The Resilient Mind - Breaking the Illusion: Awakening Beyond the Mind - Alan Watts

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

Alan Watts was a British-American philosopher and speaker known for bringing Eastern wisdom into the heart of Western culture. With a poetic yet playful style, he made complex ideas from Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism feel beautifully human and deeply accessible.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠This episode is brought to you in partnership with T & H: https://www.youtube.com/@tradgedyandhopeSpeech licensed from https://mindsetdrm.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to Breaking the Illusion, Awakening Beyond the Mind, with Alan Watts. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. Every living body is something like the flame of a candle. This living thing that you're feeling, like the gyroscope top, it's your own life. Because you can see very simply that you would not understand the experience that you call voluntary action and decision

being in control and being yourself unless in opposition to that, there was something else. You couldn't realize self and control and will unless there were something other out of control and instead of will won't. It's the two together only that produces the sensation that you call

having a personal identity. Only, there is a funny thing about human consciousness, which has been worked out very carefully in Gestalt psychology, which is that our attention is captured by the figure rather than the background, by the relatively enclosed area rather than the diffuse area, and by something moving rather than what is relatively still. And to all those phenomena that in this way attract our attention,

we attribute a higher degree of reality than the ones we don't notice. That's only because, for the moment, those are more important to us. Consciousness, you see, is a radar that is scanning the environment to look out for trouble, just in the same way as a ship's radar is looking for rocks or other ships. And the radar, therefore, does not notice the vast areas of space where there are no rocks, other ships. So in the same way, our eyes, or rather the selective consciousness behind the eyes, only pays attention to what we think is important. And so in this way, we have this rather myopic way of looking at things. And we screen out from attention anything that is not

immediately important to a scanning system based on sensing danger. But quite obviously, you as a complete individual are much more than the scanning system. You are in relationships with the external world that on the whole are incredibly harmonious. Going back to this illustration of every living body as something like the flame of a candle, The energies of life in the form of temperature, light, air and food, and so on, are streaming through you all at this moment in the most magnificently harmonious way. And all of you far more beautiful than any candle flame. Just sitting in these chairs, just going. Only we are so used to it.

We say about that so warm. Show me something interesting. Show me something new. Because it's a characteristic of consciousness that it ignores stimuli that are constant. When anything is constant, it says, okay, that's safe, it's in the bag, we didn't pay attention to that anymore. And therefore, we eliminate systematically from our awareness all the gorgeous things that are going on all the time, and instead only become focused on the things, the troublesome

things that might happen to upset it. which is all right, but we make too much of it and become, we make so much of it that we identify our very selves, I, ego, with the radar, with the troubleshooter. And that's only a tiny fragment of one's total being. So that if you do become aware that you are not simply that scanning mechanism, but you are your complete organism, then very swiftly in turn, as a consequence of that, you become aware that your organism is not the way you think about it when you look at it from the standpoint of conscious attention,

from the standpoint of the ego. From the standpoint of the ego, your organism is your kind of vehicle, your automobile, in which you go around. But from a physical point of view, your organism is again like the candle flame or the well pool it is something which is a continuous patterning or activity of the whole cosmos the key idea here is pattern

let's suppose I'm going to borrow a metaphor from Buckminster Fuller suppose we have a rope and the one section of this rope is made of manila hemp the next section is cotton the next section is silk. The next section is nylon and so on. Now we tie a knot in this rope. Just an ordinary one over knot. You find by putting your finger in the knot, you can move it all the way down the rope. Now, as this knot travels, it's first of all made of manila hemp, it's then made of cotton, it's then made of silk, it's then made of nylon and so on. But the knot keeps going on. That's the integrity of pattern, the continuing pattern, which is what you are.

Because you might, you know, for several years you might be a vegetarian and you might be a meat eater and so on and you know your constitution changes all the time, but people, your friends still recognize you because you're still putting on the same show. It's the same pattern that is the recognizable individual. But we are trained in our language, the very structure of the language we talk, us into misunderstanding this, because when we see a pattern, we ask, what's it made of?

