Self-Awakening

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SF-03032
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Watts #3 Solid Empty

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one that sent out at the end of today's talk will give you an address that you can reach for more information about smoking regulations is now watch now hotline in the seminar south of age
well as it out
this seminar is concerned mainly with won't be called the practice of meditation
although as meditation is understood in hindu buddhist and taoist tradition
if vows there is little resemblance to me which is normally attached to the word in the english language
in englishman we say someone's meditating
he usually means that he's ten years that he's taking something out
and therefore when we hear that an oriental practices meditation we normally asked the question what are you meditating on
and he finds out a very funny question
he is apt to say i'm not meditating honored it not just meditating that is the snake i'm in a particular state of consciousness
because word that me translate meditation from sanskrit yeah
in chinese chung on a japanese zen
has rarely no equivalent in any western language
it is a state of consciousness
it is in some sense also decision
it's not a disciplined as we understand disciplines
and to introduce you to this then i have to expose you just an extremely dangerous ideas
when i want you
ah don't take me to literally take me with a certain grain of salt
don't jump to conclusions that wait until impulsive time the whole thing is explained
now you see when
we engage upon any kind of psychological therapy
spiritual discipline
model enterprise
we always have in our minds
the motivation of making things better
going towards the light rather than the darkness going was the good rather than leave
have you think of all these things as methods of self employment or of wealth and twelve
to understand however what meditation is you must completely abandon the barges
and begin at rock bottom in accordance with that my favorite turkish proverb that he who sleeps on the floor cannot fall and get
if not the absolutely to be understood for anybody who's interested in understanding what meditation really means
in a that you cannot improve yourself
be that you cannot improve the world
this is all about not to say
that you cannot grow
and that the world cannot evolve
but the growth of yourself and the evolution of the world
will be hindered rather than helped
i'm making efforts in that direction from the center which you call your will your ego you're conscious intention
what as the proverb says well
the road to hell is paved with good intentions
and all the trouble makers in the world today
ah by and large llamas
miles
our whether they belong to the political right or the political left it makes not the slightest difference
there are all acting in the name of high ideals as they conceive them and i'm making an immense amount of top
because you see the simple reason for all this is that it isn't physically impossible to raise yourself off the flaw by putting at your own bootstraps
who engage in that swamp activity you are very simply stupid
because you always been an enormous amount of physical and emotional energy in attempting to do something which cannot be done
likewise
the person who thinks that he can take himself in charge
and by some sort of false
a spiritual force if you want willpower
fundamentally transform yourself into a selfless loving creative be is under the greatest illusion well it's simple reason that what is called the ego
has only the same odor of reality
as the line of longitude
or a pound or a second or an inch or indeed a dry
because all these things are abstract and symbolic
your ego
is conceived by a large as some sort of center of control
that exists about halfway between your ears and a little way behind your eyes
which inhabits the body in some of the same way as a chauffeur operates in automobile
and which is i in charge of me
have we say well i have to control myself i have to discipline myself i have to do this now on the other to myself and if i can't do that i'm going to seek out a psychologist or a girl who can help me to do it and show me the right way
but all this is such a fundamental
a mistake that we have to almost abolished our current common sense
in order to understand why mistake it is
because this abstract ego which is really nothing more than your idea of yourself given to you mostly by other people
the when we were a little child
all your aunts and uncles and parents brothers sisters and other children
conspired unwitting to tell you who you are
they played around with you until they established what you call your role or character in life
and there are a choice of acceptable roles which you might play in the current wa as a culture of united states
but the main thing that they chose me was
that you are a separate breed responsible agent an independent first cause of boss words and deeds
what would you ought to be held responsible praised if they are acceptable and plate with their unacceptable
now there's a little baby
you could not possibly resist
this indoctrination this brainwashing you believed it
and do you see the paradox and values from the very beginning that you believe that you were free and independent agent because you were incapable of believing anything else because that was the idea of foisted upon me
in other was you believed in your freedom because you weren't free at that time
and so everybody grows up
with this nonsense rating in the backs of their brains
and that while everybody feels vaguely prostrate
and because of this they sense of chronic prostration one goes around the various teachers religions psychological systems and perhaps many of you came to a gathering such as this some of you may have come out a simple curiosity others to be entertained and you
will understand me much easier than those of you who claim to be enlightened

