of

his

sensibility

become

blocked

he

gets

a

kind

of

neurological

sclerosis

the

kind

of

inability

to

give

himself

to

be

spontaneous

to

be

alive

with

full

joyous

abandon

thus

the

more

civilized

we

become

the

more

stuffy

we

get

and

therefore

the

various

ways

of

liberating

oneself

from

society

of

entering

what the

Indians

call

Vana

Prastha

the

life

of

forest

dweller

going

back

to

the

forest

when a

person

reaches a

certain

point in

life

when he

says

now look

here

I've had

enough

of all

this

I'm

simply

tired

of

making

life

not

in the

least

bit

worth

living

by

going

through

the

horrors

as to

what

might

happen

of

going

through

all

this

in the

name

of

efficiency

and

membership

in the

community

let me

for a

while

get away

from it

all

and find

out

what the

score

is

for

myself

I'm

tired

of being

told

what I

ought

to

believe

I'm

tired

of being

told

how I

ought

to

see

how I

ought

to

behave

how I

ought

and so

these

institutions

of going

back

as it

were

to

the

shaman

state

of

religion

of

getting

away

from

the

community

interpretation

of

how

one

ought

to

think

and

feel

arise

in

very

many

great

cultures

of

the

past

now

they

arise

therefore

again

today

and

it's

perhaps

impossible

and

misleading

to

try

and

have

what I

would

call

authoritative

attitude

about

this

phase

of

man's

spiritual

exploration

sometimes

for example

when a

person

wants to

find out

who he

really

is

he

goes

to

a

psychiatrist

and

occasionally

he

will

find

the

kind

of

psychiatrist

who

does

not

have

an

authoritative

view

of what

human

health

is

and

who

simply

helps

the

individual

to

psychotherapists

who

think

they

know

what

an

integrated

healthy

and

normal

human

being

is

and

who

have

a

whole

theoretic

pattern

of

what

is

believed

to be

the

actual

fact

or

what

are

believed

to be

the

actual

facts

of

human

nature

the

actual

design

of

the

psyche

and

they

attempt

consciously

or

subconsciously

to

wangle

the

patient

into

accounts

books

about

authorities

about

their

ways

of

liberation

which

in

many

cases

however

have

tended

to

harden

into

an

orthodoxy

and to

present a

traditional

spiritual

experience

just as if

they were

the kind

of spiritual

experiences

which it

is the

function of

that social

officer

the priest

to impart

and thus

when we

get

swamis

representing

an

orthodox

interpretation

of

Indian

moksha

or

liberation

or

when we

get

even

zen

masters

representing

perhaps

an

orthodox

buddhist

experience

or

seeming to

represent

one

we

should

be

suspicious

because

these

are the

kind

of

experiences

which

cannot

be

transmitted

which

for

their

very

nature

are

something

which

one

finds

out

for

oneself

and

which

if

they

could

be

transmitted

would

not

be

the

very

thing

which

they

are

intended

to

be

because

they

are

discoverers

of

something

authentic

of

something

genuine

of

something

which is

first-hand

between

oneself

and

one's

universe

and

thus

it's

in the

nature

of

things

that

they

can't

be

codified

they

can't

be

made

a

factor

in

social

communication

and

so

it

is

that

it

is

in a

way

fortunate

that

we

here

in

the

western

world

do

enlightenment

more

and

more

of

us

I

think

tend

to

feel

that

we

are

all

alone

together

whistling

in the

dark

that

we

haven't

a

saviour

there

is

no

statesman

clever enough

to

understand

the

frightful

tangle

of

international

affairs

or really

to do

anything

very much

about

it

there

is

our

own

resources

and

this

seems

to

me

to

be

a

perfectly

excellent

state

of

affairs

so

that

we

become

in a

symbolic

sense

back

in the

forest

like

the

hunter

of

old

who

was

nobody

around

him

to

tell

him

how

he

ought

to

feel

and

how

he

ought

to

use

his

senses

and

must

therefore

make

his

own

exploration

and

find

out

for

himself

but

you

know

when

you

study

the

records

of

these

self

discoveries

the

fascinating

thing

is

that

there

seems

to

be

such

a

common

measure

of

agreement

between

all

those

who

find

out

for

themselves

and

yet

always

the

way

in which

he

has

to

find

out

is

his

own

secret

place

and

asks

for

direct

encounter

with

the

world

and

no

longer

as it

were

looks

out

of

the

corner

of

his

eyes

to

see

if

everybody

else

is

doing

the

same

thing

getting

the

same

results

it

is

in

this

sense

that

the

person

becomes

in

the

truest

sense

of

the

authoritative

source

of

life

as

distinct

from

a

person

in

its

original

sense

a

mask

a

role

that

he

is

playing

in

a

society

===== Way Beyond The West - 06 - Talks With Mrs. Huxley =====

So we're going to start out with Alan Watts.

You're going to hear This Timeless Moment, one of my favorites.

Alan Watts talks with Laura Huxley about her biography of her husband, Aldous Huxley.

And this interview was recorded by KPFA at the home of Alan Watts in Sausalito.

Laura, I've been reading your book, This Timeless Moment, with extraordinary fascination.

I don't think I've ever read a biography quite like that.

Because it's not a complete biography.

It's the story of the last days, in a way, or the last years of Aldous Huxley.

But I can't think of anybody else who has been written about by his widow.

And a case where the book was so very largely concerned with the process of death.

And with a highly intelligent form of dying.

There is this, I remember, a story which is supposed to have been told of Goethe.

That when he was dying, somebody called, wanted to see him.

But the maid answering the door said,

But the master is busy dying.

And our culture is one in which death is invariably something swept under the carpet.

We pretend it doesn't really happen.

Yes.

And, therefore, there is no realization that dying is an art.

And it's an adventure, too, you know.

It's maybe, I don't know, but maybe it's the only chance that we have that one.

We don't know.

It is.

And I think, as you tell the story, you acted as a marvelous high priestess in helping someone through this adventure.

Well, Aldous had done the same thing for his first wife, Maria, you see.

And that, of course, gave me the inspiration.

And he spoke very often of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which I haven't read completely, but, I mean, I know the basic assumption.

And, I mean, throughout his work, he spoke about this fact of paying attention.

