This talk transcribed here for fun & to learning, again..[this was typed as heard on KPFK radio talk broadcast and some words or transitions may seem awkward, some were in talk and some not noticed as fingers typed but sometimes slower than words flowed...punctuations not corrected for exact properness but the FLOW of words heard, Alan Watts' thoughts, & his stream-of-consciousness as he spoke = are contained pretty intact here.
{brackets] are used for my inserted words to clarify.
"Quote marks " are left off of each sentence or paragraph, for easier reading.
at bottom are other links for sources to listen, read, learn more about Watts' materials available on line ...tho not a full list of resources. Some found, shared for convenience here.
Most of this is shared here to be offered as : REMINDERS, and to PROVOKE CREATIVE thinking, to move us all out of stuckness,& out of commonplace/ ordinary/ conformist modes. that induce confusion or misery. Freeing UP what we understand about life, death, and eastern philosophies assists most of 'us' in living more fully, openly, and in unison, together.
Enjoy :
" neither class would know who they were with out the other. need “out”-group to have an "in”-group…to be chosen/ in synagogue need to separate out from ‘others’ outsiders to know you are ‘in’ …beyond the village to feel protected, to feel you are there…
so bodies have skins, eggs have shells – inside vs outside
but understood as SYMBIOSIS – crucial important matter
to understand politics, social conflicts, conflicts between biological species is symbiosis
mutual support mostly like bees & flowers
which came first ? we cant tell, which came before the other but cant have either w/o other so different in appearance in space but constitute a Single Organism…
same man and women, takes 1 of ea to produce a human being – we are man/woman arrangement …tho look-like we are individuals and separate from ea other but is not the case at all….
same is between groups that appear to be hostile to ea other...real basis is that biological order is a EATING society, mutually eating up the other…
realize you are a ‘compound of murders’ and a bag of water, human organism is mainly water held by complex arabesque of stuff that makes up skin, muscle, organs…that was some other being before you could be that tensile film to hold water in you as “you”.
we are predatory creature, more than any others in nature, more than sharks, piranhas or eagles but they stay within their range of territory- ocean, air, water…vs. man preys on living and minerals any where , everywhere….
our civilization sits on sewage dump sending playthings at moon
our misuse of water in our civilization is horrifying !
see how we use water uneconomical ways…we re predatory monster eating up the planet. humans are in danger cuz they refused to be mutually eaten up and only want to be eater, never eaten, [ so never die ! ]
to just be mummified, embalmed and never even return to organic earth, never return to ‘earth’ or ‘dirt’ but kept from being recycled. we are reducing wild animals, bird, even farming animals changes into pseudo animals because in huge animal/farm chickens, animals are not same, taste different, constitute different than they do ‘in wild’
“I love you so much I could eat you”…but you cannot love a whole farm bin of chickens – reduced into stuff that is not real, like flour converted into Styrofoam called ‘bread’ but doesn’t taste like it in natural form ! like pabulum given to babies who spit it back out…a miserable paste vs. being bread. or a live chicken vs. artificially manipulated to seem/look like
we eat things look like chalk & string because we don’t love what we eat, no respect for raw materials…all groups need an enemy group, that preys upon it is also a kind of Friend…cuz enemy proves your own groups, keeps you on your toes to defend against it so you stay fit, vs. flabby….
we have lost meaning of chivalry…in all conflict situations, …were before customs to a fight that saluted ea other before fighting, bow, shake hands- recognize an ‘honorable’ opponent whom fight is an important matter/ event/ act.
that is essential law of survival – recognize enemies [not predatory locusts who do not re sow, replace what they take - ] must respect the species because you will need them again to grow to nurture /feed you/ or to sell them to others for food/ resource
absolutely necessary to have an out-group so you can have an in-group, beginning of sociability - contained conflict, in-group must realize it NEEDS the out-group, vs. getting rid of them ,…
i.e. get rid of communists from earth as external threat – while they say same tho their politics would fall apart if they didn’t have an ‘enemy’ to fight and organize around their enemies ! under fear, external threat that humans get together to cooperate, or they don’t.
humans need an external menace, so that menace is friendly to the group in being useful and needed., big or small groups…
game is “I’m more tolerant than you are “ game played by religions…can only transcend by humor and both need to laugh at Game Played…you are necessary for me to have my opinion – that is secret of humor, someone else to laugh at or with ?
the nature of your self…we have cultural linguistic background that sets up how we experience ‘self’ as an enclosed island, confronted by enormous out-group called universe…inside body, soft sensitive reality is ‘me’ while outside I don’t feel and don’t know/sense you, so you are ‘alien’…
so world as physical entity, process is an organization that goes on for all eternity but individual is in it for brief occurrence.
