Alan Watts Chillstep Mix 3
Alan Watts Chillstep Mix #3 / 1 Hour + by Terrestrial_Exitium
Lyrics / Transcript of Alan Watts Chillstep Mix 3
Some people will use a symbolism of the relationship of God to the Universe. Wherein, God is say, brilliant light, only somehow veiled. Hiding underneath all these forms you see as you look around you. So far so good. But the truth is funnier than that. It is that you are looking right at the brilliant light now. The experience you are having which you call ordinary, everyday consciousness, pretending you are not It. That experience is exactly the same thing as It. There’s no difference at all.
That’s the great discovery.
In other words, when you really start to see things, and you look at an old paper cup. And you go into the nature of what it really is to See, what Vision is. Or what Smell is. Or what Touch is. You realize that that vision of the paper cup is the brilliant light of the cosmos.
See the source of all light is in the eye. If there were no eyes in this world, the sun would not be light. You evoke light out of the Universe. In the same way you by virtue having a soft skin evoke hardness out of wood. Wood is only hard in relation to a soft skin. It’s your eardrum that evokes noise out of the air.
You, by being this organism, call into being the whole Universe of light and color and hardness and heaviness and everything. You see?
But in the mythology we have sold ourselves on during the end of the 19th century, when people discovered how big the Universe was. And that we live on a little planet, in a solar system on the edge of a galaxy (which is a minor galaxy). Everybody thought, “Uughgh…we really are unimportant after all. God isn’t there and doesn’t love us. And nature doesn’t give a damn.”
And we put ourselves down, you see.
But actually, it’s this little funny microbe, tiny thing, crawling on this little planet that’s way out somewhere who has the ingenuity. By nature of this magnificent organic structure, to evoke the whole Universe.
Out of what would otherwise be mere quanta. There’s jazz going on. But you see, this little ingenious organism is not merely some stranger in this. This little organism on this little planet is what the whole show is growing there. And so realizing its own presence.
If this is the state of affairs which is so, and if the consciousness state you are in this moment is the same thing as what we might call Divine State—if you do anything to make it different, it shows you don’t understand that it’s so.
You Are Getting In Your Own Way.
The Buddha said, “We suffer because we desire. If you can give up desire, you won’t suffer.”
But he didn’t say that as the last word. He said that as the opening statement to open the dialog. Because if you say that to someone, they’re going to come back after a while and say, “yes, but I’m now desiring not to desire.”
And so the Buddha will answer, “Well, you’re beginning to understand the point. Because you can’t give up desire. Why would you try to do that, it’s already desire.”
Buddha Desire Story
So in the same way you ask, “So you want to be unselfish?” Or to give up your ego.
Let Go. Relax.
Why do you want to do that?
Just because it’s another way of beating the game? Isn’t it?
And the moment you see you had hypothesized that you are different from the Universe, you want to get one up on it. But if you try to get one up on the Universe, and you’re in competition with it, it means you don’t understand you are It.
You think there’s a real difference between Self and Other. But “Self,” what you call your “self” and what you call “other,” are mutually necessary to each other like back and front. They’re really One.
But just as a magnet polarizes itself at North and South, but it’s all one magnet. So experience polarizes itself as Self and Other. But it’s All One. So if you try to make the North Pole get the mastery of it or the South Pole the mastery of the North Pole, you show you don’t know what’s going on.
A guru or teacher who wants to get this across to somebody, because he knows it himself. And when you “know” it, you know you like others to see it too.
What he does is, he gets you into being ridiculous.
In other words, if you are in a contest with the Universe, he’s going to stir up that contest until it becomes ridiculous. So he sets you such tasks as saying, of course in order to be a true person you must give up your self. Be unselfish. So the Lord steps down out of Heaven and says, “The First Great Commandment is: Thou Shalt Love The Lord Thy God.”
You Must Love Me.Well that’s a double blind.
You can’t love on purpose.
You can’t be sincere purposely. But if a person tries to do it—so this is where Christianity is rigged: “You should be very sorry for your sins.”
And though everybody knows they’re not, but they think they ought to be. And so they go around trying to be penitent. Or trying to be humble. And they know that the more assiduously they practice it, the phonier and phonier the whole thing gets.
If you think you have a problem and that you’re an ego, and that you’re in difficulty. The answer that the Zen Master asks you is, “show me your ego.” I want to see this thing that has a problem.
“Show me your ego. I want to see this thing that has a problem.” -Zen Master
You won’t be able to find it.
The only way you’ll know it isn’t there is if you look for it hard enough. To find out it isn’t there.
So everybody says, “Alright, find out who you are.” Because the harder you look, you won’t be able to find it. And then you realize that it isn’t there at all.
There isn’t a separate you.
Your mind is what there is. Everything.