You remember, in Ireland.

Well, the minor birds call out here and now, boys, attention.

You know, I love so much your seminar, your tapes, and that book is the best presentation of that book that I could help to hear.

Yes, I think that was a very great book, Ireland.

The problem is that I found in giving lectures, if I announce a title for a lecture, and then give a lecture on a different subject,

even though it may be a perfectly good lecture, people are somehow discombobulated.

I think you always give a lecture on a different subject, Ireland, you always do that.

I can talk about the same thing in ever so many different ways.

But the point is, when Aldous put out Ireland, he put it out in the form of a novel.

That's right.

And people have very fixed ideas of what a novel is supposed to be, and they had identified Aldous to a great extent as a novelist.

And then, when it so turned out that Ireland was a sociological textbook, almost, a sociological blueprint in the form of a novel,

they said, well, he's really sermonizing with a few entertaining bits added just because of the novel form.

Yes, I mean, it would have really, I think, been better if he would have written it straight as a manual for living and loving and dying,

because then it wouldn't have, the public would not have expected a novel, which apparently, as a novel, it's not this very best.

No. No, but that's ridiculous. It's quite obvious to anyone who reads it that it wasn't really intended to be a novel.

Well, it's why it's obvious to you, Ireland. It's different, you know.

And, I mean, in conclusion, very few people have read it.

And there are so many sequences, there are so many methods which are so practical for here and now.

It would be wonderful if we could apply only a few of them, we would all feel better.

But, you know, I have really sort of a crusade against useless suffering.

And in that book, there is so much about suffering which is not necessary, it's not creative, it's just, just nothing.

It doesn't bring any enlightenment, any compassion.

A great number of young people are reading this book today.

Yes, yes.

And it has become a sort of inspiration for many of them for experiments in forming new kinds of family.

Yes.

New communities, intentional communities.

But I heard a story where Aldous was challenged about this book and said,

now, did you mean this seriously?

And he said, oh, no, it was purely an intellectual exercise.

Did he say that?

Well, he's supposed to have said that.

I didn't say that.

But what do you think about that?

You were with him while he was reading.

Well, I have to think exactly the contrary.

I don't think it was an intellectual exercise.

I mean, he might have said that as a joke.

Yes.

But he really, every sequence in that book, every method, every recipe, if you like to call it that way,

is something that most of them, at least, he experimented himself in his own life.

And he, I don't know, it was not an intellectual exercise.

The part of the novel, the writing of the novel, it was probably an intellectual exercise because he had to fit it.

Now, I realize that.

Yes, but.

Aldous also once said, when you are with savages, don't fool them with them because you will end up in the cooking pot.

And therefore, he used to know how to be very perspicacious and tactful about his public relations.

But, you know, a thing that has often occurred to me is that Aldous Huxley was one of the most highly educated men I ever ran into.

When you study the field of his interests, the scope of his interests, especially as revealed in his essays,

in, uh, he knew a great deal about the history of art.

Oh, yes.

An enormous amount about the history of science and technology.

He was fond of the theater.

He, uh, he knew about music.

He, he had an encyclopedic mind.

And he carried all this with a lovely urbanity.

So much so that I think a great many people simply didn't know how to understand him because they weren't well educated enough.

That's right.

The frame of reference was enormous.

But, for instance, I can tell you about music.

I am a violinist.

I've been trained as a violinist.

It has been the major work in my life.

And one time he mentioned a concerto.

A Vioti concerto that no one knows except violinists who had to study it, you know, to, to, to work the technique and so on.

And he knew this Vioti concerto was absolutely extraordinary.

He had, he knew as much as specialists, really, in their field.

And then, of course, he could, uh, correlate all of this.

And in this utopia, in this island, he wanted to put everything in, you know, all the chemical study, all the progress in pharmacology and make it into a concrete mysticism.

Well, I think he, uh, well, I think he, uh, along with that, you see, had the difficulty of living in a country where that sort of highly-cultured intellectuality is envied.

And because it's envied, it's put down.

People used to circulate stories, for example, that before going to a party, Aldous would read in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Oh, no, please.

Uh, everything that he'd had to say on the letter P, the origins of that.

And then he would subtly move the conversation around to where the letter P in some way became important.

And then would proceed to be completely encyclopedic upon the subject.

Well, they tell me, before going to a party, Aldous only discussed what I was going to wear and how he liked it and this and that.

Well, I think that sort of story expresses the envy and the resentment which people feel for such high culture.

But I don't think he was aware of that, really.

No.

It would have been very amusing.

I never saw, in all that I knew of him, any kind of awkward self-consciousness about these things.

He had a kind of reserve, which is very natural to Englishmen of his upbringing.

A lot of people, for example, I had a rather similar upbringing and a lot of people think that I'm a bit isolated and difficult to reach.

When it isn't that at all.

It's really consideration for other people, fundamentally, which makes English people reserved.

We don't want to, you know, throw ourselves at everyone.

Yeah.

And so it's very difficult to transplant yourself to the United States, where that's more or less what you're expected to do.

Yes, and yet, with the upbringing, you know, he would live very much in the American way and enjoy it.

You know, we, as I said in the book, we were married in a drive-in chapel.

Well, now, less English than that and less Italian than that.

You can find it.

And he enjoyed it and I enjoyed it very much.

And he did all the things that were done in America, you know.

He didn't try to transplant his own way of living here.

Yes, but of course, there is still a fundamental style of life.

Oh, a style of life, an inner style, yes.

An inner style, exactly.

Oh, yes, very much so.

But, I mean, he would, if I was not there for lunch or something, he would make his own lunch very well.

And this is rather more American.

You mean he was a good cook?

Oh, yes, he was a very nice cook.

He particularly liked to make soups.

We had a whole, he once even thought of writing a little book about making soups.

Well, I never...

How is your own book going on?

Oh, I tell you, I have abandoned that for the time being because I felt that writing about gourmet cookery at this moment would be like fiddling while Rome burns.

Well, so what are you doing about Rome?

I'm writing a book instead about ethics called The Rules of the Game.

And I think that's an extremely important subject for young people.

Oh, yes.

And as you see, in the same way, you could say from a certain point of view that as his life went on, all of Aldous' books became more serious, or I would prefer to say sincere, and concerned with profound matters.

