It Will Give You Goosebumps – Alan Watts On Existence

the reason why certain people turn to philosophy why i became a philosopher was that since i was a little boy i always felt that [Music] existence as such was weird i mean here we are isn't that odd of course it's odd what do you mean what do you mean by odd well it's what's different from even i mean what's art stands out what's even lies flat but you can't see the outstanding without the flat background [Music] here's this thing standing out it's odd each one of you is odd strange unique particular different how do we know what we mean by that except against the background of something even that is not differentiated like space and so you get this philosophical itch you begin to scratch your head and think about why is that so [Music] well after a while you realize that's a meaningless question and you ask how is it so well that leads you into science and other investigations so you want to know what is it i mean this this happening this thing called existence what is it you ask that question long enough and it suddenly hits you [Music] that if you could answer it you wouldn't know what terms to put the answer in i mean when we investigate the properties of nature and we do get some answers all the answers are in terms of particular structures forms patterns and these can be measured and their behavior can be predicted [Music] but when i want to ask the question what are the forms made of i mean what is it really we can't think of any way in which we could answer the question because we would have to have a class of all classes when you ask the question what it's like saying is you is or is you ain't is you animal is your vegetable is your mineral are you a republican or a democrat are you male or female are you a christian or a jew or a hindu or what have you we classify always to give an answer to the question what is it and when you classify you distinguish an inside group from an outside group [Music] right so what we want to know is what is the group of all groups well we can't imagine what the outside would be so we can't answer the question what is it so the physicist finally abandoned the quest for stuff and they gave us a description of the universe entirely in terms of form [Music] the pattern not the stuff when people ask what's the web yeah but you can't do that what's the pattern made of surely there mustn't be an answer to that see what happens is when you turn up the microscope all stuff turns into form it becomes articulate you know the carpet looks like some sort of stuff but when you look at it under a microscope you will see the crystalline structure of the nylon or whatever it's made of see they want to know what are those crystals made of all right turn up the volume and you'll find molecules turn up the volume you find waveables but we think the the the wavelengths must be of something but of course they're not we find substance or stuff totally vanishes we say does it matter what does that mean [Music] does it matter is it important in other words does it measure up to anything mata comes from a sanskrit root matra which means to measure so from this root matra we get going on into sanskrit we get the word maya and maya is generally translated illusion although it also means magic creative power the word illusion switch over we get that from latin and that comes from the latin ludere to play let's pretend that we matter see the world is a musical phenomenon good music never refers to anything except the music itself you don't ask mr black mr ravi what do you mean by this music what is it intended to express listen that's the meaning giraffes are giraffing trees are treeing stars are starring clouds are clowning rain is raining and if you don't understand look at it again and people are people wow we notice that all these suchnesses appear and disappear they keep changing they come and they go but if you get hung up on your particular form i'll have to alter the language a little bit because you see your form makes a duality whereas you are your form you're what you're doing now you think um for some strange reason i must make that go on as long as possible and therefore you think you have an instinct to survive and so the only thing anybody can agree about today so far as the discussion of ethical and moral problems are concerned is that we ought to survive and therefore certain forms of conduct have survival value and certain forms don't but when you say to yourself you must go on living you put yourself in a double blind because you said to a process which is a sense essentially spontaneous that it must happen and the basic form of the double bind which is imposed upon all children is you are required to do that which will be acceptable only if you do it voluntarily so when we say to ourselves you must go on the reason is you see that we are not living in the eternal now where reality is we are always thinking that the satisfaction of life will be coming later don't kid yourself which is to say only suckers put hope in the future you