Things Are Not What They Seem – Alan Watts (Eye-opening speech)

listen kids things aren't what they seem don't be fooled there's a big deception going on and you're involved in it but i just thought you ought to know it and enjoy it see i i'm terribly puzzled about the way people go out of their way to disenjoy themselves they take so much trouble about it let's take you the sort of the character of the pied piper the person who brings you an invitation to dance i would say then you see there is going to be a dance this evening and i would like you all to come you know that's the spirit in which i invite you to a seminar i am not inviting you in the spirit of saying no we're going to have to discuss some very grave matters and you ought to be awake to all these things and arouse your social conscience and uh so on and so forth [Music] because [Music] when you get through with all that then what when you get through with feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and we are making great strides with automation and technology in abolishing poverty totally then what are we going to do well you see if you've got all these people clothed and fed and so on and then they say well now what next if you've got a kind of quakerish state of mind you don't know what to do well uh feed and close somebody else see get busy but then where is that leading so you see to spread joy you have to have it to impart delight you have to be more or less delightful and to be delightful is not some factor of trying to make yourself look delightful it is to do things that are delightful to you you become thereby delightful to others that's to say people who are interesting are people who are interested any person for example who is constantly thinking about all sorts of other things and other people and so on because they're fascinating becomes a fascinating person but a person who doesn't think about anybody else and who's got very little going on inside their skull is boring so in other words your engagement with the external world the more you are involved the more your personality is enriched but if you try to enrich your personality by taking a course in how to win friends and influence people or how to be a real person you'll become just a washout because you will be in a sound of small circle you'll be as it well you'll be like somebody trying to get a good nutrition by biting his nails then the fingers next you know and then half an arm gone and so on and uh you're entirely nourishing yourself with yourself now of course on a vast scale the universe does that it eats itself up that's why the symbol of the snake swallowing its tail is a very fundamental archaic symbol of life but the way it's done is that the snake has in some part of the ring a place where it's not sensitive it's called the unconscious where it doesn't know that what comes to it in the form of food is actually what left it in the form of excrement that thing is don't mention it after all as the lord said at the beginning of the universe you must draw the line somewhere and so as a result of there always being a kind of gap that's the gap you know like where the electric spark jumps that's the thing behind your head behind your eyes that you could never get to look at the gap and because of that little gap the circle doesn't just revolve in a dull way just go round and round and round like a boring thing [Music] it has rhythm see if i say no rhythm see it's just one long sound after a while we say oh cut it out uh or we just become insensitive to it but what we want to hear is a break in it you see and we want to hear it go on and off and vanish and come back again and so on and it sets up a rhythm that becomes interesting that's putting gaps between you see [Music] we need those gaps so now you see it no you don't oh that's pretty dull so what we're going to do is this we're going to have you see it three times and then with a regular nazi it between them then they're going to be a longer not see it after that one and then i'm going to do something very complicated after that so that you don't don't really know when it's going to come next so there's going to be a surprise you know how we all do that and interesting people are those who do this in very involved ways dull people sort of people who put their hats on absolutely straight uh are the kind of people for example who have the same meal every day exactly the same thing always they have no inventiveness they have the same routine they go to the same office they answer the same kind of letters and that's that but then if they want to start up a more interesting kind of business and make more money then they have to figure out let's take the people who make clothes they figure out fashion it's going to be a new thing for ladies and new styles fall we're going to make them do long skirts instead of the short skirts middle skirts and the skirts go like this then finally they thought about having topless women they're going to play around with that and have an absolutely scandalous ball but that's the whole thing you see it's this thing of rhythm and yes you ask well i see that what is doing this rhythm or who after all am i and as you explore deeper and deeper and deeper into the nature of yourself you find that you're a rhythm doing a rhythm and behind that there's another rhythm doing your vibrations and once again you meet our friend the onion and who who is doing why he disappeared came around there it was and uh we were looking for him and vanished and then just when we weren't looking for him again there he is but every time we try to see he isn't there [Music] now do you see that that that situation is what's called life [Music]