And this is what you're doing.

But, you know, there's a... critics have tended to say about the later work of Aldous Huxley, which begins with a book called Ends and Means.

I remember reading an article by Charles Savage in the Sewanee Review some years ago, discussing the change in his work, and saying that we are really seeing two different sides of the same man.

He pointed out that Aldous is at his best when he is destroying, when he is satirizing, when he is poking fun and contempt at various things.

And so, in all his early satirical novels, he proved himself to be a master of this.

Now, said Savage, he shifts to a certain kind of mysticism.

But the message of this mysticism is really the same as that of his earlier novels.

Namely, that the human world, the world of personalities, the world of differentiation, the world of multiplicity, of nature, is really fundamentally contemptible.

And should all be dissolved in the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum, in the Brahman, in the Ungrund, in the what have you, you know?

Oh, goodness, interpreting, it's a terrible thing, isn't it? It should be one of the great crimes.

Isn't it? Because I was astounded when I read this.

Really? I mean, how can one come to such a conclusion after all that he tries in every paragraph, you know, to say the importance of each person, of each thing in nature, even of things as such?

But he saw that, but these people can't see that he saw it.

You see, I had met Aldous just about the time, just a little before I read that review, and that was back in, oh, 1947.

And he had then written Grey Eminence and the Perennial Philosophy.

And in Grey Eminence, I feel that at that time, Aldous was somewhat under the influence of Gerald Heard's more ascetic period.

Possibly, yes.

That was when Gerald Heard was running the co-educational monastery at Tribuco, and they were trying to take the Kingdom of Heaven by storm, and they were all very much, in a way, mystically uptight.

And I felt a little reflection of that in Aldous at the time.

Of that, yeah, maybe, yes.

But then, when his attitude began to change, he became less and less the Manichaean, and more and more, what I would call a tantric type.

Yes, concrete type.

You wrote me a wonderful letter when he died about that, how you have felt this development in Aldous, especially in the later years, in Aldous's way of being, even of dressing.

I mean, the outer signs, of course, there can be many.

Well, to tell you the truth, Laura, when I first met him, it was in Hollywood, and he came out in the most decrepit old pants and a run-down shirt.

And, of course, he was vastly entertaining, but he was looking pretty shabby.

And I met him again after he married you, and suddenly he was nattily dressed.

He was wearing a beautiful tweed jacket with a handkerchief in the breast pocket just so.

He was beautifully groomed, and I thought, my goodness, something has changed.

I had a wonderful collection of ties, you know.

I must send you one, but you don't wear ties, because it was a magnificent collection, and they would be called psychedelic ties.

Well, I wear ties when the occasion requires.

You must remember, I'm a sort of joker or comedian who adopts the guy suitable for the occasion.

Oh, I know.

Just fair, I know.

But, no, I always had the impression, you see, that this criticism of savages was absolutely ridiculous, because I never met a man who had so many interests.

In other words, he was profoundly interested in all the diversities.

Yes, and he was so curious, and in everything, really, timeless moment.

I mean, it's true, he was living moment by moment.

And he had, I suppose, disciplined himself to that, or maybe that was why he enjoyed life so much.

Yes.

That was, he was, another thing, I mean, people think sometimes that he was a depressed man.

He was hardly ever a depressed man.

Very, very seldom.

He was preoccupied, but they always tried to do something about this preoccupation, you know, the state of the world and all that.

But I think all writers tend to get moods of preoccupation.

You get completely fascinated with writing, and then you may suddenly have to have a meal, and you'll turn up and sit down and eat.

And you can't get off, your mind, off the various ideas or themes you're playing with.

Then your wife may say to you, what's the matter with you?

Can't you make any conversation?

Are you angry with me?

Or something of that kind.

No, that really only happened with Aldous, when he was writing Ireland, because of this contrast, you know, of the novel and the essay.

Otherwise, his writing, yes, he fascinated him, but he was very ready to change, you know, to change the course of his thought.

But with Ireland, two or three times, he was like that.

And then, of course, when he was ill at the end, because there were so many things still that he wanted to do.

And he wondered, you know, how much, how long would he, how long a time would he have, how much energy.

There was a period there like that.

And, yes.

It took a long time to write Ireland, didn't it?

Yes, he wrote it in two or three periods.

He left it sometimes and then went back again.

Of course, that's the hardest thing to do.

In a way, it's easy to write Brave New World, because there the point of view is in a way critical.

But in Ireland, where you want to paint the vision of what you really believe in and what you would like to happen, that's the hardest thing to do.

Yes, and then, as you said, who is it that said that the, the mauvais, the bad sentiment make good novels?

Yes, bad sentiments make good novels.

Yes, yes.

Because when everything is fine and nice and everybody is good and happy, it's very difficult to write about it.

Yes, and in the same way, I think that the, the imagery of Paradise in the history of Western art has been artistically inferior to the imagery of Hell.

If you take, for example, Gustave Doré's illustrations to the Divina Commedia.

Yes.

Those for Hell and Purgatory are fascinating.

But the illustrations for the Paradiso are just these streams of angels in white nighties flying around the sky, and they're very uninspiring.

I know, well, because that's right, but then he should have seen that in different ways, you see.

Now there is all kind of different illustration, because the photography, for instance, photography, there is in your book, the joyous, the joyous cosmology, and the photography of flowers or things of nature.

It is so magnificent that I think that maybe this is changed now, don't you think?

Yes, I think so. I think we are seeing the re-emergence in Western art of sheer glory.

Yes, absolutely.

Which we haven't seen since the stained glass and the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages.

Yes, and it is the same thing. It's the mystical experience which brings this expression about.

I think that the best illustrations of Paradise are to be found in Persian miniatures.

Ah, yes.

Was Aldous interested in those?

Yes. Yeah, we had, well, we had some books, yes. He was always looking with the enlarging glass, you know, to look at the details of this.

Now, I must, to some extent, attribute the change in his attitude and also in Gerald Hurd's attitude to the time when they first encountered LSD.

It seemed to me that in both of them there was a marked shift of attitude.

I suppose that those who would be unfavorable to all this would say, well, that's the time they got their brains damaged.

Yes.

