Waching daily Dec 27 2017

I find it a little difficult to say what the subject matter of the seminar is

going to be because it's too fundamental to give it a title I'm going to talk

about what there is now the first thing though that we have to do is to get our

perspectives with some background about the basic ideas which as Westerners

living today in the United States influence our everyday common sense our

fundamental notions about what life is about and there are historical origins

for this which influenced us more strongly than most people realize ideas

of the world which are built into the very nature of the language we use and

of our ideas of logic and of what makes sense all together and these basic ideas

I call myth not using the word myth to mean simply something untrue

but to use the word myth in a more powerful sense a myth is an image in

terms of which we try to make sense of the world and we at present are living

under the influence of two very powerful images which are in the present state of

scientific knowledge inadequate and one of our major problems today is to find

an adequate satisfying image of the world well that's what I'm going to talk

about and I'm going to go further than that not only what image of the world to

have but how we can get our sensations and our feelings

in accordance with the most sensible image of the world that we can manage to

conceive all right now the two images which we have been working under for

2,000 years and maybe more are what I would call two models of the universe in

the first is called the ceramic model and the second the fully automatic model

the ceramic model of the universe is based on the book of Genesis from which

Judaism Islam and Christianity derive their basic picture of the world and the

image of the world in the book of Genesis is that the world is an artifact

it is made as a Potter takes clay and forms pots out of it or as a carpenter

takes wood and makes tables and chairs out of it

don't forget jesus is the son of the carpenter and also the son of god so the

image of god and of the world is based on the idea of God as a

technician Potter carpenter architect who has in mind a plan and who fashions

the universe in accordance with that plan so basic to this image of the world

is the notion you see that the world consists of stuff basically primordial

matter substance stuff as pots are made of clay and the Potter imposes his will

on it and makes it become whatever he wants and so in the book of Genesis the

Lord God creates Adam out of the dust of the earth in other words he makes a clay

figurine and then he breathes into it and it

becomes alive because the clay becomes in formed by itself it is formless it

has no intelligence and therefore it requires an external intelligence and an

external energy to bring it to life and to put some sense into it and so in this

way we inherit a conception of ourselves as being artifacts as being made and it

is perfectly natural in our culture for a child to ask its mother how was I made

or who made me and this is a very very powerful idea but for example it is not

shared by the Chinese or by the Hindus a Chinese child would not ask its mother

how was I made a Chinese child might ask its mother how did I grow which is an

entirely different procedure from making you seen when you make something you put

it together you arrange parts or you from the outside to the end as a

sculptor works on a stone or as the Potter works on clay but when you watch

something growing it works in exactly the opposite direction it works from the

inside to the outside it expands it virgins it blossoms and it happens all

over itself at once in other words the the original simple form say over the

living cell in the womb progressively complicates itself and that's the

growing process and it's quite different from the making process and so there is

for that reason a fundamental difference between the maid and the maker and this

image this ceramic model of the universe originated in cultures where the form of

government was monarchic oh and we're therefore the maker of the universe was

conceived also at the same time in the image of the king of the universe King

of Kings Lord of lords the only ruler of princes who dust from thy throne behold

all dwellers upon earth I'm quoting the Book of Common Prayer and so all those

people who are oriented to the universe in that way feel related to basic

reality as a subject to a king and so they are on very very humble terms in

relation to whatever it is that works all this thing I find it odd in the

United States the people who are citizens of a republic have a

monarchical theory of the universe

because we are carrying over from a very ancient Near Eastern cultures the notion

that the Lord of the universe must be respected in a certain way people kneel

people bow people prostrate themselves because the ruler and you know what the

reason for all that is that nobody is more frightened of everybody else than

the tyrant he sits with his back to the wall and his guards on either side of

him and he has you face downwards on the ground because you can't use weapons

that way when you come into his presence you don't stand up and face him because

you might attack and he has reason to fear that you might because he's ruling

you all and the man who rules you all is the biggest crook in the bunch but he's

the one who succeeded in crime the other people pushed aside because they the

criminals the people we lock up in jail simply the people who didn't make it

so naturally the real boss sits that is back to the wall and his henchmen on

either side of him and so when you design a church what does it look like

Catholic Church with the altar as it used to be it's changing now because the

Catholic religion is changing but the Catholic Church has the altar with its

back to the wall at the east end of the church and there the author is the

throne and the priest is the chief this year of the court and he is making a

basin to the throne in front but there is the throne of God the altar and all

the people are facing it and kneeling down and a great Catholic cathedral is

called a Basilica from the Greek basileus which means king so a basilica

is the house of a king and the ritual of the Catholic Church is based on the

court rituals of Byzantium a Protestant Church is a little different but

basically the same the furniture of a Protestant church is based on a judicial

courthouse the pulpit the judge in an American Court was the black robe he who

has exactly the same dress as a Protestant minister and everybody sits

in neat boxes like there's a jury box is a box for the job of the boxing is the

box of that and those are the pews in an ordinary kind of colonial type

Protestant Church so both these kinds of churches which

have an autocratic view of the nature of the universe decorate themselves are

architectural II constructed in accordance with political images of the

universe one is the king and the other is the judge your honor

no sense in this when in court you have to refer to the judges your honor it

stops the people engaged in litigation from losing their temples and getting

rude this a certain sense to that but when you want to apply that image to

the universe itself for the very nature of life it has limitations for one thing

the idea of a difference between matter and spirit this idea doesn't work

anymore long long ago physicists stopped asking the question what is matter they

began that way they wanted to know what is the fundamental substance of the

world and the more they asked that question the more they realized they

couldn't answer it because if you're going to say what matter is you've got

to describe it in terms of behavior and that is to say in terms of form in terms

of pattern you tell what it does you describe the smallest shapes of it that

you can see atoms electrons protons Nissan's

all sorts of sub-nuclear particles but you never never arrive at the basic

stuff because there isn't it what happens is this stuff is a word for the

world as it looks when our eyes are out of focus

Fuzzy's stop the idea of stuff is that it's undifferentiated at some kind of

ague and when your eyes are not in sharp focus everything looks fuzzy when you

get your eyes into focus you see a form you see a pattern and so all that we can

talk about is patterns so the picture of the world in the most sophisticated

physics of today is not formed stuff potted clay but patent a

self moving self designing pattern they dance and we haven't yet our common

sense as individuals hasn't yet caught up with us well now in the course of

time in the evolution of Western thought the ceramic image of the world ran into

trouble and changed into what I call the fully automatic model or image of the

world in other words Western science was based on the idea that there are laws of

nature and it got that idea from Judaism and Christianity and Islam that in other

words the Potter the maker of the world in the beginning of things laid down the

laws and the the law of God which is also the law of nature it's called the

logos and in Christianity the logoff is the second person of the Trinity

incarnate as Jesus Christ who thereby is the perfect exemplar of the divine law

so we have tended to think of all natural phenomena as responding to laws

as if in other words the laws of the world were like the rails on which a

streetcar or tram or a train runs and these things exist in a certain way and

all events respond to these laws you know that Limerick there was a young man

who said down for it certainly seems that I am a creature that moves

indeterminate grooves I'm not even a bus I'm a tram

here's this idea that there's a kind of a plan and everything responds and obeys

that plan well in the 18th century Western intellectuals began to suspect

this idea what they suspected is whether there is a lawmaker whether there is an

architect of the universe and they found out or they reasoned that you don't have