for you see
you are at least
your entire physical organism
but very few people admit this
they disown their own organisms
people don't say i am body
they say i have a body
they don't say
i beat my heart they save my heart beats
what about breathing
do you really
yes you can experience bringing as a voluntary action in the same senses walking
and yet you can't stop reading it goes on when you're not thinking about it and then it breathes you
was he was
when you make a decision such as to open your hands
you say i know how to live in my hand doing
about hi hearing
that you can do it
but you know how you do
you just do it
this the when you make a decision you just make it
there's you don't know how people saying when you're simply conscious you are conscious because you ran down this damned the hit me psychic and neurological processes which underlie consciousness
so is your whole organism all the processes of the obvious and will probably saved is something which happens to you
of which you are a model all this passage public public with some small degree of control
or on the other hand are you in the truest and deeper sense that meets your whole body
how lot of people don't want to read their fathers because they watch lives and they see that they get the credit disease that they grow old decay and eventually die and they think of themselves well i don't want to be identified with that kind of mess
so i am not my body i'm something spiritual
i my ideas
and ideas will live forever because i can put them in writing they will survive off and body dies or perhaps that ideas exist on some plane of vibration
that my thoughts structure
will live forever on this particular level of vibration long after my body that decade
now we cannot simply dismissed that idea except i really want to point out that it is used on misuse
by people who
don't that sort of opinion because they are afraid of their own bodies and that's quite the wrong reason for hobby
it may very well be that we live on all kinds of levels
but if you disarm your own organism
you are like a drink made of pure alcohol
instead of a good wine
which has body and face as well as is that now god company
beware of except with disparagement people
because the splendor of map
is that he is a marvel of marriage of angel and am
and there is no really great mr who is not also a censorious
and there's no really great nancy
who is not also domestic
the home me to be human
is to make these two aspects of life what
so
if i say
you cannot improve yourself
and you cannot employees work it is first of all because
you that would improve yourself in obviously the same yourself as stands he needed a true
so
the time being however that when you fully understand that you are not going to be able to improve yourself and you are not going to be able to reform the work
when that is thoroughly grasp
a whole lot of currently wasted psychic and physical energy will be released from the impossible task
and can help direct to be directed redirect to the things that can be done
for after all
one captain
clancy
an read the crops
one to build houses they are votes
make all kinds of machines
travel ever young talk to one another all these things to be done
but they're all rather particular and specific things
but once you get hung up on the idea of becoming a better
you are
taking away energy from all the things that can be done to something with company
so then to release that energy for the things that can be done
what has to understand that you as you are now
ah the to the instruments
which is going to function in this life
i always advise people were about to get matter
that instead of thinking what potentialities that are in this man august moon and how i could bring them out
to take a completely cynical who you say how will it mean to live with this person when they fall in the top of it
well they've grown older and uglier when they get stop in their ways when they have generally deteriorated by the process of age
would you like to live with them then if so matter
but don't expect any improve
but you see this apparently negative apparently senate were looking at things he is extremely creative
because it first of all it relieves you entirely of a sense of guilt
and more energy is wasted in punishing wonderful for supposed arrows with the sense of guilt than anything else we would go never transform anyone into anything except a hypocrite
because you cannot love anyone
are you the sense of guilt
if for example you will are married to somebody will move lunch alone as one psychologists reasons we said with low volume i love against
you feel you feel them out of a sense of guilt that you really ought to do your very best vehicle why for a good husband
but this motivation simply cannot be concealed
the other one knows just like the child always knows what is your motivation although the child cannot articulate it
and the moment you start to be abroad and say i love you i love you i love lamb most devoted to when you are not in your own as a get out of his duty
everybody's needs right through even though they won't admit to themselves they nevertheless see it is what the germans call i enjoy it entre a little thought far far in the back of the head everybody knows
and therefore the only thing that comes out of love fake love delivered artists and guilt is mutual hostility
i hate you because you're loving me our business and field i hate myself because he was about me and because i love you out of a sense of guilt address eyes you're a track
so nothing comes up except
to pile up hostility
but you see our entire culture of works on the system
and everybody is politicking to this point and say
they all know everybody knows
on whatever side of politics you may be what you're against and absolutely nobody at the faintest notion won't get for
except in very very gay zones now we'd like to get rid of poverty and war on smaller country that nobody has the face country realistic jersey
of exactly how to do
not everybody wants the things that they will solve these problems if they get rid of those bastards zambada
stop them
now then there's the next secret doors which is equally contrary to common sense
that is this
what happens
in the world outside you
trump right here in this room to the most remote galaxies
he's all your own doing
in other words you are got not however in the judeo christian sense of god
who is the cosmic boss
who is personally in charge of everything and who knows and is informed encyclopedic a of all the details
but rather in the sense of the hindu god
who
the plays all the parts that are being played
why do cause like itself is essentially a game of hide and seek or now you see it now you jump
the universe is a system
