Alan Watts on Trusting Universal Determinism and Letting Go Black Screen Meditation

Ler puts it in this way the great da flows everywhere both to the left and to the right it loves and nourishes all things but does not Lord it over them and when merits are accomplished it lays no claim to them the more therefore you relinquish power trust others the more powerful you become Come but in such a way that instead of having to lie awake nights controlling everything you do it beautifully by trusting the job to everyone else and they carry it on for you so you can go to sleep at night and trust

your nervous system to wake you up in the morning you can even tell it I want to wake up at 6:00 and it'll wake you up just like an alarm clock this seems a sort of paradox to say this But the principle of unity of coming to a sense of of Oneness with the whole of the rest of the universe is not to try to be obtain power over the rest of the universe that will only disturb it and antagonize it and make it seem less one with you than ever the way to become one

with the universe is to to trust it as another as you would another and Say let's see what you're going to do but in doing that you see in saying that to everything else that you have been taught to think is not you you are also saying it to yourself because finally as I pointed out you do not know where your decisions come from they pop up like hiccups and when you make a decision people have a great deal of anxiety About making decisions she's this guy who um farmer who ordered a help man come

in and uh found he was an extraordinarily efficient worker because the first day he put him on sowing logs and he sawed more logs than anybody had ever sawed it was fantastic but it were all done in one day so the next day putting on put him on to mending fences and there were all kinds of broken fences around the farm and in one Day he had the whole thing done so I thought what am I going to do with this guy so he took him down into a basement and said look here are all

all the potatoes that have come in from this Harvest and I want you to sort them into three groups those that we sell those that we use for seeding and those that we throw away so he left him at that at the end of the day the laborer came back and said well that's enough mister I Quit well he said you can't quit I've never had such an excellent work I'll raise your salary I'll do anything to keep you around here I said no it's all right mending fences and chopping wood but this potato business

is decision after decision after DEC decision after decision so when we decide we're always worrying did I think this over long enough did I take enough data into consideration and if you think it through you find you never could take Enough data into consideration the data for a decision in any given situation is infinite so what you do is you go through the motions of thinking out what you will do about this and then when the time comes to act you make a snap judgment I mean I'm speaking a little extremely uh making some fun

of it and uh so on because after all uh we we do occasionally get the vague outlines of Things and make a right decision on rational grounds but we fortunately forget the variables that could have interfered with this coming outright it's amazing how often it works but Warriors are people who think of all the variables beyond their control and what might happen so then when you make a decision and it works out all right I think very little of it has much To do with your conscious intent and control but somehow or other you are

able to decide and control things more harmoniously if you delegate Authority it's why very great businessmen are those who can delegate Authority trust others to work for them because those are people developing businesses on the same basic structure that is fundamental to a Living organism delegation of authority it loves and nourishes all things but does not Lord it over them and you see then what what is happening is this the more you let go of it and trust it as if it were quite other than you the more you Realize the Inseparable identity of self

and other to go back if you try to find the identity of self and other by subjecting other to self no go if on the other hand you you find it through giving self that is control over to other and trusting that you may make a mistake you may make a bad gamble but in the long run you're acting on a Principle which has the backing of evolution this is the way biological evolution goes on constant delegation of authority it's why obviously the democracy is superior to the monarchy Mr tville who said that democracy is

always right but for the wrong reasons because there is operating in a democracy the principle that Buckminster Fuller calls Synergy and Synergy is the intelligence Of a highly complex system the nature of which is always unknown to the individual members because that's goes back again to this point that we are always entering a new environment we don't ever know fully what the new environment is because the only environments we know are the past ones there is always then operating in uh the development of cellular life on any Level a new way of organization higher than

any existing form and we are not aware of it until after it's happened if you ever saw for example the film contiki uh this man figured out a few things as to how to make a balsawood raft to sail from South America to the Pacific Islands but once he had set this in motion he discovered that all sorts of unexpected Ed factors cooperated with Him that when the wood got wet it expanded so that the ties bit into it and held it completely secure he had never expected that and he found that as he sailed

along a flying fish would simply a light flat on the deck every morning for breakfast that all kinds of Natural Factors it was just he he he had touched a key where he was flowing with the course of Nature and everything cooperated with him because he had Touched the key he had made the Act of Faith and he was just picking up in other words a practice which had been uh hundreds and hundreds of years ago had been followed by others who had worked it out by their great ecological awareness so we do come out

of this uh way of of thinking to something which has I I would say the most enormously creative and revolutionary social consequences that it has Become not virtuous not self-sacrificing and not anything like that it has become the hardest practical politics to let go control to others to give up trying to dominate the scene also in a parallel way way it has become at this time in our history very much hard practical politics to learn how to enjoy ourselves you can go to the Protestant people with their Protestant ethic who Uh are against this kind

of thing and now say to them with greatly it is your solemn duty to learn how to enjoy yourself why because in an age of leisure people have really got to know how to enjoy themselves because if they don't they'll smash the whole future of the human race so a Utopia has become uh not some sort of a dream but an urgent necessity We can't do without it because if we try to do without it what's going to happen is that we are going to terminate our race in a mutual Massacre of scapegoats and so

the present paranoia in the United States that is going on where everybody is thinking up a new scapegoat and how great it will be to demolish them or get them out of power all all this kind of bickering and uh right and left politics has become Irrelevant because we now have the opportunity of uh trusting our own intelligence our own technology to take the risk of doing what we want which will work to the extent that we realize that what I want basically what I really want is what you want and I don't know what

you want surpris me but that's my that that's the kinship Between I and thou so when I ask I go right down to the question should we started with what do I want the answer is I don't know when bodh Dharma was asked who are you which is another form of the same question he said I don't know planting flowers to which the butterflies come bodh Dharma says I know not I don't know what I want but when you don't know what you want you've re Reached the state of desirelessness when you really don't know

you see there's a there's a beginning stage of not knowing and there's an ending stage of not knowing in the beginning stage you don't know what you want because you haven't thought about it or you've only thought superficially then when you somebody forces you to think about it and go through and say yeah I think I like this I think I'd like that I think I'd like The other as the middle stage then you get beyond that say is that what I really want in the end you say no I don't think that's it I

might be satisfied with it for a while and I wouldn't turn my nose up at it but it's not really what I want why don't you really know what you want two reasons that you don't really know what you want number one you have it number Two you don't know yourself because you never can the godhead is never an object of its own knowledge just as a knife doesn't cut itself Fire doesn't burn itself light doesn't illumin itself it's always an endless mystery to itself I don't know and this I don't know uttered in the

infinite interior of the spirit this I don't Know is the same thing as I love I let go I don't try to force or control it's the same thing as humility and so the upanishad say if you think that you understand Brahma you do not understand and you have yet to be instructed further if you know that you do not understand then you truly understand for the Brahman is unknown to those who know it and known to those who know it not And the principle is that anytime you as it were voluntarily let up control

in other words cease to cling to yourself you have an access of power because you're wasting energy all the time in self-defense trying to manage things trying to force things to conform to your will the moment you stop doing that that wasted energy is available and therefore you are in that Sense having that energy available you are one with the Divine principle you have the energy when you're trying however to act as if you were God that is to say you don't trust anybody and you're the dictator and you have to keep everybody in line

you lose the Divine energy because what you're doing is simply defending yourself so then the principle is the more you give it Away the more comes back now you say I don't have the courage to give it away I'm afraid and you can only overcome that by realizing you better give it away because there's nowh holding on to it the meaning of the fact you see that everything is dissolving constantly that we're all falling apart we're all in a process of constant death and that uh the world hope Men set their hearts upon turns ashes

or it Prospers and like snow upon the desert's Dusty face lighting a little hour or two is gone you know all that Omar Kayan Jazz you know the cloudcap towers the gorgeous palaces the great Globe itself I all which it inherit shall dissolve and like this insubstantial pageant faded leave not a rack behind all falling apart everything is that's the the great assistance to you see that that fact that everything is in Decay is your Helper that is allowing you that you don't have to let go because there's nothing to hold on to it's achieved

