Another good typist is now putting in written form an Alan Watts' talk ... mostly verbatim here but not all exactly as uttered then whenever that was, so many years ago:
As the tapes are copy-written by his sons who are in business with his legacy, audiotapes they sell and want to control his thoughts, maybe in audio form but probably in any form, dead man held tight for some gains or profits ?
So do not copy or paste please unless you do ask permission from the Alan Watts organizations that let KPFK replay their tapes - in return for the blurb of where they are borrowed for play and thus like Sounds True too gets heard...otherwise maybe hardly NOT heard.
It is here too a trade-publicity-promo always.
The inheritor-owner [of father's audio tapes, after he died, not before, we presume ] desperately tries to hold on to their stuff - as if it were all so original, words were invented by orator or recorder of talks, and as if the thoughts Alan Watts said were ONLY HIS OWN, not borrow, repeated and translated by him, as written, told by many before his birth too..
So these 'new owners' after Watts died in 1976 made a business in order to maybe properly control their father's inheritance to not be freely available to be used, or to be educational, for FREE and easy and made popular-use, and they can be contacted for their aims, and stated-motives,too.
Tho we doubt anything but altruism is ever stated as the reason why copy-writes or claiming-'rights' = claimed by governments,or samplers, or repeaters, and all who claim to be 'artists' or 'inventors' or such people who enjoy claiming Total Originality ! huh?
And then they deny where they learned and gained information, hints, thoughts, teachings, words from all those who shared those same ideas and interpretations BEFORE these utterances, maybe in a different language, or a few words turned, slanted, spun differently but all the message & info are essential THE SAME, just pretending to be "MY OWN" by owners, of 'legal rights' for their own gains.
Gains can be status, imagined property-ownership-rights, or even images long dead and gone and no longer able to say these grasps are what the speaker/ writer/ artist/ entertainer intended or would agree to in this day & age.
Thus the owning of dead people's articulations, as if this could really ever be OWNED at all anyhow. Words in lectures, then recorded and the recorders given equal profits/benefits too?
or the "entertainer" as Watts claimed to be, no longer doing business, certainly was not on internet then to be revealed, as his words are here anyhow.
This is for PUBLIC INFORMATION DISSEMINATED FOR FREE AND WITH NO RETURN NOR BENEFITS in return, here. This is not a 'disclaiming" anything, but a statement of what is happening, here, now. duh....
[please ignore any punctuations disarray or words left out or whatever is imperfect in the attempt to share some interesting ways to think.Or buy a tape from the "owners" and type it up to share further, unless that is already available and FOR SALE ? ]
And understand what religions love to claim is ONLY their domain, their expertise, their connection as dispenser of godly favors, and all they claim to "own" too, or threaten death and suffering, of course !
So.Who.is.god. ?
if you are using images of god at all, you cant go higher
than protestations that any other image falls below image of man…becomes
compost of tapioca or jello…
only 1 exit from this predicament. if one tries…to use
images
it is necessary to go beyond Images ! but if one uses
images, cant go beyond man cuz we don’t know of anything more evolved than
ourselves
and even if there were anything, I. e.
dolphins, we don’t know dolphins more than we know ourselves
everywhere else we see things from surfaces, from outside,
but you know yourself from Inside. so have advantageous situation, have a deeper view than anywhere else.
now then, if dissatisfied and cannot stand image of GOD as
personal, as a religious man, the only way open, if you still use images, you
have an Incomplete image of man too.
most extraordinary thing, as in arts – what happens to image
of man in arts and what happens in contemporary art to that image?
contemporary artist have cut adrift from representation of
humans or anything else at all, as we used to regard as realistic terms. theologian
Nicholas……wrote about disappearance of humans in the arts.
that is sinister & destructive. but he missed point because when some contemporary artists draw a man, they don’t want to represent human
as he appears from Outside, but experiment themselves as they really feel to be
themselves…and when do that comes up that doesn’t look-like man as we know
him….