which creeps up on itself we suddenly shouts know
and then roars with laughter as itself the jumpers
and it internally things are new ways doing that
but every time pool is a big surprise
now that's the kind of thing were involved
and therefore you all know this every single one of you knows it but lots of you will put up amazing arguments to defend yourselves against the village
but you all again the into it i'm including the back the you all know this beetroot
but i could expect many great fights to to resist emitting defense
oh
and if you are truly reading your own art you know that you're gonna have usually that means to say the process is too complicated to described
it works because words very clumsy
it takes a long time to describe and think is a very short time to do it
so you are eating your hawks
now if you are reading your heart
if you are constructed out of some strange neurological wisdom the marvel of your eye
the most beautiful jewel in the world is the human eye
this is in comfort you will look the human eyes
and you create it's interesting that in our culture is there's little cabin to look too long and and about his eyes unless you're deeply in love with leave then
something about it that is awesome because when you look into that magnificent june you could look through and down the in in in and you'll you reach the heart of the universe
you can see that looking knowledge from another just
although the experiment other place maybe say what me
of and i don't understand
i'm just little league
the eyes give the lie in the state
because there is nothing more beautiful in the world
i don't know if there's a blind person
but you can also do interviews if you ever study that marvellous thing the
memory shell of time
that is equally gorgeous
and it also leads by song and lot of things
for everybody really is hot
in a universe which is a curved space time continuum
let's imagine all that isn't quite accurate that the whole universe is spread out on the surface of this year
this is one of the models that astronomers used when they try to talk to them
now any point on the surface of the spear can be regarded as the center of the whole surface
you see a way you just fear any point on it you can look at it as the center of it is
the center of the whole surface
so every time in the universe is the center of universe and you all feel the show center and you are
and every living creature that exists feels that way
even the most minute little fly knows that it's human
the civilized and it's a person that it has dignity and it has all his friends and relations and we say that it's only apply which means that we have not yet they need to understand its culture
those little flyers look at us human beings they did you ever see such pack rats
who's civilization depends on their requiring enormous apparatus external to their organisms houses temples still use books records
instruments and all the junk
takes around those whereas we fly look at that we i can just turn it this way and that way and it reflects light and infinitely many red rose and every little fly doesn't mean different way that was a different personality
and they all drink that the
very high orders and collaboration
he can be a feature that stuff down to the very viruses
and they mean there are ways in which stones have some form of primordial consciousness but everything that is knows it's the center and it is this business
so that whatever is going on
in this whole cosmos
is your doing it
in the same way that you're reading and off but not assuming responsibility part
zao the happens to
to the coach just is that i couldn't help it
so the same way
when a juvenile delinquent who has done a little bit of fried his home before the god he says well i couldn't help it because my mother gave me in trouble
know they say while i'm mother to call
what did you bring up his choice of that why is the father had a responsible he has not been in this child enough or something i'm not so visited a good example with the father and mother's day together we couldn't help it because our parents didn't bring us that probably usually they were fangio victorians they repressed all our goal the natural instincts and
therefore we are a mess
and so this grandfather and grandmother of dead and can't be long before the court to court doesn't know what to do
well everybody passing the buck back it said well he was my parents' fault but i got home it was defective rubber goes on we provide my father is the last the mountain and i'm not responsible for years now filthy ideas and of so i am until song so by an accent
don't i arrived in his world
how is that any more miserable approach to life the that
not to admit with delight is you were the evil gleam in your father's i when he went after your mother
the over there are understood the since
that as the manufacture those theorists are right about the cosmos and everything became a glorious exploding flung out all the galaxies into space that was you
only way you find yourself now is on the fringes of this explosion in ideas when you throw a bottle of ink against a white wall and then splashes and also goes out to the big central blog and then as it gets to the periphery is all now individualized busy little little blue
dropped his ego scattering around
and the you want now you think if you're not you identify itself i'm just on the lookout and play for the big bang in the center will that happened i didn't do that
you sure did club the yard throwing the mob of the wall near the beginning of time
before all world
you too
so let's admit that
what did you find you find a situation that's the paradoxical
a college
we are thinking about on each like us
as
separate images
track for thrown into a world a huge for bathroom
environment which we don't understand and which we feel this to found the other than up
and in our intense hostility against the situation where fine
we believe that beginning with chili
i first met
a hostile expression
and so
loss and foundation
how have our own house
increasing
i watching mindless technology
searched with technology instead of time
now we know somebody's gotta be done that
we cannot go on
we've got to was really very terribly necessary that we make friends without it to divine that we realize if the world outside asking is just the same as the world inside austrians it's all costs vs on how to set of the to
and that
we will only
make a great and a lovely invited interest off
by that kind of cooperation intelligence for operation
with the cabbage leaf
but how on earth are we to do it if we can't do anything that
hey there is impossible
for any time i will buy my closet either
transform the even myself
audience of
why on earth is fantastic
now that's the wrong place

