04-15-2022, 11:43 AM
(This post was last modified: 04-15-2022, 11:44 AM by Steppingfeet.)
I’ve been listening to "Out of Your Mind" the past couple of weeks, an audiobook compilation of talks by Alan Watts. The following section lit me up. (Bold added.)
We all have some kind of intellectual understanding re the self-authored nature of the journey, but I’ve never seen it put quite this way: the way that we, as sovereign entities, control both the gas and the brake pedals of awakening, with our hands alone, ultimately, on the steering wheel. (Until we realize that we were never really the ones driving the car.)
Some potential inspiration for you.
Alan Watts
So then, here’s the drama. My metaphysics—let me be perfectly frank with you—are that there is the central self—you can call it God, you can call it anything you like—and it’s all of us. It’s playing all the parts of all beings whatsoever everywhere and anywhere. And it’s playing the game of hide-and-seek with itself. It gets lost, it gets involved in the farthest-out adventures, but in the end it always wakes up and comes back to itself. And when you’re ready to wake up, you’re going to wake up. And if you’re not ready you’re going to stay pretending that you’re just “poor little me.”
And since you’re all here and engaged in this sort of inquiry and listening to this sort of lecture, I assume that you’re all on the process of waking up. Or else you’re teasing yourselves with some kind of flirtation with waking up, which you’re not serious about. But I assume—maybe you are not serious, but sincere—that you are ready to wake up.
So then, when you’re in the way of waking up, and finding out who you really are, you meet a character called a guru, as the Hindus say—this word, “the teacher,” “the awakener.” And what is the function of a guru? He’s the man who looks at you in the eye and says, “Oh, come off it! I know who you are.”
You know, you come to the guru and say, “Sir, I have a problem. I’m unhappy, and I want to get one-up on the universe, so I want to become enlightened. I want spiritual wisdom.” The guru looks at you and says, “Who are you?”
You know Sri Ramana Maharshi, that great Hindu sage of modern times? People used to come to him and say, “Master, who was I in my last incarnation?”—as if that mattered. And he would say, “Who is asking the question?” And he’d look at you and say, “Basically, go right down to it. You’re looking at me, you’re looking out, and you’re unaware of what’s behind your eyes. Go back in and find out who you are, where the question comes from, why you ask.” And if you’ve looked at a photograph of that man—I have a gorgeous photograph of him; I walk by it every time I go out of the front door—and I look at those eyes, and the humor in them, the lilting laugh that says, “Oh come off it! Shiva, I recognize you. When you come to my door and you say, ‘I’m so-and-so,’ I say, ‘Ha ha, what a funny way God has come on today!’”
There are all sorts of tricks, of course, that gurus play. They say, “Well, we’re going to put you through the mill.” And the reason they do that is, simply, that you won’t wake up until you feel you’ve paid a price for it. In other words, the sense of guilt that one has, or the sense of anxiety, is simply the way one experiences keeping the game of disguise going on. Do you see that? Supposing you say, “I feel guilty.” Christianity makes you feel guilty for existing. That, somehow, the very fact that you exist is an affront. You are a fallen human being. […]
But that sense, that sense of guilt, is the veil across the sanctuary. Don’t you dare come in! In all mysteries, when you are going to be initiated, there’s somebody saying “Ah-ah-ah-ah! Don’t you come in! You’ve got to fulfill this requirement, and this requirement, and this requirement, and this requirement; then we’ll let you in.” And so you go through the mill.
Why? Because you’re saying to yourself, “I won’t wake up until I feel I deserve it. I won’t wake up until I’ve made it difficult for me to wake up.” So I invent for myself an elaborate system of delaying my waking up. I put myself through this test, and that test, and when I feel it’s been sufficiently arduous, then I may at last admit to myself who I really am, and draw aside the veil, and realize that—after all, when all is said and done—I am that I am, which is the name of God. And, when it comes to it, that’s rather funny.
They say in Zen, when you attain satori, nothing is left you at that moment but to have a good laugh. But naturally, all masters—Zen masters, yoga masters, every kind of master—puts up a barrier and says to you… he simply plays your own game. You know, we say anybody who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined. Because you—when you go to a psychiatrist—you define yourself as somebody who ought to have his head examined. Same way, the Zen masters say anybody who studies Zen, or comes to a Zen master, ought to be given thirty blows with a stick, because he was stupid enough to pose the question that he had a problem. But you’re the problem. You put yourself in this situation.
So, it’s a question, fundamentally. Do you define yourself as a victim of the world, or as the world? You can define yourself, you see—if you identify you with what you call the voluntary system of the nerves, and say, “Only that’s me”—and that’s really a rather limited amount of my total performance; what I do voluntarily—then you’ve defined yourself as the victim in the game. And so you are able to feel that life was a trap. Something else—whether it was God, or whether it was fate, or whether it was “the big mechanism,” “the system”—imposed this on you. And you can say, “Poor little me.” But you can equally well, and with just as much justification, define yourself not only as what you do voluntarily, but also what you do involuntarily; that’s you, too. Do you beat your heart, or don’t you? Or does it just happen to you? And if you define yourself as the works, then nobody’s imposing on you. You’re not a victim. You’re doing it. Of course, you can’t explain how you do it in words, because words are too clumsy and it’d take too long to say. You’d get bored with it. But actually, then you can say—with gusto—“I am responsible for this life. Whether comedy or tragedy—I did it.” And it seems to me that that is a basis for behavior and going on which is more fundamentally joyous, and profitable, and great, than defining ourselves as miserable victims, or sinners, or what have you.