to suppose that there is why because the hypothesis of God does not help us to

make any predictions in other words that put it this way if the business of

science is to make predictions about what's going to happen science is

essentially prophecy what's going to happen by studying the behavior of the

past and describing it carefully we can make predictions about what's going to

happen in the future that's really the whole science and to do this and to make

successful predictions you do not need God as a hypothesis because it makes no

difference for anything if you say everything is controlled by God

everything is governed by God that doesn't make any difference to your

prediction of what's going to happen and so what they did was simply drop that

hypothesis but they kept the hypothesis of law because if you can predict if you

can study the past and describe how things have behaved and you've got some

regularities in the behavior of the universe you call that law although it

may not be law in the ordinary sense of the word a simply regularity and so they

what they did was they got rid of the lawmaker and kept the law

and so they conceived the universe in terms of a mechanism something in other

words that is functioning according to regular clock light mechanical

principles newton's whole image of the world is based on billions the atoms are

billiard balls and they bang each other around and so your behavior you hear

every every individual therefore is defined as a very very complex

arrangement of billiard balls being banged around by everything else and so

behind the fully automatic model of the universe is the notion that reality

itself is to use the favorite term of 19th century scientists blind energy in

say the metaphysics of and tackle and th Huxley the world is basically nothing

but blind unintelligent force and likewise in parallel to this in the

philosophy of Freud the basic psychological energy is libido which is

blind lust and it is only a fluke it is only as a result of pure chances

that resulting from the exuberance of this energy there are people with values

with reason with languages with cultures and with love just a fluke like you know

1000 monkeys typing 1000 typewriters for a million years will eventually tightly

Encyclopedia Brittanica and of course the moment they stop typing the

Encyclopedia Britannica they will relapse into nonsense and so in order

that that shall not happen because you and I are flukes in this cosmos and we

like our way of life we like being human if we want to keep

it say these people we've got to fight nature because it'll turn us back into

nonsense moment we let it and so we've got to impose our will upon

this world as if we were something completely alien to it from outside and

so we get a culture based on the idea of the war between man and nature and we

talk about the conquest of space the conquest of Everest and the great

symbols of our culture are the rocket and the bulldozer the rocket you know

compensation for the sexually inadequate male so we're gonna conquer space you

know we're in space already way up if anybody cared to be sensitive and let

what's outside space come to you you can if your eyes are clear enough aided by

telescopes aided by radio astronomy aided by all the kind of sensitive

instruments we can devise we are as far out in space as we're ever going to get

but you know sensitivity isn't the pitch in especially in the W ASP culture of

the United States we define man - in terms of aggression you see because we

are not with a little bit frightened as to whether we are really men and so we

put on this great show of being a tough guy is completely unnecessary

you know if you have what it takes you don't need to put on that show you don't

need to beat nature into submission why be hostile to nature because after all

you are a symptom of nature view as a human being you grow out of this

physical universe in just exactly the same way that an apple grows off an

apple tree so let's say the tree which grows apples is a tree which apples

using Apple as a verb and a world in which human beings arrive is the world

that peoples and so the existence of people is

symptomatic of the kind of universe we live in

just as spots on somebody's skin symptomatic of chickenpox but we have

been brought up by reason of our two great myths the ceramic and the

fully-automatic not to feel that we belong in the world

so our popular speech reflected we say I came into this world you didn't you came

out of it we say face facts we talk about encounters with the reality as if

it was a head-on meeting of completely alien agencies and the average person

has the sensation that he is a somewhat that exists inside a bag of skin the

center of consciousness which looks out at this thing and what the hell is it

going to do to me you see I recognize you you kind of look like me and I've

seen myself in a mirror and you look like you might be people so maybe you're

intelligent maybe you can love too and may perhaps you're alright some of you

are anyway if you got the right color of skin or you have the right religion or

whatever it is you're okay but there are all those people over in Asia Africa and

they may not really be people when you want to destroy someone you always

define them as um people not really human monkeys may be idiots maybe

machines may be but not people but we have this hostility to the external

world because of the superstition the myth the absolutely unfounded theory

that you yourself exists only inside your skin now I want to propose another

idea altogether another astronomers either say there was a primordial

explosion enormous bang millions of years ago billions of years ago which

flung all the galaxies into space now let's take that just for the sake of

argument and say that was the way it happened

it's like you took a bottle of ink and you threw it at a wall smash and all

that ink spreads and in the middle it's dense isn't it and as it gets out on the

edge the little droplets are finer and finer and make more complicated patterns

see so in the same way there was a big bang in the beginning of things and it

spread and you and I sitting here in this room has complicated human beings

are way way out on the fringe of that band we're the complicated little

patterns on the end of it very interesting but so we define ourselves

as being only that if you think that you are only inside your skin you define

yourself as one very complicated little curlicue way out on the edge of that

explosion way out in space and way out in time billions of years ago you were a

Big Bang and now you're a complicated human being and when then we cut

ourselves up like this and don't feel that we are still the Big Bang but you

are depends how you define yourself you are actually if this is the way things

started if there was a big bang in the beginning you're not something that is a

result of the big bang on the end of the process you are still the process you

are the Big Bang the original force of the universe

coming on as whoever you are see when I meet you I see not just II what you

define yourself as mister so-and-so miss song so mrs. so-and-so I see every one

of you as the primordial energy of the universe coming on at me in this

particular way I know I'm that too but we've learned to define ourselves as

separate from it and so what I would call a kind of a basic problem we've got

to go through first is to understand that there are no such things

things that is to say separate things or separate events that is only a way of

talking and if you can understand this you're gonna have no further problems I

once asked a group of high school children what do you mean by a thing and

first of all they gave me all sorts of synonyms they said it's an object which

is simply another word for a thing it doesn't tell you anything about what you

mean by a thing finally a very smart girl from Italy who was in the group

said the thing is a noun she was quite right a noun

isn't a part of nature it's part of speech there are no nouns in the

physical world there are no separate things in the physical world either

the physical world is Wiggly the clouds mountains trees people are all Wiggly

and only when human beings get working at things they build buildings and

straight lines and try and make out that the world isn't really Wiggly but here

were we sitting in this room all built on straight lines but each one of us is

as Wiggly as all get-out now then when you want to get control of something

that Wiggles it's pretty difficult isn't it you try and pick up a fish in your

hands and the fish is Wiggly and it slips out what do you do to get all of

the fish you use a net and so the net is the basic thing we have for getting hold

