See, our problem is we don't really know how to stop.
We've got something started and we see it's going in the wrong direction.
And I think the difficulty is, to borrow an old Chinese saying, that when the wrong man
uses the right means, the right means work in the wrong way.
In other words, there is something wrong with the way we think.
And while that is there, everything we do will be a mess.
Now, what is it that's wrong?
Now, as far as I can see, the basic mistake is that we've invented this wonderful system
of language and calculation and that it is at once too simple to deal with the complexity
of the world, and also we are liable to confuse that system of symbols with the world itself,
just as we confuse money with wealth. A lot of people are in business to make money instead
of wealth when they make the money they don’t know what to do with it.
And so in the same way, we confuse happiness with status and we confuse ourselves as living
organisms, which are one with this whole universe, with something we call our personality.
And what is our personality?
Our personality is what we call our image, our image of ourselves, and also our thought
about ourselves, our idea of ourselves.
This is the person, in other words, what people meet and understand, and what I understand
as Alan Watts is a big act, which is not really me, because in the image of Alan Watts, there
are not all my unconscious processes, both psychological and physical.
The construction of my brain is not contained in the concept Alan Watts, and the concept
Alan Watts does not contain the inseparable relationships which I have with all the rest
of the universe.
And therefore that concept is a fraud. And when it's mistaken for the real me, there's
a confusion because if somebody says to me, Alan Watts, do something about it, the concept,
Alan Watts can't do anything.
In other words, because it's only a concept, you can't make it lift a weight, just as three
as a concept. Three, the number you can't make, just plain three do anything.
So, also you can't wrap up parcels with the equator. It's a useful imaginary line, but
it can't do anything.
But we all feel that this concept of ourselves, which we call our personality or our ego,
can do something because we think it really exists.
And I'll tell you why we think it exists.
What happens when you if I were to say to you now look hard at the television screen,
really look at it. What do you do as distinct from just watching it in the ordinary way
when you say, no, I really got to see that?
What do you do?
Notice that you tighten muscles all around here, that you frown a little, you clench
your teeth perhaps.
And what does that got to do with seeing anything clearly?
It has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Same thing when you listen carefully.
Now, listen, catch everything that said, when you start tightening up around your ears,
that has nothing to do with hearing clearly.
Now, from the moment we were little children, when teachers in class screamed at us, pay
attention, we go tight in various ways, either to see or hear more clearly, to concentrate
or to will something which is supposed to be difficult to do.
And that constitutes a habitual tension over the whole body that's there almost all the time.
And that feeling of unnecessary tension is, as it were, the material sensation upon which
we fastened this concept of I. We hang it on to that feeling. The concept is not us.
The feeling of tension is completely phony. It has nothing to do with success in seeing,
hearing or acting.
And so we get the marriage of an illusion with a falsehood and that we call ourselves.
And I wonder we feel cut off from everything, alienated, frightened of life and death.
So, what has to happen is we have to come back to a sane view of our own life, which
is the way we really are, an organism functioning in terms of the whole environment, with the
whole environment, instead of this funny little separate personality.
But how are we going to do that?
People say, oh, you can't change human nature overnight.
You're asking us to give up the ego. That's the most difficult of all things to do.
Actually, it isn't, because the ego doesn't exist.
But of course, if you try to give up your ego with your ego, then it will take you to
the end of time.
Because this is the point.
You can't transform yourself, you can't make yourself sane, you can't make yourself loving,
you can't make yourself unselfish.
And yet it's absolutely necessary that we be that way.
It's absolutely necessary.
If we are going to hand over the direction of nature to nature, which is what it comes to.
It's absolutely necessary that we let go of ourselves and it can't be done. Not by anything
that we call doing it, acting, willing, or even just accepting things, you can't do it.
Why?
Because you don't really exist as that kind of a separate ego or personality.
It's just an idea based on a phony feeling.
So, when it comes down to it.
It's shocking news for us, for the human race, for our pride.
You're only making a mess by trying to put things straight. They're trying to straighten
out a wiggly world and no wonder you're in trouble.
So, you can't do anything.
So, you can't transform yourself.
And what can you do?
What happens then if you actually realize you've come to a dead end?
And the human race has come to a dead end, in my opinion.
What then?
Commit suicide?
Or is there something else?
What happens when you just wait?
There's nothing you can do.
You watch.
And all you see is what goes on that is happening of itself, you are breathing, the wind is
blowing, the trees are waving, your blood is circulating, your nerves are tingling.
It's all going on by itself.
But, you know, that's you.
That's the real you.
The you that goes on of itself.
It's not the symbol, it's not the person, it's you that's happening as when you breathe.
Yes, you can get the feeling that I am breathing by shoving your breath, but your breath goes
on day in and day out without you doing anything about it or even thinking of it.
The same way your brain is functioning without you forcing it.
So, when you come to a dead end and we are individually and socially now at a dead end,
this is the moment of which it is said man's extremity is God's opportunity, because we
have to stop.
And when we stop, we find a world that is happening rather than being done, being shoved.
And that happening, as distinct from doing, is our fundamental self.
And our fundamental self is not something just inside the skin. It's everything around
us with which we connect.
When you look out of your eyes at nature happening out there, you're looking at you.
I'm not going to say what we should do from then on.
But simply that before we think of doing anything in this critical situation, we realize the
completely illusory nature of the beings that we think we are and get back again to the
beings that we really are, which includes all this outside world, no longer left outside.