man is tiny little germ living on obscure rock around star near one of many galaxies…
so we feel/ think ‘maybe, I don’t belong here at all ‘
any universe can be called ‘the center’ of it, but All pts are the center too…. if we can see that we can make a psychological adjustment to our life situation and learn how /what we call “I” is not a poor little puppet, but the situation of being central to all things is a kind of distortion of true situation….
that I-ness and be-ing, existence are the same thing… as sense of self requires sense of other…sense of being here requires the interval of apparent nothingness that we call “death”.
life goes with death as “other”,….crest of wave and troth of wave...go together...as intervals. survival of individual personality seems critical to us, but understand that real “you’ is not the individual….
i.e. a circle…represents universe, then draw rays from circle so drawing tangents to circle meet at points outside it, so star w/ea ray points to entire diameter of star, turn it inside out, so rays go inside circle, whole circle focuses itself at innumerable points within in…..
Soul is not in body but body is in the soul…focused in time/ place, as here/now.
that is what you really are…galaxies seem far off and have nothing to do with you…
are ..you…all is in you too…
we cant get at all the universe…not like billiard balls…always indescribable and indefinable…as is your own mind…you cannot find name for color of vision…color of lens of eye so we call it ‘transparent’ – no color…
as mirror has no color or it could into reflect colors, so at root of all experience is the non-experience, which is fundamental.
it can never be described by experiences within it…it lies between light/darkness life/death, coming/going but never can be ‘possessing’ it because it IS you…
because invisible intangible nature of this reality, we tend to for-get all about it and become fascinated instead with subsidiary features inside of ‘it’…it has no color, no shape that can be defined because have to outside itself to define itself [even from space stations ?] …
and conscious attn always concentrates on figures that is part of the Background …and total background [as is Tillich’s “ ground of being” ] escapes our attention…so we fail to notice it…
we prefer movies and stories as if you were in mortal danger of being eaten up…and enjoy that horror instead of recognizing that daily we take sides, we cant actually take sides because both/ more are needed, you ARE both inside & outside, cant take 1 side vs the other, but you are BOTH…and all
so liberation, Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism is to be aware of eternity and infinity of ea of us not separable…not personal immortality to go out with memory of this life or past lives which we may have been, to get pleasure of heaven as we are by name , to be exclusive [ego proud] as “Mary” or "Watts"…
if you remembered for ever and ever and had continuous cumulative experience, after a while you would want to forget…
forgetting is as important as remembering…as eating is to excrement…
analogy of mind to digestive system…forgetting is important to mental function, why we sleep, have intervals of unconscious to renew things…to remember things after a going-away-rest-sleep-dream…
but if you want to always be who you are, you have to Die First and see it all as You.
all initiation ceremonies are a symbolic Death…various rituals people put in coffins, books of dead are references to initiation rites & processes where you DIE to become alive ..again….
thinking about death is productive…imagine consciousness to cease ad never return again ! never wake up…. consider this and teases you out of ‘thought’...how to start out of nothing at all, as you were when you were born…teases you out of thinking…
if you arrived out of space ? stop thinking, imagining to get to Creative Moment when thought is nonplussed, at that pt you get to your self…same as you can’t conceive you self in universe, you cant conceive of these Q either
if you think long enough about death, possibility of total disappearance, and for you a total disappearance of everything else too…a curious flip, yang turns into ying. infinite nothing when you die is same one as when you were born.. .remember millions yrs of what you were before you were born ? see how it flips ?
from objective observation, there will be babies born, baby humans, snakes, spiders, fish, billions…some die and some are born later, so you will be everyone of those babies …but every baby can only Experience as One At A Time – that is the GAME
you cant experience yourself as being all the beings, coagulated into 1 ..but you ARE all of those that are born, tho ea experiences themselves as a singular …
when you die you may experience same as when you were born, as a human or fish…
but if a fish, you will be where you feel you are a ‘human’/ center species and all others are ‘fish’ – others =repeating same theme - reason for many species and many consciousness…
you don’t have to believe in any supernatural situation…there is no difference between molecules composing your hand, no space between what is your hands or other vibrations, as sounds heard vs. space in which they are ‘heard’ …. as can be slowed waves that sound like grunts vs. words… can hear spaces between vibrations…
makes perfect sense…discontinuous sounds to make sense to our minds …looks like it continues as there are spaces between words but there is all
[white space defines font / print and both needed to create readability,as print…]
can imagine being dead when dead and say ‘particles’ vs. continuous waves being the vibrations being
can never escape duality which requires non duality
the system is rigged, you are IT !