for you in other words by the process of nature so once you see that uh you just don't have a prayer and it's all washed up and that you will vanish and leave not a rack behind and you really get with that suddenly you find you have the power this enormous access of Energy but it's not power that came to you because you grabbed it came in entirely the opposite way and power that comes to you in that opposite way is power with which you can be trusted of course what we've been talking talking about

is not so much a set of ideas as an experience or shall we say experiencing and uh this kind of seminar in Comparison with uh encounter groups or workshops of various kinds or experiments in sensory awareness is now being called a conceptual seminar although I'm not talking about Concepts but the crucial question arises that an understanding a real feeling understanding of the Polar relationship between the individual and the World is something that operates uh as we say in your bones and isn't just a view that you hold or a belief that you hold it's so

curious that the emphasis of the western tradition in religion is primarily upon right belief do you believe in the right dogmas and the right doctrines and only secondarily upon right action because what you believe is in Christianity at any rate far more important than what you do because one is saved through faith not by works and early in its history the Christian Church re rejected the movement in the church which had been known as gnosticism from the Greek gnosis which means knowledge and in a way there were some sound reasons for doing So because the

gnostics were what I would call anti- materialists they divided human beings into three classes that were called respectively pneumatic psychic and hilik the last one being h y l i c from the Greek H or they would call it now el el meaning wood so the people were spiritual Psychological and wooden and uh that is to say the wooden people people were those most absorbed in materiality and most closely identified with their bodies and Orthodox Christianity re rejected this sort of Distinction because of the perfectly correct idea that material existence is not inconsistent with Spirituality

this is something which most Christians have forgotten but they do believe as the central principle of Christianity in What's called the Incarnation that in uh the Jesus of Nazareth almighty God did in fact become material become human and by this process initiated a transformation of the cosmos in the words of St athanasius God became man that man might become God and you don't hear that from the pulpit very often the Christian Church therefore emphasized pistus or faith as against gnosis or knowledge because they said you can never know God God could never become an object

of knowledge and in this funny roundabout way the Christian theologians were Saying exactly the same thing as the Hindus only the Hindus do call this knowledge of God through faith they call it Gana which is the same as the Greek word gnosis but just give you a little sidelight on how words get mixed up in their meanings we now have a class of person called an agnostic and an agnostic generally means a person who doesn't commit himself to Any beliefs about the ultimate nature of things he just says he doesn't know but the original word

agnosia in Greek meant a special kind of knowledge it was called the dark knowledge of God the knowledge of God In The Cloud of Unknowing to use the title of a mystical Treatise written by an anonymous 14th century English monk this monk derived his ideas from a Very mysterious figure who wrote Under the name of diis the areopagite dianis was a fifth or sixth Century Syrian monk who had learned his mysticism from poery who got it from plotinus who was a neoplatonist and who probably got uh a great deal of stimulation from the intellectual world

Of Alexandria and Alexandria in the early years of the Christian era was a tremendous Exchange Place between East and West Buddhist monks visited Alexandria it was uh one of the great centers of trade between Rome and India and as you may know all Rome's gold eventually went to India for the purchase of pepper and as a result of this the Roman Economy collapsed they bought too much luxury from India India in exchange got Roman architecture and uh you'll see a lot of Roman architecture in Indian temples but Alexandria was the great center for the gnostics

and for Christian Theology and some of the greatest theologians Clement origin athanasius St sirel all worked out of Alexandria but now going back to this strange monk dianus it was he who first put around the idea in Christian circles that there was such a thing of the knowled as the knowledge of God by Faith by agnosia really by unknowing and he in a book which he wrote very short book called the theologia mystica he wrote A Treatise on the Higher knowledge of God which might be quoted directly from the upanishads in certain parts of it

the last section of it reads like the muko panish because it's a series of negations it says what God is Not and he goes very far because he says that God is not one he says our idea of unity Falls far short of what God is so does our idea of Trinity so does our Idea of spirit our idea of Mind of justice of love all these things are not really God and he says in another place if anybody having seen God understood what he had seen what he would have seen would not have been

God but some creature of God less than God some sort of angel or something like that it's perfectly amazing to consider the influence that this man had for writing under the name Of dianis the areopagite he became identified you see with St Paul's first convert in Athens and Legend has it that he was the first Bishop of Athens and was martyred in Gaul now where he's known as Dennis but St Thomas aquinus looked upon the writings of dianis the areopagite as having the highest Authority and you could if all the texts of Dian isis's work

had been lost you could restore most of it from quotations In St Thomas he wrote really two very important books one was the one I said the theologia mystica the other was called the Divine names and these two books presented the two phases of his theology the book called The Divine names was a discussion on the nature of God in terms of what God is like by Analogy and this kind of knowledge of God he called cataphatic from the Greek FEI to speak or say Kata meaning to say according to that is to say to

speak by analogy where he used the entirely negative language about God this sort of discourse was called apophatic and the word APO meaning away from to talk away from just as a sculptor when he makes an image reveals the image by removing Stone and so dianis explained that one attains the knowledge of God by discarding Concepts which is exactly what the Hindus mean when they say uh of God one can only say NTI netti not this not this not any conception th in Hindu philosophy the highest state of consciousness in samadi is called Nala samadi

which means literally non-conceptual viala means a concept Near is a negation so the non-conceptual knowledge now people have greatly misunderstood this they have imagined that unknowing the state of the highest contemplation was the acquisition of a blank mind from which you first discarded thought you went on to discard perception you went on to discard any kind of Sensory content in Awareness until you were so far as anyone could say aware of nothing and they supposed that this kind of catatonic state was mystical Consciousness this is often believed in India if you go to the Vidant

society and ask what do you mean by nalpas samadi they will tell you that the one in that State has no consciousness whatsoever of the sensory world that he's completely absorbed as you sometimes see Hindu holy men sitting in a state where they are blind and deaf to everything going on around them the founder of Chinese Zen known as hang describe people like that as no better than pieces of rock and lumps of wood he said it's a very serious mistake indeed to Confuse sunata the Sanskrit word for the great void which is both the

Ultimate Reality and the Consciousness thereof that it's a great mistake to confuse it with nothingness it is rather to be thought of as space or like space because space is not empty it contains the whole universe and so in the same way the State of Mind of a person who is truly enlightened is not empty it Contains everything but like space it is not stained by what it contains and it's often said in Zen imagery you can't hammer a nail into space you can't spit on the sky and soil it if you try the spit

will just return and hit your own face so they go on to say the Consciousness in all of us your basic mind is like space it is Completely pure but of course by Purity they don't mean unsex ual which is of course what Purity generally means in the Western World blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God a person who's pure in heart is generally understood as one who never has any naughty thoughts you know what naughty means means vain negative Empty a naughty person therefore is one who doesn't amount to anything

who's just nothing that's the real meaning but uh this misunderstanding of the nature of contemplation existed not only in India from which it was transmitted to China but also in the west you read many treatises on Western mysticism and the still the feeling that Getting into a deep deep trance sometimes called Rapture again the word rapture has undergone some Transformations we talk about Rapture as people being beside themselves with pleasure but to be wrapped means to be taken away from the body so also ecstasy we now interpret as meaning uh in a state of high

pleasure but it means to be outside yourself to stand outside yourself your soul has Left you it is with God as Arabs say of all crazy people be kind to them they're not here they're soul is with God but actually if it can be true as Buddhists say that Nirvana and sansara are one and if it can be true as Christians say that the spirit can be made flesh the word can be made flesh then obviously the highest form of Man is not sitting in a trance like a lump on a log with a perfectly

blank mind because if that were the highest state of consciousness it would be an exclusive State of Mind a state of mind that shuts out life and in that sense it could not qualify for being what the Hindus call non-dualistic they always speak of the highest reality as being not one because one excludes Many not nothing because nothing excludes something not being because being excludes non-being and vice versa and so they use this word nondual to mean that which doesn't exclude anything which as it were has no outside as we say space has no outside

