I wonder what you mean when you use the word I.
I've been very interested in this problem for a long, long time,
and I've come to the conclusion that what most civilized people mean by that word
is a hallucination, that is to say a false sense of personal identity
that is at complete variance with the facts of nature.
And as a result of having a false sense of identity,
we act in a way that is inappropriate to our natural environment.
And when that inappropriate way of action is magnified by a very powerful technology,
we swiftly begin to see the results of a profound discord between man and nature.
As is well known, we are now in the process of destroying our environment
as a result of an attempt to conquer it and master it.
And we have not realized, therefore, that our environment
is not something other than ourselves.
In assuming that it is, we have made a great mistake
and are now paying the price for it.
But most people would agree with the lines of the poet who said,
I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.
Because we have the strong sensation
that our own being inside our skin
is extremely different from the world outside our skin.
That while there may be intelligence inside human skins,
and while there may be values and loving feelings,
outside the skin is a world of mechanical process
which does not give a damn about any individual
and which is basically unintelligent,
being gyrations of blind force
and so far as the merely biological world is concerned,
gyrations of libido
which is Freud's word for blind lust.
It should be obvious
that the human being
goes with
the rest of the universe.
Even though we say in popular speech
I came into this world.
Now it is not true
that you came into this world.
You came out of it
in the same way as a flower
comes out of a plant
or a fruit
comes out of a tree.
And as an apple tree apples
the solar system in which we live
and therefore the galaxy in which we live
and therefore the system of galaxies
in which we live
that system peoples.
and therefore people are an expression
of its energy
and of its nature.
If people are intelligent
and I suppose we have to grant that if
then the energy
which people express
must also be intelligent
because one does not gather
figs from thistles
and grapes from thorns.
But it does not occur
you see
to the ordinary civilized person
to regard himself
or herself
as an expression
of the whole universe.
It should be obvious
that we cannot exist
except in an environment
of earth
air
water
and
solar temperature
that all these things
go with us
and are as important to us
albeit outside our skins
as our internal organs
heart
stomach
brain
and so forth.
Now if then we cannot describe
the behavior of organisms
without at the same time
describing the behavior
of their environments
we should realize
that we have a new
entity of description
not the individual organism alone
but what would now be called
a field of behavior
which we must call
rather clumsily
the organism environment.
You go with your environment
in the same way
as your head
goes with the rest of your body.
You do not find in nature
faces arriving in the world
sui generis.
They go with
a body
but also bodies
do not arrive
in a world
which would be
for example
a plain
ball
of scrubbed rock
floating without an atmosphere
far away
from a star.
That will not grow bodies.
There is no soil for bodies.
There is no complexity
of environment
which is
body producing.
So bodies
go with
a very complicated
natural environment.
And if
the head
goes with the body
and the body
goes with the environment
the body
is as much
an integral part
of the environment
as the head
is part of the body.
It is deceptive
of course
because the human being
is not rooted
to the ground
like a tree.
A human being
moves about
and therefore
can shift
from one environment
to another.
But these shifts
are superficial.
The basic environment
of the planet
remains a constant.
And if the human being
leaves the planet
he has to take
with him
a canned version
of the planetary
environment.
Now we are not
really aware of this.
Upon taking thought
and due consideration
it does occur to us
yes indeed
we do need that environment.
But in the ordinary way
we don't feel it.
That is to say
we don't have a vivid
sensation
of belonging to
our environment
in the same way
that we have
a vivid sensation
of being an ego
inside a bag of skin
located mostly
in the skull
about half way
between the ears
and a little way
behind the eyes.
And it issues
in these disastrous
results
of the ego
which according
to 19th century
common sense
feels
that it is a fluke
in nature
and that
if it does not
fight nature
it will not
be able
to maintain
its status
as intelligent fluke.
So the geneticists
are now saying
and many others
are now saying
that man must
take the course
of his evolution
into his own hands.