We all have some kind of intellectual understanding re the self-authored nature of the journey, but I’ve never seen it put quite this way: the way that we, as sovereign entities, control both the gas and the brake pedals of awakening, with our hands alone, ultimately, on the steering wheel. (Until we realize that we were never really the ones driving the car.)
Some potential inspiration for you.
Alan Watts
So then, here’s the drama. My metaphysics—let me be perfectly frank with you—are that there is the central self—you can call it God, you can call it anything you like—and it’s all of us. It’s playing all the parts of all beings whatsoever everywhere and anywhere. And it’s playing the game of hide-and-seek with itself. It gets lost, it gets involved in the farthest-out adventures, but in the end it always wakes up and comes back to itself. And when you’re ready to wake up, you’re going to wake up. And if you’re not ready you’re going to stay pretending that you’re just “poor little me.”
And since you’re all here and engaged in this sort of inquiry and listening to this sort of lecture, I assume that you’re all on the process of waking up. Or else you’re teasing yourselves with some kind of flirtation with waking up, which you’re not serious about. But I assume—maybe you are not serious, but sincere—that you are ready to wake up.
So then, when you’re in the way of waking up, and finding out who you really are, you meet a character called a guru, as the Hindus say—this word, “the teacher,” “the awakener.” And what is the function of a guru? He’s the man who looks at you in the eye and says, “Oh, come off it! I know who you are.”
You know, you come to the guru and say, “Sir, I have a problem. I’m unhappy, and I want to get one-up on the universe, so I want to become enlightened. I want spiritual wisdom.” The guru looks at you and says, “Who are you?”
You know Sri Ramana Maharshi, that great Hindu sage of modern times? People used to come to him and say, “Master, who was I in my last incarnation?”—as if that mattered. And he would say, “Who is asking the question?” And he’d look at you and say, “Basically, go right down to it. You’re looking at me, you’re looking out, and you’re unaware of what’s behind your eyes. Go back in and find out who you are, where the question comes from, why you ask.” And if you’ve looked at a photograph of that man—I have a gorgeous photograph of him; I walk by it every time I go out of the front door—and I look at those eyes, and the humor in them, the lilting laugh that says, “Oh come off it! Shiva, I recognize you. When you come to my door and you say, ‘I’m so-and-so,’ I say, ‘Ha ha, what a funny way God has come on today!’”
There are all sorts of tricks, of course, that gurus play. They say, “Well, we’re going to put you through the mill.” And the reason they do that is, simply, that you won’t wake up until you feel you’ve paid a price for it. In other words, the sense of guilt that one has, or the sense of anxiety, is simply the way one experiences keeping the game of disguise going on. Do you see that? Supposing you say, “I feel guilty.” Christianity makes you feel guilty for existing. That, somehow, the very fact that you exist is an affront. You are a fallen human being. […]
But that sense, that sense of guilt, is the veil across the sanctuary. Don’t you dare come in! In all mysteries, when you are going to be initiated, there’s somebody saying “Ah-ah-ah-ah! Don’t you come in! You’ve got to fulfill this requirement, and this requirement, and this requirement, and this requirement; then we’ll let you in.” And so you go through the mill.
Why? Because you’re saying to yourself, “I won’t wake up until I feel I deserve it. I won’t wake up until I’ve made it difficult for me to wake up.” So I invent for myself an elaborate system of delaying my waking up. I put myself through this test, and that test, and when I feel it’s been sufficiently arduous, then I may at last admit to myself who I really am, and draw aside the veil, and realize that—after all, when all is said and done—I am that I am, which is the name of God. And, when it comes to it, that’s rather funny.
They say in Zen, when you attain satori, nothing is left you at that moment but to have a good laugh. But naturally, all masters—Zen masters, yoga masters, every kind of master—puts up a barrier and says to you… he simply plays your own game. You know, we say anybody who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined. Because you—when you go to a psychiatrist—you define yourself as somebody who ought to have his head examined. Same way, the Zen masters say anybody who studies Zen, or comes to a Zen master, ought to be given thirty blows with a stick, because he was stupid enough to pose the question that he had a problem. But you’re the problem. You put yourself in this situation.
So, it’s a question, fundamentally. Do you define yourself as a victim of the world, or as the world? You can define yourself, you see—if you identify you with what you call the voluntary system of the nerves, and say, “Only that’s me”—and that’s really a rather limited amount of my total performance; what I do voluntarily—then you’ve defined yourself as the victim in the game. And so you are able to feel that life was a trap. Something else—whether it was God, or whether it was fate, or whether it was “the big mechanism,” “the system”—imposed this on you. And you can say, “Poor little me.” But you can equally well, and with just as much justification, define yourself not only as what you do voluntarily, but also what you do involuntarily; that’s you, too. Do you beat your heart, or don’t you? Or does it just happen to you? And if you define yourself as the works, then nobody’s imposing on you. You’re not a victim. You’re doing it. Of course, you can’t explain how you do it in words, because words are too clumsy and it’d take too long to say. You’d get bored with it. But actually, then you can say—with gusto—“I am responsible for this life. Whether comedy or tragedy—I did it.” And it seems to me that that is a basis for behavior and going on which is more fundamentally joyous, and profitable, and great, than defining ourselves as miserable victims, or sinners, or what have you.
Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear, but love unexplained is clearer. - Rumi
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