you can only have outsides inside Space you can't have any outsides outside space there is no outside space even though space may be curved and Finite so yeah if you want to think incidentally of that uh curved space go and take a look at a photograph in um the life a book on mathematics where there's a picture of a Klein bottle which is a three-dimensional mbius strip a mbius strip you know is a piece of paper that is Twisted once and then joined and it has only one side and only one Edge our clein bottle

is a three-dimensional mbius strip and it only has one inside it has no outside you can say it has an inside and no outside or it has an outside and no inside it's a fabulous little little trick but something like that would be the nature of space uh as that which does indeed transcend the Opposites not quite now we'd have to do one extra move on a serpent to make it Into a Klein bottle uh you'd have to tuck its head through the in through the side of its skin and make the aperture through the

mouth continuous with the inside of the serpent towards the tail you see that's more or less what a cim bottle is so uh what I'm getting to I'm giving you something out of the general history of religions to show that what has been Meant by the mystical State the state of samadi or Awakening in certain Traditions is not this State of Trance but a state of consci ious in which you can perfectly well carry on your daily Affairs and of course what is meant by a Bodhi satra as the ideal type of Buddhist person is

that he is not wrapped that he is actively engaged in the life of the world because he has gone beyond the Illusion that Nirvana is to be found away from everyday life so what is then the point of meditation why meditate why do you have to crawl off into a hole or go to a Zen Monastery or uh retire and be quiet when this is only a withdrawal is there anything to be said for it or meditation is in that in that sense as a practice as a discipline is a very curious Problem because from

one point view it's a help and from another point of view a hindrance and I think we have to understand first of all that meditation exercises are medicinal rather than dietary the same could be said of LSD a medicine not a diet uh something that um is described in Zen as when you want to open a door or summon someone to open the door for you you pick up a brick and you knock on the door but you don't carry the brick Into the house when you need a raft for crossing a stream you cross

the stream on the raft but you leave the raft on the bank at the other side you don't go carrying it around but a lot of people when they get into meditation or they get into religion or into um any kind of exploration of this sort turn the door into a revolving door and keep on going round and round and Round and never get through they say what a gas it is to be in this revolving door so a good definition of a parasite is a person who goes through a revolving door on someone else's

[Laughter] push so there are all sorts of people in the religious racket who are uh going through revolving doors and they're very bitter about people who walk right through and leave the door behind because they say Well you haven't paid enough respect you must really understand religious one-upmanship it's a tremendously important thing and don't be caught out by this because what happens is there's a little game going on which I'm going to initiate you into and it's played in Zen which is it it works like this if you go to a teacher and ask for

for Spiritual instruction or even if you come to a Seminar like this you are by doing that confusing yourself because you are looking for what you're asking for outside as if someone else could give it to you as if you didn't have it so the teacher knows that as long as you do that you haven't understood but he doesn't just tell you to go away or we may sometimes just say go Away I'm too busy and any in any case I can't tell you anything well people won't take that for an answer they won't take

no for an answer and furthermore if he just said go away they would just find some other teacher who would exploit them and uh maybe keep them as followers for years and acquire a great deal of money by so doing but what he does is another thing he Tries to give them the put down as if to say you have a great long distance to go yet your attainment is uh not at all all perfect and uh where uh they're always talking about other sects and other schools and saying well they haven't really got the

point you see so that you keep losing faith in yourself and uh feeling my goodness I haven't yet attained this Thing and that keeps you working but all the time you're being talked out it's like someone who's a pickpocket and he's stolen your own watch and is selling it to you but just so long as you can be talked out of yourself you deserve to be [Laughter] now you become very aware of this if you ever do momentarily slip into some sort Of mystical experience uh you become aware of this tremendous gamesmanship going on uh

and you see it as sort of continuous with the with all sort sorts of cosmic games that are going on of uh creatures eating other creatures up and um the creatures that get eaten of course transform themselves into the creatures that eat them and then in turn uh eat other creatures and uh you you see the whole hideand-seek game going on And then you realize very clearly that the state of development that you are in now is uh no better and no worse than anybody else's State because it's like uh space again which planet is

in or which star is in the best position well it's all equal they're all in the middle any one can be considered as the center one any point on a sphere is the center Of the surface of the sphere so in a that in the same way everybody in all his behavior whatever he's doing whether we call him from a certain point of view sick or whether we call him healthy whether we call him good or bad neurotic normal psychotic sane uh all the manifestations are just like uh the leaves on the trees and uh

in each uh being in a unique way is as Christian would say manifesting the will of God so that really from that point of view you see there is nothing to do to attain buddhahood nothing at all but you see that's very difficult to understand because a lot of people when they hear that there's nothing to do try to do nothing and you can't because you are Karma and Karma Means action you can't do nothing but uh the thing you're looking for or think you're looking for is what you're doing is what's call you only

of course as we all know uh we've got ourselves into the idea that one self is so difficult to see because it's like as I've often said trying to bite your own teeth or look into your own eyes and you can't find it it's always behind it's like your Head is from the optical point of view a blank space neither light nor dark it's right in the middle of everything and so one of the Great Tricks of gurus is to set people looking for their heads there's a famous story of a king in India in

ancient times called yaj nadata and one morning he woke up and reached out for his mirror and brought it over no Head he was looking in the wrong side of the mirror and you know he was kind of BL eyed and had a hangover so he summoned servants and said the gods I've lost my head find it and uh they said but your majesty it's there on your shoulders he said it is not I can't see it in the mirror nobody can show me my head so they were rushing all over the place looking for

the Head now the trick to that is of course that uh you are perfectly well aware of your head only not in a form in which you expect to be aware of it you expect to be aware of your own head in the same way as you're aware of other people's heads but that wouldn't be true of you because youve got an inside view on your head you have an outside view on of other people's heads because of course you're taking an inside point of View but the way in which you are aware of your

head is in terms of what you are seeing and hearing because all sights and all sounds are what the nerves inside inside your head are doing that's how to be aware of one's head you are aware therefore of yourself the mysterious self that you have in terms of experience because there isn't really Any difference but that always escapes people you see so perpetually so long as you don't understand that you can be talked into going on to all all kinds of weird excursions and just so long as you believe it you're a sucker you're hooked

and it takes a tremendous inner confidence and nerve finally to say don't pull that stunt on me Anymore I I see through your game and uh because gurus are very clever at putting you down but they're just trying to see how strong you are testing you out see if they can Hoodwink you so long as they can you see they're going to go on doing it because they're going to get you to the point where they can't do it to you anymore then they'll Graduate and so uh one of rai's students after he saw through

it said well there wasn't much in rinai Buddhism after all of course there wasn't he said boldly and straight out my teaching is just like using an empty fist to deceive a child you know when you play games with a child and pretend you got something here the child goes into all kinds of um Tizzy to get you to open your hand and show what it is and then there's nothing fooled so you so you you can be fooled as long as you can be fooled when you can't be fooled you don't ask the question

anymore because it's all become clear it's all become clear that there is no puzzle about this universe what makes you think there are puzzles about this universe very simple Reason you're trying to explain it and when you explain things what you would what do you mean by explanation there are several meanings of explanation there's really one basic meaning but first of all to be able to translate what is happening into terms of words or numbers in other words to describe but a real explanation is not just a description it's a description which Enables us to

to control what we are describing but didn't we see in the last session that to control the world is not really what we want to do so that if all explanations have as their function enabling us to control things then maybe an explanation isn't what we wanted and for more you can very simply see that what makes things complicated is explaining them when somebody Explains to you how a flower works and he's a great botanist and analyzes all the Inns of a flower and shows the channels the fibers the processes of reproduction and uh so

on that go on in it everybody stands fascinated said how complicated that is how clever God must have been to create that flower to have all that complexity going it isn't complicated at all it's only complicated when you start thinking about It because the vehicle of words is a very clumsy one and when you try to talk about the processes of nature what is complicated is not the processes of nature but trying to put them into words that's as complicated as trying to drink up the ocean with a fork takes forever and so this intense