Elsa Gindler gave problem
to class – a large paper – draw a pix of yourself as you see yourself to be and
student with conceit who had studied movement, and know all about construction
of her organism, Charlotte drew complicated muscles, bones, but when all
students arranged drawings with Gindler making comments, Charlotte was
astounded at what else others drew….
Charlotte could see more from their strange
drawings – a blob - Elsa had not drawn
as she Felt herself but as she had learned from physiological textbooks but not
as she really Felt about herself.
[see google if this is the same person:
if we can make attempts of how to represent our self as
‘being’ – which will not be representation conventional of how we ‘look’ –
worth thinking about – how artificial our conception of ourselves is – but even
Camera is trained to see things conventionally. The lens we put in camera to
not distort things but it Does Distort as we manufactured lens to make a distorted
image of how we look like - and we call
that “real”.
but when we show a foto of a Bedouin chief and show it to him,
he cant recognize himself !
because he will turn foto around and look at back and not
see himself…!
distance shows him smaller in perspective and he says ‘tree is
not shorter than I am, why show it smaller?”
we depict ourselves in prejudice.
Chinese shows faces w/o shadows – everything is w/o shadows.
Emperor shown with shadow considered inauspicious – ½ his face black implies it
is dirty – a shadow was cast over his life. He is insulted.
do look “Art
& Illusion” [book] a study
of optical problems in western art.
how lots of contemporary art considers problem of how we see
from how we are Suppose To See. that’s how Cezanne shocked everyone, to how
world says I am suppose to see it, as leaves are green, but are there ?
people
draw blk outline and fill it in w/green, but leaves are a multiplicity of
colors w/o blk outlines in reality. When artist says “I don’t now whether how I
see the world is thrust upon me, how I am suppose-to see world or how it IS,
how I do see it ?”
other influences tell me what to See ! like in sculpture – we can get in touch w/
subtle body distinct from physical body.
physical body can be described as conventionally seen – as
you see someone else. But surgeon or other can see other body. but SUBTLE BODY
is how you see yourself...as in adv shows distorted foto of person with swelled
head showing headache visually [exaggerated, artistically]
as in a cartoon showing airplane overhead and animal saw
himself twisted looking up at it, like the subtle-body, not conventional but as
it felt to him.
to represent facts how it feels inside your head is
different from what is expected representational. To feel out vision, what
appears outside in front of eyes is state of affairs in your brain. that means if you draw that, you’ve got to
draw what is Inside your own head. That alters our images, of man.
One thinks of one’s head as Blank, colorless, neither dark
nor light is behind our eyes – external world begins here and goes on out- in here is unseen recipient – where optical
nerve centers are…but that is difficult to Feel that… but can do so.
you can
come to feel that with all senses, hearing, touch, to see that whole external
world is literally YOUR BODY.
and corollary of that is that external world is your body !
there are 2 different ideas involved, external world IS your body and not ‘out
there’ differently. You have arbitrarily drawn line of where I begin & end,
as if at your skin.
but know skin is in relation to pressures, electronic
relationships that go thru you and rest of universe so why draw external world
at your skin ? that is a game. know external world as YOURSELF…your
organism is inseparable from yourself.
your deepest inside is as much external world as anything
else. your external is same as mine is. each of us knows external world in
terms of himself !!! I am aware of me so that’s how I am aware of you !
if you begin to feel that too, when I draw my eyes, I don’t
draw conventional eyes but also things that are ‘outside’ my eyes to express
what my eyes FEEL like. if feel eyes
with fingers then have to draw fingers too, the state of fingertips, feel
eyelids and draw that, if eyes are totally open, how does that feel ? feel
temperature of eyes, twitches, and how else do eyes fee?
my goodness ! they feel like you !
now extend that…how you FEEL -? like the universe is how you feel.
this way image of man alters. no longer bag of skin inside
it. He is relationship between bag of skin and everything and NOT APART FROM THAT
BAG OF SKIN.
you are not ‘in this world’ like pea in pod or penny in
piggy bank but part of it.
