THE WISDOM OF INSECURITY : PART 1
BY ALLAN WATTS
The Age of anxiety
Essential realities of religion and metaphysic are vindicated in doing without them and manifested in being destroyed.
Human beings appear to be happy just so long as they have a future to which they can look forward. Man seems to be unable to live without the myth that the routine and drudgery, the pain and fear of this life have some meaning and goal in the future.
One has the anxiety that one may be missing something and hence the mind flits nervously and greedily from one pleasure to another, without finding rest and satisfaction in any.
The common error of ordinary religious practice is to mistake the symbol for the reality, to look at the finger pointing the way and then suck it for comfort rather than follow it.
A person who employs belief will open his mind to the truth on the condition that it fits with his pre-conceived ideas. Faith on the other hand is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no pre-conceptions, it is a plunge into the unknown.
Most of us ‘believe’ in order to feel secure, in order to make our individual lives seem valuable and meaningful. ‘Believing’ is like trying to capture running water in a bucket but you will always be disappointed for, in the bucket the water does not run. To ‘have’ running water you must let go of it and let it run. The same is true of life and God.
By the law of reverse effect, paradox though it may seem, we find life meaningful only when we have seen that it is without purpose and know the mystery of the universe only when we are convinced that we know nothing about it at all.
Pain and time
There seems to be no effective way of decreasing the delicacy and perishability of living tissue without also decreasing its vitality and sensitivity. If we are to have intense pleasures, we must also be liable to have intense pains.
The future is quite meaningless and unimportant unless, sooner or later, it is going to become the present. Thus to plan for a future which is not going to become the present is hardly more absurd than to plan for a future, which when it comes to me, will find me absent, looking fixedly over its shoulder instead of into its face. This kind of living in fantasy of expectation rather than the reality of the present is the special trouble of those businessmen who live entirely to make money.
First we must learn to enjoy the pleasures in the present moment. Then, our consciousness of time or ‘future consciousness’ should be used as a gift to plan for future pleasures. Future consciousness also makes man much more adaptable than any other species in this world. By remembering the past, we can plan for the future.
However, this ability to plan for future pleasures is offset by the ability to dread pain and fear the unknown. This way we cannot be more sensitive to pleasures without being more sensitive to pain. There is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. To drink more fully of the fountain of pleasure, it has brought forth capacities which make man the more susceptible to pain. This way consciousness seems to be nature’s ingenious mode of self-torture. We do not want to think that it is true but that would be wishful thinking.
The Great Stream
The perishability and the changefulness of this world is part and parcel of its liveliness and loveliness. To resist change, to try to cling to life is therefore like holding your breath : if you persist, you kill yourself.
Consciousness also lives because it is moving. Consciousness or what you call ‘I’ is really a stream of experiences, of sensations, thoughts and feelings in constant motion. But because these experiences include memories, we have the impression that ‘I’ is something solid and still and like a tablet upon which life is writing its record. ‘I’ not understanding that it too is a part of the stream of change, will try to make sense of the world and experience by attempting to ‘fix’ it.
We shall then have a war between consciousness and nature – between desire for permanence and the fact of flux. For when we fail to see that our own consciousness and life is change, we set ourselves against ourselves much like the snake Ouroburos which is famous for its head eating its own tail. Struggle as we may, ‘fixing’ will never make sense out of change. The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it and join the dance.
Religion as most of us have known it has quite obviously tried to make sense out of life by fixation. We have thus made a problem for ourselves by confusing the intelligible with the fixed. We think that making sense of life is impossible unless the flow of events can somehow be fitted into a framework of rigid forms & to be meaningful, life must be understandable in terms of fixed ideas and laws.
The root of this difficulty lies in taking conventions like thoughts and words, ideas and laws as reality instead of mere symbols of reality.