of the wiggly world and so if you want to get hold of this wiggle you've got to

put a net over it and I can number the holes in the net so many so holds up so

many holes across and if I can number these holes I can count exactly where

each wiggle is in terms of a hole in that net and that's the beginning of

calculus the art of measuring the world but in order to do that

got to break up the wiggle into bits and I'm going to call this a specific bit

and this the next bit of the wiggle and this the next bit and this the next bit

of the wiggle and so these bits are things or events bits of Wiggles which I

mark out in order to talk about the wiggle in order to measure it and

therefore in order to control it but in nature in fact in the physical world the

wiggle isn't bitted like you don't get a cut-up fryer out of an egg but you have

to cut the chicken up in order to eat it you bite it but it doesn't come bitten

so the world doesn't come thing it doesn't come isn't it

you and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is

continuous with the ocean the ocean waves and the universe peoples and as

the wave I wave with you and say you the world is waving at me with you and

saying hi I'm here but we are consciousness are the way we feel and

sense our existence being based on a myth that we are made that we are parts

that we are things our consciousness has been influenced so that each one of us

does not feel that we feel we have been hypnotized literally hypnotized by

social convention into feeling and sensing that we exist only inside our

skins that we are not the original bang but just something out on the end of it

and therefore we are scared stiff my wave is going to disappear and I'm going

to die and that would be awful we've got a mythology going now which is the

father mask we'll put it we're nothing but coming it happens between the

maternity ward and the crematorium and that's it and therefore everybody

feels unhappy and miserable no this is what people really believe today you may

go to church you may say you believe in the certain the other but you don't even

Jehovah's Witnesses who are the most fundamentalist fundamentalist they are

polite when they come round and knock at the door but if you really believed in

Christianity you would be screaming in the streets but nobody does you'd be

taking full-page ads in the paper every day you would have the most terrifying

television programs the churches would be going out of their minds if they

really believe what they think but they don't they think they ought to believe

what they teach they believe they should believe what they don't believe it

because what we really believe is the fully automatic model and that is our

basic plausible common sense you are a fluke

you are a separate event and you run from the maternity ward to the

crematorium and that's it baby that's it now why does anybody think that way

there's no reason to because it isn't even scientific it's just a myth and

it's invented by people who wanted to feel a certain way they want to play a

certain game either game of God the guttin got embarrassing you begin the

idea of God as the putter the architect of the universe is good and it makes you

feel that light is after all important there is someone who cares it has

meaning it has sense and you are valuable in the eyes of the Father but

after a while it gets embarrassing and you realize that everything you do is

being watched by God

he knows your tiniest inmost feelings and thoughts and you say after a while

quit bugging me I don't want you or happen so you become an atheist just to

get rid of it then then you feel terrible after that because you've got

rid of God but that means you got rid of yourself you're just nothing but a

machine and your idea that you're a machine is just a machine too so if

you're a smart kid you commit suicide

Camus said there is only really one serious philosophical question which is

whether or not to commit suicide I think there are four or five serious for the

tropical questions the first one is who started it

the second is are we going to make it the third is where are we going to put

it the fourth is who's going to clean up and the fifth is it serious but but

still I should you are not commit suicide this is a good question why go

on and you only go on if the game is worth the candle now the universe has

been going on for an incredible long time and so really they satisfy a theory

of the universe has to be one that's worth betting on that's a very seems to

me absolutely elementary common-sense if you make a theory of the universe which

isn't worth betting on why bother just commit suicide but if you want to

go on playing the game you've got to have an optimal theory for playing the

game otherwise there's no point in it but the people who coined the fully

automatic theory of the universe were playing a very funny game what they

wanted to say was this all your people who believed in religion

are old ladies and wishful thinkers you've got a big daddy out there and you

want a comfort and thing but life is rough

life is tough and success goes to the most hard-headed people that was a very

convenient theory when the European American world was colonizing the

natives everywhere else I said we're the end product of evolution and we're tough

see I'm a big strong guy because I face facts and life is just a bunch of junk

and I'm going to impose my will on it and turn it into something else City and

I'm real hard see that's a way of flattering yourself and so it has become

academically plausible and fashionable that this is the way the world works in

academic circles no other theory of the world and the fully automatic model is

respectable because if you're an academic person you've got to be an

intellectually tough person you want to be prickly there are basically two kinds

of philosophy once called prickles the others called goon and prickly people

are precise rigorous logical like everything chopped up and clear goo

people like invade their for example in physics prickly people believe that the

ultimate constituents of matter of particles goo people believe it's waves

and in in philosophy prickly people are logical positivists and do people are

idealists and they're always arguing with each other and what they don't

realize is that they neither one can take his position without the other

person because you wouldn't know you advocated prickles and this was somebody

else advocating Guth you wouldn't know what a prickle was

unless you knew what goo was because life is not be the prickles or goo it's

gooey prickles and pretty cool you go together like back and front male and

female and that's the answer to philosophy see I'm a philosopher and I'm

not going to argue very much because if you don't argue with me I don't know

what I think so if we argue I say thank you because they're going to the

courtesy of you're taking a different point of view I understand what I mean

so I can't get rid of you but however you see this whole idea that the

universe is just nothing at all but an intelligent force playing around and not

even enjoying it he is a put down theory of the world people who had a an

advantage to make a game to play by putting it down and making out that

because they put the world down they were a superior kind of people so that

just won't do we've had it because if you seriously go

along with this idea of the world you're what is technically called alienated you

feel hostile to the world you feel that the world is a trap it is a mechanism

it's electronic and neurological

mechanisms into which you somehow got caught and you poor thing have to put up

with being in a body that's falling apart and that gets cancer that gets the

great siberian itch and it's just terrible

and these mechanics doctors are trying to help you out but they really can't

succeed in the end and you're just going to fall apart and it's a grim business

and it's too bad so if you think that that's the way things are you may as

well commit suicide right now

unless you say well I'd eminent because they're really after all there might be

eternal damnation in the back of the thing if I did that or then I identify

with my children or something and I think of them going on and without me

and nobody does support them and of course if I do go on in this frame of

mind and continue to support them I shall merely teach them to be like I am

and they'll go on dragging it out to support their children and they won't

enjoy it and they'll be afraid to commit suicide and so will their children they

all learn the same lesson so you see all I'm trying to say is that the basic

common sense about the nature of the world that is influencing most people in

the United States today the fully automatic model is simply a myth if you

want to say that the idea of God the Father with his white beard on the

golden throne is a myth in the bad sense of the word myth so is this other one

it's just as phony and has just as little for support as being the true

state of affairs why and let's get this clear if there is any such thing at all

as intelligence and love and beauty well you found it in other people

in other words it exists in us as human beings and as I said if it is there in

us it is symptomatic of the scheme of things we are a symptomatic of the

scheme of things as the apples are symptomatic of the apple tree or the

rose of the rosebush the earth is not a big rock infested with living organisms

any more than your skeleton is bones infested with cells

the earth is geologic from the earth but this geological entity and grows people

and our existence on the earth is a symptom of the solar system and it's

balances as much as the solar system in turn is a symptom of our galaxy and our

galaxy in its turn is a symptom of the whole company of galaxies goodness only

knows what that's in but you see when as a scientist you describe the behavior of

an living organism you try to say what a person does it's the only way in which

you can describe what a person is describe what they do then you find out

that in making this description you cannot confine yourself to what happens

inside the skin in other words you can't talk about a person walking unless you

start describing the floor because when I walk I don't just dangle my legs in

empty space I move in relationship to a room

and so in order to describe what I'm doing when I'm walking I have to

describe the run I have to describe the territory so in describing my talking at

the moment I can't describe this just as a thing in itself because I'm talking to

you and so what I'm doing at the moment is not completely described unless your

being here is described also so if that is necessary if in other words in order

to describe my behavior I have to describe your behavior and the behavior

of the environment it means that we've really got one system of behavior that

what I am involves what you are I don't know who I am unless I know who you are

and you don't know who you are unless you know who I am

it was a wise rabbi once said if I am I because you are you and you are you

because I am I then I am NOT I and you are not you in other words we are not

separate we define each other we're all back some fronts to each other you know

you can't for example have two sticks you lean two sticks against each other

and they stand up because they support each other take one away and the other

faults they interdependent and so in exactly that way we and our environment

and all of us and each other are interdependent systems we know who we

are in terms of other people we all work together now this is again and again the

