Alan Watts - Breaking Negative Patterns

My mother was a great artist in embroidery, she did absolutely fabulous work and could do everything with thread, sew, knit, embroider, make tapestry, repair tapestry, oh just fabulous work, so I grew up in an environment where the thread is of enormous importance. She made a I lived this way for a while, so I was always amazed at the way you take a ball of wool and knitting needles and it suddenly turns into a fantastic sweater, but I discovered that you see the secret of this, that is that it will do this. it will be held together by this combination of warp and wolf by this process where one thread goes under the other skips the next goes under the other and then the next does the same but in the opposite way they connect and they hold each other.

For example, you can put two wooden sticks and lean them against each other and they will rise. You know, the Chinese character for man looks more or less like that, and although this is written, it is simply the shape of the brush, the abbreviation of the brush. what were originally the legs of a small human stick figure, there is a story that Japanese children sometimes learn from their mothers that this is the reason why this is the man character is that two sticks lent together as I described They will support each other and one depends on the other, it is mutual and in the same way the existence of human beings depends on us supporting each other without any of us being able to exist, but that may seem a little trite, a unmoralistic, etc., but It is absolutely fundamental that whatever exists, as long as we can say that something exists, existence is a function of the relationship, movement itself is a function of the relationship, for example, forgive me if some Of you have heard this before, but it is a very important basic lesson if there is only one object, a small ball in the middle of infinite space, no one knows if it is moving because you cannot tell if it is approaching something or if it is moving. moving away from something because there is nothing else, so in that state of affairs there is no movement, but if we introduce a second ball into the image and both of them move towards or away from each other then we can say that both or either of them are in motion, not We can decide which one is doing the movement. moving because it could be could be one could be the other now we will put three balls in space and we find that two of them stay together and the other one leaves, now it is up to the two of them to decide if the other one is moving away from them or they are moving away. moving away from the other because two is a majority in this case and the vote always, of course, goes to the majority, the universe is basically a democratic organization and that's how it happens now once you have that.

I can see that movement is a form of relationship. Well, let me put it another way. Energy is a form of relationship. If the universe is basically a play of energy, then you can say that energy and relationship go together. What does this say? that being existence itself is a relationship, let's look at it in other ways. You know the old question: if a tree crashes in a forest and no one is around to hear it, is there a noise? This question has been discussed in many feudal ways, but basically it is noise. It is a state of affairs that requires an eardrum and an auditory nervous system behind the eardrum when the tree falls it makes the air vibrate if there is somewhere around an ear with the appropriate nervous system there will be a noise because the noise is a relationship between the movement in the air and in the ears, if there is no air around, there will be no noise, although there will be vibration in the air, and if there is some instrument around, such as a microphone connected to a recorder, which is a mechanical copy of an ear human then according to that there will be noise there will be a vibration in the same way suppose the sun sends light into space now the space surrounding the sun will be black darkness as if there is no light in it unless a planet floats by when a planet floats by There will be light in the darkness but if there is nothing to relate to the sun in that way then the light does not come now this goes straight to the root and foundation of everything it descends to. the essence of your nerves of your entire being is that everything is an interdependence and that is why one of the basic symbols of the universe is the Chinese yin yang symbol, which you know is a circle with an s-shaped curve in the center On one side of the s is black the other is white and then it makes like two commas or two fish and the eye of the fish is the opposite color the white fish has a black eye the black fish has a white eye and these things go like this Look, twisting around each other now, this is called a helix and that is the fundamental shape of galaxies, the large nebulae that we see in space are making these curves and this is basically the position of sexual relations, this is making love and this it's what you know when they hold hands and so on uh this is it, but there are two involved and the two are secretly one now this is what I really want you to understand to enter into the unitive world that underlies and supports everyday practice.

In this world there have to be certain alterations in one's common sense. Now there are certain ideas and beyond these ideas, certain feelings that are difficult to convey, not because they are intellectually complicated, not because of that, but because they are unfamiliar. It is strange that we have not been educated to accommodate them in exactly the same way that in times past people knew that the planets stood in the sky because they were embedded in crystal spheres and if they were not embedded in crystal spheres and Of course that you could see them because you could see through them that they would fall to earth and now, when astronomers finally suggested that there were no crystal spheres, people felt incredibly insecure.

It was very difficult for them to assimilate this idea. Do you see what it means? It involves assimilating a really new idea, you have to take a big turn, for example, there are some people whose number systems only represent quantities 1, two, three, many, so they have no concept of the four corners of a table. Look, a table has many corners. and a pile of pebbles is in that sense equivalent in multitude to the four corners of the table. Now they are having a hard time starting to grasp the idea of ​​counting and numbering all those corners or all those pebbles, but we have done it.

