Alan Watts – What happens after Death (Lecture)

I have often puzzled and puzzled about what it must be like to go to sleep and never wake up to be simply not there forever and ever after all one has some intimation of this by the interval that separates going to sleep from waking when we don't have any dreams but go to sleep and then suddenly we're there again and in the interim or done and if there was never any end to that interval if the waking up didn't happen that's such a curious thought and yet you know I believe that there although that's rather gloomy kind of consideration I found that's one of the most creative thoughts I ever thought in my life and I keep going back to it you know it's in line with a lot of the very fundamental questions that children ask when they say mummy who would I have been if you had married someone else these are the kind of questions that make us puzzle profoundly about our existence and one of the reasons why I think thinking about not being about total non-existence is so creative is that in comparison with that thought the fact that we are seems kind of queer incredibly odd but you know in the Western world I suppose we have two dominant ideas about what happens to us when we die does the old-fashioned idea that our we die we go to another world I say old-fashioned not to say it's out-of-date we don't know what the answer to this is but that's the traditional answer of the Western world when you die you go to another light maybe heaven maybe purgatory maybe he'll who knows I think nowadays though the more general idea the more plausible idea to many people is that when we die we just cease to be that's all there is to it but we're inclined I think to have in our minds a picture of this which indeed is depressed of being shut up in the dark for always and always in always to be kind of buried alive in a blackness where we are blind deaf and dumb but somehow still conscious but in the eastern world there are different ideas of this the major Eastern idea is what is generally known as reincarnation are going through life after life after life in an endless series now of course when any idea like that is explained the first thing that we ask is is it true is there a process of rebirth but you know as this idea is held by deeply thoughtful Hindus and Buddhists it isn't a belief in something which we can't prove it's really quite a self-evident notion think of it in this way supposing I make two statements statement one after I die I shall be reborn again as a baby but I shall forget my former life statement two after I die a baby will be born now I believe that those two statements are saying exactly the same thing and we know that the second one is true babies are always being born conscious beings of all kinds are constantly coming into existence after others died but why would I think that the two statements are really the same cause after all if you die and your memory comes to an end and you forget who you were being reborn again is exactly the equivalent of somebody else being born because we have no consciousness of our continuity unless we have memory if the memory goes then we might just as well be somebody else but it seems to me that the fascinating thing about this is that although a particular set of memories vanishes death is not the end of consciousness in other words we are deluded by a kind of fantasy if we think of death as endless darkness endless nothingness is not only inconceivable but it's logically absolutely meaningless because we aren't able to have any idea much less sensation of not unless it can be compared with a sensation of something these two things go together and therefore I think what is meant is that the vacuum created by the disappearance of a being by the disappearance of his memory system is simply filled by another being who is I just as you feel your eye the funny thing though about being I about feeling that one is sort of a center of the universe is it you can only experience this eye sensation in the singular you can't experience being two or three eyes all at the same time now then it seems to me that this idea has three very important consequences one is that the disappearance of our memory in death is not really something to be regretted of course everybody wishes to hold forever to the memories and to the people and the situations that he particularly loves but surely if we think this room is that what we actually want do we really want to have those we love however greatly we love them for always and always and always and always isn't it inconceivable that even in a very distant future we wouldn't get tired of it and this indeed is the secret of the thing this is why the demon of impermanence is the nut because it is forgetting about things that renews their wonder just think when you open your eyes on the world for the first time as a child of brilliant colors work what a duel the son wants what Marvel's the Stars how incredibly alive the trees were that's all because they were new to your heart or in the same way you know how it is you've been reading a mystery story and you're looking around the house one time to read you pick up an old mystery story if you read it years and years ago and you've forgotten all about the clock it still excites you but if you remember the plot it doesn't excite you and so by the dispensation of forgetting the world is constantly renewed and we are able to see it again in the game and to love again and again to have people to whom we are deeply attached and deeply fond always with renewed intensity and without the contrast of having seen before before before before always involved at all another consequence of this is a very curious realization remember that question who would I be if my mother had married someone else who if I were you we often said one might so easily have been you I might so easily have been born in China and India why do I feel that the world is centered in this place as distinct from some other place you jolly well know the world is centered where you are and this gives one a very strange feeling of the idea that other people jolly will exist in the same sense you do everybody's name is I that's what you call yourself so there will always be eyes in the world every eye is in a way the same eye we all might be anyone else and there is no escape it goes on and on on on so long as there is consciousness anywhere that is I you then in a way look out through all eyes and that perhaps is the secret of the great virtue of compassion