But it was highly interesting damage for both of them because I felt that the attitudes of both of them became somehow enriched.

Oh, yes. Well, of course, I knew Aldous very little before that. In fact, I only met him a few times.

But when I saw him after that experience, which was in Rome, it was this tremendous vitality and this tremendous interest in looking and seeing and experimenting.

Of course, he didn't do this experimenting so often as people thought, you know. It was done very, very rarely and very seriously.

Oh, well, that's what, that's the way I think in any intelligent use of this kind of thing.

Yes.

A single experience gives you so much that it takes several months to digest it.

Yes, exactly.

And, you know, to go on week after week or worse day after day with this sort of thing is to give yourself a mystical indigestion.

Yes.

Yes, and all this had not happened, you see, by the time that Aldous died was just beginning in 1963.

I remember in the last few months or even weeks of his life, he began to hear about abuses.

And so I think it would be horrified to see what, I wonder what he would have done, you know, to prevent this, of course, he would have done all that he could.

And I wonder how much he could have accomplished in preventing this misuse and abuse and the sensation.

There is so much sensation about this thing.

Well, all that kind of thing seems to me to be inevitable in a world where there are no secrets.

In other words, scientific knowledge has to be public knowledge because the community of scientists has to know all about it in order to work.

And therefore there are no secrets and therefore everything gets broadcast around.

And I felt that when Aldous had let the cat out of the bag with the doors of perception and later with heaven and hell, that I ought to write something about it too.

I was reserved about writing anything about it much before, but I felt that he had let the cat out of the bag and that more needed to be said.

Now, of course, the cat would have been let out of the bag eventually, there's no doubt about it.

Well, I think so and probably not as well in such a good manner.

But now, when was it approximately that he first experimented with LSD?

In 1953.

In 1953?

In 1953.

That's right.

And doors of perception came out then in 54.

That's right.

As early as 54?

Oh yes, doors of perception is in 1954.

Oh, I had no idea it was that early.

Wait a second, I was going to Italy and I read it on the plane.

No, it came out in 1955.

55?

Yes, that might be.

No, no, no, 54.

54?

It was in the summer of 54 that I read it.

Because you see, I didn't run into this until 1958.

I think that we met here in San Francisco one time, yes.

Yes, that's right, at the Tokyo Skiaki restaurant.

That's right, yes, yes.

That's right.

But I hadn't encountered it until that time.

You got married in what year?

In 1956.

Well, anyway, I felt that this had fully opened his eyes to see that the mystical world,

or the mystical dimension of unity behind the whole cosmos, was no longer something that

required for its vision, a turning away from the diversity of the material world.

But you could see this unity, this underlying unity, right in the, in the multiplicity of

the material world.

Yes.

And he seemed to be feeling that more and more strongly as time went on.

Yes, yes, yes.

I remember he was writing to me that summer, the summer before we were married, he was

in New York, and he wrote to me that he went to see a musical comedy.

And it was a very poor and vulgar thing.

And he said, yet, even there, if one would look with attention and look deeply, one could

find some kind of essence of beauty.

Well, I had exactly the same experience in listening to a terrible Baptist preacher on the radio.

Well, that's the same thing.

And it was really awful.

Yes.

And it was as phony as it could be.

Yes.

And it was concerned with money.

Send in your dollar.

You know, if you want to copy this address, be sure to send in your dollar.

But as I listened deeply into that voice, it sounded like someone saying, well, I'm just

alive and I got to eat too.

And it was a little baby calling for its mother in the dark.

Uh-huh.

And, but it was coming on like, you know, all this God and Jesus and salvation and everything

and, uh, saying it, uh, as if it knew all about it.

But you could see this was a big front on quaking terror underneath.

Yes.

Well, the same thing, you see, there was nothing that, uh, Aldous really was a very fine musician

and musical comedy for him was not his type of music.

And particularly this one, I don't know which one it was, but it was particularly bad.

And yet, and yet, you know, if you listen, he said, he would find something in it.

Did he ever discuss these experiences with Krishnamurti?

He did.

Uh, he told me that, uh, the very first time that he had it, uh, with Maria

and Dr. Osman, you remember?

Uh-huh.

And then he went up to Hawaii and, uh, spoke about it to Krishnaji.

And, uh, Krishnaji was very familiar with the whole thing.

He said, oh, yes, yes.

He said, oh, yes, that's right.

That's all.

He was, he knew exactly what Aldous was speaking about.

Uh-huh.

I have a feeling that Krishnaji is there all the time, except when he has to come back

and talk a little bit.

And I think that that is the merit of, uh, Krishna Murthy to, to do this, uh, speaking

to people, because probably he would have a much better time not to.

Would, would you say that Aldous was greatly influenced by Krishnaji?

Yes, I would, I would say that he was influenced by Krishnaji, probably more than by any other

single religious man.

Well, I, uh, in a way could say the same thing.

Only, uh, one is always very hesitant in acknowledging any debt to Krishnaji because he

so hates the idea of having any disciples.

Yes.

But I, for my part, feel that he is, uh, one of the most original and profound thinkers

in the world, because, uh, he's always in a bit, a bit unexpected.

He's never in the ordinary ruts of, uh, religious or psychotherapeutic thinking.

Well, the trouble is that he, uh, I mean, the trouble is not the trouble.

And the point is that, uh, that is what he is.

But, uh, he does not give any way to get there.

And that is the great thing, you see.

People say, well, why, how am I going to do that?

And, you know, that he really was, uh, very, very angry at me when I wrote, uh, that book,

you know, you are not the target with, uh, recipes of techniques.

Yes.

He was very innocent, and I told him about it with a great pleasure.

And, uh, oh, he was quite violent about it.

Oh, you tell that story in your book, don't you?

Yes, he was there.

Yes.

And, um, yes, because, uh, I was, I spoke about this, uh, during lunch.

And then we were alone, and he looked at me very, very intensely.

And he said, you know, all these people that go around helping other people, I think they

are a curse, looking at me, you see.

I was so shaken, but after a few seconds, uh, I found myself, and I said, well, what do

you think you are doing?

And this answer was so delightful.

He said, oh, but I don't do it on purpose.

And that was something that Aldous just adored, this thing, I don't do it on purpose.