And for us that is perfectly simple, but imagine the kind of mentality, the kind of person for whom that is not simple at all, but now, in exactly the same way, here is what I am trying to explain, a new idea that the most people don't. It is not assimilated and that is the idea of ​​the total interdependence of everything in the world. Buddhists in Japan call him Gigi Muge. Between thing and thing, between event and event, there is no block and they imaginatively represent it as a network. Three-dimensional spider web covered with dew in the morning and each drop of dew in this web contains the reflections of all the other drops of dew and of course in turn in each drop of dew that reflects one drop is the reflection of all the others again and use this image to represent the interdependence of everything in the world in other words, if we give this dewdrop image, if we put it in a linguistic analogy, we would say that these words have meaning only in the context of the meaning of any word.

It depends on the sentence or paragraph it is in, so if I say this tree has no bark it is one thing and if I say this dog has no bark it is another, so you will always see that the meaning of the word is relationship. with the context now in exactly the same way the meaning as well as the existence of an individual person an organism is in relation to the context you are what is sitting here at this moment with your particular type of clothes and with the particular colors of your faces and your particular personalities your family implications your business implications your neuroses and your everything that you are that precisely in relation to an extremely complex environment, so much so that if we take for example this piece of wood that supports the beam that It comes out here now, believe me, this is true, you can see it has little bumps and so on, if it wasn't the way it is, you wouldn't be the way you are, the line of connection between what is and what you are, it's very, very complicated we might as well to say that if a certain star that we observe did not exist, you would be different from what you are now.

I'm not saying you wouldn't exist, but you would exist differently, but you could say the connection is very weak. It's something you don't normally have to think about, it's not important, but basically it's important, you just say I don't have to think about it because it's there all the time. Look, for example, the floor is under you all the time. a kind of floor, a kind of ground and you don't really have to think about it, so it's always there, it's always there, if you become numb, you stop thinking about it, but there it is, and so on manner. our subtle interdependence, keep in mind that it is not just our simple existence, it is the type of existence that we have, it depends on all these things, also our simple existence, but that boils down, but the fundamental thing is the existence, it is the relationship, In other words, if my finger up. here he is alone and the wind does not move and nothing touches him he stops knowing that it is there but if something comes and does it he is immediately aware that it is there so you see, it takes two, we could have a lot of fun, but it takes more. more than one and she doesn't want to, but this way you see what we call duality, you can see, right?, how duality is fundamental, two are needed, but duality is always a secret unity.

Take the contrast between the words we use, explicit and implicit very valuable words what is explicit what is on the outside say how we behave publicly explicitly we are like this and like that we have a fight uh we are in competition let's say in business explicitly but implicitly we have resolved this that we have agreed in a secret way that no one knows that this competition is extremely valuable for both of us take it politically, for example, let's take the situation of Russia versus the United States explicitly in public, this has to be a big fight, these two ways of life, these two. the ideologies oppose say no we are there, but behind the scenes everything has been carefully crafted, you can bet this opposition has to happen because our economy depends on it and their economy depends on it and everyone knows who has who is smart.

But there are many people who let themselves be fooled by propaganda and they should let themselves be fooled because that makes things work. It's crazy, but that's how it works and everything works this way. For example, when swans start to mate, they don't. I'm sure what they're supposed to do and they start fighting. I had a long conversation about this with CJ Young. He lived on the shore of Lake Zurich and had a small summer house right on the water's edge and there were many of them. swans there and I was getting up at the end of a conversation with him and we were starting to walk back to the main house and I said to him, isn't it true that swans are monogamous? and he said yes, they are, he said, you know, I've had very interesting relationships between these and many of my patients who thought they were homosexual.

I mean, Jung wasn't a sexual snob. I mean, he understood the whole legitimacy of all kinds of sexual variations, but he said it had been a starting point for our discussions, he said it's so funny that when they start mating they start fighting and they don't know what it's about and then, suddenly the fight turns into love making, so that's what I mean, underneath the opposition there is love underneath. duality there is unity the tweedledum and the tweedledee agreed to have a battle so you see here is the principle of weaving things are held together above below below above below below above below below above and that creates a thing creates a cloth creates clothing creates shelter creates what we call mata mata mata madre and also the same word illusion Mayan sees the world as a wonderful illusion now we have to get into this look at another form of the thing you can play it not only two at a time but you can play it three at a time.