He can no longer
trust
the wiggly
random
and unintelligible
processes of nature
to develop him
any further
but he must
interfere with
his own intelligence
and through
genetic alterations
breed
the kind of people
who will be viable
for human society
and that sort of thing.
Now this I submit
is a ghastly error
because human
intelligence
has a very
serious limitation.
That limitation
is
that it is
a scanning system
of conscious attention
which
is linear
that is to say
it
examines
the world
in lines
rather
as you would
pass the beam
of a flashlight
across
a room
or a spotlight.
That's why
our education
takes so long.
It takes so long
because we have
to scan
miles
of lines
of print
and we regard
that you see
as basic information.
Now the universe
does not come
at us
in lines.
It comes at us
in a multidimensional
continuum
in which everything
is happening
all together
everywhere at once
and it comes
at us
much too quickly
to be
translated
into lines
of print
or of other
information
however fast
they may be scanned
and that
is
our limitation
so far
as the intellectual
life
and the scientific
life is concerned.
The computer
will greatly
speed up
linear scanning
but it's still
linear scanning
and so long
as we are
stuck with that
form of wisdom
we cannot deal
with more
than a few
variables
at once.
Now what do I
mean by that?
What is a variable?
A variable
is any
one
linear
process.
Let's take music.
When you play
a Bach fugue
and there are
four parts
to it
you have
four variables
you have
four moving
lines
and you can
take care
of that
with two
hands.
An organist
using two
feet
can put in
two more
variables
and have
six going
and you may
realize
if you've
ever tried
to play
the organ
that it's
quite
difficult
to make
six
independent
motions
go
at once.
The average
person cannot
do that
without training.
The average
person cannot
deal with
more than
three variables
at once
without using
a pencil.
Now when
we study
physics
we are
dealing
with
processes
in which
there are
millions
of variables.
This however
we handle
by statistics
in the same
way as
insurance
companies
use
actuarial
tables
to predict
when most
people will
die.
If the
average
age of
death
is 65
however
this
prediction
does
not
apply
to
any
given
individual
any
given
individual
will
live
to
plus
or
minus
years
and
the
range
of
difference
may
be
very
wide
indeed
of
course
but
this
is
all
right
the
guess
is
all
right
when
you're
doing
large
scale
gambling
and
that's
the way
the
physicist
works
in
predicting
the
behavior
of
nuclear
wavicles
but
the
very
poor
and
thinking
it
out
by
linear
consideration
is
impossible
with
that
equipment
then
we
are
proposing
to
interfere
with
our
genes
and
with
that
equipment
also
be it
said
we
are
trying
to
solve
our
political
economic
and
social
problems
and
naturally
everybody
has
the
sense
of
total
frustration
and
the
individual
feels
what
on
earth
can
I
do
we
do
not
seem
to
know
a
way
of
calling
upon
our
brains
because
our
brains
can
handle
an
enormous
number
of
variables
that
are
not
accessible
to
the
process
of
conscious
attention
your
brain
is
your
blood
chemistry
the
secretions
from
your
glands
the
behavior
of
millions
of
cells
it
is
doing
all
that
without
thinking
about
it
that
is
to
say
without
translating
the
processes
it
is
handling
into
consciously
reviewed
words
symbols
or
numbers
now
when
I
use
the
word
thinking
I
translating
what
is
going
on
in
nature
into
words
symbols
or
numbers
because
both
words
and
numbers
are
kinds
of
symbols
bear
the
same
relation
to
the
real
world
that
money
bears
to
wealth
you
cannot
quench
anybody's
thirst
with
the
word
water
just
as
you
cannot
eat
a
dollar
nutrition
from
it
but
using