liquid say said how this the situation going to grow now what am i going to do
how is this situation due to grow how does you can revived

instead about you what am i going to do that because the village was what am i going to do about it if you get the situation is no comedy and politics today that everybody was the properties of the world of snow complex the pilot is an invested interest in everything else is very long as the mayor little individual is helpless
now true the individual cultures so how much you can still if you delete your
so the identifies himself with an abstraction
he's injected idea
he's wrote his mouth his personal
but the individual has a biological origins and the psychological albums
yes they do path
because that individual is inseparable from the whole universe
and after a through the power to home
just as it's a heartbeat between miraculous and it's great if you mama
so what has happened is a transition of our of south
two people at a dealership in our center of gravity from the this fundamental officer in charge of processes halfway between the years
to be our or physical organism
and throw them all of the physical organisms knows very well
it is as in separate from all energy patterns in the cosmos
as any well me is inseparable from provo river
so that if you can get a sense
what goes on outside you
he is what did you are doing the same since the beginning of your art is what erotic the growing of your hair is watch to the conservation of your eyes as much regularly and so safeway everything else was on outside was perfect
you are in possession of them to begin to feel can for many employers to think about
the practical everyday problems of our relationship

so when you asked how am i do that
i'm going to say
don't ask any questions
why
because it in order to understand what i'm probably about
in a gutsy way as distinct from that amid a cerebral way
you have to stop it
i'm just stop birdlife
because it is false
and worse which fragment the physical universe into bits which we call to fix everything separate against
this is very useful calculus provided your servants and not your mouth
the military becomes your master you think the world is really made up of separate kids
and you overcome that a huge got to stop haiti
now when i say stop thinking i mean very specific
got thirty times in your life when you do not talk to yourself in words or in numbers on an abstract images
when your mind reflects whatever is in your senses as a clear to
rejects the sky
the stars
and it is that clarification of the mind which is why is understood in yoga thousand then etc etc as meditation
now this may seem at first too many of you to be an anti intellectual aptitude it is nothing of the kind because the intellect the scholarly intellect the scientific intellect cannot flourish
well the mind is incapable of science why because if you think all the time
you're not going to take about it's a flop
if i drop all the time
i never listened to what anybody else has to say i have nothing to talk about it at my luggage
when it's exactly the same reason you was thinking if you're always preoccupied with symbolizing inside your head
you have no contact with reality only with this number work am i mean by reality i want to find you know what reality is
you know perfectly well what reality
because they well if you do you mean by reality the material world
i will answer the material world as a concept
it has particular philosophical idea evolved out of her seventeenth eighteenth nineteenth century thinking the material world summit
you mean and that reality is the spiritual world has like as a concept
it's a lot of symbols noise is going on inside your head abstract calculation you know what material world lives
know this
to john
don't then you know the word mystics comes from the greek word believe
which means finger on the lips shut up
be quiet
look listen
cheap
so then i in a the tradition of zen the attitude of meditation is called sometimes motion which means no my alone in which means no thought
the state out in furious silence
which however
is not something that can be forced
you can make yourself in english your site
because
that involves the idea of an abstraction called a fusion
now you all know there isn't any such thing as the future
there is always and only now
and there is no past
there are only present memories
that prefer
two former states have not
there is actually own enough
so if you anything work and meditation ever get away from now you are not medicaid
the price is not what you should become what you should be what state of mind you should get into that simply what's going on was not
because it is this
hopeless the palm now on is actually happening as distinct from what it's supposed to be happening while up to happen what is described as being happily instead make direct contact with simply the way it is
now there are all kinds of techniques and gimmicks which how plank or don't
to be present completely
we can use these gimmicks that i want to warn you about me
whenever you use a meditation gimmick
you might chomp a mountain you might use a com you might concentrate on some a visual image what have you
don't do it to get a result
the whole idea of getting a result has to be complete your about in order to get into the state of medication that all i have to say an interest in order to get into
that's why as long as i talk
i'll just only create confusion
because once you start talking the whole notion of in order to it is impossible
you only have ideas of the future are getting someone a purpose are pursuing some we'll go so long as you think you
when you're not thinking all of that disappears
but you can't get into the not forgive state by making a the future objective
so then
the next thing dangerous idea five to put forward
great you can actually this is