serious scientific description of how things happen and any good scientist

knows therefore that what you call the

external world is as much you as your own body your skin doesn't separate you

from the world it's a bridge through which the external world flows into you

and you flow into it just for example is the whirlpool in water you could say

because you have a skin you have a definite shape you have a definite form

all right here is what a flow of water and it suddenly it does a whirlpool and

then it goes on the Whirlpool is a definite form but no water stays put in

it the Whirlpool is something the stream is doing and exactly the same way the

whole universe is doing each one of us and I see you today and I recognize you

tomorrow just as I would recognize the whirlpool in a stream I'd say oh yes

I've seen that well pool before it's just near Sun close house on the edge of

the river and it's always there so in the same way when I meet you tomorrow I

recognize you you're the same well pull you away yesterday but you're moving the

whole world is moving through you all the cosmic rays all the food you're

eating the stream of steaks and milk and the eggs and everything is just flowing

right through you when you're wiggling the same way the world is wiggling the

stream is wiggling you as a problem is you see we haven't been taught to feel

that way the myth underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not

taught us to feel identical with the universe but only parts of it only in it

only confronting aliens and we are I think quite urgently in need of coming

to feel that we are the eternal universe each one of us otherwise we're going to

go out of our heads we're going to commit suicide collectively with

courtesy of h-bombs and all right supposing we do well that will be that

and it will be life making experiments on other galaxies maybe they'll find a

better game well now I was discussing two of the great myths or models of the

universe which lie in the intellectual and psychological background of all of

us myth of the world as a political monarchical state in which we are all

here on sufferance as subject to God in which we are made artifacts who do not

exist in our own right God alone in the first myth exists in

his own right and you exist as a favor and you ought to be grateful like your

parents come on and say to you maybe look at all the things we've done for

you all the money we spent to send you to college and you turn out to be a

beatnik you're a wretched ungrateful child and you're supposed to say sorry I

really am but you're you're definitely in the position of being on probation so

that that idea of the royal god the king of kings and the Lord of lords which we

inherit from the political structures of the tigris-euphrates cultures and from

Egypt the Pharaoh Amenhotep the fourth is probably

as Freud suggested the original author of Moses monotheism and the certainly

the Jewish law code comes from Hammurabi in Acadia and these men lived in a

culture well the pyramid and the ziggurat the ziggurat is a Chaldean

version of the pyramid indicating somehow a hierarchy of power from the

bus all the way down and God in this first myth that we've been discussing

the ceramic myth is the boss and the idea of God is that the universe is

governed from above but you see this parallels and goes hand-in-hand with the

idea that you govern your own body that the ego which lies somewhere between the

ears and behind the eyes in the brain is the governor of the body and so we can't

understand and assist a system of order a system of life in which there isn't a

governor Oh Lord our governor how excellent is my name in all the world

but supposing on the contrary there could be a system which doesn't have a

government that's what we are supposed to have in this society we are supposed

to be a democracy and a republic and we are supposed to govern ourselves and yet

as I said it's so funny that Americans can be politically Republican I don't

mean Republican in the party sense and yet religiously monarchic oh it's a real

strange contradiction so what is this universe is it a

monarchy is it a republic is it a mechanism or an organism because you see

if it's a mechanism either it's a a mere mechanism as in the fully automatic

model or else it's the mechanism under the control of a driver mechanic if it's

not that it's an organism and an organism is the thing that governs

itself in your body there is no boss you can say you can argue for example that

the brain is a gadget evolved by the stomach in order to serve the stomach

for the purposes of getting food or you can argue that the stomach is a gadget

evolved by the brain to feed it and keep it alive whose game is this is it the

brain's game Oh stomachs game it doesn't make actually that their mutual the

brain implies the stomach the stomach implies the brain and neither of them is

the boss you know that story about all the limbs of the body said the hand said

we we do all our work the feet said we do our work but now said we do all the

chewing and here's this lazy stomach we just gets it all and doesn't do a thing

we didn't do any work so let's go on strike and the hands refuse to carry the

feet refuse to walk the mouse refused to and said now we're on strike against the

stomach but after a while all of them found themselves getting weaker and

weaker and weaker and weaker because they didn't recognize that the stomach

threatened so there is the possibility then that we

are not in the kind of system that are these two myths delineate that we are

not living in a world where we ourselves in the deeper sense of our of self are

outside reality and somehow in a position that we have to bow down to it

and say as a great favour please preserve us in existence nor are we in a

system which is merely mechanical and in which we are nothing but flukes trapped

in the electrical wiring of a nervous system which is fundamentally rather

inefficiently arranged what's the alternative

well we can put the alternative in another image altogether and I will call

this not the ceramic image not the fully automatic image but the dramatic image

consider the world as a drama what's the basis of all drama the basis of all

stories of all plots of all happenings

it's a game of hide-and-seek

you get a baby what's the fundamental first game you play with the baby you

put a book in front of your face and you click it the baby's like this the baby

starts giggling because the baby is close to the origins of life it comes

from the womb really knowing what it's all about but it can't put it into words

see what every child psychologist really wants to know is to get a baby to talk

psychological jargon and explain how it feels with the baby knows you do this

for this this this and the baby starts laughing because the baby is a recent

incarnation of God and the baby knows therefore that hide and seek is the

basic game see before when we were children we were taught one-two-three

and ABC but we weren't sat down on our mother's knees and taught the game of

black and white that's the thing that was left out of all our education that

life is not a conflict between opposites but a polarity the difference between a

conflict and the polarity is simply when you say about opposite things we

sometimes use the expression these two things are the poles apart you say for

example with someone with whom you totally disagree I'm the poles apart

from this person but you're very saying that gives the show away polls polls are

the opposite ends of one magnet and if you take a magnet is the North Pole and

the South Pole right chopped off the South Pole move it away the piece you've

got left creates a new South Pole you never get rid of the South Pole things

maybe the poles apart but they go together you can't have the one without

the other that's the basic idea of polarity that

what we are trying to imagine is the encounter of forces that come from

absolutely opposed realms that have nothing in common when we say of two

personality types that they're the poles apart we are trying to think eccentric

tree instead of concentrating and so in this way we haven't realized that life

and death black and white good and evil being and non-being come from the same

Center they imply each other so that you wouldn't know the one without the other

now I'm not saying that that's bad that's fun you are playing the game that

you don't know that self and other go together in just the same way as the two

poles of a magnet so that when anybody in our culture says

slips into the state of consciousness where they suddenly find this to be true

and they come on and say I'm God we say you're insane now it's very difficult

you you can very easily slip into the state of consciousness where you feel

your God it can happen to anyone just in the same way as you can get the flu or

measles or something like that you can slip into this state of consciousness

when you get it it depends upon your background and your training as to how

you're going to interpret it if you've got the idea of God that comes from

popular Christianity God as the governor the political head of the world and you

think you're God then you say to everybody well you should bow down and

worship Me but if you're a member of Hindu culture and you suddenly tell all

your friends I'm God instead of saying you're insane they say

congratulations at last you found out

because their idea of God is not the autocratic governor when they make

images of Shiva say he has ten arms how would you use ten arms it's hard enough

to use two you know if you play the organ you've got to use your two feet

and your two hands and you play different rhythms with each member it's

kind of tricky but actually we're all masters with this because how do you

grow each hair without having to think about each nerve how do you beat your

heart and digest with your stomach at the same time you don't have to think

about in your very body you are omnipotent in the true sense of

omnipotence which is that you are able to be omnipotent you are able to do all

these things without having to think about it when I was a child

I used to ask my mother of course all sorts of ridiculous questions that every

child asked and when she got bored with my question she'd say darling there are

some things where does not meant to know I said well we ever know if she said yes