You know, it was so, so clear to Aldous what he meant.

But it's not clear to everyone because it's not easy, really.

That was the conversation, wasn't it, that, uh, again, it's reported in your book, where

he ends up on this extraordinary note that the state of consciousness that he's trying

to describe as in himself is one which has no center.

No center, that's right.

And it is just the opposite of what we find.

You know, we always try to find the central core of ourselves.

Yes.

And, uh, go to the center, find it, be the center.

And he said, no center.

Yes, that was very strange.

Very strange.

One can feel, uh, that, for him, it's all so natural.

For Krishnamurti, all this is so natural, so obvious, that it seems to him preposterous

even to have to say these things.

But I must say it's not, uh, natural and easy for many people that I know.

It's not easy for me, certainly.

Did Krishnaji in any way disapprove of Aldous's use of psychedelics to see these things?

Well, uh, this I don't know.

He never told me that.

And I don't think that he ever said anything like that to Aldous.

Uh, no, I think, uh, the two men were so nice together.

I don't know.

They didn't speak much.

You know, we once, uh, visited Krishnaji in India for three days.

And I don't think that they ever thought very much about all this deep, uh, philosophies

or modes of existence.

They just were very nice together.

One felt a tremendous liking for each other.

It was a very special atmosphere when they were together.

But I don't know that he criticized that.

He told him, you know, directly you shouldn't do this or anything.

In other words, when they got together, uh, they didn't discuss deep matters, but just

enjoyed themselves.

That's right.

As a matter of fact, I must tell you about this three days because we were living in the

house of this great mystic and, uh, he had a marvelous cook.

And we always look forward to the next meal.

It was the most refined food that you could imagine without any animal.

food, you know, completely vegetarian, and the variety of tastes and the delicacy, I

mean, the great refinement really of the way that Krishnaji lives. He said in a way he

could have been, maybe he is an hedonist, you see, because he appreciates all the things

of perception.

We say hedonist.

Hedonist.

Yes.

I remember him once speaking about materials, and everything, his perceptions are so cleansed,

you know, the laws of his perception are very, very clear. And it was marvelous who was waiting

for the next meal.

You see, this is fascinating, because this doesn't come out in Krishnamurti's lectures.

No, I know, I know.

Nor does humor come out.

No, and he has a great deal of humor, although he's very, very preoccupied about the world.

He was, I haven't seen him lately. He was preoccupied about the world because the world had so many

churches and priests and psychologists, you know. That was, which probably he equates in

a way with politicians and all the rest of it, you know. People that are being followed,

that have followed. He has that. But do you think that, that one can be without leaders?

Do you really think so?

Well, I suppose you could argue that the presence of churches and priests and psychologists were

like the presence of spots on a person who has chicken pox.

Of course, these spots are, in a way, letting off infections inside the body, and therefore

they fulfill some sort of function. But they go with a diseased condition. After all, if

we were living in harmony with the way of nature, the Tao, as the Chinese call it, we wouldn't

need churches and priests and psychotherapists.

I know, but we don't live in the Tao.

No. And, but, but perhaps, um, well, I think, you know, uh, this is a bit off the subject,

but, uh, when you get into a real jam and you realize it's useless to call the psychiatrist,

you're undergoing a very creative experience.

Yes, if you, if you go to the, all the way to the end of it.

Yes, yes, and you don't call the psychiatrist, you see.

I have a kind of terror of calling a psychiatrist into any situation because I know what it might

lead to. And so I always try to leave it alone. And, uh, I don't want to offend my psychiatric

friends by saying this, but, uh, I mean, some of them know how to handle things and some

of them, I just was just talking to one the other day who wouldn't dream of getting one

of these patients into a mental hospital. And, uh, you would not dream. No, he wouldn't

dream of it. He does everything in his power to avoid that sort of a solution or non-solution.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

But, I, I think in a way, uh, this is Krishnaji's attitude to all the people who are trying

to help others is that, uh, a lot of people are doing that kind of work to try and help

other people. But, uh, I know in my own case, I'm not really trying to help the world.

And I think that's what Krishnaji is saying when he doesn't do this on purpose, when he

says he doesn't do it on purpose. Uh, and I think that, uh, Aldous had a very similar

attitude that he was writing about mysticism and, uh, philosophy and religion, not because

he was, or he was even writing about the alarming state of the world. But you never felt in him

the fanatic. No. He was so extraordinarily interested in what was going on, that that seems to me

the primary reason why he wrote. Oh, yes. Well, that is, was his, his life, was his way

of living, you know. Yes. But I ask Aldous, uh, when, uh, when Krishnaji told me that, you

know, and so violently, I said, but, uh, what do you think? Should I do this? And he said, no,

everything should be done. What Krishnaji does is, uh, marvelous, but, uh, what you do, uh,

given tools and given the recipes, that is also necessary. I mean, he included everything.

Yes. He didn't think that, uh, you know, only one thing, that there was only one panacea that is,

of course, was completely different from his way of being. He couldn't have been, uh, so restricted.

But why did you, what did you say just a minute ago about yourself, that you...

Well, I often say, half-chokingly, when I'm asked in a student audience,

why do you go around lecturing on these things? I say, because I'm a philosophical entertainer.

After all, when you, not all entertainment is frivolous. You do pay entertainment's tax when

you go to a concert by a pianist who's going to play Mozart and Beethoven sonatas. You could

hardly call that frivolous. And so there can be philosophical entertainment in the same spirit.

Yes. And then also, I mean, everybody has to express himself, uh,

the best way. And it seems to me you are such a marvelous virtuoso of words, like all these words.

Naturally, you must use your virtuosity. It would be bad for you and for everybody else if you wouldn't.

Now, here, here's the thing that's fascinating. You see, I, in, in using words,

I've been accused of being a word man.

Well, of course you would, I mean, but, I mean, that is, that is beside the point. You can be accused of everything.

Well, of course you can. But, you know, people in, in, especially when you get into the,

this whole new domain of emphasis upon the experiential.

Oh, yes.

Not ideas, not theories, but getting down to the nitty-gritty, the real experience. And so this

is true with the encounter groups, with the tea groups, with the, all that kind of thing. And, uh,

I remember once Fritz Pearl saying to me, he said, uh, the trouble with you is your whole words.