what is my role in talking to you about this your attitude to meet ya to anyone else
who gases our kitchens or has anything to do with such subjects as the new girl

now we're living in an age of courage
gurus abound on all sides every kind of good
and in one way or another people's they
this man i have found as my guru really knows he is not ours
and i'm putting myself under his this
but the funny thing that people who do that are always trying to persuade their friends to join and good
i know how people you know who get to go out to go out to go to and each one they presented me with equivalent enthusiasm they use them they must come to someone's those lectures discourses meditation practices on and so forth this is the very last thing
when i say no i had it coming from done here before june and ha
because what people don't realize
is whether you electric or guru
how do you know it in
if you don't know you know if you get a reason for me
and why do you mean a group
you see the authority which people give to churches descriptions to groups
is that i'm not that he said they can see it from themselves just the same way when we change the time from that the times a day like safe
we say instead of getting up an hour earlier which would be very simple without monkey with the tops we change the top and always we changed the authority from everybody the eyes by the talk the we can feel from ourselves that the authority of the crop is now a little part because we have consent contented so
i do agree that this common measure of time com account
the like the police say the police are supposed to keep people in orange
who controls the police
well as nobody thousand watch out
but you're supposed to control keys and if you do know say for example take the driving on the highway
the centers thinking the world says to solve problems on the highway is the cookies
do you realize that you will alow courteous on the highway we wouldn't need a highway patrol
except or someone to run along with people look out to broken down cars
we can give all our doors unlocked and new on everything it will be much simpler i've often tried to tell criminals that levels of criminal were obliged it's much more difficult
it's very hard work to people
much hollywood nam to earn one's living in normal way
you could you should have you would be amazed at the schemes that people that created to cheat the income-tax by finding all sorts of different returns in different cities and then claiming rebates
that can around all these places it's a life
for very little reward considering the average different
seventy cemetery
but that the thing it is
do that we need as a whole culture periodic locations from thinking
in order to have something to eat that
believe there's for nothing else
we are over symbolic culture we completely confuse the world of symbols will the world and reality
we think money is wealth
i'm going to give a seminar me
strictly for extremely wealthy people in are you welt miserable
because if you are i'm just so you will do with your punish
actually i'm going to create a with the i'm going to show you how to spend it on yourself
wilson an adaptation
but you see there's only a limited way you can do this you know your story i'll give you a million dollars you can spend the whole thing in one day you're not buying stocks or real estate
just think of things that you would like to spend a million dollars in a day can imagine
the other people use the or wanting this thing this abstraction they feel that they are everyone happy when they got hold of paper dollars
even so the locks doesn't matter if they were gold gold is lying in the bank vault it's completely useless
so i'm filling teeth for making jewelry from putting lots a solid gold on the dome of the capitol in washington on dramatic look great for all always good for
people confuse the mania was a dinner
most americans eat me in the region
look at our bread you can is nothing but kind of squishy starting
an alleged may lead to new to chemicals needed
your tastes of what
nothing whatsoever to a kind of young tablet mother family patients have enough the white goon gonna take this and baby was fitted out
holidays like assumed metacritic life
and that in some many ways in other words we are living
following conceptions
for ideas of status of gun
when we were hypnotized
into these divisions created by works
and therefore divorced
from the concrete real world so that the purchase process of meditation
he's to read contact
reality
so as to get a demographic
from which to construct a civilization on the couch
maybe babies have this contact when they are born in terms of what freud called the oceanic the feeling of being one with the whole universe
but the baby is oceanic freedom
is to the experience of a great mystic as the a comments to the oak
we need i supposed to calculate the oceanic feeling which a baby have
and not use education as a means of
suppressing and for getting that feeling but a means of accurate occupied

so that we eventually come to this stage in which were kind of a curiously happens
i'm how can i illustrate this when you're scaring a car
are you pushing the wheel point
you're obviously doing both
so in a similar way you can't feel that everything that's happening in the world
which you thought was pushing you around
you'll find you're pulling it
and when you push it around you'll get the feeling that it's pulling you
so it's always beautiful
you've been listening to alan watts with part one for the seminar entitled not awaken
if you liked an audio cassette copy of today's talk
send five dollars to this address clearly a box three all three sausalito nine four nine six six be sure to specify you want part one the similar
snow
the dresser
hi
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huh
they can combine yeah no you leave me a great town and computer market cap on saturday february eight and she kind of like try a coalition of personal eat coach in my everyone to a great evening celebrating a hundred and thirty eight years
in view that i convinced my pizza and other very special good