comp complexity that we see in Everything is created by our attempt to analyze it all and so what we do is you see when we analyze we use our eyes and ears as scalpel and we dissect everything and we have to put a label on every piece we chop off and so we scalp paliz and we get it right down to atoms getting finer and finer and we suddenly thought well we got to the end of it because the word atom means what is not Cutable atos uh but then if found we could cut the

atom and lo and behold big fleas had little fleas upon their backs to bite them and it goes on forever there is no end to the minuteness which you can unveil through physical investigation for the simple reason that the investigation itself is what is chopping things into pieces and the sharper you can sharpen your Knife the finer you can cut it and the knife of the intellect is very sharp indeed and the sophisticated instruments that we can now make there's probably no limmit to it but in a way all that is vain knowledge in a

way because you see it what it does is it gives you the illusion that you've solved your Problems when you have control certain things and you have solved certain problems practical problems you say fine more of that please let's go on solving problems and then you do and you create a world of people as we are today far more comfortable than people who lived in the 19th century just remember the Troubles of going to a dentist when you were children or some of you when you were children of um Medicine of uh badly heated homes

of uh all sorts of things that we don't put up with anymore but the problem is we keep running into this thing that all constant stimulations of Consciousness become unconscious and when we take it as a matter of course to have certain Comforts then we switch the level on which we worry when you solve a whole set of Problems people find new ones to worry about and after a while you begin to get that haven't we been here before feeling aren't we just going around on a cycle and doing the same old thing over and

over and over again because we don't realize that we're chasing our own Tales by an eternally recurrent process of not knowing who you are that is the hide and seek that is The nature of what the Hindus call the mananta and the praya the period of the mananta in which the worlds are manifested and the period of the liar in which the worlds are withdrawn from manifestation in and out in and out ever more came out by the same door as in I went the thing is to get to the point where you can see

that you are doing that in every moment of your Existence with every tiny little atom of your body you now at this minute you see are the whole the whole system alining and alving in other words you often think perhaps um maybe a long long time ahead I shall reach the point where I wake up from manifestation and overcome the world illusion and discover that I am the Supreme reality behind all this diversification my friends there is no diversification in other words what you call diversification is your game in the same way as you chop

the thing and then you say it is made of pieces because you forget that you cut it so when you see the world as complicated and that there are life problems and that uh you might one day succeed see hundreds and hundreds of people are running like mad after Something that they C that is success and they have no idea what it is so in exactly the same way the guru is keeping you running and running after spiritual attainment you don't know what you want so where Krishna M is so clever because he says if

you ask me for enlightenment how can you ask me for enlightenment if you don't know what it is how do you know you want it is that any concept you have of it will be simply A way of trying to perpetuate the situation you're already in if you think you know what you're going out for all you're doing is you're seeking the past what you already know what you've already experienced therefore that's not it is it because you say you're looking for something quite new but what do you mean new what's your conception of something

new well you figure I can only think About it in terms of something old something I once had so he doesn't say anything he doesn't indicate anything positively everybody says why are you so negative why don't you give us something to hang on to well if the simple answer is it would be spirous you don't need anything to hang on to you're it you don't need a religion but then you say well uh well what is all this religious stuff About then why don't we just forget it you can try by all means just go

away don't go to gurus don't go to church don't enter philosophical discussions forget it but then you'll realize that by having consented to forget it you're still seeking what a trap what can you do you see if you stay here and listen to me or To anyone else who comes around here you're fooling yourself but if you go away you're fooling yourself [Laughter] too CU you still think that's going to improve your situation it won't and therefore when you discover that it doesn't you think well maybe it was a mistake to go away and you

come back to the Guru and he looks at you and says uh uh uh uh you are very undisciplined very uh very uh inferior student and uh you you need to apply yourself well as I explained I explained what he's doing but it comes down in a way to a sort of contest with a guru you see will you call his bluff you're afraid to because you might discover that if you do call his bluff he's no better than you Are well that's what you're supposed to find out but without being cynical about it Jesus

divine as you are but you've got to call the bluff there's going to be a showdown and it's it's a double bind the whole situation is a double bind because it doesn't do any good to stay here and it doesn't do you any good to go away either to do something about it or To do nothing about it now then there's something else when you understand that and when you realize that um there's nothing to realize CU it's all here then what are you going to [Laughter] do well of course this is the sense of

the Zen poem Supernatural activity and marvelous power drawing water carrying fuel know do whatever one does as a Human being but there's a little element of philistinism in that it's like when a child is pestering father father or mother with all sorts of questions they finally get down to the deepest metaphysical problems they say oh shut up and eat your [Laughter] donut and um I wouldn't say that you see at this point because uh life as one looks at it You see is in fact a celebration of itself when you look out at night at

the stars and you really wonder good God what is all that about well it's a firework display and it's celebrating High holy day it's whoopy and the whole world is whoopy it's a kind of exuberance and therefore the proper function of Religion is digging this it's not seeking it's not seeking anything but is in a way Thanksgiving that's why of course the Christians were right in calling the mass the the Eucharist the Thanksgiving only they had such a complicated way of thinking about it that nobody can understand it so there in in religion all religious

exercises whether they are meditative or whether they are Ritualistic are whoopy they are not something you do in in order to attain anything they are like art forms like dancing they are expressive of attainment of the attain attainment so here's another hangup for you when you go to Mr Suzuki who runs the Zen Center he's a good disciple of dogen who brought Zen certain School of Zen to Japan in the uh 13th century Dogen said you can't sit and meditate unless you're already a Buddha in which case why meditate well meditation is just the way

a Buddha sits and he called this sitting just to sit not to attain Enlightenment the minute you do that you see you're not meditating so you only become a a good meditator if you're not looking for anything and therefore you realize what A great thing it is to be able to sit and what a great thing it is not to dissect the world with your analytical intellect to be able to look out at the water or the trees or the floor and the light on it in front of you without calling it light or floor

or trees or thinking that it has parts or thinking that uh it's complicated It Isn't So when you can sit without thinking not with an empty mind mind you I'm going back to that point not with an Empty mind but just um an un non-analytic mind a non-probe mind uh where you're not creating problems all the time by trying to control it by trying to control your mind by trying to control your experience what you see and hear you then just simply discover that there is no way of controlling what you're experiencing because what you're

experiencing is you and to try and really fundamentally Control that is just going around the circle so if I would to say to you now what you have to learn is to let it happen that's wrong too there's no one to let it happen if I say to you accept your experience um be calm and open to things things that again perpetuates the illusion that you're something different from it so we go round and round but if there are some people who Want to get together and like we would get together to play poker or

to um have a walk go fishing or sail a boat if there are some people who want to get together to meditate and to have rituals and to chant uh great it's an art form and you can only use it and make it a good art form if you're not using it to get something and this is what really is the bane of temples all over the world you go into Buddhist temples where They theoretically don't believe in any God but there are the people praying and they are all doing it in order that we

get a male child next time around or that the horse recover from a disease or that Mama gets cured of the dropsy and all these petitions are going on and on and on people are always coming to the temple to ask for something low brow people for low brow things highbrow people for highbrow Things and there all the vendors sit outside and sell souvenirs and magic and charms and all the people go in and do this and all these serious priests sitting there really having to keep up Faith and say Yes uh uh we can

provide these [Laughter] services on the other hand if you go in to one of these temples along with all the faithful followers and have a ball buy a buy a bead buy a candle buy a this Buy that buy some incense go in and dig this great thing going on Salute the Buddhas or the Cris or the altars or the crucifixes or what you will but don't take it seriously and this is one of the great important transformations of today in our Consciousness is that a great many people are finding out that religion is not

supposed to be taken seriously this is a shocking thing to Many people uh there used to be an old saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh across the altars that's true in one sense when the priests know that they've got a racket going and they don't believe one word of it and they are laughing across the altar because of all these suckers around uh doing it then it's true uh the religion is dead but when the priests laugh at the Altars because they're having such fun because this whole scene is so beautiful

uh well it's the difference between some stuffy old Buddhist priest humming a Sutra and Alan Ginsburg chanting a Sutra uh that's a thing to hear because it's you know they go on interminably it's a ball they're sick of it but they get paid for it this is magical but when Alan Ginsburg Chanel Sutra everybody gets in the circle and He gets these little bells and they get going it's just like a it's like a um a jam session where everybody is absolutely delighted well that's the way to do it and if you can't do it

that way forget it in terms of what God is like by analogy and this kind of knowledge of God he called cataphatic from the Greek FEI to speak Or say Kata meaning to say according to that is to say to speak by analogy where he used the entirely negative language about God this sort of discourse was called apophatic and the word APO meaning away from to talk away from just as a sculptor when he makes an image reveals the image by removing Stone and so diis explained that one attains the knowledge of God by discarding