the organism is in a polar relationship to everything else,
so any full account of that organism is takes all else to that you
feel,…because your feeling of others is a feeling of yourself at same time/in
same perception.
otherwise you have weird conclusion of who you are. I don’t
control your movements but I see your movements as movements of me. when you
lift your hand it is in my BRAIN that I am aware of so it is my movement too…I
have to keep track of what is yours and mine and suddenly I might feel that in
a state of conscious – we are part of everything is happening…. that you are
controlling what everyone else is doing !
all voluntary actions are part of involuntary actions.
other people are part of you. as your heart beats are you ,
tho you don’t feel them, consciously. you don’t control other people’s behavior
but that/they are also you, as your heart is, tho you don’t think of that.
as you find the WHOLE
WORLD IS YOUR BODY TOO, both translated in your nervous system and your
objectively being a physical organism – a process inseparable from all other
processes that are ‘outside’ of you, you are part of external world you think
is ‘outside/around’ you. you cant set it aside as if something ‘different’ than
you.
world is full of lines, boundaries, spaces…. it is there…but
the outline of bodies is inline of what surrounds bodies at same time…we move
together as one.
even if one is taught to think they move ‘independently’ of
one another.
as you become aware of that that the WHOLE WORLD IS YOUR BODY too,
so universe is the shape of man, not like having a head, 2
arms, a truck, but that man is more than that shape. we have the shape of
whatever universe is, tho we don’t know all that it is.
so immense and in more dimensions.
it too feel like itself is surrounded by other galaxies,
surrounded by other bodies, who knows?
all you know of US is having a map of Kansas
so think if expand that map it will cover the whole world, but it doesn’t.
You
cant judge from what you see that the rest is just a continuation of that ltd
vision. So whatever shape Universe is, that is our shape and not what we
“think” we have as a shape.
that is shape Chinese of have Tao…the course of nature is a
conception of world as an organism. that involves thing peculiar to us that all
particular parts arise together …. the organization of an organism is
non-political, it is not ruled by a governor…
look at a ….. we can see head and tail, but the high doesn’t
come Before the Low. They need each other… they come in together and are
together.
people say ‘brain feeds stomach’ but can say ‘stomach serves
the brain’ keeps it going but they serve each other mutually. brain would be
nowhere without stomach….if limbs all got together and said ‘we do all the work and stomach is lazy and
doesn’t do anything !’ so mouth, hands, brain didn’t do anything went on
strike but realized w/o stomach they could not survive.
[google image shared here]
All had to work in unison. All parts come to being together
and relationship is all mutually advantageous to each other.
to not be operating in a chain of command, in a pecking
order, but in unison. To assume the pecking order, top down, is looking only
from an Analytical process, looking at piece by piece, start somewhere and end
elsewhere to analyze assume that is how nature starts. to start with head and
goes on down to feet, but it is all combined, united. like kids draw figures.
Could start with feet first and move to arms, or head.
how could head be going around unless firmly grounded with
feet ? how can feet on ground w/o all starting on head, the ctr of intelligence
? but cant work that way. that is how we learn to draw, to begin somewhere and
then move pencil further. but you were not drawn as that in mothers’ womb.
an organism comes to birth is more like image develops on photographic plate, all in one …the whole image comes to being – like fetus
grows – so who is boss of that being ? the chemical in developing foto tray or
the plate ? no , all together brings being image come to fore.
so image of world there is NO top process, but all comes
emerging together, in mutual relationship to all processes in it.
because of this, every and all parts, there are NO PARTS, we
just call ‘things’ as if there were separate parts, but all is essential to the
whole.
all parts disappear when you drop dead, so parts are not
essential, the whole is.
all begin and end in course of time.
they have essential parts are temporal limits and special
limits, a significant feature of universe that Socrates did exist. the world in
which there was Socrates is different than one in which there was none.
