How To Be Fully Alive Now - Alan Watts

when we say to ourselves you must go on the reason is 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 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 uh 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 downtown 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 happened you've described a SC straggly skeletal fleshless list of abstractions whereas if you 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 bill and expect a nutritious 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 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 incidentally 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 um a lot of things about this consider the lies of the field how they grow they toil not neither did 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 rabble seeks after these things sufficient to the day is the worry of it nobody ever preaches a sermon on that text 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 his son and and he knew you see that he was really in charge of the universe and he had 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 [Laughter] out you two are the boss's son that was the Gospel lots of people in India know that perfectly well they have a Delayed Action on it 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 but until then uh uh uh it's still a no no but if you've put in the time they finally let

you in here you have to wait until you're [Laughter] dead well uh 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 well I I'm I'm I'm not good enough because I'm neurotic I'm uh perhaps not old enough not mature enough for such knowledge I uh still am frightened of pain and of course I'd have to overcome that I'm still uh dependent on material things

I have to you know eat a lot and drink a lot and uh sex around and all that kind of thing and uh I think that uh I better get all that under control first Oh you mean you've got a case of spiritual Pride you you you want to be able to congratulate yourself for having gone through the discipline which is rewarded with realization that is trying to quench fire with fire wouldn't it be great to have no fear no attachments no Hang-Ups to be as free as the air so that you know you could

just wander out in the streets and uh give away all your clothes to the Beggars and uh let go the whole thing Let It All Hang Out wouldn't 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 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 when I say you 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 other there's no billiard ball on the end of the queue so the this illusion of the persecuted ego who is pushed around by Fate

it it just altogether disappeared and so in likewise the illusion of the ego who pushes fate around has also 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 Edwin Arnold foregoing self the universe grows I [Music] [Music]