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Alan Watts on the Meaning of Life — The Answer Hidden in Plain Sight · Motivation Mindset Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You and the universe are really the same process. You
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: as an organism are an operation of the universe. The
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: real you, though, is the whole thing. Your soul isn't
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: in your body. Your body is in your soul, and
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: your soul is the entire arrangement of forces constituting this
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: universe centered on your physical organism. So that's why the
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: astrologer took the time and place of a person's birth
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: and said, how are the heavens arranged around that? That's
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: why you are. The soul is in heaven, the meaning
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: that it is heaven. It is the total arrangement of
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: cosmic forces, the total pattern. Then when you wake up
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: to that and actually feel it to be so, I
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: assure you it's just great, and you stop worrying.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: You still are.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Sensible enough not to walk into a fire, but you
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: get rid of that deep central anxiety because it's like
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: the universe has nothing to fall onto if it drops,
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  Speaker 1: and a fall will only be disastrous if there was
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  Speaker 1: a flaw of concrete down below. The universe has nothing
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  Speaker 1: to fall on. Everything in it is dropping. The Earth
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  Speaker 1: is dropping around the Sun, just as long as it
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  Speaker 1: isn't a planet in the way or something like that,
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  Speaker 1: nothing happens, and the system as a whole there isn't
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  Speaker 1: anything else. So why worry size if you disappear as
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  Speaker 1: an organism? Great, because if you went on too long,
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  Speaker 1: you get tired of yourself, And so what always a
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: new surprise in store. The thing is a self surprising system.
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  Speaker 1: That's why it goes on. When you know the future perfectly,
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  Speaker 1: it's already passed. You've had it. When you know the
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  Speaker 1: outcome of a game and it becomes certain, answer it
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: and begin another one. So to know too much gets
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  Speaker 1: you nowhere.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: The astrologer was right when he drew a map of
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: your soul. He drew a crude map of the universe.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: He drew the universe as it was at the time
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  Speaker 3: and place of your birth, the universe as it was
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  Speaker 3: as seen from the point of view where you were born.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: And that was your soul. So your soul, you see,
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: is not in your body. Your body is in your
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: soul because your soul is the entire network of relationships
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: in terms of which you live. Your soul is the
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  Speaker 3: whole universe. But each one of us, as it were,
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: is a different point in it. But all these points
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  Speaker 3: in it are the center. We can go way beyond
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: Ptolemy and Copernicus. Now, and if we think that space
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: is curved, every point of space is the center of
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  Speaker 3: the universe, because any point on a ball is the
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  Speaker 3: center of the sphere of the surface. See. You can
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  Speaker 3: turn any point of a ball, and wherever you look
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  Speaker 3: at it, it's the center, isn't it.
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  Speaker 1: See So in the same way, take a crystal ball
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  Speaker 1: in your hand, a crystal mirror, and no, I'm what
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  Speaker 1: I mean. It's not a crystal mirror. I mean a
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  Speaker 1: spherical mirror.
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  Speaker 3: Look at it, and wherever you turn it, your face
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  Speaker 3: will be in the middle. So, in exactly the same way,
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  Speaker 3: every place in the universe is the middle of the
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  Speaker 3: universe from a standpoint of curved space. So we go
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: back to an entirely new Ptolemaic view of the world
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  Speaker 3: beyond Coponitus. Not that the Earth is that.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Yes, the Earth is the center of the universe, but
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  Speaker 1: every other place is also the center the universe.
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  Speaker 3: There is no absolute center. So this is an astronomical
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  Speaker 3: way of saying in Sanskrit tat vaasi, you're it. Everyone
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  Speaker 3: is rightly the center. You may think. My mother used
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  Speaker 3: to say, you're not the only but in a way
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  Speaker 3: everyone is the central pebble, and the feeling that you
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  Speaker 3: have of being the center, which turns out into selfishness
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  Speaker 3: and all the sort of conflict scrapping, is nevertheless based
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  Speaker 3: on something true. What we do is we misinterpret it.
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  Speaker 3: We don't realize that everybody else is the center too.
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  Speaker 3: In that sense, you're not the only pebble on the beach,
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  Speaker 3: you're not the only center of the universe. And yet
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  Speaker 3: there is only one center. And that's why.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Who was it?
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  Speaker 3: I think it was Saint Bonaventure who first thought up
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  Speaker 3: the description of the definition of God as that circle
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  Speaker 3: whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. This
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  Speaker 3: is called the doctrine of the mutual interpenetration of all
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  Speaker 3: things and events. So it would be like there's lovely
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  Speaker 3: drawings where you take a circle and you can play
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  Speaker 3: with us.
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  Speaker 1: It's a nice thing to play with.