You already know the trademark of Valentine's ale, which is three interlocking rings. Now, the way these rings are interlocked is such that they join together only if all three are present, if you remove one from the other. two fall apart this very interesting phenomenon but it can be created physically with steel rings its cohesion in all three is present now we have tried scientifically to understand the world and explain its mysteries by analyzing the smallest particles of the things that exist by investigating downward downwards, down, what is this thing we call flesh, cold steel or stone, what is it made of?, down to the middle of that and that has given us a certain understanding, but only half of the understanding is equally important not which one. is the smallest particle, but in What context is the smallest particle you see in relation to what it is?

Just as the word bark, as I showed you, has different meanings in different sentences, so cells, molecules, atoms have different properties in different contexts, so what the scientist equally needs to study is not simply, what It's anything when you analyze it very, verycarefully, but where it is, when is what makes the difference. Do you see that many people who get anxious when they hear that everything is relative have no need to understand that anxious relativity? Isn't it a kind of slippery swamp in which all the rules and all the directions are lost relativity is really the most solid situation that exists look it's the one that holds the other it's this thing you know this this is wonderful x mark the spot imagine this goes on and on assuming my finger was indefinitely long both fingers and they were doing this look they're just crossing each other now on one side it's a pair of scissors and it cuts what's on the other side why is it spreading female legs saying why please come with this absolute softness total receptivity on the other side is but on this side please please please yes welcome and everything is based on that look it's like this sharpness teeth biting spines crab shells all that kind of thing you know, in the other side is the melting softness of life look, they go together just like that and God knows what is on these two outer sides.

I haven't thought about that, so if you see that if you understand that principle, you can feel yourself not just going around in the world kind of um. You know someone who has been trapped down there but you can feel that you are in an absolutely exact relationship with everything around you and this is very beautiful, it is not just that you are here looking at what is out there as if you were photographing it with your eyes is that if that did not exist you would not be here, the outside that you see and the inside that you are are poles of the same magnet or back facing the same coin and without one there is no other means, of course, that we live in the middle of a world of animals, plants, minerals, atmospheres, astronomical bodies, which is highly intelligent, its concentrated intelligence crystallized in our brains, that is where it comes from, it is seen in any field, let's say, let's take any field. of forces we take a chemical solution and at certain critical points in this chemical solution the crystals begin to form and so in the same way the total intelligence of this entire universe crystallizes in human brains also in other types of brains, but that is where it really comes but it is the total intelligence of the entire field that does this, so we go all in, we depend on it, we do not live in an environment that is only rock, only air, only atmosphere, etc., environments are only like that when we think .

We talk about it analytically and try to explain it, but when we think about it, it's not just rock and air, but those things go together when you see the interconnectedness, when you see in the simplest way how flowers go with bees and other insects. . they do not live without them humans go with livestock plants do not exist without them etc etc etc when you see the intervals the meaning of the relationships between these things it is only then when you see that that you are aware of the melody returns to The example I gave of The person who cannot hear a melody, who is deaf, only hears a succession of sounds because he is not aware of the intervals.

Now most people are educated to be deaf regarding their own existence and the rest of life. universe, they don't see the relationships, they aren't aware of the unity, so once you realize how it all goes with that you are one extreme and out there is the other extreme and they really go together, then can say that we are living a harmonious life. This concludes session three of Out of Your Mind. Essential listening to the Alan Watts audio files. Our program continues with session four. The web of life. Let me try to indicate from the beginning the point we are at.

The point is that human consciousness is at the same time a form of awareness, sensitivity and understanding, it is also a form of ignorance. The everyday consciousness that we have leaves out more than it captures and that is why it leaves out. It leaves out things that are terribly important, it leaves out things that, if we knew them, would alleviate our anxieties, fears and horrors, and if we could expand our consciousness, to include those things that we left out, we would have a deep inner piece because everyone would know one thing. that you are not supposed to know, you know according to the rules of our particular social game, one thing that you are not supposed to know and that is not actually allowed, but it is the truth about life and then the truth, on the one hand, means the true dirt of things, but the deep is also the deep, the mysterious, what is in the depths and something that is left out and our everyday consciousness eliminates it in the same way that when you say you have to knit, you have a say over this. uh carpet here in front of us when the black ends here the black threads will go underneath and then appear again here then they will go under the white and then appear again here you know, so the back will be the obverse pattern of the front now the world is So our sensory organs are selective, they select certain things that they are receptive to, for example, we have a small little band of what might be called a spectrum of light, sound, tactile sensation, etc. to which the human organism is sensitive but we know that outside that small band there is an enormous range of vibrations to which we have built instruments that are sensitive things like cosmic rays, ultraviolet rays, gamma rays, hard X rays and so on all They are outside the band of our spectrum and, obviously, there are things that are outside the reach of our instruments, it is possible that one day we will build new instruments that evoke and bring to our consciousness other orders of vibration, but yes, we do not know them yet, so you could Imagine that you see that the universe is a vast, vast system of vibrations and it has infinite possibilities.