symbols
and
using
conscious
intelligence
scanning
has proved
very useful
to us
it has
given us
such
technology
as we
have
but
at the
same
time
it
has
proved
too
much
of
a
good
thing
at
the
same
time
we've
become
so
fascinated
with
it
that
we
confuse
the
world
as
it
is
with
the
world
as
it
is
thought
about
talked
about
and
figured
about
that
is
to
say
with
the
world
as
it
is
described
and
the
difference
between
these
two
is
vast
and
when
we
are
not
aware
of
ourselves
except
in
a
symbolic
way
we
are
not
related
to
ourselves
at
so
then
we
get
back
to
the
question
of
what
do
we
mean
by
I
well
first
of
all
obviously
we
mean
our
symbol
of
ourselves
now
ourselves
in
this
case
is
the
whole
psychophysical
organism
conscious
and
unconscious
plus
its
environment
that's
your
real
self
your
real
self
in
has
centered
on
your
organism
that's
you
say
let me
just
clarify
that
a
little
for
one
reason
what
you
do
is
also
a
doing
of
your
environment
your
behavior
is
its
behavior
as
much
as
its
behavior
is
your
behavior
it's
mutual
we
could
say
it
is
transactional
you
they
go
together
they
act
together
in
the
same
way
for
example
if
i
have
a
wheel
one
side
of
it
going
down
is
the
same
as
the
other
side
of
it
organism
and
environment
we
are
only
rarely
aware
of
this
as
when
in
curious
alterations
of
consciousness
which
we
call
mystical
experience
cosmic
consciousness
an
individual
gets
the
feeling
that
everything
that is
happening
is
his
own
doing
or
the
opposite
of
that
feeling
that
he
isn't
doing
anything
but
that
you
can
feel
it
either
way
you
can
describe
it
in
these
two
completely
opposite
ways
but
you're
talking
about
the
same
experience
you're
talking
about
experiencing
your
own
activity
and
the
activity
of
nature
as
one
single
process
and
you
can
describe
it
as
if
you
were
omnipotent
like
God
or
as
don't
feel
that
do
we
ordinarily
what
we
feel
instead
is
an
identification
of
ourselves
with
our
idea
of
ourselves
or
I
would
rather
say
with
our
image
of
ourselves
and
that's
the
person
or
the
ego
you
play
a
role
you
identify
with
that
role
I
play
a
role
it's
called
Alan
Watts
and
I
know
very
well
that
that's
a
big
act
I
can
play
some
other
roles
besides
Alan
Watts
if
necessary
but
I
find
this
one
is
better
for
making
a
living
but
I
assure
you
it's
a
mask
and
I
don't
take
it
seriously
the
idea
of
my
being
a
kind
so
I
know
I
know
I
not
that
but
most
of
us
are
taught
to
think
that
we
are
whom
we
are
called
and
when
you're
a
little
child
and
you
begin
to
learn
a role
and
your
parents
and
your
peers
approve
of
your
being
that
they
know
who
you
are
you're
predictable
so
you
can
be
controlled
but
when
you
act
out
of
role
and
you
imitate
some
other
child's
behavior
everybody
points
the
finger
and
says
you're
not
being
true
to
yourself
Johnny
that's
not
you
that's
Peter
and
so
you
learn
to
stay
Peter
or
to
stay
Johnny
but
of
course
you're
not
either
because
this
is
just
the
image
of
you
it's
as
much
of
you
as
you
can
get
into
contains
no
information
about
how
you
structure
your
nervous
system
it
contains
no
information
about
your
blood
chemistry
it
contains
almost
no
information
about
the
subtle
influences
of
society
upon
your
behavior
it
does
not
include
the
basic
assumptions
of
your
culture
which
are
all
taken
for
granted
and
unconscious
and
you
can't
find
them
out
unless
you
study
illusions
that
you
are
completely
unaware
of
as
for
example
that
time
is
real
and
that
there
is
such
a
thing
as
a
past
which
is
pure
hokum
but
nevertheless
all
these
things
are
unconscious
in
us
and
they
are
not
included
in
our
image
of
this
is
a
very
impoverished
image
when
you
ask
a
person
what
did
you
do
yesterday
they'll
give
you
a
historical
account
of a
certain
