THE WISDOM OF INSECURITY : PART 2
BY ALLAN WATTS
The transformation of life
The proper meaning of the word ‘theory’ is not idle speculation but vision. Vision in this sense means ‘clarity’ .. proper understanding of who you are and where you want to go. Without such vision all talk of being practical is useless. It is like walking busily in a fog and going nowhere.
If we have contradictory wants for example sovereign borders and world peace, then their results however practical we may be about getting them will be further contradictions.
On sensations
I am all I know (sense) for all I know (sense) is I. The sensation of a house across the street or the star in outer space is no less I than the itch on the sole of my foot or an idea in my brain. I do not know my brain as a brain. Similarly I do not know the sun apart from my sensation of it. But if my brain is nonetheless I ,then the sun is I, the air is I and the society of which I am a member is also I.
That there is a sun apart from my sensation of it is an inference. The fact that I have a brain though I cannot see it is likewise an inference. Actually, I just have a sensation of my body or a sensation of a thought in a brain, yet I call myself the body or brain. Similarly, I have a sensation of the sun and the sky, then I must consider myself the sun as well as the sky. This theoretical universe is also a unity. My body and the world are a continuous process.
Inseparability of subject and object
Going one step further ahead, you do not have a sensation of the sky, you are that sensation. For all purposes of feeling, you are what you sense,feel and know.
To discover that one is many and many are one is obvious to sense and feeling but an enigma to logic and description. This experience can therefore only be felt and not concluded by theory.
The fact that we are undivided and do not exist as a separate entity has many implications :
1. Objective analysis not possible : The feeling that we stand face-to-face and objectively with the world, cut off and set apart is an illusion. Philosophers often fail to recognize that their remarks about the universe also apply to themselves and their remarks. If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so. If the world is a vicious trap, so is its accuser and the pot is calling the kettle black.
2. Plunge into life to understand it : In the strictest sense we can actually never think about life at all because that world include thinking about thinking, thinking about thinking about thinking and so ad infinitum. Since you and your thoughts are a part of the universe, you cannot stand outside the universe and describe it. That is why all philosophical and theological systems must ultimately fall apart. To ‘know’ reality, you cannot stand outside it and define it; you must enter into it, be it and feel it.
3. Nowness of our experiences : As the philosopher tries to stand outside himself and his thought, the ordinary divided man tries to stand outside himself and his emotions and thoughts, his feelings and desires. The undivided man cannot be elsewhere but here and now. When you realize that indeed you ‘are’ this moment now and no other, that apart from this there is no past and future, you must relax and taste to the full whether it be pleasure or pain..
4.Purpose of universe : At once it begins obvious why this universe exists, why conscious beings, why sensitive organs, why space, time and change.
5.No distant Purpose in life : The whole problem of justifying nature of trying to make life mean something in terms of its future disappears utterly. Obviously it all exists for this moment. It is a dance and when you are dancing, you are not intent on getting somewhere. You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord.
6.Transcending death : To the undivided mind, death is another moment, complete like every other moment, and cannot yield its secret unless lived to the full.
Death is the epitome of the truth that at each moment we are thrust into the unknown. Here all clinging to security is compelled to cease and wherever the past is dropped away and safety abandoned, life is renewed. Nothing is more creative than death since it is the whole secret of life. It means that the past must be abandoned, that the unknown cannot be avoided, that ‘I’ cannot continue, and that nothing can be ultimately fixed. When a man knows this, he lives for the first time in his life. By holding his breath, he loses it, by letting it go, he finds it.
Creative Morality
There are a few mis-conceptions in understanding the meaning of ‘true freedom’ :
1.The aspect of Fate :
The meaning of freedom cannot be grasped by the divided mind. If I feel separate from my experience and from the world, freedom will seem to be the extent to which I can push the world around, and fate the extent to which the world pushes me around. But to the whole mind, there is no contrast between ‘I’ and the world. There is just one process acting and it does everything that happens. It raises my little finger and it creates earthquakes. Or if you want to put it that way, I raise my little finger and also create earthquakes. No one fates and no one is being fated.