Concepts which is exactly what the Hindus mean when they say uh of God one can only say Ny netti not this not this not any conception thus in Hindu philosophy the highest state of consciousness in samadi is called near viala samadi which means literally non-conceptual viala means a concept near is a negation so the non-conceptual knowledge now people have greatly misunderstood This they have imagined that unknowing the state of the highest contemplation was the acquisition of a blank mind from which you first discarded thought you went on to discard perception you went on to discard

any kind of sensory content in Awareness until you were so far as anyone could say aware of Nothing and they supposed that this kind of catatonic state was mystical Consciousness this is often believed in India if you go to the Vidant society and ask what do you mean by Nala samadi they will tell you that the one in that state has no consciousness whatsoever of the sensory world that he's completely absorbed as you sometimes see Hindu holy men sitting in a state where they are blind and deaf To everything going on around them the founder

of Chinese Zen known as huan describe people like that as no better than pieces of rock and lump of wood he said it's a very serious mistake indeed to confuse sunata the Sanskrit word for the great void which is both the Ultimate Reality and the Consciousness thereof said it's a great mistake to confuse it with Nothingness it is rather to be thought of as space or like space because space is not empty it contains the whole universe and so in the same way the State of Mind of a person who is truly enlightened is not

empty it contains everything but like space it is not stained by what it contains and it's often said in Zen Imagery you can't hammer a nail into space you can't spit on the sky and soil it if you try the spit will just return and hit your own faith so they go on to say the Consciousness in all of us your basic mind is like space it is completely pure but of course by Purity they don't mean unsexual which is of course what Purity generally means in the Western World Blessed are the pure in heart

for they shall see God a person who's pure in heart is generally understood as one who never has any naughty thoughts you know what naughty means means vain negative empty a naughty person therefore is one who doesn't amount to anything it's just nothing that's the real meaning but uh this misunderstanding of the nature Of contemplation existed not only in India from which it was transmitted to China but also in the west you read many treatises on Western mysticism and the still the feeling that getting into a deep deep trance sometimes called Rapture again the word

rapture has under gone some transformation we talk about Rapture as people being beside themselves with Pleasure but to be wrapped means to be taken away from the body so also ecstasy we now interpret as meaning uh in a state of high pleasure but it means to be outside yourself to stand outside yourself your soul has left you it is with God as Arabs say of all crazy people be kind to them they're not here their soul is with God but actually if it can be true as Buddhists Say that Nirvana and sansara are one and

if it can be true as Christians say that the spirit can be made flesh the word can be made flesh then obviously the highest form of man is not sitting in in a trance like a lump on a log with a perfectly blank mind because if that were the highest state of consciousness it would be an exclusive State of Mind a state of mind that shuts Out life and in that sense it could not qualify for being what the Hindus call non-dualistic they always speak of the highest reality as being not one because one excludes

many not nothing because nothing excludes something not being because being excludes non-being and vice versa so they use this word nondual to mean that which doesn't exclude anything which as it were has no Outside as we say space has no outside you can only have outsides inside Space you can't have any outsides outside space there is no outside space even though space may be curved and fin it so yeah if you want to think incidentally of that uh curved space go and take a look at a photograph in um the life a book on mathematics

where there's A picture of a Klein bottle which is a three-dimensional mbius strip a mbius strip you know is a piece of paper that is Twisted once and and then joined and it has only one side and only one Edge ourin bottle is a three-dimensional mous strip and it only has one inside it has no outside you can say it has an inside and no outside or it has an outside and no inside it's a fabulous Little little trick but something like that would be the nature of space uh as that which does indeed transcend

the Opposites not quite now we'd have to do one extra move on a serpent to make it into a Klein bottle uh you'd have to tuck its head through the in through the side of its skin and make the aperture through the mouth continuous with the inside of the serpent towards The tail you see that's more or less what a clme bottle is so uh what I'm getting to I'm giving you something out of the general history of religions to show that what has been meant by the mystical State the state of samadi or Awakening

in certain Traditions is not this State of Trance but a state of consciousness in which you can perfectly well carry on Your daily Affairs and of course what is meant by a Bodhi satra as the ideal type of a Buddhist person is that he is not wrapped that he is actively engaged in the life of the world because he has gone beyond the illusion that Nirvana is to be found away from everyday life so what is then the point of meditation why meditate why do you have to crawl off into a hole or go to

a Zen Monastery or uh retire and be quiet when this is only a withdrawal is there anything to be said for it or meditation is in that in that sense as a practice as a discipline is a very curious problem because from one point of view it's a help and from another point of view a hindrance and I I think we have to understand first of all that meditation Exercises are medicinal rather than dietary the same could be said of LSD a medicine not a diet uh something that um is described in Zen as when

you want to open a door or summon someone to open the door for you you pick up a brick and you knock on the door but you don't carry the brick into the house when you need a raft for crossing a stream you cross the stream on the raft but you leave the raft on the bank At the other side you don't go carrying it around but a lot of people when they get into meditation or they get into religion or into um any kind of exploration of this sort turn the door into a revolving

door and keep on going round and round and round and never get through they say what a gas it is to be in this revolving door so that a good definition of parasite is the person who goes through A revolving door on someone else's [Laughter] push so there are all sorts of people in the religious racket who are uh going through revolving doors and they're very bitter about people who walk right through and leave the door behind because they say well you haven't paid enough respect you must really understand religious one-upmanship it's a tremendously important

thing And don't be caught out by this because what happens is there's a little game going on which I'm going to initiate you into and it's played in Zen which is it it works like this if you go to a teacher and ask for Spiritual instruction or even if you come to a seminar like this You Are by doing that confusing yourself because you are looking for What you're asking for outside as if someone else could give it to you as if you didn't have it so the teacher knows that as long as you do

that you haven't understood but he doesn't just tell you to go away or we may sometimes just say go away I'm too busy and in any in any case I can't tell you anything well people won't take that for An answer they won't take no for an answer and furthermore if he just said go away they would just find some other teacher who would exploit them and uh maybe keep them as followers for years and acquire a great deal of money by so doing but what he does is another thing he tries to give them

the put down as if to Say you have a great long distance to go yet your attainment is uh not at all perfect and uh where uh they they're always talking about other sects and other schools and saying well they haven't really got the point you see so that you keep losing faith in yourself and uh feeling my goodness I haven't yet attained this thing and that keeps you working but all the time you're being Talked out it's like someone who's a pig pocket and he's stolen your own watch and is selling it to you

but just so long as you can be talked out of yourself you deserve to be [Laughter] now you become very aware of this if you ever do momentarily slip into some sort of mystical experience uh you become aware of this tremendous gamesmanship going On uh and you see it as sort of continuous with the with all sorts of cosmic games that are going on of uh creatures eating other creatures up and um the creatures that get eaten of course transform themselves into the creatures that eat them and then in turn uh eat other creatures and

uh you you see the whole hide and seek game going on and then you realize very clearly that the state of development that you are in Now is uh no better and no worse than anybody else's State because it's like uh space again which planet is in or which star is in the best position well it's all equal they're all in the middle any one can be considered as the center one any point on a sphere is the center of the surface of the sphere so in a that in the same way Everybody in all

his behavior whatever he's doing whether we call him from a point of view sick or whether we call him healthy whether we call him good or bad neurotic normal psychotic saying uh all the manifestations are just like uh the leaves on the trees and uh in each uh being in a unique way is as Christians would say manifesting the will of God so that really from that point of view there is nothing to Do to attain buddhahood nothing at all but you see that's very difficult to understand because a lot of people when they hear

