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Alan Watts on Life After Death: Profound Insights That Will Change Your Perspective · Motivation Mindset Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: It's like people thinking about death. You can't imagine death,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: and so they onto this void what projects all sorts
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: of things. People are afraid of death. They think, oh,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: what's it going to be like to go to sleep
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and never wake up? They imagine themselves being shot up
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: in the dark forever and give them get bugged by it.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: But on the other hand, when you start thinking about
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: what will it be like to go to sleep and
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: never wake up, suddenly occurs to you that when you
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: were born, you woke up without ever having gone to sleep.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: It's rather funny. And of course if it happened once,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: it can happen again, And that begins to get you
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: real puzzled about what you mean by you. But everybody
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: feels his eye. Everybody has this sensation of being in
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: the middle of everything. Turn around and see more or
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: less equally in all directions, and you feel that you're
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: in the center. Everybody feels in the center just as
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: much as I do. In fact, insects feel they're in
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: the center. And I'm quite sure they feel that. People.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: We don't cost them bother to notice them in any
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: great detail, and therefore they all look the same. And
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: therefore we say well, they're not people. They're all alike.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: There's some sort of mechanisms. Oh, they look at us
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: in just the same way, and they can't make any
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: sense out of what we're doing. So we're some sort
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: of funny mechanisms going around so far as they're concerned.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: But so there's a lot of mystery hidden in this
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: self that we have. Well, of course, you see we're
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: worried about it. We see the organism vanishes. We're always
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: defending our personalities and somebody accuses our personality of falling
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: apart and say, now you're not being consistent, you're not
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: fulfilling what you said you would do, you're not playing
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: the role you're supposed to play. Everybody feels that they're
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: coming apart because they're not acting right as on the stage.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: So we are constantly on the defensive. And also we're
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: a prey to anxiety. Anxiety is a trembling motion. To
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: be or not to be? That is the question, because
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: the minute you know you're alive and really become aware
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: of being alive, you realize that you might also be dead,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: because to be implies not to be and not to be.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Although we don't really think about that that implies to be.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: So we're always wondering, now, if I do this, will
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: I survive? Or would I better do that? We're never
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: quite sure because you think when you get a really
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: important decision, you've got to make it. You want did
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: I take everything into consideration? Did I make a sensible judgment? Will?
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: You never know because in the best thought out plan,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: always chancy things occur. You don't know whether you're going
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: to slip on a banana skin or whether you're going
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: to get sick. It's all very unpredictable. Therefore we tremble
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: now when it occurs to us. Of course, it doesn't
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: in the ordinary way that there is no choice between
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: to be and not to be, just as there's no
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: choice between front and back. Space implies solid just as
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: much as solid implies space, But conscious attention ignores that.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: It suffers from ignorance. We notice the figure and ignore
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: the background. We notice the solid and ignore the space.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: We notice the relatively moving in smaller object, but we
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: ignore the relatively stationary background. That's with consciousness, with noticing,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: and so you see, we don't notice that in order
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: to be present, you must also be absent. Because life
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: is an energy system, and energy is something that vibrates,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: and whatever vibrates goes on and off. If I sit
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: next to a girl in the moon and she attracts me,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: and I put my hand on her knee and just
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: leave it there, she will in due course cease to
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: notice it because it's a constant stimulus. But if I
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: gently stroke her or pat her on the knee, she
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: will keep noticing because it goes on and off. Now,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: all energy systems go on and off. You can't know
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: you're on unless you're off too. So we get waking
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: and sleeping. We get every kind of rhythm, and there
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: are tiny rhythms that go dig so fast, like a
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: beam of light that you don't notice the spaces because
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: your retina doesn't react quickly enough. It reacts to the
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: stimulus of the on, but before it can go off,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: there's a new on. See, so you get what appears
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: to be a constant stimulus. The table appears to be hard.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: It's vibrating so fast I can't put my finger through it,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: the same way as an airplane propeller appears to be
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: a solid or an electric fan. But it's all going
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: on and off. Now they are these very fast vibrations
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: have on and off, and there are very slow ones
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: like life and death. Now you see it, now you don't.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: That's what the world is. But because of the focusing
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: of conscious attention, which regards on as real and off
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: is unreal because you ignore it, regards solid as real,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: and space is unreal. It's like trying to have trying
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: to think of waves as a series of crests without
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: any troughs. But a wave is a crest trough on off,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: so off is as important as on. You can't have
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: anything happening without both. And although they are explicitly different
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: on and off, they're implicitly one. We call it energy.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: If these neglected and ignored features of the world came
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: to our attention or in some way could impinge upon
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: our consciousness, we should feel very differently than we ordinarily
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: do feel. How would you feel, well, I can roughly
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: describe it to you very odd feeling. Indeed, at first,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: you feel that what you are doing and what happens
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: to you are the same. You can say of everything
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: that happens to you, I'm doing it, and of everything
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: that you are doing is that it happens to me.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: For example, when you're steering a car, are you pulling
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: the wheel or pushing it? It's push pull, isn't it both?
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Although the words push and pull are formally logically opposed
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: to each other. But that's what you're doing when you're steering,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: your push pulling, so in exactly the same way when
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: you are acting, what your environment does and what you
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: do are the same process. So when you feel that
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: it's very odd you feel as you walk up a hill,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: the hill is lifting you. That a lot of people
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: go crazy with this because they suddenly say, well, I'm God,
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  Speaker 1: I'm doing everything, and if they may start to tell
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: everybody that their God, and people object and say, well,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: you know, it's absolutely preposterous that you should say you're
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: personally in charge of the whole universe and therefore should
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: be bowed down to and given divine On this you
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: must be mad. Or a person may take entirely hopposite
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: point of view and say I do nothing, I'm just
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: a little puppet on the end of strings, and everything
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: I do is controlled by something else. In otherwise becomes
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: a complete fatalist. What he doesn't see is that both
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: points of view are right. But of course this won't
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: fit in with an idea of God which is based
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: on the ancient monarchies of the Near East. That is
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: to say, it won't do with an idea of God
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: conceived as the cosmic boss, the boss, the chief. That's
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: a political image, and it just doesn't work too well
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: for the Godhead. It leads to all sorts of trouble.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: And as I often say, for Americans, you'd believe, don't you,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: as American citizens that are republic is the best form
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: of government. How can you square that with thinking of
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: heaven as a monarchy? If heaven is a monarchy, monarchy
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: is the best form of government. What about democracy in
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: the kingdom of Heaven? How about that? Now? So you
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: have to you have to conceive God in accordance with
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: some different kind of image, or maybe, wait a moment,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: maybe we shouldn't do that at all. Images of God
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: are idolatry, aren't they? There are no image because every
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: image is an idol, and idols that are made of
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: imagination and thought are much more dangerous than idols made
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: of wood or stone. Nobody takes a wooden idol seriously.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: You merely regard it as a symbol. And it's such
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  Speaker 1: an obvious symbol, a concept that seems so spirit so abstract.
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  Speaker 1: But it's the most dangerous kind of idol, as we
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: shall see when we come to the study of Buddhism,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: how it gets rid of all the conceptual idols.