All these vibrations that you know are like the strings of a harp and the harps that the angels in heaven are supposed to play are actually this enormous possibility. Do you see when you play the harp you select strings you don't play all the strings it's stupid to just run your finger along the entire edge of the heart from one side to the other from one side to the other what you do is select with your fingers select like on the piano, do you? You know? You choose certain notes and they form the

patterns

, but at the same time you select you reject what you do not select, but it is all there making up a fundamental continuity, the type of continuity of the thread as they go towards the back of the woven material and compose the obverse of the pattern that is on the front now the question that is absolutely basic for all human beings is what have you left out you see you are focused on certain things that constitute what you call everyday reality look at yourself People come out and you see them sitting sitting sitting around and you know that they are things that are really there and then behind the people are the houses or whatever we live on and the earth and behind all that the sky and so on, but we see the world as a collection of events and Pretty disjointed stuff and I could tell you when you came here today, Oh my God, you all forgot something, what did you forget and you think, Oh my God, I put on pants, I put on a sweater? that I have my glasses and my hair on or my wig or whatever and uh no no it's nothing like that something you forgot look everyone has forgotten something you left it out you just missed it look look and so I can bring this up what I've forgotten if I ask you who you are, you'll say I'm Paul Jones or whatever your name is, I say oh no, no, no, don't tell me that stuff, who are you really?

You think, um, wait, of course I do. It's just me, too, don't give me that, I don't want to hear all that nonsense, you're playing a joke on me, deep down, who you are, because I don't really know, that's what you have to do. discover that that is what has been forgotten to see, that is the bottom of the tapestry that has been left aside because what we are carefully taught to ignore is that each of us fundamentally deep inside, let's put it bluntly, In that way, it is an act of a function of a performance of the manifestation of the works, the whole blinking cosmos with all its galaxies and forever and ever, whatever is beyond what you could call god in the Western tradition or Brahman in Hindu philosophy or Tao each of us.

It is really that, but we are pretending that we are not and we are pretending with tremendous skill and deception. Now what I would call a truly oscillating human being is a person who lives on two levels at once and is able to live on the level of being his own. ordinary ego your everyday personality and play your role in life and observe all the rules and so on, but if you are only at that level, if you are only playing that kind of thing and think that that is all, you become a burden and start to be the type of person who feels that he has to continue surviving, sees that it is tremendously important to continue surviving to live and works on that and his children learn the same attitude from him and know that he says well.

I have to survive because I have all these children that I want to support and so on and then they adopt the same attitude and raise children and feel compulsive about supporting them because they have to leave. so no one really has fun it's just we have to do this thing you see and don't have to see every time someone comes to me and tells me I really can't go on and I have to kill myself. say well that's completely it you're right there's really no reason why you should continue and if you want to kill yourself then do it you can check it because this reduces anxiety when they feel free to kill themselves they really don't have to. suicide, so much so that you know you can commit partial suicide, then the feeling that you just have to keep living, see that life is essential when you say something spontaneous, see that life is spontaneous, it happens in the words of the Taoists , which means of itself, so that's their Chinese expression for nature, what happens on its own, what doesn't push itself, but just appears, you see how, um, I'll never forget that there was a great Zen master who I met him once in New York, he was giving a conference. night and he was dressed in his golden ceremonial robe and he was sitting in front of an altar like this kind of thing and he had a very formal table in front of him with candles and a sutra written on a small desk and he was lecturing on the sutra and he said : "a fundamental principle in Buddhism has no purpose, purpose, when you fart, you don't say at nine o'clock, I fart, it happens on its own, you know, and all these pious Western devotees, you know "They're kind." of putting tissues in your mouth and trying not to laugh, but that's the meaning of something that happens on its own, like farting or having hiccups or um, you're just born, you know it happens in a way like that.

Look now, you can't say the process should happen, it should happen because that hinders it in the same way as when you have a small child and all the relatives have come to a Thanksgiving party and you put the child. in the middle of all the relatives and says now, dear to play, look and it absolutely bothers the child to do it like that and then this is the problem for every artist because an artist is a man who makes a living by playing, whether it is dancing or painting or playing. music or whatever and you have to overcome this problem, you have to know how to play in public at a certain time on a date, look, and that is not an easy thing to learn, but when you understand the trick, you can do it. making it to play on demand that's the hardest lesson in life coming up with what my japanese artist friend sabro hasagawa calls a controlled accident the thing is we've been educated