Well, if you are a dancer, you, you, you dance around with words. And I said, now, listen,

Fritz, don't you put down words.

No.

Words are a pattern of life, just like a fern, just like a snow crystal, just like a cloud.

And if I play with that kind of a pattern,

am I any really less experiential than the fern that plays with the chlorophyll and, uh,

such things to become a fern?

In fact, it's marvelous when you think of words. If you just take any one word,

and not just thinking about how it came about in the expression, but just what your mouth does

to, to pronounce that word is the most fascinating thing that you find.

Oh, yes. I love to write nonsense, you know, where the words don't have any meaning.

Yes, but they are just the fact.

But it's just, um, I went to get the bucket of ducks, bucket of ducks, bucket of ducks.

I went to get the bucket of ducks, all on a summer's day.

Caluckity bucket, lickity bucket, snippity snappity snickity bucket, cluppity flippity

flippity bucket, all in the same old way. You know, things like that.

Wonderful. You see, what your tongue and your mouth and your lips had to do to that is a miracle,

you know, it's absolutely a miracle.

But I know, I think that the only people that can do without words are people like yourself and

Aldous. You know, Aldous began to speak about non-verbal education and gave it an enormous

importance. And it's just like, you know, like a millionaire that can say, well, money is not

important because there is so much of it. And you can say it, and Aldous could say it, but for the rest

of us, I think that we have to have the appropriate words. I know how difficult it is for me, you see,

because words is not my mean of expression, you know, I like other things. And I know that it's

very good to have them. And I believe that I notice very many young people here, they get in so much

trouble just because they don't express themselves right. They say the wrong word, you know.

They just have never had either the thought of the opportunity, I don't know which, you know,

but they want to say something not very nice, like to say, you know, I would like to go away,

I would like not to do this. And they say, drop dead. Well, people don't like to hear that, you see.

Yes, I've been astounded at the inarticulateness of many young people today. And also, it goes with

a kind of strange, slightly dead sounding quality of voice, which I can immediately detect on the

telephone. Yes, yes. Somebody calls and says, like Mr. Watts, I was just wondering if there's any chance of

your being so that I could come and rap with you, you know, and there's a sort of dead voice. And,

you know, at once I'm inclined to reject such an encounter. Well, those are the people that must see

you. You must see them. That is a very signal. Because, I mean, you might inspire them to get a

little bit more alive. I think there are many people that are not quite alive. Do you find that?

Oh, sure. Zombies. Yes, but, I mean, also among the people that have taken drugs and so on,

that you expect them to be more here and now. Yes, but they didn't bring anything to it.

You see, that experience with LSD doesn't really do much for anyone who doesn't bring something to it.

But if you bring a lot to it, it enlivens all that you have. The people who have the best LSD experiences

are those who say before they take it, oh, but I don't need that kind of thing. What you're telling

me about is the state of consciousness I'm in all the time. And they have the best results of it.

That is very true, but those people sometimes are put in a mental hospital too, you know,

because they see too much. Maybe. Yes, you can see too much. Yes. Well, the impression might be

so overwhelming. I mean, I'm getting here in your house, here in the boat, I'm almost getting in that

place, you know, because this water and these hills and the light changing. It's so beautiful.

Do you work here right on this window? No, I do sometimes. No, I usually work where the books are.

Yes, because here it's very inducing to just... Well, you should see the changing quality of light

when the dawn hits that mountain, Tamalpais. Even those Air Force radar domes are transformed and

they look like the domes of a mosque. I see. And I feel I'm in some strange Oriental world and the way

the house lights up all these houseboats across here. I mean, the sun lights up all these houseboats.

They become rich and golden and bejeweled. And people would say, well, this is a dirty old slum,

but you should see it at dawn. It's a paradise. Yes.

Well, you see it. And this transformation is really the keynote, isn't it, to our living,

to be able to transform the mind. Yes. Well, it's that sentence which

Aldous Huxley uses for the doors of perception from Blake. Oh, yes.

If the doors of perception were cleansed, we should see everything as it is, infinite.

Infinite, yes. Tell me, what was Aldous's attitude in

the whole process of delight in words? I mean, could you, would you feel while he was working

on something that he was completely delighted with the whole sort of triumph of being able to get

some extremely subtle emotion or some personal attitude in a character that he got just the

Mojist, the right word for it. Yes, the Mojist. Yes, yes. Oh, yes. He was delighted in that way.

And he was delighted with words of others. You know, that he read, he read poetry aloud. I have

a lot of tips, beautiful tips, where he read poetry aloud in English and Italian and in French,

just for the pleasure of hearing these words back again. Yes. Oh, yes. He had this thing of the

word. And then when he helped me writing, you are not the target, you know, I would read to him. He had

such patience, you just have no idea. I would read to him these recipes. And once, if he ever changed the

paragraph, my editor would reject decimal. He evidently said it was too good, you know, it was a different

style. And so that we never went to the book. But one word here and one word there, one word there. He would

just get that word and or a quotation. The quotation was very extraordinary. Yes, well, he had this

enjoyment of words and words in the same time. He thought that one should let them go, you know,

they are not so important. What did he say? Words are good servants but bad masters. That was his attitude.

Well, he had an astounding facility in getting the flavor of human character. This is a thing that I

admire enormously because I would never be able to write a good novel. I think people who write novels

are absolute geniuses. He felt himself not to be a very good novelist. Especially in delineating the

characters of women. Oh, yes. It's so easy to make a rather stereotype of women when writing and it's

very bad. I think that's why I liked D. H. Lawrence so much, I suppose, because he does that so well.

But he could get, by a curious turn of phrase, he could get the sort of feeling about another person

where you say, now, I want to tell you what this kind of, what the kind of person this is. But I,

I just somehow, they're very distinct. They're a very particular kind of person. I wish I could give you

the flavor but I just can't find the word to pin down the kind of individual that is. Like the story

in which somebody was saying, well, I don't know how to tell you what sort of person she is, but she's

the sort of person who would say serviette instead of napkin. And somebody said some other lady person,

well, I always say serviette instead of napkin. And he said, well, you must know just the sort of person

I mean. But in the, in the, the final stages of his life, he was, he was, wasn't he, about to begin

another novel and had written some of it? Yes, he wanted to write a sort of autobiographical,

semi-autobiographical novel. That's what I gathered, yes, from reading as much as you published.

