It Will Leave You Speechless - Alan Watts on Being Here and Now

what you do is what the whole universe is doing at the place you call here and now we have been brought up to experience ourselves as isolated centers of awareness and action placed in a world that is not us that is foreign alien other which we confront [Music] whereas in fact you are something the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing the real you is not a puppet which life pushes around the real deep down you is the whole universe [Music] and it's doing

your living organism and all its behavior it's expressing it as a singer sings a song we've been hoodwinked into the feeling that we exist only inside our skins that is a hallucination we need to experience ourselves in such a way that we could say that our real body is not just what's inside the skin but our whole total external environment [Music] because if we don't experience ourselves that way we mistreat our environment we treat it as an enemy we try to beat it into submission and if we do that comes disaster [Music] we exploit the

world we live in we don't treat it with love and gentleness and respect we cut down millions of acres of forests to turn it into newspaper of all things [Music] lovely trees turned into information about nothing and we don't replace them properly [Music] we kick the world around in revenge for feeling that really we are puppets which the world kicks around we need a new kind of consciousness because you see underneath the superficial self which pays attention to this and that there is another self more really us than i and if you become aware of

that unknown self the more you become aware of it the more you realize that it is inseparably connected with everything else that there is that you are a function of this total galaxy [Music] bounded by the milky way [Music] and that furthermore this galaxy is a function of all other galaxies and that vast thing that you see far off far off far off with telescopes and you look and look and look one day you're going to wake up and say why that's me and in knowing that no you see that you never die you are

the eternal thing that comes and goes it appears now as jon jones now as mary smith now is betty brown so it goes forever and ever ever here is a conception of nature as something you must trust outside nature the birds the bees the flowers the mountains the clouds and inside nature human nature now nature isn't trustworthy completely it'll sometimes let you down with a wallop [Music] but that's the risk you take that's the risk of life what's the alternative i do not trust nature at all it's got to be watched you know what that

leads to it leads to the totalitarian state [Music] where everybody is his brother's policeman where everybody is watching everybody else to report them to the authorities where you can't trust your own motivation if you can learn what the chinese call purposelessness they think nature is purposeless when we say something's purposeless that's put down there's no future in it it's a washout but when they hear the word purposeless they think that's just great it's like the waves washing against the shore going on and on and on forever with no meaning all music is purposeless [Music] is

music getting somewhere if it were i mean if the aim of music were of a symphony were to get to the final bar the best conductor would be the one who got there fastest see dancing when you dance do you aim to arrive at a particular place on the floor is that the idea of dancing the aim of dancing is to dance is the present well it's exactly the same with our life we think life has a purpose now here's the choice are you going to trust it or not [Music] if you do trust it

you may get let down and this it is yourself your own nature and all nature around you they're going to be mistakes but if you don't trust it at all [Music] it's a washout [Music] you're going to fence yourself round with rules and regulations and laws and prescriptions and policemen and guards and who's going to guard the guards and who's going to look after big brother to be sure that he doesn't do something stupid [Music] no go to live i must have faith i must trust myself to the totally unknown i must trust myself to

a nature which doesn't have a boss because a boss is a system of mistrust that is why lao says dao loves and nourishes all things but does not lord it over them [Music] [Music] you