you learn to be bugged, phased by eventualities…as baby you are pushed into this by society, babies know who they are [like the
oceanic experience babies have per Freud] w/o words that define …
we want to teach babies to talk to tell us how it is when they cannot talk …babies experience whole world as their own body, doesn’t differentiate between baby and mother…we didn’t have words to put memories into…memories require notations, words, thus spaces and language, thoughts..
to a baby nothing has a special value, all is changing …like sounds vary, a play of energy and movement, nothing until told it is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ shape, sound…but baby knows all is…continuous.. until TAUGHT to separate ea section by name/ label and it all just goes onnnnnnnn
and there are no intervals except as we define/ then teach it to babies….
as the ' big bang' are all systems of energies that have fallen out but were all unified, so nothing was going on before it banged ? everything that happens 1x can happen again
…. so it is a meta physical leap of faith ? but cant be proven either way, as is or isn’t.
so don’t worry about not retaining your personal identity because you would be bored w/ it if you could or it will Kill You... and it does !
human life is looked upon as seasons… .as Japanese poetry writes re rhythm of seasons …as in life cycles is similar…and you will dis-appear and re-appear…but you could re-appear in form similar to what you re now, as 2 performances of same musical piece are same composition but not same performance….
and every conceivable possibility is going on and on ..thru ‘time’ …
an essential step of meditation is to see everything as non-sense
Buddhist talk about seeing everything as ‘suchness’
as sounds of "dadada"…rhythms, nothing matters, if you die is one kind of jazz, if you live it is another jazz, don’t matter either way…becomes obvious that you are continuous life with everything around you…going "raptaraptarapta"….
life bonging on the same drum….and you are the drum…
as you start to grow up, [nothing or all ends here ]
BLOG.REPOSTINGS.FROM.HERE.txt
print /write here and copy, DO NOT USE 'WORD'.... comes out ok from here ...
--------------------------------------
Watts.World.As.Play.doc T “pt 4 – World as Play” ---
neither class would know who they were with out the other. need “out”-group to have an "in”-group…to be chosen/ in synagogue need to separate out from ‘others’ outsiders to know you are ‘in’ …beyond the village to feel protected, to feel you are there…
so bodies have skins, eggs have shells – inside vs outside
but understood as SYMBIOSIS – crucial important matter
to understand politics, social conflicts, conflicts between biological species is symbiosis
mutual support mostly like bees & flowers
which came first ? we cant tell, which came before the other but cant have either w/o other so different in appearance in space but constitute a Single Organism…
same man and women, takes 1 of ea to produce a human being – we are man/woman arrangement …tho look-like we are individuals and separate from ea other but is not the case at all….
same is between groups that appear to be hostile to ea other...real basis is that biological order is a EATING society, mutually eating up the other…
realize you are a ‘compound of murders’ and a bag of water, human organism is mainly water held by complex arabesque of stuff that makes up skin, muscle, organs…that was some other being before you could be that tensile film to hold water in you as “you”.
we are predatory creature, more than any others in nature, more than sharks, piranhas or eagles but they stay within their range of territory- ocean, air, water…vs. man preys on living and minerals any where , everywhere….
our civilization sits on sewage dump sending playthings at moon
our misuse of water in our civilization is horrifying !
see how we use water uneconomical ways…we re predatory monster eating up the planet. humans are in danger cuz they refused to be mutually eaten up and only want to be eater, never eaten, [ so never die ! ]
to just be mummified, embalmed and never even return to organic earth, never return to ‘earth’ or ‘dirt’ but kept from being recycled. we are reducing wild animals, bird, even farming animals changes into pseudo animals because in huge animal/farm chickens, animals are not same, taste different, constitute different than they do ‘in wild’
“I love you so much I could eat you”…but you cannot love a whole farm bin of chickens – reduced into stuff that is not real, like flour converted into Styrofoam called ‘bread’ but doesn’t taste like it in natural form ! like pabulum given to babies who spit it back out…a miserable paste vs. being bread. or a live chicken vs. artificially manipulated to seem/look like
we eat things look like chalk & string because we don’t love what we eat, no respect for raw materials…all groups need an enemy group, that preys upon it is also a kind of Friend…cuz enemy proves your own groups, keeps you on your toes to defend against it so you stay fit, vs. flabby….
we have lost meaning of chivalry…in all conflict situations, …were before customs to a fight that saluted ea other before fighting, bow, shake hands- recognize an ‘honorable’ opponent whom fight is an important matter/ event/ act.
