It Will Give You Goosebumps - Alan Watts on Falling in Love

well now really when we go back then to falling in love and say it's crazy falling [Music] we don't say rising into love there is in it the idea of the fall taking this ghastly risk is the condition of there being life you see for all life is an act of faith the moment you take a step you do so on an act of faith because you don't know that the flaw is not going to give under your feet the moment you take a journey what an act of faith any kind of undertaking in relationship

what an act of faith you've given yourself up this is the most powerful thing that can be done surrender see and love is an act of surrender to another person total abandonment i give myself to you that's quite mad because you see it's letting things get out of control all sensible people keep things in control watch it watch it watch it police security vigilance watch it guards watch it who's going to watch the gods actually what is really sensible is to let go is to commit oneself to give oneself up and that's quite mad so

we come to the strange conclusion that in madness lies sanity [Music] when you fall in love with somebody else and you trust them they may as a matter of fact not fulfill your expectations there will be disappointments and failures and disasters as a result of taking these risks it's a gamble but that risk has to be taken the alternative to taking that risk is much worse than trusting and being deceived kenosis is a greek word meaning self-emptying self-sacrifice and thereby conferred freedom of will and the power to love human beings and people who give the

power away are tremendously strong personalities because the more they have given it up the more they get it you know you do this completely off of control it's a lovely irresponsible state to be [Music] what i am involves what you are if i am i because you are you and you are you because i am i then i am not i and you are not you in other words we are not separate you know uh you can't for example have two sticks you lean two sticks against each other and they stand up because they support

each other take one away and the other falls and so in exactly that way we and our environment and all of us and each other are interdependent systems we know who we are in terms of other people we all lock together and therefore that what you call the external world is as much you as your own body love is not something that is a sort of rare commodity everybody has it existence is love because you see in tying up love in knots and becoming capable incapable of it you can't destroy this energy when you won't

love and you won't let it out the thing comes out in the form of self-destruction uh so everybody has the the force running the thing is first of all to get it moving to follow whatever kind of love you have in the first place the first thing then is to discover what indeed you do love if anything and you will find there is something and then go into the nature of that now it said that selfish people love themselves i would say that that is really a misunderstanding of the whole thing if you explore what

you love when you say you love yourself you will make the startling discovery that everything you love is something which you thought was other than yourself you suddenly discover that yourself is bigger than you thought it was [Music] it uh includes the other [Music] and you can't do without it you this brings about a fundamental change in the understanding of the meaning and nature of self and thereupon there become a change of attitude to other people your love which is what you are begins to express itself quite naturally and unaffectedly in a wider way [Music]

now you may ask well how are we going to love i don't think that's quite the question it isn't so much how or where are we going to get the love from we all have it [Music] it's simply deep down in us bursting to get out the desire to love and to be loved is i think probably the deepest thing that there is in us certainly if the relationship of infancy to the rest of life have any truth in them at all and so it's a matter of seeing that this deeply repressed love must be

let out [Music] you