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Alan Watts on The Art of Living Without Struggle · Motivation Mindset Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Every creature in the universe that is in any way
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: sensitive and in any manner of speaking conscious, regards itself
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: as a human being. That is to say, it knows
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: and is aware of a hierarchy of beings above it
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: and a hierarchy of beings below it. If you take
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: such a tiny creature as a fruit fly, which lives
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: only a few days.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: It is aware of all sorts.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Of weird little animals and objects and spores floating in
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere which we don't even notice unless we've got
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: a microscope around very few people have, and it criticizes
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: them as being inferior animals and all that sort of thing.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Whereas human beings are things that it doesn't comprehend. They
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: are as much outside its intellect as a quasar is
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: outside ours. And we see these far off objects floating
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: in the heavens, and we have only the vaguest idea
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: of what they may be. But there is I think,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: a fundamental principle that everybody must understand in order to
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: know what is the meaning of the Tao, or the
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Chinese sense of the course of nature, and that is
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: the principle of relativity. That is to say that wherever
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: you are, and whoever you are, and whatever you are.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: You're in the middle. You know, pig in the middle.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: That's the game.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: And you suggest in the same way as when you stand,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: say on the deck of a ship, and you can
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: see a horizon all around you to exactly the same distance,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: you're in the center of a circle, because your senses
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: extend a certain direction in all directions, and therefore give
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: you the impression.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Of being in the middle. Now, everything in.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: The world feels like that, and also it has its
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: own kind which look natural to it, the sensation of
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: a certain tension, which constitutes the feeling of iness, of
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: theirness of being here. Because after all, every creature is
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: a particular form. Everything is individual. Not only you as
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: a total organism standing here, but all the component cells
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: of your body, each one of them has some sort
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: of a feeling of its own, and it is individual.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: You can look at.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: A microscope at the right level of magnification and you
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: can see that thing there with its own little life.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: And if you examine the stream of your blood, you'll
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: find it full of all kinds of organisms that are
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: having all sorts of conspiracies and games and plots and
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: eating each other and.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Doing these things that like we do.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Only we realize that we wouldn't be healthy as a
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: total organism unless there were all these wars and fights
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: and plots and politics going on between the various cells
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: in our blood. Each one of us retains a peculiar individuality.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Almost in the same way as nothing could be more
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: unlike a stomach than a heart, and nothing could be
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: more unlike a kidney than a pituitary gland.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: See, there's a lot of differentiation.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Inside the body, despite the fact that it is an
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: organism functioning altogether. There is then this sensation of practically
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: every living being, of constituting a center of tension and
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: of resistance, that is to say, of being a little
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: bit blocked, or shall I say, of being in the way,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: being in one's own way. Imagine the opposite. Let us suppose,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: for example, that you got up in the morning with
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: a feeling of total transparency. There's no resistance in your
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: organism to the external world.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: You just float through it. You're part of it, it's
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: part of you.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: And just in the same way for example, that when
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: you see, if you see well, you aren't aware of
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: your eyes. But if there's something wrong with your eyes,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: and you see spots in front of you, then you
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: are looking at your eyes, and their eyes are getting
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: in your own way. So the dowist sage A Duangza
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: says that when clothes fit well, you are not aware
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: of them. When you're girdle or belt fits properly, you
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: are not aware of it. Good shoes, you're unconscious of it.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: And so in exactly the same way, the perfect form
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: of man is unaware of himself because he doesn't get
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: in his own way. He is thus, in this sense,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: completely transparent. Now you were thinking, I'm trying to sell
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: you a bill of goods, that I'm going to teach
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: you some technique so that you can feel perfectly transparent,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: and that this is the proper way to feel, this
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: is the way you ought to feel. It's not that simple.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: The point is to begin with, if you do, in
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: a really rather natural way, feel alone and feel a
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: little bit vulnerable, that you've got a soft skin, and
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: you've got a weak heart, and you've got you know,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: all those ills that the.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: Human body is heir to going on inside you. Let's
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: begin with that.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Let's begin with the way in which we do in
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: fact constitute a sort of block in the middle of things,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: and that fact we hurt a bit, and through hurting
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: a bit, we know we're here. See, people go very
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: often to extreme measures to know that they're there. I
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: was in Mexico two years ago. I'm trying to find
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: out what was really behind all the blood and gore
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: in Mexican Catholicism. Why they love these pictures of Christ
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: that you're sold in the little shops, where he's green
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: and his face is contarted with horror, blood pouring down
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: a crown of thorns, and.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: All that kind of thing.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: And then at Guadalupe, girls kneeling walking for a mile
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: right down the avenue to the altar.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: In that thing, what is it all about? Why?