[16:40] Let’s say, we take the basic supposition, which is the thing that one sees in the experience of satori or awakening or whatever you want to call it. This Now moment in which I’m talking, and you’re listening, is eternity. That although we have somehow conned ourselves into the notion that this moment is rather ordinary, and that we may not feel very well. And that we’re sort of vaguely frustrated and worried and so on. And that it ought to be changed. This is it.
So you don’t need to do anything at all.
But the difficulty of explaining that is, you mustn’t try to do anything. Because that’s doing something.
That’s why Zen teachers use shock treatment. Sometimes why they hit people or shout at them. Or create a sudden surprise. Because it is that jolt, that suddenly brings you Here. See there’s no road to Here. Because you’re already There.
[19:26] If you ask me, “How am I going to get Here?” It will be like the famous story of the American tourist in England. Who asked some yokel the way to Upper Tuddenham, a little village. The yokel scratched his head and said (in English accent), “Well Sir, I do know where it is, but if I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.” [laughs]
So you see, when you ask, how do I attain the knowledge of God? How do I attain Nirvana? Liberation? All I can say is you’re asking the wrong question.
Why Do You Want To Attain It?
Because the very fact that you are wanting to attain it is the only thing that prevents you from getting there.
You already have It.
But of course it’s up to you, it’s your privilege to pretend you don’t.
That’s your game, that’s your life game, that’s what makes you think you’re an ego.
And when you want to wake up, you will.
Just like that.
If you’re not awake, it shows you don’t want to. You’re still playing the high part of the game. You’re still, as it were, the Self pretending it’s not the Self. That’s what you want to do.
So you see, in that way too, you’re already there. When you understand this, a funny thing happens. And some people misinterpret it. You’ll discover, as this happens, that the distinction between voluntary and involuntary behavior disappears. You will realize that what you describe as things under your own will feel exactly the same as things going on “outside” of you.
You watch other people moving, and you know you’re doing that. Just like you’re breathing. Or circulating your blood.
If you don’t understand what’s going on, you’re liable to get crazier at this point. And to feel that you are God in the Jehovah sense. Say that you actually have power over other people, so that you could alter what they’re doing. And that you are omnipotent in a very crude, literal, bible sense. You see.
And a lot of people feel that and they go crazy.
They have to put them away. They think they’re Jesus Christ. And that everybody ought to fall down and worship them. That’s only they’ve got their wires crossed. This experience happened to them, but they don’t know how to interpret it. So be careful of that. Jung calls it inflation. People who get the holy man syndrome.
That “I suddenly discover that I’m the Lord and I’m above good and evil, and so on.” Then I start giving myself airs and graces. But the point is, everybody else is too. If you discover that, then you ought to know that everybody else has.
[28:10] Most people think that when they open their eyes and look around that what they are seeing is outside. It seems doesn’t it that you are “behind” your eyes. And that behind the eyes, there is a blank. You can’t see at all, unless there is something else in front of you.
Behind the eyes there seems to be something that has no color. Isn’t dark. Isn’t light. But is that behind your eyes?
Well actually when you look out there and see all these people and things sitting around, that’s how it feels inside your head. The color of this room, is back here in the nervous system. Where the optical nerves are at the back of the head. It’s in there. But you’re experiencing it.
What you see out here is a neurological experience.
Now if that hits you, and you feel sensuously that that’s so, you may think then, that therefore, the external world is all inside my skull.
But you’ve got to correct that. The thought that your skull is also in the external world. So you suddenly begin to feel, “well, what a kind of a situation is this? It’s inside me and I’m inside it, and it’s inside me, and I’m inside it.” But that’s the way it is.
This is what you could call the transaction rather than interaction between the individual and the world. Just like for example in buying and selling. There cannot be an act of buying unless there’s simultaneously an act of selling and vice versa. So the relationship between the organism and the environment is transactional. The environment grows the organism and in turn, the organism creates the environment.
The organism turns the sun into light. But there requires there to be an environment containing a sun for there to be an organism at all. And the answer to that is that they’re all simply one process.
It isn’t that organisms by chance came into this world. Put it, rather, that this world is the sort of environment that grows organisms. It was that way from the beginning. The organisms may in time have arrived in the sea later than the beginning of the sea. But from the moment it went “Bang!” in the beginning, that’s the way it started.
Organisms like us, were involved in it.
You see, look here, let’s take the propagation of an electric current. I can have an electric current running through a wire that goes all the way around the earth. And here we have our power source, and here we have a switch. Alright. Here’s the positive pole. Here’s the negative pole. Now, before that switch closes, the current doesn’t exactly behave like water in a pipe.
There isn’t current waiting here, waiting to jump the gap as soon as the switch is closed.
The current doesn’t even start, until the switch is closed from the positive pole. It never starts unless the point of arrival is there. Now it will take for that interval to get that current going. And the circuit going all the way around the earth. It’s a long run. But the finishing point has to be closed before it will even