number
of
events
in
which
they
participated
and a
certain
number
of
things
which
they
saw
used
or
were
clobbered
by
but
realize
at
once
that
this
history
leaves
out
most
of
what
happened
I
in
trying
this
evening
will
never
be
able
to
describe
it
because
there
are
so
many
people
here
that
if
I
were
to
talk
about
everyone
whom
I've
seen
what
they
were
wearing
what
color
their
hair
was
what
sort
of
expressions
they
had
on
their
faces
I
would
have
to
talk
till
doomsday
so
instead of
this rich
physical
experience
which is
very rich
indeed
I
have
to
attenuate
it
in
and
there
were
men
and
women
and
lots
of
them
were
young
and
some
of
them
were
old
you
know
most
utterly
impoverished
account
of
it's
not
a
skeleton
so
we
are
as
it
were
conceiving
ourselves
as
a
bunch
of
skeletons
and
they
got
no
flesh
on
them
just
a
bunch
of
bones
and
no
wonder
we
all
feel
inadequate
we're
all
looking
for
something
to
the
future
to
bring
us
a
goody
we
know
we
ought
to
have
there's
a
golden
goody
at
the
end
of
the
line
somewhere
there's
a
good
time
coming
be
it
ever
so
way
far
away
that
one
far
off
divine
event
to
which
all
creation
moves
we
hope
and
therefore
we
say
of
something
that's
no
good
it
has
no
future
I
would
say
it
has
no
present
but
everybody
says
it
has
no
future
now
here
we
are
as
it
were
psychically
starved
and
nobody
knows
what
they
want
we
say
yes
we
think
of
what
we
want
in
vague
terms
pleasure
money
wealth
love
fulfillment
personal
development
but we
don't know
what we
mean
by all
that
the
person
really
sits
down
to
figure
out
write
a
long
essay
pages
on
your
idea
of
heaven
it'll
be
whether
it
depictions
of
heaven
and
hell
is
always
much
better
than
heaven
although
it's
uncomfortable
it's a
sadomasochistic
orgy
wowee
you know
hell
is really
rip
roaring
whereas
all the
saints
in heaven
are sitting
you know
very very
smug
and demure
like they
were in
church
and
you see
also
the
multitudes
of the
saved
instead
of this
writhing
thing
you can
see
all
their
heads
which
the
artist
has
drawn
to
abbreviate
them
just
the
tops
of
their
heads
in
masses
they
look
like
cobblestone
street
flattened
out
so
what
has
happened
then
is
this
that
our
eye
is
an
illusion
it's
an
image
and
it
is
no
more
our
self
than
an
idol
is
the
godhead
but
we
i
feel
i
really
exist
it
isn't
just
an
idea
in
my
head
it's
a
feeling
i
feel
me
well
what
is
it
that
you
feel
when
you
feel
i
tell
you
what
do
you
do
when
somebody
says
pay
attention
what
is
the
difference
between
looking
at
something
and
taking
a
hard
look
at
it
or
between
hearing
something
and
listening
intently
what's
the
difference
what's
the
difference
between
waiting
while
something
goes
on
and
enduring
it
why
the
difference
is
this
that
when
you
pay
attention
instead
of
just
looking
you
screw
up
your
face
you
frown
and
stare
that
is
a
muscular
activity
around
here
when
you
will
you
grit
your
teeth
or
clench
your
fists
when
you
endure
or
control
yourself
you
pull
yourself
together
physically
and
therefore
you
get
up
tight
you
hold
your
breath
you
do
all
kinds
of
muscular
things
to
control
the
functioning
of
your
nervous
system
and
none
of
them
have
the
slightest
effect
on
the
proper
operation
of
the
nervous
system
if
you
stare
at
things
you
will
rather
fuzz
the
image
than
see
them
clearly
if
you
listen
intently
by
concentrating
on
muscles
around
the
ears
you
will
be
so
much
attending
to
muscles
here
that
you
won't
hear
things
properly
and
you
may
get
singing
in
the
ears
if
you
tighten
up
with
your
body
to
pull
yourself
together
all
you
do
is
constrict
yourself
I
remember
in
school
I
sat
next
to
a
boy
who
had
great
difficulty
in
learning
to
read
and
what
they
always
say
to
children
is
try
if
you