that there's nothing to do try to do nothing and you can't because you are Karma and Karma means action you can't do nothing but uh the thing you're looking for or think you're looking for is what you're Doing is what's called you only of course as we all know uh we've got ourselves into the idea that oneself is so difficult to see because it's like as I've often said try to bite your own teeth or look into your own eyes and you can't find it it's always behind it's like your head is from the optical

point of view a blank space neither light nor dark it's right in the middle of Everything and so one of the Great Tricks of gurus is to set people looking for their heads there's a famous story of a king in India in ancient times called yaj nadata and one morning he woke up and reached out for his mirror and brought it over no head he was looking in the wrong side of the mirror and you know he was kind of BL Eyed and had a hangover so he summoned servants and said if Gods I've lost

my head find it and uh they said but your majesty it's there on your should he said it did not I can't see it in the mirror nobody can show me my head so they were rushing all over the place looking for the head now the trick to that is of course that uh you are perfectly well aware of your head only not in a form in which you expect to be aware of It you expect to be aware of your own head in the same way as you're aware of other people's heads but that

wouldn't be true of you because you got an inside view on your head you have an outside view on about the people's heads because of course you're taking an inside point of view but the way in which you are aware of your head is in terms of what you are seeing and Hearing because all sights and all sounds are what the nerves inside your head are doing that's how to be aware of one's head you are aware therefore of yourself the mysterious self that you have in terms of experience because there isn't really any difference

but that always escapes people you see so perpetually so long as you don't Understand that you can be talked into going on to all kinds of weird excursions and just so long as you believe it you're a sucker you're hooked and it takes a tremendous inner confidence and nerve finally to say don't pull that stunt on me anymore I I see through your game and uh because gurus are very clever at putting you down But they're just trying to see how strong you are testing you out see if they can Hoodwink you so long as

they can you see they're going to go on doing it because they're going to get you to the point where they can't do it to you anymore then they'll graduate and so uh one of Rin eyes students after he saw through it said well there wasn't much in Rin eyes bu ISM after all of course there wasn't he said boldly and straight out my teaching is just like using an empty fist to deceive a child you know when you play games with a child and pretend you got something here the child goes into all kinds

of um tizzy to get you to open your hand and show what it is and then there's nothing fooled so you so you you can be Fooled as long as you can be fooled when you can't be fooled you don't ask the question anymore because it's all become clear ler puts it in this way the great da flows everywhere both to the left and to the right it loves and nourishes all things but does not Lord it over them and when merits are accomplished it lays no claim to them the more therefore you you relinquish

Power trust others the more powerful you become but in such a way that instead of having to lie awake nights controlling everything you do it beautifully by trusting the job to everyone else and they carry it on for you so you can can go to sleep at night and trust your nervous system to wake you up in the morning you can even tell It I want to wake up at 6:00 and it'll wake you up just like an alarm clock this seems a sort of paradox to say this but the principle of unity of coming

to a sense of of Oneness with the whole of the rest of the universe is not to try to be obtain power over the rest of the universe that will only disturb it and antagonize it and make it seem less one with you than ever the way to become one with the universe is to trust It as another as you would another and say let's see what you're going to do but in doing that you see in saying that to everything else that you have have been taught to think is not you you are also

saying it to yourself because finally as I pointed out you do not know where your decisions come from they pop up like Hiccups and when you make a decision people have a great deal of anxiety about making decisions she's this guy who um farmer who ordered a help man come in and uh found he was an extraordinar efficient worker because the first day he put him on sowing logs and he sawed more logs than anybody had ever saw it was fantastic but it were all done in one day so the next day putting on put

him onto mending Fences and there were all kinds of broken fences around the farm and in one day he had the whole thing done so thought what am I going to do with this guy so he took him down into a basement and said look here all all the potatoes that have come in from this Harvest and I want you to sort them into three groups those that we sell those that we use for seeding and those that we throw away so he left him at that at the end Of the day the laborer came

back and said well that's enough mister I qup oh he said you can't quit I've never had such an excellent work I'll raise your salary I'll do anything to keep you around it I said no it's all right mending fences and chopping wood but this potato business is decision after decision after decision after decision turn so when we decide we're always worrying did I think this over long Enough did I take enough data into consideration and and if you think it through you find you never could take enough data into consideration the data for a

decision in any given situation is infinite so what you do is you go through the motions of thinking out what you will do about this and then when the time comes to act you make a snap do and I mean I'm speaking a little Extremely uh making some fun of it and so on because after all uh we we do occasionally get the vague outlines of things and make a right decision on rational grounds but we fortunately forget the variables that could have interfered with this coming outright it's amazing how often it works but Warriors

are people who think of all the variables beyond their control and what might Happen so then when you make a decision and it works out all right I think very little of it has much to do with your conscious intent and control but somehow or other you are able to decide and control things more harmoniously if you delegate Authority why very great businessmen are those who can delegate Authority trust others to work for them Because those are people developing businesses on the same basic structure that is fundamental to a living organism delegation of authority it

loves and nourishes all things but does not Lord it over them and you see then what what is happening is this the more you let go of it and trust it as if it were Quite other than you the more you realize the Inseparable identity of self and other to go back if you try to find the identity of self and other by subjecting other to self no go if on the other hand you you find it through giving self that is control over to other and trusting That you may make a mistake you may

make a bad gamble but in the long run you're acting on a principle which has the backing of evolution this is the way biological evolution goes on constant delegation of authority it's why obviously the democracy is superior to be the monarchy it was the tville who said that democracy is always right but for the wrong reasons because there is operating in a Democracy the principle that Buckminster Fuller call Synergy and Synergy is the intelligence of a highly complex system the nature of which is always unknown to the individual members because that's goes back again to

this point that we're always entering a new environment we don't ever know fully what the new environment is because the only environment we know the past ones There is always then operating in the development of cellular life on any level a new way of organization higher than any existing form and we are not aware of it until after it's happened if you ever saw for example the film contiki uh this man figured out a few few things as to how to make a balsawood raft to sail from South America to the Pacific island but once

she had set this In motion he discovered that all sorts of unexpected factors cooperated with him that when the wood got wet it expanded so that the ties bit into it and held it completely secure he had never expected that and he found that as he sailed along a flying fish would simply a light flat on the deck every morning for breakfast that all kinds of Natural Factors it was just he he he had touched a key where he was flowing with the Course of Nature and everything cooperated with it because he had touched the

key he' made the Act of Faith and he was just picking up in other words the practice which had been uh hundreds and hundreds of years ago had been followed by others who have worked it out by their great ecological awareness so we do come out of this uh way of of thinking to something which has I I would say the most enormously creative and revolutionary social Consequences that it has become not virtuous not self-sacrificing and not anything like that it has become the hardest practical politics to let go control to others to give up

trying to dominate the scene also in a parallel way it has become at this time in our history very much hard practical politics to learn how to enjoy Ourselves you can go to the Protestant people with their Protestant eth I who uh are against this kind of thing and now say to them with great Glee it is your solemn duty to learn how to enjoy yourself why because in an age of leer people have really got to know how to enjoy themselves because if they don't they'll smash the whole future of the human race So

you a Utopia has become uh not some sort of a dream but an urgent necessity we can't do without it because if we try to do without it what's going to happen is that we are going to terminate our race in a mutual Massacre of scapegoats and so the the present paranoia in the United States that is going on where everybody is thinking up a new scapegoat and how great it will be to demolish them or get them out of Power all this kind of bickering and uh right and left politics has become irrelevant because

we now have the opportunity of uh trusting our own intelligence our own technology to take the risk of doing what we want which will work to the extent that we realize that what I want basically what I really want is what you want and I don't know what you she surprised Me but that's my that's the kinship between I and thou so when I ask I go right down to the question should we started with what do I want the answer is I don't know when bodh Dharma was asked who are you which is another