of course when we die and go to heaven every God will make everything plain try

used to imagine on wet afternoons in heaven we'd all sit around the throne of

grace and say to God well now why did you do this and how did you do that

and who would explain it to us Heavenly Father why are the leaves green and you

would say because of the chlorophyll and we'd say oh but in the Hindu universe

you would say to God how did you make the mountains and he would say well I

just did it because what you're asking me for when you asked me how did I make

the mountains you are asking me to describe in words how I made the

mountains and there are no worlds which can do this words cannot tell you how I

made the mountains any more then I can drink the ocean with a fork the fork may

be useful for sticking into a piece of something and eating it but it won't it

is no use for a folk of imbibing the ocean will take millions of years so it

would take millions of years in other words you would be bored with my

description long before I got through it if I put it to you in words because I

didn't create the mountains with words I just did it like you open and close your

hand you know how to do this but can you describe in words how you do it would

you do it you are conscious aren't you do you know how you manage to be

conscious do you know how you beat your heart can you say in words explain

directly how this is done you do it but you can't put it into words coz words

are too clumsy and yet you manage this expertly for as long as you are able to

do it we are playing again then the game runs like this the only

thing you really know is what you can put into words let's suppose I love some

girl rapturously and somebody said to me would you really love her or how am I

going to prove this let's say write poetry tell us all how much you love her

then we will believe you so if I'm an artist and I can put this into words and

convince everybody that I've written the most ecstatic love letters ever written

they say alright okay Weedle admit it you really do love her but supposing

you're not very articulate are we going to tell you you don't level surely not

you don't have to be Heloise and Abelard to be in love so the whole game that our

culture is playing is that nothing really happens unless it's in the

newspaper so we're when we're at a party and

there's a great party somebody said too bad there wasn't the tape recorder and

so our children begin to feel that they don't exist authentically unless they

get their names in the papers and the fastest way of getting your name in the

papers is to commit a crime then you'll be photographed then you'll appear in

court and everybody will notice you it really happened if it was recorded in

other words if you shout and the distance doesn't come back an echo it

didn't happen

well that's a real hang-up it's true the fun with echoes we all like singing in

the bathtub because there's more resonance there and when we play a

musical instrument like a violin or a cello it has a sounding box because that

gives resonance to the sound and in the same way the cortex of the human brain

enables us when we are happy to know that we are happy and that gives a

certain resonance to it if you are happy and you don't know you're happy there's

nobody home

but this is the whole problem for us

several thousand years ago human beings evolved the system of self-consciousness

and they knew they they knew it was a young man who said though it seems that

I know that I know what I would like to see is the eye that knows me when I know

that I know that I know see and and this is that the human problem we know that

we know and so that came a point in our evolution when we didn't guide life by

just trusting our instincts and had to think about it and had to purposely

arranged and discipline and push our lives around in accordance with

foresight and words and systems of symbols accountancy calculation and so

on and then we worried once you start thinking about things you worry as to

whether you thought enough did you really take all the details into

consideration with every fact properly reviewed and by Jove the more you think

about it the more you realize that you really couldn't take everything into

consideration because all the variables in any human decision are incalculable

so you get anxiety and this though also this is the price you pay for knowing

that you know for being able to think about thinking to feel about feeling and

so we are in this funny position now then do you see that this is

simultaneously an advantage and a terrible disadvantage

what has happened here is that by having a certain kind of consciousness a

certain kind of reflexive consciousness being aware of being aware being able to

represent what goes on fundamentally in terms of the system of symbols such as

words such as numbers you put as it were two lives together at once one

representing the other the symbols representing the reality the money

representing the wealth and if you don't realize that the symbol is really

secondary it doesn't have the same value no people go to the supermarket and they

get a whole carload of goodies and they drive it through and then the clerk

fixes up the counter on this long tape comes out and you say thirty dollars

please and everybody feels depressed they they give away thirty dollars worth

of paper but they got a cartload of goodies they don't think about that they

think they just lost lost thirty dollars but you've got the real wealth in the

car all you parted with was the paint one because the paper in our system

becomes more valuable than the wealth it represents power potentiality whereas

the wealth think oh well that's just necessary you've got to eat

I mean this could be really nice stuff

so then if you awaken from this illusion and you understand that black implies

white self implies other life implies death

or should I say death implies life you can feel yourself not as a stranger in

the world not as something here on probation not as something that has

arrived here by fluke but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely

fundamental what you are basically deep deep down far far in is simply the

fabric and structure of existence itself

so say in Hindu mythology they say that the world is the drama of God God is not

something in Hindu mythology with the white beard that sits on the throne and

it has royal prerogatives God in in Indian mythology is the self

satchitananda which means that that which is shit that which is

consciousness that which is Ananda is bliss and in other words read the that

what exists reality itself is gorgeous it is the plenum the fullness of total

joy Wow we and all those stars if you look out in the sky is the firework

display like you see on the 4th of July which is the great occasion for

celebration the universal in the celebration it is it firework show to

celebrate that existence wow-whee and then they say but however

there's no point just in sustaining bliss let's suppose that you were able

every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream and that you could for

example have the power within one night to dream seventy-five years of time or

any length of time you wanted to have and you would naturally as you began on

this adventure of Dreams you would fulfill all your wishes you would have

every kind of pleasure you could conceive and after several nights of 75

years of total pleasure each you would say wow it was pretty great

but now let's um let's have a surprise let's have a dream which isn't under

control where something is going to happen to me that I don't know what its

gonna be and you you would dig that and come out of that and say wow that was a

close shave of MIT and then you would get more and more adventurous and you

would make further and further out Gamble's as to what you would dream and

finally you would dream where you are now you would dream the dream of living

the life that you were actually living today that would be within the infinite

multiplicity of choices you would have of playing that you weren't God because

the whole nature of the Godhead according to this idea is to play that

he's not the first thing he says to himself his man get lost because he

gives himself away the nature of love is self-abandonment not clinging to oneself