2. The aspect of free will :
We are accustomed to think that if at all , there is any freedom, it resides not in nature but in separate human will and its power of choice. But what we ordinarily mean by choice is not freedom. Choices are usually decisions motivated by pleasure and pain, and the divided mind acts with the sole purpose of getting ‘I’ into pleasure and out of pain. But the best pleasures are those for which we do not plan and the worst part of pain is expecting it and trying to get away from it when it has come. Hence individual choices or human will does not lead to freedom.
3. The conditions of freedom :
We have a sense of not being free. It comes from trying to do things which are impossible and meaningless. You are not free to draw a square circle, to live without a head or to stop certain reflex actions. These are not obstacles to freedom, they are conditions of freedom. Likewise I am not free to live in any moment other than this one or to separate myself from my feelings. In short I am not free in trying to do something contradictory. On the other hand, I am free, the world process is free to do anything that is not a contradiction.
In this light, the next question is : Is it a contradiction to act or decide anything without pleasure as its ultimate aim.
No, it is not. The answer to this has two aspects :
We generally never act or decide something with ‘pleasure’ as its ultimate aim. The theory that we must inevitably do what gives us greater pleasure or lesser pain is a meaningless assertion based on verbal confusion. To say that I decide to do something because it pleases me says only that I decide to something because I decide to do it. If ‘pleasure’ is defined in the beginning as ‘what I prefer’, then ‘ what I prefer’ will always be pleasure. If I prefer pain like a masochist, then pain will be pleasure.
I fall straight into contradiction when I make ‘being pleased’ my future goal. For the more my actions are directed towards future pleasures, the more I am incapable of enjoying any pleasures at all. For all pleasures are present and nothing save complete awareness of the present can even begin to guarantee future happiness.
Contradictions of this type are the only types of action without freedom.
4. The aspect of ‘past Karma’ :
Another put-down on freedom comes from the belief that the whole process of action which is man-and-universe is a determined series of events in which every event is the inevitable result of past causes. The idea that the past determines the present can be an illusion of language. Because we must describe the present in terms of the past, it would seem that the past ‘explains’ the present.
Events look inevitable in retrospect because when they have happened nothing can change them. Yet, we can always make a safe bet that if I let go of a bottle, it will fall to the floor. The fact that I can make safe bets could prove equally well that events are not ‘determined’ but ‘consistent’. In other words the universal process acts freely and spontaneously at every moment, but tends to throw out events in regular and so predictable sequences.
Desires, non-judging and love
Outlandish and insatiable desires come into being because man is exploiting his appetites in order to give the ‘I’ a sense of security.
When I am aware of a feeling without naming it – ‘fear’, ‘bad’, ‘negative’ etc, it instantly changes into something else and life moves freely ahead.It is the name who automatically becomes a feeler. In non-naming and non-connotation, the feeling no longer perpetuates itself by creating the feeler behind it.
There is no problem of how to love. We love. We are love. The only problem is the direction of love. A mind must always be interested or absorbed in something just as the way a mirror always reflects something. In an undivided mind, when it is not trying to be interested in itself, it is naturally interested in other people and things. Everyone has love but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and frustration of trying to love his own self. This conviction will not come through condemnation, through hating oneself, by calling self-love all the bad names in the world. It comes only in the awareness that one has no ‘self’ to love in the first place.
Religion reviewed
Science is about adaptation to future by learning from past. Theology has to do with a supernatural future. Religion & Metaphysics is about rooting in the present.
When the mind is divided and ‘I’ wants to get away from the present experience, the whole notion of a supernatural world is its happy hide-out.
There is actually no joy in the perpetual, in the ever-lasting. We desire so only because our present is empty. We do not really want continuity but a present experience of total happiness. The thought of such an experience to go on and on is the result of being self-conscious in the experience and thus incompletely aware of it. You are not busy enough in the experience. So long as there is the feeling of an ‘I’ having an experience, the moment is not all.
To give up ‘I’ is a false problem. ‘Christ’ is the realization that there is no separate ‘I’ If there is any puzzle to solve, it is to see that in this instant, you have no ‘I’ to surrender. You are completely free to do this in any moment, and nothing whatever is stopping you. This is our freedom. We are not however, free to improve ourselves, to surrender ourselves, to lay ourselves open to grace, for all such split-mindedness is the denial and postponement of our freedom. It is trying to eat your mouth instead of bread.
It is obvious that the only interesting people are ‘interested’ people , and to be completely interested is to have forgotten about ‘I’