And because he felt that there was so much inter, intermingling, you know, intermingling his own

life with the events of the century. It was so extraordinary what had happened since he was an

adolescent or a child that thought it would be a very, well, it would have been a very big work,

you know, because that was starting, that novel started in 19, in 1900, the first chapter that is

in my book. Yes. And about himself as a child, I think that he was very much like that child that he

describes there. Remember he speaks, also in his lecture, he spoke about Queen Victoria riding on a

carriage about two or three miles an hour. And now similar ladies of similar dignity and age go

around the carnage or in the highways here at 70 miles an hour. He used that to show how we can really

develop our potentialities in so many different ways, in so many different directions. That was one of

his constant thoughts, the development of human potentials. Of course his lifetime spans the most

startling change of the speed of human history that has ever existed. And he, he, he simply, his

lifetime bridges it. Yes, exactly. Because he's got one foot in the Victorian era and one in the 1960s.

That's right, that's right. That's what he wanted to do. Yes. I don't think any of,

any other people at any time have spanned such enormous change.

And he was so much with it all the time, all these changes in different fields.

Well, the critical period of change, you see, was just before the Second World War.

Before? Yes, just before the Second World War. Because, you see, he published Ends and Means

just before he left England, didn't he? That book comes about the same time as Isles in Gaza.

And that was when he knew Gerald Hurd first. Now, what prompted him to move to the United States?

Well, he was traveling, you remember. He was, uh, first of all, he lived in Italy a long time.

And then in Italy, the, the fascist, uh, regime came about. And, uh, Gerald Hurd moved

to America. And, uh, somehow this whole group of Englishmen moved here. And then, uh, he was here,

naturally for his eyesight. It was, he found a teacher that, uh, helped him a great deal.

Yes. In overcoming this blindness.

And the climb, and then they went to live in the desert. But, um, I think that Gerald Hurd was quite,

was, uh, did give the incentive to move here and leave Europe.

So it was primarily just his interest in Gerald Hurd and the, and the group around him?

Yes, you know, and then what was happening in Italy and in Germany and so on, that, uh, made him,

and in England he couldn't leave because of the climate. He would get the, uh, uh, bronchitis just like that.

Oh, really?

Oh, yes.

That's interesting. Uh, I couldn't live in England because I couldn't make a living.

Well, he lived there, you know, I remember when he was a, a critic on some newspaper as a young man,

but he never really wanted to live there. As soon as he could, he moved into Italy and then in France,

and then here. He always went back. He liked to go there for a month or two every year.

Well, I do the same thing. The trouble with England is that it pays very little for books and nothing

at all for lectures. Whereas the United States is quite different. I remember all the saying to me

once, uh, shortly after I came out to the west coast, which was the bin in about 1952.

And, uh, he said, um, we were making an appointment and he said, yes, we're all so busy these days.

He said, it's simply appalling. He said, because nowadays it costs you 12,000 dollars a year simply

to breathe. And if you want to do something more than that, it costs about 18,000.

Yes.

But, uh, why did he settle on Southern California? Do you know?

Well, I think that the first they went up, uh, he and Maria went up to the desert because Maria

had the touch of TB. I think that they thought, they thought that she might,

uh, she might have TB. And then they went up there and they liked the desert and they lived

in the desert for several years and then it became too difficult to live there and they came down to

Los Angeles. Well, I was expecting in a way your answer to be because, uh, California is the nearest

thing in the United States to the Mediterranean. Well, I think California is everything, you know.

Yes, I know. But if you're looking, if you're looking for sun and for cypress and for, uh, palm trees

and, uh, there's a Sutton and also, of course, in the Spanish flavor, it still lingers.

And then he liked to walk. He took every day long walks and this is a wonderful place.

You see, that kind of thing has a fascination for some kind of Englishman. There's a saying,

you know, that an Englishman Italianate is a devil incarnate. And this was originally said about, um,

Frederick Corvo, who wrote, uh, Hadrian VII. And, uh, uh, Aldous having spent many years in Italy

has the same feeling, you see, for that, uh, magic of the Southland of the Mediterranean that I have

myself. And, uh, so the reason I came here was that I could sort of mix both worlds and have a

Mediterranean climate with, uh, a standard of living that I couldn't possibly maintain in Italy since,

um, well, I don't speak Italian. I could learn that, uh, it wouldn't be the sort of place I could

flourish economically without depending on outside things. No, we thought about moving back to Italy,

but, uh, we, we went almost every year. And then, uh, the way that we lived here was very, very good

because it was very free on top of a hill, uh, where there are deers and all kind of natural life.

And yet, if you wanted to go to university or to go to New York, it's so simple and so easy.

It's a very convenient place to live from any point of view. Well, uh, again, you know, those Europeans

don't pay for lectures. Yes, again, yes, oh yes, sure. The economy of an author. Now, it's a very

curious thing about Aldous Huxley because when I first knew him, he couldn't lecture for love or money.

Well, that's... He used to put his nose in a manuscript and mumble. Goodness, I never,

I've never seen him do that. But this is something you must be responsible for because after he married

you, he turned into a fantastic lecturer. Fantastic lecturer. But I don't know that I was connected in

any way with that, but it was a fantastic lecturer. But it's incredible. It's incredible. Because what

happened was that, um, right when I first, uh, was out in California, let's see, this was in 1951,

at that time, Felix Green arranged for him to give a lecture at a high school auditorium in Palo Alto,

and he was still in the mumbling stage. Then, uh, after Maria's death, he married you. I went down to

Santa Barbara, and there was a concert being given, in which Stravinsky was interested, of, um,

Yes, yes, yes, yes. And in the intermission, he gave an extremely amusing talk. Yes, and he loved it. I

mean, he really enjoyed doing that. Well, now, what had happened was that always he had been a

fantastic conversationalist. Yes. Even though he was apt to sort of take over the conversation,

nevertheless, he was invariably fascinating. And he used to fill his conversation with the most

amazing anecdotes. Uh, he was particularly fond of kind of horrendous happenings and details.