Like you see a table. Is it made of wood or is it made of aluminum? But then when you inquire into what is wood and how does wood differ from aluminum? The only thing a scientist can tell you is the different patterns, that is to say, the different molecular structure of the two things. And a molecular structure is not

a description of what something is made of, it is a description of what dance it is performing, what motions, what kind of a symphony this is, because basically, all phenomena of life are musical, and gold differs from lead in exactly the same way that a waltz differs from a mazurka. It's a different dance. And there isn't anything that's dancing.

That is a deception we get into because we have two parts of speech in our grammar. We have nouns and verbs and verbs are supposed to describe the activities of nouns and this is simply a convention of speech. You could have a language with only verbs in it. You don't need any nouns or you could also have a language with a nouns only and no verbs and it would perfectly adequately describe what's going on in the world. So if you were used to speaking with a part with a language that had one part of speech you could say just as much as we

can with two and be a lot clearer. Only at first it would sound awkward, but you'd soon get used to it. And then when you got used to it, it would be a matter of common sense that the patterning of the world is not some kind of stuff that's patterning. You don't have to seek for a substance underlying the whole thing, it's just patterning. And we're all that. Now we come here right at the start to an extremely important principle, which which is the different points of view you get when you change your level of magnification.

That is to say you can look at something with a microscope and see it a certain way. You can look at it with a naked eye and see it in a certain way. You look at it with a telescope and you see it in another way. Now which level of magnification is the correct one? Well obviously they're all correct, but they're just different points of view. You can, for example, look at a newspaper photograph. under a magnifying glass. And where with the naked eye you will see a human face,

with a magnifying glass you will just see a profusion of dots, rather meaninglessly scattered. But as you stand away from that connection of dots, which all seem to be separate and apart from each other, they suddenly arrange themselves into a pattern. And you see that these individual dots add up to some kind of sense. Now you'll see it once from this illustration. that may be you, when you take a myopic view of yourself, as most of us do,

but you may add up to some kind of sense that is not apparent to you in your ordinary consciousness. Well, it is claimed, you see, that some human beings have broken through to that vision, that they slipped somehow or other into states of consciousness, where they see the apparent disintegration and disorganization, of everyday life as the functioning of a totality, which at its level is completely harmonious. And you can say, ah-ha, at last I see, I got the point. I've seen how all this makes sense.

That's what it is. That's what we notice. What this insight depended upon was your overcoming the illusion that space separates things. We tend to see the universe itself as really consisting in all the stars and galaxies. But the space in which all this happens is sort of written off as something that isn't really there. But what one has to realize is that the space is an essential function of the things in the space. After all, you can't have separate stars unless there is a space around.

Eliminate the space and you will see you couldn't have this phenomenon at all. And vice versa. You couldn't have the space. They wouldn't be there in any sense whatsoever if there weren't the bodies in it. So the bodies in the space and the space are two aspects of a single continuum. They're related together in exactly the same way as exactly the same way as a back and a front, and you just don't get one without the other. So the moment you see that intervals that space is connective, you can understand at once

how you are not just to be exclusively defined as a flash of consciousness that occurs between two eternal darknesses. what you call yourself as a living organism, say, I am my whole body at the very least. Now, what is that body? That body is recognizable, and I recognize my friends when I meet them again with luck, and you recognize me. Although the last time any of you saw me, I was absolutely something entirely different from what I am now, just as the flame of a candle is never a constant. A flame of a candle is a stream of hot gas. Only you say the flame of the candle as if it were a constant. Well, it is a recognizably constant pattern. The spear-shaped outline of the flame

and its coloration is a constant pattern. But in exactly the same way, we are all constant patterns. And that's all we are. The only thing constant about us at all is the doing rather than the being. It's the way we behave, the way we dance. Only there's a very thing constant about us at all. It's the doing. no we that dances. There's just the dancing. Just as the flame is the streaming of hot gas, just as a whirlpool in a river is a whirling of streaming water. There is no thing that whirlpools. There is the whirlpool. And in the same way, each one of us is a very, very delightfully complex undulation of the energy of the whole universe. Only by our process of miscells. Only by our process of education, we've been deprived of the knowledge of that fact, not as if there was someone