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  Speaker 3: And you mark out twelve equal points around the circumference
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  Speaker 3: of the circle. Then you join every point to every
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  Speaker 3: other point. You have a beautiful star. And incidentally, this
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  Speaker 3: is the diagram of the notes of the twelve notes
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  Speaker 3: of the scale bach we desire, And it's a lovely thing.
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  Speaker 3: You see, it's a beautiful star. So this is the
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  Speaker 3: diagram of the way it all fits together. Now, if
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  Speaker 3: you study that, and by study again I mean not
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  Speaker 3: just think about it, but feel it out, you will
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  Speaker 3: find very strange things happening. You will find that the
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  Speaker 3: present moment, with all its particularity, in which you live
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  Speaker 3: and are functioning now, is exactly the same thing as
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  Speaker 3: anything you could possibly conceive of as eternity. You will
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  Speaker 3: find that your limited life, and remember what I said
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  Speaker 3: about limits, you have to have something to push against.
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  Speaker 3: Your limited life, with its frustrations and with its particular
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  Speaker 3: problems at this instant, is the same thing as omnipotence,
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  Speaker 3: and that your situation in space, it.
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  Speaker 1: Implies the infant, the eternal, All the energy of the universe.
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  Speaker 3: Is implied in any tiny hair on your skin. It
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  Speaker 3: goes with it mutually implies.
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  Speaker 1: This is the point.
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  Speaker 3: Just as the kind of cosmos and atmosphere in which
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  Speaker 3: we live, My existence implies that kind of an environment.
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  Speaker 1: So the environment implies.
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  Speaker 3: Me mutually, and it all goes together. Now, the only
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  Speaker 3: reason for saying this, you see, this is really terribly obvious,
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  Speaker 3: But the only reason for saying it is that people
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  Speaker 3: don't know it and think instead that they don't belong
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  Speaker 3: that this. You know, I'm just because the parents put
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: down the children and said little children to be seen
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  Speaker 3: and not heard, who don't belong here. Like I read
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  Speaker 3: the other day in some paper some young person's addressing
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  Speaker 3: a girl and saying he was trying to make love
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  Speaker 3: to he was trying to woo her, and she said,
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: you you you won't be friends with me because you
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: say I don't like your personality. Said, you don't have
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  Speaker 3: to have a personality. A personality is it something you
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  Speaker 3: had to put on because your mother.
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  Speaker 1: Didn't know it and you had to make up. Really,
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  Speaker 1: you don't need.
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  Speaker 3: A personality because you're You're, You're the essential thing you see,
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  Speaker 3: and the personality is just a way of them performing to.
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  Speaker 1: Ingratiate yourself.
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  Speaker 3: Well, we all do it because we put on personalities
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  Speaker 3: when we act like clowns and entertain the audience, put
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  Speaker 3: on masks, funny faces, but really and truly, the mask
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  Speaker 3: covers the oneself.
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  Speaker 1: That we all have and we all know it. Only
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  Speaker 1: just like black and white, we are pretending to be
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  Speaker 1: as different as possible.
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  Speaker 3: While I'm in.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: What there is and all that there is. You know,
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  Speaker 2: it's interesting that in a view of the universe which
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: these space is curved, imagine for a moment this is
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: not quite correct, but that all objects in space are
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: on the surface of the sphere. Then you will see
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: at once that every point on the surface of a
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  Speaker 2: sphere can be regarded as.
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  Speaker 1: The center of the surface. Where is the central point
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  Speaker 1: of the surface of the sphere anyway, So in this
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  Speaker 1: way we can legitimately regard every point in this universe
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  Speaker 1: as being the center of the whole thing. And it's
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  Speaker 1: in this multi centered sense that every eye which looks
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  Speaker 1: around and sees the world as something that spins around you.
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  Speaker 1: If you're the axis, you're quite correct. But you know
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  Speaker 1: how it is when you hold in your hand the gyroscope,
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  Speaker 1: isn't it It always.
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  Speaker 2: Feels alive, do isn't it? Because it surprises you.
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  Speaker 1: It wants to move in a direction which you didn't predict.
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  Speaker 1: And that movement of the gyroscope that you hold that
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  Speaker 1: seems to be against you is the movement in life
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  Speaker 1: we call other or what happens to us when we feel,
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  Speaker 1: on the other hand, that I am moving the gyroscope
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  Speaker 1: in the direction I wanted to go. That's what we
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  Speaker 1: call self, that's what we call voluntary. And you can't
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  Speaker 1: possibly know the one without the other. You don't know
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  Speaker 1: what you mean by self unless you know what you
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  Speaker 1: mean by other. You don't know what you mean by
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  Speaker 1: the voluntary. What I want to happen, except in contrast
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  Speaker 1: and play against the involuntary, what happens to me Two