form of the same question he said I don't know planting flowers to which the butterflies come bodh Dharma says I know not I don't know what I want but when You don't know what you want you re reached the state of desirelessness when you really don't know you see there's a there's a beginning stage of not knowing and there's an ending stage of not knowing in the beginning stage you don't know what you want because you haven't thought about it or you only thought superficially then when you somebody forces you to think about it and

go through and say yeah I think I'd like This I think I'd like that I think I'd like the other as the middle stage then you get beyond that say is that what I really want in the end you say no I don't think that's it I might be satisfied with it for a while and I wouldn't turn my nose up at it but it's not really what I want why don't you really know what you want two reasons that you don't really know what you want number one you have It number two you don't

know yourself because you never can the godhead is never an object of its own knowledge just as a knife doesn't cut itself Fire doesn't burn itself light doesn't illumin itself it's always an endless mystery to itself I don't know and this I don't know uttered in the infinite interior of the Spirit this I don't know is the same thing as I love I I let go I don't try to force or control it's the same thing as humility and so the upanishad say if you think that you understand Brahman you do not understand and you

have yet to be instructed further if you know that you do not understand then you truly understand understand for the Brahman is unknown to Those who know it and known to those who know it not and the principle is that any time you as it were voluntarily let up control in other words cease to cling to yourself you have an access of power cuz you're wasting energy all the time in self-defense trying to manage things trying to force things to conform to your will the moment you stop doing that That wasted energy is available and

therefore you are in that sense having that energy available you are one with the Divine principle you have the energy when you're trying however to act as if you were God that is to say you don't trust anybody and you're the dictator and you have to keep everybody in line you lose the Divine energy because what you're doing is simply defending Yourself so then the principle is the more you give it away the more it comes back now you say I don't have the courage to give it away I'm afraid and you can only overcome

that by realizing you better give it away because there's nowh holding on to it the meaning of the fact you see that everything is dissolving constantly that we're all falling apart we're all in a process of constant Death and thatth the world we hope Men set their hearts upon turns ashes or it prospers and light snow upon the desert's dust his face lighting a little hour or two is Dawn you know all that Omar Kayan Jazz you know the cloudcap towers the gorgeous palaces the great Globe itself I all which it inherits shall dissolve un

likee this insubstantial pageant faded Le not a r all falling apart everything that's the the great Assistance to you that that fact that everything is in Decay is your helper that is allowing you that you don't have to let go because there's nothing to hold on to it's achieved for you in other words by the process of nature so once you see that uh you just don't have a prayer it's all washed up and that you will vanish and leave not a rack Behind and you really get with that suddenly you find you have the

power this enormous access of energy but it's that power that came to you because you grabbed it came in entirely the opposite way and power comes to you in that opposite way is power with which you can be trusted of course what we've been talking about is not so much a set of ideas as an Experience or shall we say experiencing and uh this kind of seminar in comparison with uh encounter groups or workshops of various kinds or experiments in sensory awareness is now being called a conceptual seminar although I'm not talking about concept but

the crucial question arises that an understanding a real feeling understanding of the Polar Relationship between the individual in the world is something that operates uh as we say in your bones and isn't the just a view that you hold or a belief that you hold it's so curious that the emphasis of the western tradition in relig religion is primarily upon right belief do you believe in the right dogmas and the right Doctrines and only secondarily upon right action because what you believe is in Christianity at any rate far more important than what you do because

one is saved through faith not by works and early in its history the Christian Church re rejected the movement in the church which had been known as gnosticism from the Greek gnosis which Means knowledge and in a way there were some sound reasons for doing so because the gnostics were what I would call anti-m materialists they divided human beings into three classes that were called respectively pneumatic psychic and hilik the last one being h y l i c from The Greek hly or they would call it now el el meaning wood so the people were

spiritual psychological and wooden and uh that is to say the wooden people were those most absorbed in materiality and most closely identified with their bodies and Orthodox Christianity re rejected this sort of Distinction Because of the perfectly correct idea that material existence is not inconsistent with spirituality this is something which most Christians have forgotten but they do believe as the central principle of Christianity and what's called the Incarnation that in uh the Jesus of Nazareth almighty God did in fact become material become human and by this Process initiated a transformation of the cosmos in the

words of St athanasius God became man that man might become God and you don't hear that from the fulpit very often the Christian Church therefore emphasized pistus or faith as against gnosis or knowledge because they said you can never know God God could never become an object of knowledge and in this funny roundabout Way the Christian theologians were saying exactly the same thing as the Hindus only the Hindus do call this knowledge of God through faith they call it Gana which is the same as the Greek word gnosis but just to give you a little

sidelight on how words get mixed up in their meanings we now have a class of person called an agnostic and an agnostic generally means A person who doesn't commit himself to any beliefs about the ultimate nature of things he just says he doesn't know but the original word agnosia in Greek meant a special kind of knowledge it was called the dark knowledge of God the knowledge of God In The Cloud of Unknowing to use the title of a mystical Treatise written by an anonymous 14th Century English monk this monk derived his ideas from a very

mysterious figure who wrote Under the name of dianis the areopagite dianus Was A fifth or sixth Century Syrian monk who had learned his mysticism from poery who got it from plotinus who was a neoplatonist and who probably got uh a great deal of Stimulation from the intellectual world of Alexandria and Alexandria in the early years of the Christian era was a tremendous Exchange Place between East and West Buddhist monks visited Alexandria it was uh one of the great centers of trade between Rome and India and as you may know all Rome's gold eventually went to

India for the purchase of Pepper and as a result of this the Roman economy collapsed they bought too much luxury from India India in exchange got Roman architecture and uh you'll see a lot of Roman architecture in Indian temples but Alexandria was the great center for the gnostics and for Christian Theology and some of the greatest theologians Clement origin Athanasius St sirel all worked out of Alexandria but now going back to this strange mount dianus it was he who first put around the idea in Christian circles that there was such a thing of the knowledge

as the knowled of God by Faith by agnosia really by unknowing and he in a book which he wrote very short book called The Theologia mystica he wrote A Treatise on the higher knowledge of God which might be quoted directly from the upanishads in certain parts of it the last section of it reads like the manduk panad because it's a series of negations it says what God is Not and he goes very far because he says that God is not one he says our idea of Unity Falls far short of what God is so does

our idea of Trinity so does our idea of spirit our idea of Mind of justice of love all these things are not really God and he says in another place if anybody having seen God understood what he had seen what he would have seen would not have been God but some creature of God less than God some sort of angel or something like that it's perfectly amazing to consider The influence that this man had for writing under the name of dionisis the areopagite he became identified you see with St Paul's first convert in Athens and

Legend has it that he was the first Bishop of Athens and was martyred in Gaul where he's known as St Dennis but St Thomas aquinus looked upon the writings of dianis the areopagite as having the highest Authority and you could if all the texts of di isis's work had been lost you Could restore most of it from quotations in St Thomas he wrote really two very important books one was the one I said the theologia mystica the into terms of words or numbers in other words to describe but a real explanation is not just a

description it's a description which enables us to control what we are describing but didn't we see in the last Session that to control the world is not really what we want to do so that if all explanations have as their function enabling us to control things then maybe an explanation isn't what we wanted and furthermore you can very simply see that what makes things complicated it is explaining when somebody explains to you how a flower works and he's a great Botanist and analyzes all the Inns of a flower and shows the channels the fibers the

processes of reproduction and uh so on that go on in it everybody stands fascinated said how complicated that is how clever God must have been to create that flower to have all that complexity going it isn't complicated at all it's only complicated when you start thinking about because the vehicle of words is a very clumsy One and when you try to talk about the processes of nature what is complicated is not the processes of nature but trying to put them into words that's as complicated as trying to drink up the ocean with a fork takes

forever and so this intense complexity that we see in everything is created by our attempt to analyze it all and so what we do is you see when we Analyze we use our eyes and ears as scalples and we dissect everything and we have to put a label on every piece we chop off and so we scalp Alize and we get it right down to atoms getting finer and finer and we suddenly thought well we' got to the end of it because the word Aton means what is not cutable atos uh but then he found