can't
do
something
it
was
and
the
teacher
is
impressed
the
boy
is
really
trying
gives
him
B
for
effort
all
he's
doing
has
nothing
to
do
with
it
now
we
all
make
this
muscular
straining
with
the
thought
that
it's
achieving
psychological
results
the
sort
of
psychological
results
it's
intended
to
achieve
and
all
this
amounts
to
is
it's
like
you're
taking
off
in
a
jet
you
got
a
mile
down
the
runway
and
the
thing
isn't
up
in
the
air
yet
and
you
get
nervous
so
you
start
pulling
at
your
seatbelt
that's
what it
is
now
that
is
a
chronic
feeling
we
have
it
in
us
all
the
time
and
it
corresponds
to
the
word
I
that's
what
you
feel
when
you
say
I
you
feel
that
chronic
tension
because
when
an
organ
is
working
properly
you
don't
feel
it
if
you
see
your
eye
you've
got
cataract
if
you
hear
your
ears
you
got
singing
in
your
ears
you
know
getting
in
the
way
of
hearing
when
you
are
fully
functioning
you
are
unaware
of
the
that's
where
you
are
aware
of
all
this
but
you
are
not
aware
of
the
eye
as
the
eye
I'm
talking
about
the
optical
eye
so
when
we
are
We are aware of the ego I, we are aware of this chronic tension inside ourselves, and that's not us. It's a futile tension.
So when we get the illusion, the image of ourselves, married to a futile tension, you've got an illusion married to a futility.
And then you wonder why I can't do anything, why I feel in the face of all the problems of the world impotent,
and why I somehow cannot manage to transform I.
Now here we get to the real problem.
Because we're always telling each other that we should be different.
I'm not going to tell you that tonight.
Why not? Because I know you can't be. Nor can I.
That may sound depressing, but I'll show you it isn't. It's very heartening.
But everybody, you see, who is at all sensitive and awake to their own problems and human problems, is trying to change himself.
We know we can't change the world unless we change ourselves.
If we are all individually selfish, we're going to be collectively selfish.
If we don't really love people, and only pretend to, somehow we've got to find a way to love.
After all, it's said in the Bible, thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and your neighbor as yourself.
You must love.
Yeah, we all agree. Sure. But we don't.
In fact, one psychologist very smartly asked a patient, with whom are you in love against?
And this is particularly becomes appalling when we enter into the realm of higher things.
By which I mean spiritual development.
Everybody these days is interested in spiritual development.
And wisely, because we want to change our consciousness.
Many people are well aware that this egocentric consciousness is a hallucination.
And that they presume it's the function of religion to change it.
Because that's what the Zen Buddhists and Yogis and all these people in the Orient are doing.
They are changing their state of consciousness to get something called Satori,
or mystical experience, or Nirvana, or Moksha, or what have you.
And everybody around here is really enthused about that.
Because you don't get that in church.
I mean, there have been Christian mystics,
but the church has been very quiet about them.
But the average church, all you get is talk.
There's no meditation, no spiritual discipline.
They tell God what to do, interminably, as if he didn't know.
And then they tell the people what to do, as if they could or even wanted to.
And then they sing religious nursery rhymes.
And then, to cap it all, the Roman Catholic Church,
which did at least have an unintelligible service,
which was, you know, it was real mysterious and suggested, vast magic going on.
They went and put the thing into bad English.