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: The answer is quite simply, if you hurt, you know
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: you're there.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: This is part of the whole.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Meaning of penances and all sorts of trials that people
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: go through, and all kinds of adventures, every kind of
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: variety of differentiation is the way through which unity is discovered.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: And the fact that men and women, for example, as
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: a primordial kind of difference, never can really understand each
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: other is tremendously exciting because that's a way by which
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: something happens. If it makes a difference, then it's there.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: If it doesn't make a difference, it doesn't matter. And
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: what doesn't matter doesn't exist because it has no matter. So,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: however it is wherever you notice a difference. The difference
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: has two sides, what it is and what it's not.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: And these two sides, since you can have the one
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: side without the other side, they are really one because
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: they go together inseparably.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: So when you get this extreme.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Sense of your own existence as a rather painful fact
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: in the middle of everything else, the everything else feeling
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: and the you feeling are two poles of one and
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: the same process, so that the real you is what
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: lies between these poles and includes both of them. Now,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: this is the fundamental principle of the whole way in
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: which ancient Chinese thought developed. The philosophy of the yang
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: and yin the universe is the interplay of difference, and
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: the primordial difference is between up and down, back in front,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: black and white, is and isn't male and female, positive
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: and negative.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: So the word.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Yang in Chinese means the south side of a mountain,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: which is the sunny side. The word yin refers to
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: the north side of the mountain, which.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: Is the shady side.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Did you ever see a south sided mountain only with
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: no north side?
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: Or in?
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: It may also yang may refer to the north bank
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: of a river, which gets the sun, and yin to
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: the south bank of the river, which gets the shade.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: And so you will remember this great symbol. And one half,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: of course is colored dark, as it were two fishes interlocked,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: and they are chasing each other, just like if I
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: want to see the back of my head, I can
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: go round and round, and I can chase it, but
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: I never quite catch.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: Up with it. But that's what makes everything work.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: It is said in the Vedanta Sutras that the Lord,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: the supreme Noah of all things, who is the Noah
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: in all of us, doesn't know itself in the same
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: way that fire doesn't burn itself and a knife doesn't
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: cut itself. So nothing to God, even you see, would
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: be more mysterious than God. That's why there has to
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: be yang and yin. Yang is bright and it understands everything.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Yin is dark, and damned if.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: She'll be understood.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: And so your yang side is your conscious attention, all
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: the bright things you know and all the information you
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: have and all the know how and that you know
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: what to do, and your yin side is the other
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: side of the yang, which enables the yang to function.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Because you don't know why the yang side of you
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: functions and is the conscious, bright intelligence side of you.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: It all depends on something you don't understand at all,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: because if it didn't, it wouldn't be there, just like
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't be here unless there was something else. Now, Therefore,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: by a little extension of the imagination, you can very
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: well see that if all those bones and subtleties inside
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: you feel other than your conscious ego, but nevertheless are
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: wonder the same argument will go for all the other
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: things going on around you, the sun shining, the stars twinkling,
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: the wind blowing, and the great ocean restlessly pounding against
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: these cliffs.
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  Speaker 2: That's you too.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: You don't control it, of course, because there has to
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: be something about you you don't control, or you wouldn't
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: be you. I see that, or all that is lessen
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: elementary relativity