You remember that time we were talking about when we had lunch at, uh, the Tokyo Skiyaki restaurant?

Uh, there were four of us sitting at the table, and all the neighboring tables stopped talking.

Stopped talking, listening, because... And they listened in because he was talking about subliminal

advertising. Yes, oh, yes. Oh, that really impressed him. How you could, uh, look at President Eisenhower,

but it really was Marilyn Monroe. Yes, yes, exactly. So you associated the beautiful girl

for General Eisenhower with General Eisenhower or with somebody's toothpaste. Yes, yes. And, uh,

he was going on and enlarging on the horrendous possibilities of this. Yes. And I remember

once the conversation going on at great length about the appalling nature of fashion in medicine.

Oh, yes. So that you would never really know at the present time whether it was as ephemeral as an

operation he once described where they removed the long intestine. The long intestine, yes. And he

said it, uh, it's completely disappeared that nobody ever had such an operation. You see, the only

trouble about it was people used to have to go to the bathroom like birds every 20 minutes. But then, you

see, he started to get the idea of lecturing in just exactly the same tone of voice and spirit as he

carried on ordinary conversation. It was absolutely like a conversation. I never saw it. And suddenly,

he got released from the manuscript. Yes. And, uh, well, he said to me, he said,

well, I just decided that, uh, what I was saying was really not so important after all, you know,

the world was not going to be changed by my lecturing. And so it was, uh, I mean, I've been with him,

you know, before the lecture. And usually, before someone goes on the stage, there is all kind of

little ritual and things. He never had anything like that. No, all that's a nuisance. Yes. Yes.

All that's a nuisance. He just would be at dinner with other people and then walk out on the stage.

Yes. He would go sometimes and mumble, and somebody's here, may I go to the man's room before he could.

That was all that he asked. No, well, it was a very strange transformation, especially for somebody

at that time of life. Yes, but he was changing all the time. I mean, after, after the fire, you know,

we went to live with this friend of ours. When the house was burned down. Yes.

Yes. Uh, we went to live with this friend of ours who had two children and two little children. And

it's a completely different, uh, ambience, you know, when there are two children. He never, he never

seemed to mind or to make an effort or to, to, to, to exercise patience. And one does need patience,

you know, for the children. But it was a natural thing for him, I guess, or maybe a training thing,

to take things, uh, as they, uh, as they came, moment by moment without, uh, sort of referring to

old experiences. I think that that he had probably more than anyone else, this, uh, paradox, you see,

where he had this terrific amount of information, information and memory. And then it was freedom

of emotional, uh, uh, conditioning from the past. How so? Well, because the emotion of the past did not

interfere with his present. In other words, he, with his present, he, he responded to the present with, uh,

new reaction. I mean, he reacted to, to the present with fresh reaction and not with a conditioned reaction

from the past. Do you think he was in some respect helped by that, by the fire? After all, all his

past, all the records of his past, practically, were wiped out. Yes, everything, yes. No, I don't think

that the fire did that for him. I think more his meditation and his work with psychedelic and his

constant vigilance in that sense. He was really very, very aware that that should be stopped, you know,

that one should stop this, uh, reacting to the present in terms of the past. Yes. That was very much,

uh, in his consciousness all the time. Well, of course, that's central to Krishnamurti's whole

presentation. Yes. But that fire, uh, I, I had a friend who underwent the same sort of experience,

where she had luckily built herself a new smaller house. And just after she'd moved into it, she'd

kept a lot of records in the old house and it was burned down. And there were all these souvenirs

and letters and photographs and paintings and books, uh, which are suddenly wiped out. And they're

ordinarily things you cling onto and you feel you really can't do without that. And then suddenly

it all goes. Oh, yes. We had, uh, really several throngs of this thing. And so we went. But, uh, he did rescue,

didn't he, the manuscript of Ireland? Yes, he rescued Ireland and the three best suits, the suits that we had made in Italy.

And three suits? Yes. Ah. He said, don't you think we should take some suits? I was, I was in a completely

useless state because the fire had so fascinated me that I was just looking at the fire all the time

and I would not even have thought of that. And all of a sudden they said, oh, I must take Ireland.

So he went upstairs and took Ireland. And then he said, shouldn't we take some suits? So I said, yes, we'll take some suits.

But did he sort of risk his life doing this? No, no, no. Because our, uh, our house was not in fire yet,

but all around. Oh, I see. The fire was approaching at the time. Yes, it was approaching. Oh, yes, I saw it approach.

I saw it approach from the garden. In fact, the walls were illuminated so beautifully. You have no idea.

It was just the right, the right illumination. But, uh, and I was looking so much that I would not even

take in the suit, you see. Well, that's certainly not reacting to the present in terms of the past.

No, that's right, we won't pass. It's just, I was just, uh, not reacting at all. It was just so beautiful, you know.

Yes, it's so fascinating how in moments of crisis we do tend to become much saner than we are normally.

Well, maybe that was sane, I don't know. I mean, people have started to accomplish the most, we, we can become geniuses in crisis.

Yes, but I didn't accomplish anything, you see. I just looked.

Oh, well, I know, but you were contemplative instead of inactive.

Yes.

Exactly the contrary of my nature. Absolutely the contrary. I'm very active.

And there it was, this fire all around.

But who said that the fire, I remember Aldous saying in his lecture and visionary experience,

that is it Plotinus that says the fire is the most beautiful thing in the world.

Yes.

In connection with precious jewels, you know, which contain the fire.

Christians still worship fire because for many people the most important time in a church service

is watching the final extinction of the candles after the service is over.

And they'll all wait on their knees until that's been done.

Yes, it's like seeing the sun going down.

Yes, watching the sunset.

Are there any materials of Aldous left over which will yet see the light of publication?

Well, the letters. Oh, that is going to be a marvelous volume, yes.

It's coming out next year.

It's coming out next year and there are letters since the age of 14 to the last days, you see.

And there are really, it's a marvelous biography there.

You see all the passage in this man's life.

So he wrote a great deal of letters.

Oh, yes.

Was this true all through his life?

Was it true after you got married?

Oh, yes.

He wrote, he answered mail once a week and he wrote an enormous amount of letters.

He's doing, he's writing letters and I always use the telephone.