throwing yourself out as in for example in basketball you're always getting rid

of the ball you say to the other fellow have a ball

see and that keeps things moving that's the nature of life so in this idea then

everybody is fundamentally the alternate reality not God in a politically kingly

sense but God in the sense of being the self the deep down basic whatever there

is and you're all that only you're pretending you're not and it's perfectly

okay to pretend you're not to be absolutely convinced because this is the

whole notion of drama when you come into the theater there is a proscenium arch

and the stage and down there is the audience and everybody assumes their

feets in the theatre and I go to see a comedy a tragedy a thriller or whatever

it is and they all know as they come in and pay their admissions that what is

going to happen on the stage is not for real but the actors have a conspiracy

against this because they're going to try and persuade the audience that what

is happening on the stage is for real they want to get everybody sitting on

the edge of their chairs they want to get you terrified or crying or laughing

and absolutely captivated by the drama and if a skillful human actor can take

in an audience and make people cry think what the cosmic actor can do why he can

take himself in completely he can play so much for real he really believes it

is like you sitting in this room you think you're really here while you've

persuaded yourself that way you've acted it so damn well that you know this is

the real world but you're playing it

well the audience in the actor is one just behind the stage there's the green

room off scene obscene where the actors take off their masks you know that the

word person means mask the persona which is the mask worn by actors in

greco-roman drama because it has a megaphone type mouth which throws the

sound out in an open-air theater so pair through Sona what the sound comes

through that's the mask how to be a real person how to be a genuine fake a month

so the dramatis personae at the beginning of a play is the list of masks

that the actors will wear and so in the course of forgetting that this this life

is a drama of the word for the role the right word for the mask has come to mean

who you are genuinely the person the proper person incidentally the word

person is derived from the word person

the person of the village person around town the parson funny

so anyway then this is the drama I'm not trying to sell you on this idea in the

sense of converting you to it I want you to play with it I want you to think of

its possibilities I'm not trying to prove it I'm just putting it forward as

a possibility of life to think about so then this means that you're not victims

of a scheme of things of a mechanical world or of an autocratic god the life

you're living is what you have put yourself into only you don't admit it

because you want to play the game that it happens to you in other words I got

mixed up as well my parents I had a father who got hot pants over a girl

she was my mother and because he got the he was just a he was just a horny old

man and as the result of that I got born and I blame him for it and say well

that's your fault you've got to look after me and he says otherwise look

after you you just the result and but let's suppose we admit that I really

wanted to get born and that I was the ugly gleam in my father's eye when he

approached my mother that was me I was desire and I deliberately got

involved in this thing look at it that way instead and that even if I got

myself into an awful mess and I got born with syphilis and the great Siberian

itch and a few broken roses and in the Nazi concentration camp nevertheless

this was a game which was a very far out play it was the kind of cosmic masochism

that I did it isn't that an optimal game rule for life because if you play life

on the supposition that you're a helpless little puppet of God involved

or if you play it on the supposition that it's a frightful serious risk and

that we really ought to do something about it and so on it's a drag there's

no point in going on living unless we make the assumption that the situation

of life is optimal that really and truly we are all in the state of total bliss

and delight but we're going to pretend we aren't just for kicks

you play non bliss in order to be able to experience bliss and you go as far

out as non bliss as you want to go and when you wake up it'll be great you know

you can slam yourself on the head with a hammer because it's a nice when you stop

and it makes you realize you see how great things are when you forget that

that's the way it is and that's just like black and white you don't know

black unless you know white you don't know white unless you know black this is

simply fundamental so then here's the drama in my metaphysics that may be

perfectly frank with you ah that there is the central self you can call it God

you can call it anything you like and it's all of us it's playing all the

parts of all beings whatsoever everywhere and anywhere and it's playing

the game of hide-and-seek with itself it gets lost it gets involved in the forest

out adventures but in the end it always wakes up and comes back to itself and

when you are ready to wake up you're going to wake up and if you're not ready

you're going to stay pretending that you're just a little poor little me and

since you're all here and engaged in this sort of inquiry and listening to

this sort of lecture I assume that you're all on the process of waking up

or else you're teasing yourselves with some kind of flirtation with waking up

which you're not serious about but I assume here maybe you are not serious

that's in shear that you are ready to wake up so then when you're in the way

of waking up and finding out who you really are

you meet a character called a guru at the Hindu say this word the teacher the

awakener and what is the function of a guru he's the man who looks at you in

the eye and says come of it I know who you huh you know you come to the guru

and say sir I have a problem I'm unhappy and I want to get one up on the universe

or I want to become enlightened I want spiritual wisdom

ah guru looks at you and says who are you you know Sri Ramana Maharshi that

great Hindu sage of modern times people used to come to him and say master who

was I on my last incarnation as if that mattered and he would say who is asking

the question he look at you and say basically go right down there you're

looking at me you're looking out and you're unaware of what's behind your

eyes go back in and find out who you are where the question comes from why you

asked and if you looked at a photograph of that man I have a gorgeous photograph

of him and you look in those I walk by it every time I go out of the front door

and I look at those eyes and the human little thing laughs that says ha ha come

off it Shiva I recognize you when you come to my door and you say I'm

so-and-so I say ha ha what a funny way God has come on today

there are all sorts of tricks of course that gurus play they say well we're

going to put you through the mill and the reason they do that is simply that

you won't wake up until you feel you've paid a price for it in other words the

sense of guilt that one has or the sense of anxiety is simply the way one

experiences keeping the game of disguise going on you see that

supposing you say I feel guilty Christianity makes you feel guilty for

existing but somehow the very fact that you exist is in the front you are a

fallen human being I remember as child when we went to the services of

the church on Good Friday they gave us each a colored postcard with Jesus

crucified on him and it said underneath this have I done for thee what doest

thou for me you know you fell off you would nail that down to the cross

because you eat steak you have crucified Christ because we kill the bull after

all you depend on it Mithra it's the same mystery and what are you going to

do about that just have I done for thee what do is

start for me feel awful that you just exist at all but that sense that sense

of guilt is the veil across the sanctuary don't you dare come in in

order to you know in all mysteries when you're going to be initiated the

somebody's saying I don't you come in you got to fulfill this requirement of

this requirement of this requirement of this requirement then we'll let you in

and so you go you you go through the mill why

because this is you are saying to yourself I won't wake up until I feel I

deserve it I won't wake up until I've made it difficult for me to wake up so I

see I I invent for myself an elaborate system of delaying my waking up I put

myself through this test in that test and when I feel it's been sufficiently

arduous then I may at laughs admit to myself who I really am and draw aside

the veil and realize that after all when all is said and done I am that I am

which is the name of God and when it comes to it that's really rather funny

they say in Zen when you attain Satori nothing has left you at that moment but

to have a good laugh but naturally all masters Zen masters yoga masters every

kind of master put up a barrier and says to you

he simply plays your own game you know we say anybody who goes to a

psychiatrist taught arithmetic damage

because you when you go to a psychiatrist you define yourself that

somebody ought to have his head examined

same way the Zen master say anybody who studies in or comes to a Zen master

ought to be given 30 blows with a stick because he was stupid enough to pose the

question that he had a problem but you're the problem you you put yourself

in the situation so it's the question fundamentally do you define yourself as

a victim of the world or as the world you can define yourself

you see if you identify you with what you call the voluntary system of the

nerves and say only that's me and that's really a rather limited amount of my

total performance what I do voluntarily then you've defined yourself as the

victim in the game and so you were able to feel that life was a trap something

else whether it was God or whether it was fate or whether it was the big

mechanism the system imposed this on you and you can say poor little me but you

can eat equally well and was just as much this justification define yourself

not only as what you do voluntarily but also what you do involuntarily that's

you do do you beat your heart or don't you or does it just happen to you and if

you define yourself as the works then nobody is imposing on you you're not a

victim you're doing it because you can't

explain how you do it in words because words are to come B and it take too long

to say you get bored with it but actually then you can say

with with gusto I am responsible for this life where the comedy or tragedy I

did it and it seems to me that that is a basis for behavior and going on which is