that is essential law of survival – recognize enemies [not predatory locusts who do not re sow, replace what they take - ] must respect the species because you will need them again to grow to nurture /feed you/ or to sell them to others for food/ resource
absolutely necessary to have an out-group so you can have an in-group, beginning of sociability - contained conflict, in-group must realize it NEEDS the out-group, vs. getting rid of them ,…i.e. get rid of communists from earth as external threat – while they say same tho their politics would fall apart if they didn’t have an ‘enemy’ to fight and organize around their enemies ! under fear, external threat that humans get together to cooperate, or they don’t.
humans need an external menace, so that menace is friendly to the group in being useful and needed., big or small groups…
game is “I’m more tolerant than you are “ game played by religions…can only transcend by humor and both need to laugh at Game Played…you are necessary for me to have my opinion – that is secret of humor, someone else to laugh at or with ?
the nature of your self…we have cultural linguistic background that sets up how we experience ‘self’ as an enclosed island, confronted by enormous out-group called universe…inside body, soft sensitive reality is ‘me’ while outside I don’t feel and don’t know/sense you, so you are ‘alien’…
so world as physical entity, process is an organization that goes on for all eternity but individual is in it for brief occurrence.
man is tiny little germ living on obscure rock around star near one of many galaxies…
so we feel/ think ‘maybe, I don’t belong here at all ‘
any universe can be called ‘the center’ of it, but All points are the center too…. if we can see that we can make a psychological adjustment to our life situation and learn how /what we call “I” is not a poor little puppet, but the situation of being central to all things is a kind of distortion of true situation….
that I -ness and be -ing, existence are the same thing… as sense of self requires sense of other…sense of being here requires the interval of apparent nothingness that we call “death”.
life goes with death as “other”,….crest of wave and troth of wave...go together...as intervals. survival of individual personality seems critical to us, but understand that real “you’ is not the individual….i.e. a circle….represents universe, then draw rays from circle so drawing tangents to circle meet at pts outside it, so star w/ea ray points to entire diameter of star, turn it inside out, so rays go inside circle, whole circle focuses itself at innumerable points within in…..
Soul is not in body but body is in the soul…focused in time/ place, as here/now.
that is what you really are…galaxies seem far off and have nothing to do with you…are ..you…all is in you too…
we cant get at all the universe…not like billiard balls…always indescribable and indefinable…as is your own mind…you cannot find name for color of vision…color of lens of eye so we call it ‘transparent’ – no color…as mirror has no color or it could into reflect colors, so at root of all experience is the non-experience, which is fundamental.
it can never be described by experiences within it…it lies between light/darkness life/death, coming/going but never can be ‘possessing’ it because it IS you…
because invisible intangible nature of this reality, we tend to for-get all about it and become fascinated instead with subsidiary features inside of ‘it’…it has no color, no shape that can be defined because have to outside itself to define itself [even from space stations ?] …and conscious attn always concentrates on figures that is part of the Background …and total background [as is Tillich’s “ ground of being” ] escapes our attn…so we fail to notice it…
we prefer movies and stories as if you were in mortal danger of being eaten up…and enjoy that horror instead of recognizing that daily we take sides, we cant actually take sides because both/ more are needed, you ARE both inside & outside, cant take 1 side vs the other, but you are BOTH…and all
so liberation, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism is to be aware of eternity and infinity of ea of us not separate-able…not personal immortality to go out with memory of this life or past lives which we may have been, to get pleasure of heaven as we are by name , to be exclusive [ego proud] as “Maria” or Watts…if you remembered for ever and ever and had continuous cumulative experience, after a while you would want to forget…
forgetting is as important as remembering…as eating is to excrement…
analogy of mind to digestive system…forgetting is important to mental function, why we sleep, have intervals of unconscious to renew things…to remember things after a going-away-rest-sleep-dream…
but if you want to always be who you are, you have to Die First and see it all as You.
all initiation ceremonies are a symbolic Death…various rituals people put in coffins, books of dead are references to initiation rites & processes where you DIE to become alive ..again….
thinking about death is productive…imagine consciousness to cease ad never return again ! never wake up…. consider this and teases you out of ‘thought’...how to start out of nothing at all, as you were when you were born…teases you out of thinking…
if you arrived out of space ? stop thinking, imagining to get to Creative Moment when thought is nonplussed, at that pt you get to your self…same as you can’t concienve you self in universe, you cant conceive of these Q either
if you think long enough about death, possibility of total disappearance, and for you a total disappearance of everything else too…a curious flip, yang turns into ying. infinite nothing when you die is same one as when you were born...remember millions yrs of what you were befote you were born ? see how it flips ?
