Check out this great listen on Audible.com. In order to come to your senses, Alan Watts often said, you sometimes need to go out of your mind. Perhaps more than any other teacher in the West, this celebrated author, former Anglican priest, and self-described spiritual entertainer was responsible f. Alan Watts 6,308 56:16 6 9,660 Out Of Your Mind 03: The Web Of Life (Part 1) Previous in series.

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The web of life. Let me try, from the first, to indicate the point that we’re aiming at. The point is this: that human consciousness is—at the same time as being a form of awareness, and sensitivity, and understanding—it’s also a form of ignorance. The ordinary everyday consciousness that we have leaves out more than it takes in. And because of this, it leaves out things that are terribly important. It leaves out things that would—if we did know them—allay our anxieties, and fears, and horrors, and if we could extend our awareness, you see, to include those things that we leave out, we would have a deep interior peace. Because we would all know the one thing that you mustn’t know. You know, according to the rules of our particular social game, the one thing you mustn’t know; that’s really not allowed, that is the lowdown on life—and that the lowdown, on the one hand, means the real dirt on things. But the lowdown is also what is profound, what is mysterious, what is in the depths. And the something left out. And our everyday consciousness screens this out in the same way that, when you say you have weaving, you have—say, on this rug here in front of us—when the black finishes here, the black threads will go underneath, and then appear again over here, then they’ll go underneath the white and they’ll appear again over here, you know? So that the back will be the obverse pattern of the front.

Now—the world is like that. Our sense organs are selective. They pick out certain things; they are receptive. For example, we have a small, small band of what you might call a spectrum of light, of sound, of tactile sensation, and so on, to which the human organism is sensitive. But we know that outside that small band there is a huge range of vibrations to which we have built instruments that are sensitive—things like cosmic rays, ultraviolet rays, gamma rays, hard x-rays, and so on—they’re all outside the band of our spectrum. And obviously, there are things that are outside the range of our instruments. We may build new instruments someday, which will evoke—bring into our consciousness—other orders of vibration altogether, that, as yet, we don’t know about them.

So you could imagine, you see, the universe as a vast, vast system of vibrations; and has infinite possibilities. All these vibrations, you know, are like the strings on a harp. And the harps that the angels are supposed to play in heaven are really this huge possibility. See, when you play the harp you select strings. You don’t play all the strings; it’s stupid to just run your finger along the whole edge of the harp back and forth, back and forth, and go “blrrbllrrblllbrrbllrrblllbrr.” What you do is, you pick out with your fingers—select, just like on the piano—you don’t go “brrrrrrmmmp”—you pick out certain notes, and these make the patterns. But at the same time as you pick out, you reject what you don’t pick out. But it’s all there, constituting a fundamental continuity; the kind of continuity of the thread as they go up to the back of the woven material, and make up the obverse of the pattern that’s on the front.

Now, the question that is absolutely basic for all human beings is, “What have you left out?” You see? You are focused on certain things that constitute what you call ‘everyday reality.’ Look: you single out people, and you see them sitting, sitting, sitting, all around, and you know they are things that are really there. And then, behind the people, are the houses—or whatever we live in—and the Earth, and behind all that the sky, and so on. But we see the world as a collection of rather disjointed events and things. And I might say to you, as you came in here today, “Now, my goodness! You all forgot something. What did you forget?” And you think, “My goodness, did I put my pants on? Did I wear a sweater? Did I—got my glasses, and my hair on, or my wig, or whatever?” And—no, no, it’s none of that. Something you’ve forgotten, you see? Everybody has forgotten something. You left it out; just missed it. See, see? And so I can bring this out—what you’ve forgotten—if I ask you, “Who are you?” Well, you say, “I’m Paul Jones,” or whatever your name happens to be. I say, “Oh, no, no, no, no, don’t give me that stuff. Who are you really?” And you think, “Well, of course I’m just—I’m just me.” “No! Don’t give me that! I don’t want to hear all that nonsense. You’re playing a trick on me. Really, deep down, who are you?” “I don’t know!” Well, that’s the thing to find out. That’s the thing that’s been forgotten, see? That’s the underside of the tapestry; the thing that’s been left out.

Because what we are carefully taught to ignore is that every one of us—fundamentally; deep, deep inside—let’s put it that way—is an act of, a function of, a performance of, a manifestation of, the works. The whole blinkin’ cosmos with all its galaxies, and forever, and ever, and ever, whatever it is beyond that; what you might call God in the Western tradition, or Brahman in Hindu philosophy, or Tao in Chinese. Every one of us is really that, but we are pretending we aren’t. And we’re pretending with tremendous skill and deception.

A Spontaneous Life

Now, what I would call a really swinging human being is a person who lives on two levels at once. He’s able to live on the level of being his ordinary ego, his everyday personality, and play his role in life, and to observe all the rules, and so on, that go with that. But if he is only on that level—if he’s only playing that kind of thing—and thinks that’s all there is, it becomes a drag. He starts being the kind of person who feels that he’s just got to go on surviving, see? It’s terribly important to go on surviving; to live. And he works at that. And his children learn the same attitude from him. And they—he says, “Well, I’ve got to survive because I’ve got all these children I have to support,” and so on, and so forth, and then they take the same attitude, and they breed up children, and they feel compulsive about supporting them, because they’ve got to go on. And so nobody really has any fun. It’s just… “Ungh! Ungh! Ungh! Ungh!” You’ve got to make this thing! You see? And you don’t have to!

See, whenever I get somebody who comes to me and says, “I really can’t go on. I have to commit suicide,” I say, “Well, that’s entirely your right. There’s really no reason why you should go on, and if you want to commit suicide, do it.” You can check out. Of course, this reduces anxiety; when they feel free to commit suicide they don’t really have to commit suicide so much. You know, you can commit partial suicide. So the sense that you just have to go on living, see? That life is a ‘must.’ When you say to anything spontaneous—see, life is spontaneous. It happens—in the words of the Taoists—zìrán, which means “of itself so”—that’s the Chinese expression for nature, what happens by itself. What isn’t pushed, but it just pops up, you see?

Like—gee, I’ll never forget—there was a great Zen master I knew once, in New York. He was giving a lecture one evening, and he was dressed in his gold ceremonial robes, and he was sitting in front of an altar like this sort of thing—but he had a table in front of him with very formal candles on it and a sūtra scripture on a little desk—and he was lecturing on the sūtra. And he said, “Fundamental principle in Buddhism is: no purpose. Purposelessness. When you drop fart, you don’t say, ‘At nine o’clock, I drop fart.’ It happen of itself.” You know? And all these pious Western devotees, you know, kind of put their handkerchiefs in their mouths and tried not to laugh.

So—but, that’s the meaning of “something that happens of itself,” like “drop fart,” or “have hiccups,” or—just—you came into being, you know? It happens in a kind of a plop! way, like that—see? Now, you can’t tell that process, “You ought to

Alan Watts Out Of Your Mind