Owing to words when man can name and define himself, he feels that he has an identity. Thus he begins to feel like the word, separate and static, as over against the real fluid world of nature. It is convention alone which persuades me that I am simply this body bounded by a skin in space and birth and death in time. Only words and conventions can isolate us from the very undefinable something which is everything.
The more we live in the world of words, the more we feel isolated and alone, the more all the joy and liveliness of things is exchanged for mere certainty and security. On the other hand, the more we are forced to admit that we actually live in the real world, the more we feel ignorant,uncertain and insecure about everything.
Both science and religion are only talking about a symbol of the universe and not the universe itself. When symbols are considered as reality, the different ways of symbolizing reality will appear contradictory. But in the process of symbolizing the universe in this way or the other , for this reason or the other, we seem to have lost the entire joy and meaning of life itself.
We are actually the undefinable eternal ‘now’ –an awareness without the sense of separation from it.
Wisdom of the body
Most of the wisdom that we employ in everyday life never came to us in the form of verbal information. It was not through statements that we learnt how to breathe, swallow, see, circulate the blood, digest food or resist diseases.
We are more and more attempting to solve our problems by conscious thinking rather than unconscious ‘know-how’ This is much lesser to our advantage than we like to suppose. We have allowed brain thinking to develop and dominate our lives out of all proportion to ‘instinctual wisdom’, which we have allowed to slump into atrophy.
We stimulate our sense organs until they become insensitive so that if pleasure is to continue, they must have stronger and stronger stimulants.
Future is an abstraction, a rational inference from experience which exists only for the brain. The primary consciousness, the basic mind which knows reality rather than ideas about it does not know the future. It lives completely in the present and conceives nothing more than what is at the moment. The ingenious brain however looks at that part of present experience called ‘memory’ and by studying it is able to make predictions. These predictions are relatively so accurate and reliable ( eg: everyone will die) that the future assumes a high degree of reality, so high that the present loses its value.
Money is a symbol of all desires and to make it one’s goal is a blatant example of confusing measurements with reality.
A particular example of brain against body or measures against matter is urban man’s total slavery to clocks. A clock is useful to keep an appointment but to adapt our biological processes of eating, sleeping, working and relaxing to their uniform circular rotation is absolutely out of place. A less brainy and a more instinctual culture would synchronize its body rhythms rather than its clocks.
Accustomed as it is to think of man as a dualism of mind and body and to regard the former as sensible and the latter as a dumb animal, our culture is an affront to the wisdom of nature and a ruinous exploitation of the human organism as a whole.
Often seeing that it is unreasonable to worry does not stop you from worrying; in fact you worry all the more at being unreasonable.
The rapid, effortless and almost unconscious solutions of logical problems is what the brain is supposed to deliver. Working rightly the brain is the highest form of instinctual wisdom. Thus it should work like the homing instict of pigeons or the formation of a foetus in the womb – without verbalizing the process or knowing ‘how’ it does it. The self-conscious brain, like a self-conscious heart is a disorder and manifests itself in the acute feeling of separation between ‘I’ and my experience. The brain can only assume its proper behaviour when consciousness is doing what it is designed for : not writhing and whirling to get out of present experience but being effortlessly aware of it.
On ‘being aware’
One should be aware of life, of experience as it is without any judgements or ideas about it. In other words, you have to see and feel what you are experiencing as it is and not as it is ‘named’.
To exist at all – human beings must have a minimum livelihood in terms of food, drink & clothing with the understanding however that this cannot last forever. However man’s problems fail to cease because he wants so much more than the minimum necessities.
If I want to be secure that is protected from the ‘flux’ of life – I am wanting to be separate from life. Yet it is this very sense of separateness which makes me feel insecure. To be secure means to isolate and fortify the ‘I’ but it is just the feeling of this isolated ‘I’ which makes me feel lonely and afraid. In other words, the more security I can get, the more I shall want.
To put it still more plainly, the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. Craving for security is itself a pain and a contradiction and the more we pursue it, the more painful it becomes. This is true in whatever form security may be conceived.