from objective observation, there will be babies born, baby humans, snakes, spiders, fish, billions…some die and some are born later, so you will be everyone of those babies …but every baby can only Experience as One At A Time – that is the GAME
you cant experience yourself as being all the beings, coagulated into 1 ..but you ARE all of those that are born, tho ea experiences themselves as a singular …
when you die you may experience same as when you were born, as a human or fish…
but if a fish, you will be where you feel you are a ‘human’/ center species and all others are ‘fish’ – others =repeating same theme - reason for many species and many consciousness…
google image you don’t have to believe in any supernatural situation…there is no difference between molecules composing your hand, no space between what is your hands or other vibrations, as sounds heard vs. space in which they are ‘heard’ ….as can be slowed waves that sound like grunts vs. words… can hear spaces between vibrations…
makes perfect sense…discontinuous sounds to make sense to our minds …looks like it continues as there are spaces between words but there is all [white space defines font/print and both needed to create readability, print…]
can imagine being dead when dead and say ‘particles’ vs. continuous waves being the vibrations being
can never escape duality which requires non duality
the system is rigged, you are IT !
you learn to be bugged, phased by eventualities…as baby you are pushed into this by society, babies know who they are [oceanic experience babies have per Freud] w/o words that define …
we want to teach babies to talk to tell us how it is when they cannot talk …babies experience whole world as their own body, doesn’t differentiate between baby and mother…we didn’t have words to put memories into…memories require notations, words, thus spaces and language, thoughts..
to a baby nothing has a special value, all is changing …like sounds vary, a play of energy and movement, nothing until told it is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ shape, sound…but baby knows all is…continuous.. until TAUGHT to separate ea section by name/ label and it all just goes onnnnnnnn and there are no intervals except as we define/ then teach it to babies….
as big bang are all systems of energies that have fallen out but were all unified, so nothing was going on before it banged ? everything that happens 1x can happen again
…. so it is a meta physical leap of faith ? but cant be proven either way, as is or isn’t.
so don’t worry about not retaining your personal identity cuz you would be bored w/ it if you could or it will Kill You, and it does !
human life is looked upon as seasons….as Japanese poetry writes re rhythem of seasons …as in life cycles is similar…and you will dis-appear and re-appear…but you could re-appear in form similar to what you re now, as 2 performances of same musical piece are same composition but not same performance….
and every conceivable possibility is going on and on ..thru ‘time’ …
an essential step of meditation is to see everything as non-sense
Buddhist talk about seeing everything as ‘suchness’
as dadada…rhythms,
nothing matters, if you die is one kind of jazz, if you live it is another jazz, don’t matter either way…becomes obvious that you are continuous life with everything around you…
going raptaraptarapta….life bonging on the same drum….
and you are the drum…
as you start to grow up"
****************************************
More resources than these selected here are available, in many media platforms, videos, books, tapes, writings, books, group discussions and more... see what is of value to you. Most of the materials are free, some for sale, and if you purchase something, maybe you could also SHARE that further so it is not another commercial transaction primarily ?
https://www.soundstrue.com/store/alan-watts-5202.html
www.alanwatts.com/ = His son Mark sells Alan Watts materials, tapes, et al
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts
also look at the listed resources at this URL
https://www.brainpickings.org/tag/alan-watts
Alan W. Watts (Author of The Way of Zen) - Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1501668.Alan_W_Watts
https://www.brainpickings.org/tag/alan-watts/
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alan_Watts
https://soundcloud.com/alanwatts
www.bezenso.com/alan-watts-essays-transcripts-lectures/
www.gaia.com/
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/27/alan-watts-taboo/
see for various utube free sites also
and participating groups,[ i.e. yahoo groups] also exist... check if still open now
https://www.google.com/search?biw=800&bih=443&ei=_nkPWpq8KJDCjwOP3pPgBg&q=alan+watts+groups&oq=alan+watts+groups&gs_l=psy-ab.3...205076.206643.0.207855.7.7.0.0.0.0.126.796.0j7.7.0..3..0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.5.593...0j0i67k1j0i131i20i264k1j33i21k1.0.ImvJQZF5sCwttps://www.google.com/search?biw=800&bih=443&ei=_nkPWpq8KJDCjwOP3pPgBg&q=alan+watts+groups&oq=alan+watts+groups&gs_l=psy-ab.3...205076.206643.0.207855.7.7.0.0.0.0.126.796.0j7.7.0..3..0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.5.593...0j0i67k1j0i131i20i264k1j33i21k1.0.ImvJQZF5sCw
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1608684156
(c) off all non-Watts words here: rro 2017
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