to blame for this, because it's always with our own tacit consent, because life is basically a game of hide-and-seek, because life is pulsation on and off. Here it is and now it isn't. All life, you see, is this flickering in and out. And by being this pulsation, we know it's there. See, you don't know what you mean by on unless you know what you mean by off. In the darkness that comes before your birth, there was no you, and in the eternal darkness that follows your death, there is likewise no you. Look, will you be absolutely genuine with me?

No deception, please. I want you to do something that expresses you without the slightest deception. No more role-acting, no more playing games with me. I want to see you. Now imagine, could you really be that honest with somebody else? Especially a spiritual teacher. And you know he looks right through you. He sees all your secret thoughts.

and he knows the very second when you've been a little bit phony and that bugs you. In other words, when you're challenged to be perfectly genuine it's like saying to a child, now darling, come out here and play and don't be self-conscious

or it's like I would say to you, now look, if you come here tonight at exactly midnight and put your hands on this stage, you can wish and have granted any wish you want provided you don't think of a green elephant. And so everybody will come, they'll put their hands here, and they will be very careful not to think about a green elephant. Well, now do you see the point,

that everybody, if we transfer this to the dimension of spirituality, where the highest ideal is to be unselfish, to let go of oneself, when you are trying to be unselfish, you're doing it for a selfish reason. You can't be unselfish by a decision of the will any more than you can decide not to think of a green elephant. There is a story about Confucius, who one day met Lao Tzu, who was a great Chinese philosopher. And Lao Tzu said, sir, what is your system?

And Confucius said, it is charity and love of one's neighbor and elimination of self-interest. Lao Tzu said stuff and nonsense. Your elimination of self is a positive manifestation of self. Look at the universe. The stars keep their order. The trees and plants grow upwards without exception. The waters flow.

Be like this. All your nonsense about elimination of self is like beating a drum in search of a fugitive. So in this way, these are all examples of the thing, the trickery, the master is playing. On you. You came to him with the idea in your mind that you are a separate, independent, isolated individual. And what he is simply saying to you is, show me this individual. So after a while, you see, what happens is this.

when the student finds that there is absolutely no way of being his true self. Not only is there no way of doing it, there is also no way of doing it by not doing it. You can't do it by doing something. You can't do it by not doing something. So in this way, what is called the Zen problem, or koan, is likened

to a person who swallowed a ball of red-hot iron he can't gulp it down and he can't spit it out or it's like a mosquito biting an iron bull it's the nature of a mosquito to bite and it's the nature of an iron bull to be unbiteable and both go on doing their thing that is their nature and so nothing can happen absolutely you're up against it

Absolutely no answer to this problem. No way out. Now what does that mean? If I can't do the right thing by doing and if I can't do the right thing by not doing, what does it mean? It means, of course, that I who essayed to do all this am a hallucination. There is no independent self. to be produced.

There is no way at all of showing it, because it isn't there. So you recover from the illusion. You suddenly wake up and think, what a relief. And they call that Satari. That's awakening, the first step in awakening. Let me try and translate this.

When this kind of experience happens, you discover that what you are is no longer this sort of isolated center of action and experience locked up in your skin. The teacher has asked you to produce that thing

so in the same way when your own inner sense of identity changes from being the separate individual to being what the entire cosmic is doing at this place, you become not a puppet, but more truly and more expressively an individual than ever. There is a Chinese proverb that if the wrong man uses the right means, the right means work in the wrong way. Let us assume that our technological knowledge is the right means.

What kind of people are going to use this knowledge? Are they going to be people who hate nature and feel alienated from it, or people who love the physical world and feel that the physical world is their own personal body? But you see this whole attitude of using technology as a method of fighting the world will succeed only in destroying the world. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes. Thank you.