And they took away incense, and they took away,
and they became a bunch of Protestants.
And the thing was just terrible.
So now all these Catholics are at loose ends,
as Claire Booth Luce put it, not to be a pun,
but she said, you know,
it's no longer possible to practice contemplative prayer at mass.
Because you're being advised, exhorted, edified, all the time.
And that becomes a bore.
Think of God, listening to all those prayers.
I mean, do have, I mean, talking about grieving the Holy Spirit.
It's just awful.
People have no consideration for God at all.
So, but in pursuing these spiritual disciplines, yoga and Zen and so forth,
and also psychotherapy,
there comes up a big difficulty.
And the big difficulty is this.
I want to find a method whereby I can change my consciousness.
But the, therefore, to improve myself.
But the self that needs to be improved
is the one that is doing the improving.
And so I'm rather stuck.
I find out the reason that I think I believe, say, in God,
is that I sure hope that somehow God will rescue me.
In other words, I want to hang on to my own existence.
And I feel rather shaky about doing that for myself,
but I just hope there's a God who will take care of it.
Or, if I could be loving,
I would have a better opinion of myself.
I'd feel better about it.
I could face myself, as people say,
if I were more loving.
So, the unloving me, somehow, by some gimmickry,
has to turn itself into a loving me.
And this is just like trying to lift yourself off the ground
with your own bootstraps.
It can't be done.
And that's why religion, in practice, mainly produces hypocrisy.
And guilt.
Because of the constant failure of these enterprises.
Oh, people go and study Zen.
And they come back and say,
wow, getting rid of your ego is a superhuman task.
I assure you, it's going to be very, very difficult to get rid of your ego.
You're going to have to sit for a long time,
and you're going to get the sorest legs.
It's hard work.
And all you wretched kids who think you're getting rid of your ego
on part or something or other,
and easy yoga,
you don't know what you're in for when it really comes down to the nitty gritty.
Well, you know, the biggest ego trip going is getting rid of your ego.
And the joke of it all is your ego doesn't exist.
There's nothing to get rid of.
It's an illusion, as I tried to explain.
But you still want to ask how to stop the illusion.
Now, who's asking?
I mean, do you think in the ordinary sense in which you use the word I,
how can I stop identifying myself with the wrong me?
Well, the answer is simply you can't.
Now, the Christians put this in their way
when they say that mystical experience is a gift of divine grace.
Man, as such, cannot achieve this experience.
It is a gift of God.
And if God doesn't give it to you, there's no way of getting it.
Now that is solidly true.
You can't do anything about it because you don't exist.
Well, you say, that's pretty depressing news.
But the whole point is it isn't depressing news.
It is the joyous news.
There's a Zen poem which puts it like this, talking about it.
It means the mystical experience, Satori, the realization that you are the eternal energy of the universe, like Jesus did.
It says like this, you cannot catch hold of it, nor can you get rid of it.
In not being able to get it, you get it.
When you speak, it's silent.
When you are silent, it speaks.
Now, in not being able to get it, you get it.
Because this whole feeling, what Krishnamurti is trying to explain to people, for example,
when he says, why do you ask for a method?
There is no method.
All methods are simply gimmicks for strengthening your ego.
So how do we not do that?
He says, you're still asking for a method.
There is no method.
If you really understand what your eye is, you will see there is no method.
This is so sad.
But it's not.
This is the gospel, the good news.
Because if you cannot achieve it, if you cannot transform yourself,
that means that the main obstacle to mystical vision has collapsed.
That was you.
What happens?
You can't do anything about it.
You're at your wit's end.
What are you going to do, commit suicide?
But supposing you just put that off for a little while.
Wait and see what happens.
You can't control your thoughts.
You can't control your feelings.
Because there is no controller.
You are your thoughts and your feelings.
And they are running along, running along, running along.
Just sit and watch them.
Here they go.
You are still breathing, aren't you?