we could cut the atom and lo and behold big fleas had Little fleas upon their backs to bite them and it goes on forever there is no end to the miness which you can unveil through physical investigation for the simple reason that the investigation itself is what is chopping things into pieces and the sharper you can sharpen your knife the finer you can cut it and the knife of the intellect is very sharp indeed and the sophisticated instruments That we can now make well there's probably no limit to it but in a way all that

is vain knowledge in a way because you see it what it does is it gives you the illusion that you've solved your problem when you have controled certain things and you have solved certain problems practical problems you say fine more of that Please let's go on solving problems and then you do you create a world of people as we are today far more comfortable than people who lived in the 19th century just remember the Troubles of going to a dentist when you were children or some of you when you were children of U Medicine of

badly heated homes of uh all sorts of things that we don't put up with Anymore but the problem is we keep running into this thing that all constant stimulations of Consciousness become unconscious and when we take it as a matter of course to have certain Comforts then we switch the level on which we worry when you solve a whole set of problems people find new ones to worry about and after a while you begin to get that haven't we been here before Feeling aren't we just going around on a cycle and doing the same old

thing over and over and over again because we don't realize that we're ta chasing our own tals by an eternally recurrent process of not knowing who you are that is the hide and seek that is the nature of what the Hindus call the mananta and the pra the period of the mananta in which the worlds are manifested and the period of the prelia In which the worlds are withdrawn from manifestation in out in and out ever more came out by the same door as in I went and the thing is to get to the point

where you can see that you are doing that in every moment of your existence with every tiny little atom of your body you now at this minute you see ah the whole The whole system of inning and Outing in other words you often think perhaps um maybe a long long time ahead I shall reach the point where I wake up from manifestation and overcome the world illusion and discover that I am the Supreme reality behind all this diversification my friends there is no diversification in other words what you call Diversification is your game in the

same way as you chop the thing and then you say it is made of pieces but you forget that you cut it and so when you see the world is complicated and that there are life problems and that uh you might one day succeed think hundreds and hundreds of people are running like mad after something that they call that is success and they have no idea what it is so in exactly the same way the guru Is keeping you running and running after spiritual attainment you don't know what you want where Krishna Mur is so

clever because he says if you ask me for enlightenment how can you ask me for enlightenment if you don't know what it is how do you know you want it is that any concept you have of it will be simply a way of trying to perpetuate the situation you're already already in if you think you know what you're Going out for all you're doing is you're seeking the past what you already know what you've already experienced therefore that's not it is it because you say you're looking for something quite new but what do you mean

new what's your conception of something new well you figure I can only think about it in terms of something old something I once had so he doesn't say Anything he doesn't indicate anything positively everybody says why are you so negative why don't you give us something to hang on to well with these simple answer is it would be spous you don't need anything to hang on to you're it you don't need a religion but then you say well well what is all this religious stuff about then why don't we just forget it and Try by

all means just go away don't go to gurus don't go to church don't enter philosophical discussions forget it but then you'll realize that by having consented to forget it you're still seeking what a trap what can you do you see if you stay here and listen to me or to anyone else who comes around here you're fooling Yourself but if you go away you're fooling yourself [Laughter] too cuz you still think that's going to improve your situation it won't and therefore when you discover the it doesn't you think well maybe it was a mistake to

go away and you come back to the guru and he looks at you and says uh uh uh uh you are very undisciplined very uh Very uh inferious student and uh you you need to apply yourself well as I explained I explain what he's doing but it comes down in a way to a sort of context with the guru you see will will you call his blood you're afraid to because you might discover that if you do call his BL he's no better than you are well that's what you're supposed to Find out but without

being cynical about it he's as Divine as you are but you've got to call the bluff there's going to be a showdown and it's it's a double bind to the whole whole situation a double bind because it doesn't do any good to stay here and it doesn't do any good to go away either to do something about it or to do nothing about It now then there's something else when you understand that and when you realize that um there's nothing to realize how it's all here then what are you going to do should well of

course this is the sense of the Zen poem Supernatural activity and marvelous power drawing water carrying fuel no do whatever one does as a human being but there's a little element of philistinism in that it's like when a Child is pestering father or mother with all sorts of questions they finally get down of the deepest metaphysical problems they say oh shut up at each a [Laughter] donut and um I wouldn't say that you see point because uh life as one looks at it you see is in fact a celebration of itself when you look out

at night at the stars and you really wonder good God What is all that about well it's a firework display and it's celebrating High holy day it's whoopy and the whole world is Whoopi it's a kind of exuberant and therefore the proper function of religion is digging this it's not seeking it's not seeking anything but is in a way Thanksgiving that's why of course the Christians were right and calling the mass the the Eucharist the Thanksgiving only they had such a complicated way of thinking about it and nobody could understand it so there in in

religion all religious exercises whether they are meditative or whether they are ritualistic are whoopy they are not something you do in order to attain anything they are like art forms like Dancing they are expressive of attainment of the attain attainment so here's another handup for you when you go to Mr Suzuki who runs the Zen Center he's a good disciple of dogen who brought Zen a certain School of Zen to Japan in the uh 13th century dogen said you can't sit and meditate unless you're already a Buddha in which case why meditate well meditation is

just the way a Buddha Sits and he call this sitting just to sit not to attain Enlightenment the minute you do that you see you're not meditating so you only become a a good meditator if you're not looking for anything and therefore you realize what a great thing it is to be able to sit and what a great thing it is not to dissect the world with your analytical intellect to be able to look out at the water or the trees or the floor and the Light on it in front of you without calling it

light or floor or trees or thinking that it has parts or thinking that uh it's complicated it doesn't it so when you can sit without thinking not with an empty mind mind you I'm going back to that point not with an empty mind but does um an an a non-analytic mind a non- probing mind uh where you're not creating problems all the time by trying to control it by trying to control your Mind by trying to control your experience what you see and hear you then just simply discover that there is no way of controlling

what you're experiencing because what you're experiencing is you and to try and really fundamentally control that is this going around the circle so if I would say to you now what you have to learn is to let it happen that's wrong too there's no one to let it Happen if I say to you accept your experience um be calm and open to think that again perpetuates the illusion that you're something different from it so we go round and round but if there are some people who want to get together and like we would get together

to play poker or to um have a walk go fishing or sail a boat if there are some people who want to get together to meditate and to have rituals chant uh great it's an art Form and you can only use it and make it a good art form if you're not using it to get something and this is what really is the bane of temples all over the world you go into Buddhist temples where they theoretically don't believe in any God but there are the people praying and they're all doing it in order that

we get a male child next time around or that the horse recover from a Dis disease or that Mama gets cured of the dropsi and all these petitions are going on and on and on people always coming to the temple to ask for something low brow people for low brow things high brow people for highbrow things and there all the vendors sit outside and sell souvenirs and magic and charms and all the people go in and do this and all these serious priests sitting there really having to keep up face and say Yes uh uh

we can provide These services on the other hand if you go in to one of these temples along with all the faithful followers I have a ball buy a buy a bead buy a candle buy a this buy that buy some incense go in and dig this great thing going on Salute the Buddhas or the Cris or the altars or the crucifixes or what you will but don't take it seriously and this is one of the great important transformations Of today in our Consciousness is that a great many people are finding out that religion is

not supposed to be taken seriously this is a shocking thing to many people uh there used to be an old saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh across the altars that's true in one sense when the priests know that they've got a racket It going and they don't believe one word of it and they're laughing across the altar because of all these suckers around uh doing it then it's true uh the religion is dead but when the priests laugh at the altar because they're having such fun because this whole scene is so

beautiful uh well it's the difference between some stuffy old Buddhist priest humming a Sutra and Alan Ginsburg chanting a Sutra Uh that's a thing to hear tell the back you know they go off intermin it's a ball they're sick of it but they get paid for it this is magical but when Alan Ginsburg John the week everybody gets in the circle and he gets these little bells and they get going it's just like a it's like a um a jam session where everybody is absolutely delighted well that's the way to do it and if you

can't do it that way forget It e