more fundamentally joyous and profitable and great than defining ourselves as

miserable victims or sinners or what have you I was discussing an alternative

myth to the ceramic and fully automatic models of the universe I'll call the

dramatic myth the idea that life as we experience it's a big act and that

behind this big act is the player and the player or the self as it's called in

Hindu philosophy the Atman is you only you are playing hide and seek since that

is the essential game that's going on with the game of games the basis of all

games hide-and-seek and so since you are playing hide and seek you are

deliberately although you can't admit this or won't admit it you are

deliberately forgetting who you really are

or what you really are and the knowledge that your essential self is the

foundation of the universe the ground of beingness Tillich calls it is something

you have as what the Germans call a hint ago danke the hint eggie danke is a

thought way way way in the back of your mind way back here somewhere something

that you know deep down but to can't admit

so in a way then in in order to bring this to the front in order to know that

that is the case you have to be kitted out of your game you see the problem is

this we identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and

what happens to us we have a certain number of actions that we define as

voluntary and we feel in control of those and then over against that there

is all those things that are involuntary but the dividing line between these two

is very arbitrary because for example when you move your hand you feel that

you decide whether to open it or to close it but then ask yourself how do

you decide when you decide to open your hand do you first decide to decide you

don't do you you just decide and how do you do that and if you don't know how

you do it is it voluntary or involuntary

let's consider breathing you can feel that you breathe deliberately you can

control your breath but when you don't think about it it goes on is it

voluntary or involuntary and so we come to have a very arbitrary definition

himself that much of my activity which I feel I do and that bin doesn't include

breathing most of the time it doesn't include the heartbeats it doesn't

include the activity of the glands it doesn't include digestion

it doesn't include how you shape your bones circulate your blood do you or do

not do these things now if you get with yourself

mm-hmm and you find out that you are all of yourself very strange thing happens

you find that your body knows that you are one with the universe in other words

that the so-called involuntary circulation of your blood is one

continuous process with the Stars shine if you find out that it's you who

circulates your blood you will at the same moment find out that you are

shining the Sun because your physical organism is one continuous process with

everything else that's going on just as the waves are continuous with the ocean

your body is continuous with the total energy system of the cosmos and it's all

you only you're playing the game that you're only this bit of it but as I try

to explain there are in physical reality no such things as separate events so

then remember also when I tried to work towards the definition of omnipotence

omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done it's just doing it

you don't have to translate it into language look supposing when you got up

in the morning you have to switch your brain on and you had to think and do as

a deliberate process waking up all the circuits that you need for active life

during the day why you would never get done because you have to do all those

things at once how can a centipede control 100 legs at

once because it doesn't think about it and so in the same way you are

unconsciously performing all the various activities of your organism only

unconsciously isn't a good word because it sounds sort of dead super consciously

it would be better give it a plus rather than a minus

because what a consciousness is is simply a sort of specialized form of

awareness when you look around the room you are conscious of as much as you can

notice and you see an enormous number of things which you don't notice if for

example I look at a girl here and somebody asked me later what was she

wearing I may not know although I've seen because I didn't attend but I was

aware you see and perhaps if I could under hypnosis be asked this question

where I would get my conscious attention out of the way through being in the

hypnotic state I could recall what pressure she was wearing so then just in

the same way as you don't focus your attention on how you make your thyroid

gland function so in the same way you don't have any attention focused on how

you shine the Sun so then let me connect this with the problem of birth and death

which puzzles people enormous Lee of course because in order to understand

what what the self is you have to remember that it doesn't need to

remember anything just like you don't need to know how you work your thyroid

gland so then when you die you're not going to have to put up with everlasting

non-existence because that's not an experience a lot of people are afraid

that when they die they're going to be locked up in a darkroom forever and I'm

sort of undergo that but one of the most interesting things in the world this is

a yoga this is a way of realization try and imagine what

be like go to sleep and never wake up

think about that children think about it it's one of the great wonders of life

what will it be like to go to sleep and never wake up and if you think long

enough about that something will happen to you

you will find out among other things that it will pose a next question to you

what was it like to wake up after having never gone to sleep that was when you

were born you see you you can't have an experience of nothing nature abhors a

vacuum so after you are dead the only thing that can happen is the same

experience or the same sort of experiences when you were born in other

words we all know very well that after people die other people are born and

they're all you only you could only experience it one at a time everybody is

I you all know you you and wheresoever beings exist throughout all galaxies it

doesn't make any difference you are all of them and when they come into being

that's you coming into being you know that very well only you don't have to

remember the past in the same way you don't have to think about how you work

your thyroid gland or whatever else it is in your organized you don't have to

know how to shine the Sun you just do it like you breathe there doesn't it really

astonish you that you are this fantastically complex thing and that

you're doing all of this and you never have any education in how to do it you

never learn the perjur'd is miracle well the point is that from a strictly

physical scientific standpoint this organism is a continuous energy with

everything else that's going on and if I am my foot I am the Sun

only we've got this little partial view we've got the idea that no I'm just

something in this body the ego that's a joke the ego is nothing other than the

focus of conscious attention it's like a radar on a ship the radar on a ship is a

troubleshooter is there anything in the way and conscious attention is a

designed function of the brain to scan the environment like a radar dot and

note for any trouble making changes I mean if you identify yourself with your

troubleshooter then naturally you define yourself as being in a perpetual state

of anxiety and the moment we cease to identify with the ego and become aware

that we are the whole organism you realize that as the first thing how

harmonious it all is because your organism is a miracle of harmony all

this thing functioning together even those copper schools and creatures that

are fighting each other in the bloodstream and eating each other up if

they weren't doing that you wouldn't be healthy so what is this called at one

level of your being is harmony at a higher level and you begin to realize

that and you begin to be aware to that the discourse of your life in the

discourse of people's life which RFI's at one level as a higher level of the

universe are healthy and harmonious and you suddenly realize that everything

that you are and do is at that level as magnificent and as free of any blemish

as the patterns in waves the markings in marble the way of CAP moves and that

this world is really ok and can't be anything else because otherwise it

couldn't exist but the reality underneath physical

existence or which really is physical existence because in my philosophy

there's no difference between the physical and the spiritual these are

absolutely out of date categories it's all process it isn't stuff on the one

hand and forum on the other it's just it is pattern life is pattern it is a dance

of energy so I will never invoke Fuki knowledge and that is to say that I've

had a private revelation or that I have sensory vibrations going on a plane

which you don't have everything is standing right out in the open and it's

just a question of how you look at it so you do discover when you realize this

the most extraordinary thing to me that I never cease to be flabbergasted at

whenever it happens to me 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 which 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 that the experience you are having which you call ordinary

everyday consciousness pretending you're not it that experience is exactly the

same thing as it there's no difference at all and when you find that out you

laugh yourself silly 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 is to see what vision is or what smell is or what touches you

realize that that vision of the paper cup is the brilliant light of the cosmos

nothing could be brighter 10,000 Suns wouldn't be brighter only they're hidden

in the sense that all the points of the infinite light of so tiny when you see

them in the cut they don't blow your eyes out but it is actually see the

source of all light is in the eye if there were no eyes in this world the Sun

would not be like you evoke light out of the universe in the same way you by

virtue of 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

in the mythology that we've sold ourselves on during the end of the 19th

century when people discovered how big the universe was now that we live on a

little planet in a solar system on the edge of a galaxy which is a minor galaxy

everybody thought we're really unimportant after all God isn't there

and doesn't love us and nature doesn't give it down and we put ourselves down

you see but actually it's this little funny microbe tiny thing crawling on

this little planet it's way out somewhere who has the ingenuity by the

nature of this magnificent organic structure to evoke the whole universe

out of what would otherwise be mere quantum is jazz going on but do you see

this little bit 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 well

now here's the problem if this is the state of affairs which is so and if the

consciousness state you are in at this moment is the same thing as what we

might call the divine state if you do anything to make it different it shows

you don't understand that it's so so the moment you start practicing yoga or

praying or meditating or indulging in some sort of spiritual cultivation 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 step of a dialogue because the if he 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 at last you're