Still growing your hair?
Still seeing and hearing?
Are you doing that?
I mean, is breathing something that you do?
Do you see?
I mean, do you organize the operations of your eyes?
Know exactly how to work those rods and cones in the retina?
Do you do that?
It's a happening.
It happens.
So you can feel all this happening.
Your breathing is happening.
Your thinking is happening.
Your feeling is happening.
Your hearing.
Your seeing.
The clouds are happening across the sky.
The sky is happening blue.
The sun is happening shining.
There it is.
All this happening.
And may I introduce you?
This is yourself.
This begins to be a vision of who you really are.
And that's the way you function.
You function by happening.
That is to say, by spontaneous occurrence.
And this is not a state of affairs that you should realize.
I cannot possibly preach it to you.
Because the minute you start thinking,
I should understand that,
this is the stupid notion again that I should bring it about.
When there is no you to bring it about.
See that's why I'm not preaching.
You can only preach to egos.
All I can do,
is to talk about what is.
It amuses me to talk about what is,
because it's wonderful.
I love it.
And therefore I like to talk.
If I get paid for it,
then I make my living.
And sensible people get paid for doing what they enjoy doing.
So this is not on a,
you see this is the whole approach here,
is not to convert you.
Not to make you over.
Not to improve you.
But for you to discover.
That if you really knew the way you are.
Things would be,
would be sane.
But you see you can't do that.
You can't make that discovery.
Because you're in your own way.
So long as you think, I'm I.
So long as that hallucination blocks it.
And the hallucination disappears,
only in the realization of its own futility.
When at last you see,
you can't do it.
You cannot make yourself over.
You cannot really control your own mind.
See when we try to control the mind.
A lot of yoga teachers,
try to get you to control your own mind,
mainly to prove to you that you can't do it.
There's nothing you know.
A fool who persists in his folly will become wise.
So they,
what they do is they speed up the folly.
And so you get concentrating.
And you can have a certain amount of superficial and initial success
by a process commonly called self-hypnosis.
And you can think you're making progress.
And a good teacher will let you go along that way for a while
until he really throws you with one.
Why are you concentrating?
See, Buddhism works this way.
Buddha said,
if you suffer,
you suffer because you desire.
And your desires are either unattainable
or always being disappointed or something.
So cut out desire.
So those disciples went away
and they stamped on desire,
jumped on desire,
cut the throat of desire,
and threw out desire.
But then they came back and Buddha said,
but you are still desiring not to desire.
They wanted how to get rid of that.
So when you see that that's nonsense,
there naturally comes over you a quietness.
In seeing that you cannot control your mind,
you realize there is no controller.
What you took to be the thinker of thoughts is just one of the thoughts.
What you took to be the feeler of the feelings,
which was that chronic muscular strain,
is just one of the feelings.
What you took to be the experiencer of experience
is just part of the experience.
So there isn't any thinker of thoughts, feeler of feelings.
We get into that bind because we have a grammatical rule that verbs have to have subjects.
And the funny thing about that is that verbs are processes and subjects are nouns
which are supposed to be things.
How does a noun start a verb?
How does a thing put a process into action?
Obviously it can't.
But we always insist that there is this subject called the knower.
And without a knower there can't be knowing.
Well that's just a grammatical rule.
It isn't a rule of nature.
In nature there's just knowing.
Like you're feeling it.
And I have to say you are feeling it as if you were somehow different from the feeling.
When I say I am feeling, what I mean is there is feeling here.
When I say you are feeling, I mean there is feeling there.
I have to say even there is feeling.
What a cumbersome language we have.
Chinese is easier.
You don't have to put all that in.
You can say things twice as fast in Chinese as you can in any other language.
Well anyway.
When you come to see that you can do nothing.
That the play of thought, of feeling, etc. just goes on by itself as a happening.
Then you are in a state which we will call meditation.
