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I've just come back from Los Angeles.
I was down there to meet with a group of rather important people.
People in the movie industry, scientists and so on.
Who were considering calling a congress of the best minds in the world to meet in Los Angeles in the near future,
to be a kind of planetary alarm conference.
They wanted scientists and statesmen, religious leaders;
to do something to impress upon the world through all the media that we are in very serious danger of destroying the biosphere;
that is to say the whole envelope of living creatures which covers this planet;
through pollution, over population, nuclear fallout, poisoning of our food and very lack of food.
And we met to discuss the problem of organizing this conference,
and here are all these brilliant people, and it came over us that we really didn't know what we ought to say.
I mean you can scream and create a state of panic, but that won't do any good;
and when it came down to it, we didn't know what we ought to say because we really don't know what to do.
Some things that we might do for example, to increase the food supply with high yield crops, may be ecological mistakes;
and so the consensus of almost everybody at the meeting, was that in some way or other
the human race has to learn how to leave the world alone and let what is called the natural homeostasis;
that is the self-balancing process of nature, take care of the mess.
Now how are we going to do that?
This is Japanese ceremonial tea. It's good on a cold day.
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's 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 for as I can see, the basic mistake is that we have 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 say, money with wealth itself.
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, for something we call our personality.
Now 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 its 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 is a concept, three the number; you can't make just plain three do anything.
Also you can't just 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.
Now what happens if I were to say to you, 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 "Now 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; now what has that got to do with seeing anything clearly?
It's absolutely nothing to do with it. Same thing when you listen carefully, "Now listen,
catch everything that's said", 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 fasten 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. No 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 separate
little funny personality. But how are we going to do that? People say "Well you can't change
human nature overnight. You're asking us to give up the ego." and 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 till 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. You'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, what can you do? What happens then, when 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're breathing, the wind is blowing, the trees are waving, your blood is circulating,
your nerves are tingling. It's all going on of itself. But do 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 in 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 in 1971 at a dead end), this is the moment of which it
is said that 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, the
outside world, no longer left outside.