The notion of security is born from the belief that there is something within us which is permanent, something which endures through all the days and changes of life. We are struggling to make sure of the permanence, continuity and safety of this enduring core – the center and soul of our being which we call ‘I’ . For this we think that the real man is the thinker of our thoughts, the feeler behind our feelings and the knower of our knowledge. We do not understand that there is no security until we understand that there is no ‘I’ at all.
Look at the phenomenon of watching an experience. When you are watching an experience, you are not aware of someone watching it. Can you find in addition to an experience, an ‘experiencer’ ? Can you at the same moment read this sentence and think about yourself reading it ? You will find that to think about yourself reading it, you will have to for a brief second stop reading it. Never for a moment, you are able to separate yourself from a present thought, a present experience.
The notion of a separate thinker, of an I distinct from a present experience, comes from memory and from the rapidity with which thought changes. If you imagine that memory is a direct knowledge of the past instead of a present experience, you get into the illusion that you know past and present both at the same time. This suggests that there is something in you distinct from both the past and the present experiences. Unless you understand that memory is a present experience carrying the dead corpse of the past in it, you cannot get out of such a confusion.
There is simply experience. There is not something or someone experiencing ‘experience’. You do not feel feelings, think thoughts or sense sensations any more than you hear hearing, see sights or smell smelling. I feel fine means that a fine feeling is present. Period.
Sanity, wholeness and integration lie in the realization that we are not divided, that man and his present experience are one and that no separate ‘I’ or mind can be found.
To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking ‘I am listening to this music’, you are not listening. To understand this moment I must try not to be divided from it ; I must be aware of it with my whole being and not as someone separate standing by the side.
The marvelous moment
There is never a sensation of what senses sensations, just as there is no meaning or possibility in the notion of smelling one’s own nose or kissing one’s own lips.
In times of happiness and pleasure, we are generally ready enough to flow with the moment, to be aware of it and let the experience be all. In such moments, we forget ourselves and mind makes no attempt to divide itself from itself, to be separate from experience. But with the arrival of pain, whether physical or psychological, actual or anticipated, the split begins and the circle goes round and round.
The human organism has the most wonderful powers of adaptation to both physical and psychological pain. But these can only come into full play when the pain is not being constantly restimulated by the inner effort to get away from it, to separate the ‘I’ from the feeling. The effort creates a sense of tension in which the pain thrives. But when the tension ceases, the mind and body begin to absorb the pain as water reacts to a blow or cut.
The word ‘joy’ comes from contrast with the word ‘sorrow’ or memory of the experience named ‘sorrow’. A lot of our nomenclature is born from comparision with a memory. There are two ways of understanding an experience. The first is to compare it with memories of other experiences and so to name and define it. This is to interpret it in accordance with the dead and the past. The second is to be aware of it as it is, as when in the intensity of joy, we forget past and future and let the present be all and thus do not even stop to think ‘I am happy’.
Both ways of understanding have their uses. But they correspond to the difference between knowing a thing by words vs knowing it immediately ; knowing a thing by your mind vs knowing it with all your organism. A menu too is very useful but it is no substitute for the dinner.
The point then is that when we try to understand the present by comparing it with memories, we do not understand it as deeply as when we are aware of it without comparison. This however is the way in which we approach unpleasant experiences. Instead of being aware as they are, we try to deal with them in terms of the past. The frightened or lonely person begins at once to think : ‘ I’m afraid ‘ or ‘I am so lonely’.
This is of course an attempt to avoid the experience. We don’t want to be aware of this present. But as we cannot get out of the present, our only escape is into memories. Here we feel on safe ground, for the past is the fixed and the known but also of course – the dead.
This would be all very well if you were trying to get away from something from which you can get away. It is a useful process to know when to come in out of the rain. But it does not tell you how to live with things from which you cannot get away, which are already part of yourself. Your body does not eliminate poisons by knowing their names.