And slowly, without being pushed, your thoughts will come to silence.
That is to say, all the verbal symbolic chatter going on in the skull.
Don't try and get rid of it.
Because that will again produce the illusion that there is a controller.
Just, it goes on, it goes on, it goes on.
And finally it gets tired of itself and bored and stops.
And so then there is a silence.
And this is a deeper level of meditation.
And in that silence, you suddenly begin to see the world as it is.
And you don't see any past.
And you don't see any future.
You don't see any difference between yourself and the rest of it.
That's just an idea.
You can't put your hand on the difference between myself and you.
You know, you can't blow it.
You can't bounce it.
You can't pull it.
It's just an idea.
You can't find any material body.
Because material body is an idea.
So is spiritual body.
This is somebody's philosophical notions.
See, reality isn't material.
That's an idea.
Reality isn't spiritual.
That's an idea.
Reality is.
So, we find, if I've got to put it back into words,
that we live in an eternal now.
You've got all the time in the world.
Because you've got all the time there is, which is now.
And you are this universe.
And you feel a strange feeling when ideas don't define the differences.
You feel that other people's doings are your doings.
And that makes it very difficult to blame other people.
If you're not sophisticated theologically,
you may, of course, run screaming in the streets and say that you're God.
In a way, that's what happened to Jesus.
Because he wasn't sophisticated theologically.
He only had Old Testament biblical theology behind him.
If he'd had Hindu theology, he could have put it more subtly.
But it was only that rather primitive theology of the Old Testament.
And that was the conception of God as a monarchical boss.
Thanks.
And you can't go around and say, I'm the boss's son.
If you're going to say, I'm God, you must allow it for everyone else too.
But this was a heretical idea from the point of view of Hebrew theology.
And so what they did with Jesus was they pedestalized him.
That means kicked him upstairs so that he wouldn't be able to influence anyone else.
And only you may be God.
And that stopped the gospel cold right at the beginning.
It couldn't spread.
Well anyway, this is therefore to say that
the transformation of human consciousness through meditation is frustrated.
So long as we think of it in terms of something that I myself can bring about.
By some kind of wangle, by some sort of gimmick.
Because you see that leads to endless games of spiritual one-upmanship.
And of guru competitions.
Of my guru is more effective than your guru.
My yoga's faster than your yoga.
I'm more aware of myself than you are.
I'm humbler than you are.
I'm sorrier for my sins than you are.
I love you more than you love me.
It is interminable goings on about which people fight and wonder
whether they are a little bit more evolved than somebody else and so on.
All that can just fall away.
And then we get this strange feeling that we have never had, you see, in our lives.
Except occasionally by accident.
Some people get a glimpse.
That we are no longer this poor little stranger and afraid in a world it never made.
But that you are this universe.
And you are creating it at every moment.
Because, you see, it starts now.
It didn't begin in the past.
There was no past.
See, if the universe began in the past, when that happened, it was now.
See?
Well, it's still now.
And the universe is still beginning now.
And it's trailing off like the wake of a ship from now.
And the wake of the ship fades out, so does the past.
You can look back there to explain things, but the explanation disappears.
You'll never find it there.
Things are not explained by the past.
They're explained by what happens now.
That creates the past.
And it begins here.
That's the birth of responsibility.
Because otherwise, you can always look over your shoulder and say,
Well, I'm the way I am because my mother dropped me.
And she dropped me because she was neurotic because her mother dropped her.
And away we go back to Adam and Eve or to a disappearing monkey or something.
And we never get at it.
But in this way, you're faced with it.
You're doing all this.
And that's an extraordinary shock.
So, cheer up.
You can't blame anyone else for the kind of world you're in.
And if you know, you see, that I, in the sense of the person, the front, the ego,
it really doesn't exist, then it won't go to your head too badly
if you wake up and discover that you're God.
You've been listening to Alan Watts
from the Spoken Word Library of the Electronic University.
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