beginning to understand the point

because you can't give up desire why would you try to do that it's already

designed

so in the same way you say you ought 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 when the moment you see you hypothesize but 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 yourself 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 in 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 get the mastery of the north

pole you sure 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 perceived to their what he does is he gets you into

being ridiculous harder and more assiduously than usual in other words if

you are in a contest with the universe he's going to stir up that contest until

it becomes ridiculous and so he sets you such tasks as saying now of course in

order to be a true person you must give up yourself beyond self so the Lord sits

steps down out of heaven and says first and Great Commandment is thou shalt love

the Lord thy God you must love me well that's a double bind you can't love on

purpose you can't be sincere purposely it's like trying not to think of a green

elephant while taking medicine

but if a person really tries to do it so you know 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 the more assiduously they practice it the

pronia and phony or the whole thing gets and so in this way it's like what it's

called the technique of reduction at absurdum if you think you have a problem

you see and that you're an ego and the during difficulty the answer that the

Zen master makes to you is show me your ego I want to see this thing that has a

problem when Bodhidharma the legendary founder of Zen came to China a disciple

came to him and said I have no peace of mind please pacify my mind and

Bodhidharma said bring out your mind here before me and I'll pacify it well

he said when I look for it I can't find it

so Bodhi Dharma said there it specified me because when you look for your own

mind that is to say your own particular eyes center of being which is separate

from everything else you won't be able to find it it the only way you'll know

it isn't there is if you look for it hard enough but to find out that it

isn't there and so everybody says all right know yourself look within 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 view your mind is

what there is everything but the only way to find that out is to persist in

the state of delusion as hard as possible that's one way haven't said the

only way but it is one way and so almost all spiritual disciplines meditations

prayers etc etc are ways of persisting in folly doing resolutely and

consistently what you're doing already so if a person

believes that the earth is flat you can't talk him out of that he knows

it's flat look around with a window and see it's obviously it looks flat so the

only way to convince him that it isn't is to say well let's go and find the

edge and in order to find the edge you've got to be very careful not to

walk in circles and you'll never find it that way

so we've got to go consistently in a straight line view west along the same

line of latitude and eventually when we get back to where we started from you've

convinced the guy that the earth is round but that's the that's the only way

that'll tell that will teach him because people can't be talked out of illusions

but now there is another possibility however but this is more difficult to

describe let's say we take us the basics our position which is the thing that one

sees in the experience of Satori or awakening or whatever you want to call

it now this now a 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 about explaining that is that don't you you mustn't try not to

do anything because that's doing something and how do we explain that

because there's nothing to explain it's do it it is the way it is now and if you

understand that it will automatically wake you up

that's why Zen teachers use shock treatment too 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 but they're

already there if you ask me how am I going to get here it'll be like the

famous story of the American tourists in England who are some yokel the way to

upper Tottenham's a billy little village the opal scratched his head and he said

well sir I do know where it is but if I were you I wouldn't start from here so

you see when you are how do i attain the knowledge of God how do i attain nirvana

liberation all I can say is it's the wrong question

why do you want to attain it because the very fact that you're wanting to attain

it is the only thing that prevents you from getting there you already have it

but of course yeah it's it's up to you it's your privilege to pretend that 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 hide part of the game you're

still as it worthy the 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 will

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 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 crazy at this point and to feel

that you are God in the Jehova sense just 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 kind of Bible sense you see and a lot of

people feel that and they go crazy let's put them away they think they're Jesus

Christ and that everybody ought to fall down and worship that's only they got

their wires crossed they haven't been able to this experience happen to them

but they don't know how to interpret it

so be careful of that young calls it inflation people who get the holy man

syndrome that I suddenly discovered that I'm the Lord and the time above good and

evil and so on and that therefore I start giving myself airs and graces but

the point is everybody else is too if you discover that you're that then you

ought to know that everybody else is well for example let's see how in other

ways if you might realize this most people think 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 they're behind the eyes there is a blank

you can't see at all turn around this is something else in front of you behind

the eyes the see to be something that has no color

doesn't dark isn't light it's just it's there from a tactile standpoint you can

feel it with your fingers although you don't get inside it but what is that

behind your eyes you see 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 a nervous system where the optical nerves

are at the back of the head it's in now it's what you're experiencing what you

see out here is that neurological experience now if that hits you and you

feel sensuously that that cell you may think that then they then therefore the

external world is all inside my skull

but you've got to correct that with the thought that your skull is also in the

external world so you suddenly begin to feel well wow 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 the what you could call transaction rather than

interaction between the individual in the world just like for example in

buying and selling there cannot be an act of buying let's the simultaneously

an act of selling 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 it requires there to be an environment containing a Sun for

there to be an organism at all and the answer to it is simply there are one

princess and

it isn't that organisms by chance came into this world put it rather that this

world is the sort of environment which grows organisms it was that way from the

beginning just in the same way for humans the organisms may in time have

arrived in the scene or out of the scene later than the beginning of the scene

but from the moment that went bang in the beginning if that's the way it

started organisms like us are sitting here were involved in it you see look

here let's take the kid the propagation of an electric current I can have a

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 all right here's a

positive pole is the negative pole now

before that switch closes there is the current doesn't exactly behave like

water in a pipe there isn't current 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'll take an integral for that current to get going and circuit if it's going

all the way around the earth it's the long run but the finishing point has to

be closed before it will even start from the beginning in a similar way although

in the development of any physical system there may be billions of years

between the creation of the most primitive form of energy and then the

arrival of intelligent that billions of years is just the same

thing as the trip of the current round the wire takes it at the time but it's

already implied it takes time for an acorn to seven to a note but the oak is

already implied in the akon so in any lump of rock floating about in space

there is implicit human intelligence

some time somehow somewhere they all go together so don't differentiate yourself

and stand up against this and say I am a living organism in a world made of a lot

of dead junk rocks and stuff it all goes together those rocks are just as much

you as your fingernails you need rocks what are you going to stand on what I

think you know awakening really involves

is a reexamination of our common sense

we've got all sorts of ideas built into us which seemed unquestioned obvious and

our speech reflects communist phrases face the facts as if they were outside

you as if life without the use of the encounter of the foreigner taste the

facts

our common sense has been rigged you see so that we feel strangers and aliens in

this world and this is terribly plausible simply because it's what we're

used to that's the only reason but when you really start questioning this say is

that the way I have to assume life is I know everybody does but does that make

it true it doesn't necessarily it ain't

necessarily so and so then you is you question this

basic assumption that underlies our culture you find you get a new kind of

common sense it becomes absolutely obvious to you that you are continuous

with the universe

for example people used to believe that the people who lived in the Antipodes

would fall off and that was scary but then when somebody's sailed around

the world and we all got used to it and now we travel around in jet planes and

everything we have no problem about feeling that the earth is globular none

whatever we got used to it so in the same way Einstein's relativity theories

the curvature of the propagation of light there began to bother people when

Einstein started talking like that but now we're all used to it well in a few

years it will be a matter of common sense very many people that they are one

with the universe it'll be so simple and then maybe if

that happens we shall be in a position to handle our technology with more sense

with love instead of with hate for our environment

you