Obviously, we try to know, name and define fear, in order to make it objective – that is separate from ‘I’. But why are we trying to be separate from fear ? Because, we are afraid. In other words, fear is trying to separate itself from fear as if one could fight fire with fire.
Calling an experience ‘fear’ tells you little or nothing about it for the comparison and naming is based not on past experience but on memory which is only a trace of the past experience. You should know that you have no choice but to be aware of it with your whole being as an entirely new experience. Indeed every experience is in this sense new and at every moment in our lives we are in the midst of the new and the unknown. At this point you receive the experience without resisting it or naming it, and the whole sense of conflict between ‘I’ and the present reality vanishes.
We should know that resistance is as futile and exasperating as trying to swim against roaring current. The art of living in this predicament is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past and the known on the other. It consists in being completely sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.
This is not a philosophical theory but an experiment. One has to make the experiment to understand that it brings into play altogether new powers of adaptation to life, of literally absorbing pain and insecurity. It is as hard to describe how this absorption works as it is to explain the beating of one’s heart or the formation of genes. The ‘open’ mind does this as most of us breathe : without being able to explain it at all. The principle of the thing is clearly something like ‘judo’ , the gentle (ju) way (do) of mastering an opposing force by giving in to it.
It is like a cushion; a car without the cushion of tires and springs will soon come apart on the road. The mind has just the same powers as it can absorb shocks like water or cushion. Giving away to an opposing force is not at all the same thing as running away. A shock absorber too gives in but yet stays at the same place.
When the mind understands that the pain is inescapable and resistance as a defense only makes it worse and the whole system gets jarred by this shock, then it acts as per its nature – it gives in and absorbs and remains stable.
Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape. But so long as you are not aware of the inseparability of thinker and thought, you will try to escape.
From this follows, quite naturally, absorption. It is no effort, the mind does it by itself. Seeing that there is no escape from the pain, the mind yields to it, absorbs it, and becomes conscious of just ‘pain’ without any ‘I’ feeling it or resisting it. It experiences pain in the same complete unselfconscious way in which it experiences pleasure.
One of the big problems of a civilized society is that it has lost the capacity to be in the new, to be in a state of wonder. It has chosen to compartmentalize everything into one box or another. If u don’t have a social security no., you don’t exist. If you are not a capitalist, you are a communist or vice versa. A person who doesn’t conform to either of these views is fast becoming unintelligible.
We name or call something by a word so that we can later use this word to define something else. This obviously is an attempt to fix the unknown by the known. Always living in these classifications, these words is to live the unknown by fixing it by the known, is to live the present by fixing it to the dead past. Then there is no possibility of anything new or to be in a state of wonder.
Nomenclature has its practical advantages but it loses all its virtue if it is mis-applied in experiential life. An evolved man is the one who can use words and yet live beyond them when need be, one who can live at both these levels at once.
To look at life without words is not to lose the ability to form words – to think, remember and plan. To be silent is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, it is only through silence, that you can discover something new to talk about. The same is true of thinking as thinking is nothing but silent talking.
Certainly a revolutionary thinker must go beyond thought. He knows that almost all his best ideas come to him when thinking has stopped. When thoughts either because of past effort and exhaustion or due to meditation, the mind is able to see the problem as it is – not as it is verbalized – and at once it is understood.
We learn nothing of great importance when it can be explained entirely in terms of past experience.If it were possible to understand all things in terms of what we already know, we could convey the sense of color to a blind man with nothing but sound, taste, touch and smell.
Marvelous achievements of science and technology are of so little real use to us. It is in vain that we can predict and control the course of events in the future, unless we know how to live in the present. It is in vain that doctors prolong life if we spend the extra time being anxious to live still longer. It is in vain that the engineers devise faster and easier means of travel when the new sights that are seen are merely sorted and understood in terms of old ones. Tools of language and thought are of use to man only if they are awake – not lost in the dreamland of past and future.
