It Will Give You Goosebumps - Alan Watts On The Eternal Now

when we say to ourselves you must go on the reason is you see that we are not living in the Eternal now where reality is we are always thinking that the satisfaction of life will be coming later don't kid yourself only suckers put hope in the future there isn't much of a future you're going to die so therefore this hope for the future it is a hoax it's a perfect hoax because you're not fully Alive now you think maybe someday you will be look supposing I ask you what did you do yesterday most people say

well I got up at 7:30 and I brushed my teeth and I read the newspaper over a cup of coffee and then I looked at the clock and dressed and uh got in the car and drove down toown and did this and that in the office and so on and you go on and on and on and you suddenly discover that what you've described has absolutely nothing to do with what [Music] happened you've described a fleshless list of abstractions whereas if he were actually aware of what went on you could never describe it because nature

is multi-dimensional language is linear language is scrawny and therefore if you identify the world as it is with the way the world is described it's as if you were trying to eat dollar bills and expect a nutrition ious diet or eat numbers a lot of people eat numbers people play the stock market and doing nothing but eating numbers and they're always unhappy absolutely miserable because they never get anything so therefore they always hope more is coming because they believe that if they eat enough dollar bills eventually something satisfactory will happen so eating the abstractions all

the time we want more more more time confucious very wisely said a man who understands the da in the morning may die with content in the evening because when you understand you don't put your hope in time time won't solve a thing and the Christian word for sinning in Greek is amatan which means to miss the point and the point is eternal life which is here and now but until there is silence of the mind it is almost impossible to understand eternal life that is to say Eternal now when you are fully aware and not

thinking you will notice some amazing uh absences there is no past can you hear anything past incidently can you hear anything future they're just not there to the plain sense of one's ears well I remember in The Sermon on the Mount that Jesus said [Music] them a lot of things about this consider the lies of the field how they grow they toil not neither do they spin and yet suan in all his glory was not clothed like one of these and if God so clothe the grass of the field which today is and tomorrow is

cast into the oven shall he not much more clothe you faithless ones wow so do not worry about tomorrow saying what shall we eat what shall we drink or how shall we clothe ourselves oh the Rabel seeks after these things sufficient to the day is the worry of it nobody ever preaches a sermon on that text never I've Heard lots of sermons and never one on that one because people say look that's all very well because Jesus was the boss's son and and he knew you see that he was really in charge of the universe

and he nothing to worry about but we have to be practical oh what do you suppose the gospel was the good news do you know it never got out [Laughter] [Music] you too are the boss's son that was the Gospel lots of people in India know that perfectly well when you get to be a certain age and after you studied long enough with a certain Guru then and then only may you realize this if you've put in the time they finally let you in here you have to wait until you dead the only place to

begin is now because here's where we are so why put it off a lot of people say well I'm not ready what do you mean you're not ready what do you have to be to be ready I I'm I'm I'm not good enough I'm uh perhaps not old enough not mature enough still I'm frightened of pain I'm still uh dependent on material things I have to you know eat a lot and drink a lot and uh I better get all that under control first oh you you you want to be able to congratulate yourself for

having gone through the discipline which is rewarded with [Music] realization that is trying to quench fire with [Music] fire wouldn't it be great to have no fear no attachments no Hang-Ups to be as free as the air Let It Be Crazy to have that courage and you look into yourself honestly and you find that inside you're actually a quaking mess of sensitivity running away from the quaking mess escaping you never can there's nothing you can actually do to transform your own nature into unattached selflessness because you have a selfish reason for wanting to do it

what does it mean that you can't do anything about it it's singing loud and clear the reason you can't do anything about it is that you don't exist you as you conceive yourself to be that is your ego your image of yourself isn't there it doesn't exist it's an abstraction well when you understand that you're liberated there's The Happening the suchness yes sure you bet but it's not pushing you around because there's no you to be pushed around so the this illusion of the persecuted ego who is pushed around by Fate is just altogether disappeared

and so in likewise the illusion of the ego who pushes fate around is also [Music] disappeared there's a Happening by dying to yourself by having become completely incompetent and found that you don't exist you're reborn you become everything in the words of Sir Edwin Arnold foregoing self the universe grows ey