Tho
that world disappeared he is still an Essential Feature of our cosmos, or any
other person who has lived, or will live. They are all symptomatic of the WHOLE
THING.
in your short span of
life the whole universe depends on you as you depend on it all mutual, all of a
piece together…
you now have a different image of god, if that image of man
is expanded and inclusive ….vs the image we have been accustomed to, limits man
by skin and as ‘governor’ of universe or governor of cities, tribes…
it just a
copy of what we have seen – a monarchical image of the universe..
as if “1 nation under god” accords god the honor as if he
were a king on earth, is a political image, make up story by rulers who like
that version, as if organized organically vs. humans’ political interpretation
of relationships.
people don’t like rituals in church that look like legal
courts, even churches look like judicial courts. how same they are decorated,
with jury box for the choir ad judge sits at pulpit, wearing same black gowns
as minister wears…both indistinguishable.
Decorating churches began w/ protestant reformation – a bourgeoisie
reformation – a city merchant version – emergence of city merchant class over
landowner classes, because they had a kings-court version before.
The city court was replicated in churches, chose images of
how we govern our selves [ a choice ]
while catholic church was monarchical…and is becoming less by
bringing altar to center of church...
but that is dangerous for a king who can
be attacked that way, instead of with east wall behind him protecting him
with military [other church people
there]…. had to leave swords outside but wore divided skirts that dragged
behind them so they couldn’t run in those clothes to protect the king from
being hurt or abandoned by his court.
so when church begins to move altar to center, position of king
has been abandoned, and expands from center is a healthier station, mutual trust
all around vs. king in defensive stand w/ hidden altar parts in back – pubic
not seen – to protect him.
in traditional church stand in row like army on march with
god head in front, like on top.
to be walking down long aisle …
with pews, so not one can
turn over any part w/o being stalled.
the TOP ONE is up there, by altar…
higher up [physically
placed higher as if for all to see, and for him to see over them to protect
himself ] the old POLITICAL PATTERNS are repeated.
this is the beginning to be aware of the transformation of
image of god. 1 facet is image of man is
changing into image of universe. and universe functioning organically vs. being
in a chain of command, like kings & their
military were .
all position
below governor are not functional, except to him, barely important, vs. the
universe means there is NO CENTER, which is in middle because all are middle
ones.
Universe as we know is not like a ball with a middle and the
rest if outside. In math terms the whole universe has been distributed over surface
of the ball, but it has no center that way…. sphere like as if a black center
rotating in front of you but as your shift the sphere it has No inside and No
outside, but the totality of a a curved surface, no middle one, anyone can be
middle one.
just as you feel you are in middle of the world…
you see same
distance all around you even in middle of desert …
same all the time. you see as
if a long past behind you and long future ahead. but we are in place called NOW,
between then and will be.
you can put people down and say they are not in ctr of
world…YOU are center.
when we found out Ptolemaic center of world doesn’t remain,
sun is then center of world but then found it is on edge in galaxy and then
found millions of galaxy and we found we were small, but didn’t see other side
of picture…what a remarkable being man is to realize that at all, to be
insignificant solar system of the whole and to be AWARE
as of that reflecting
mirror of Buddhist image of Indira’s nest
multidimensional of spiders web in morning dew.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - -- - - -
- - - - - - -
paraphrasing here:
Watts reminds us also that there is NO SEPARATION ...no "the knower" vs. a separate stuff to be "known..."
the viewer is also the viewed...
and there is no "I" looking at what is "over there"...
because we are all of one, whole, and not as is said in languages, or socially trained, to think : that this is not separated parts or isolated objects as 'individuals'
the space between words and distances we think we 'see' between this body and that person or object is "empty space" is what we are taught to believe and pretend....
as if from a separate "that" [in time, in space, in perceiving, in the motion of 'knowing']....is "this...
yet, the inside & outside are all of one and not pieced / spliced/ cut apart.
While this re-cognition is difficult to remember & hard to recognize in daily life, it just takes another "Wake Up!" reminder for that moment - to real-ize that what we Assume.... and pretend....or define is "them" and "that" is not another or 'other', but all are This too.
like Krishnamurti often said : there is no difference between the observer and the observed.
no (C) on Watts typed words, but on intro and on this blogsite (c) mj 2018
