We Are All Actors – Alan Watts On The Game We Play

but now the most important kind of social institution is that which has to do with role-playing who you are when we ask the question who are you people think of this question in two different ways one person when asked who are you will answer I'm a doctor another person will fall silent because he realizes how profound the question is he realizes that he's been asked what his ego is but a lot of people don't realize that when they are asked who are you I have noticed just a little bit of difficulty in my investigations of discussing identity with people that they fix on their role and use that to describe their identity their name their family their place in society what they do what Their hobbies are and so on all these are roles and then also there is the role of character playing all people are more or less taught to act we are all hams from the beginning and we were schooled in acting in our childhood although it wasn't called that it was called education it was called upbringing but a great deal of it is schooling in acting and you very soon learn as a child from your peers and from your parents what acts are appropriate and what are not it is the concern of all parents that their child learns a role in life and has an identity by which the child can be recognized whole trend of education is to shake all this down and make you more or less constant in every sort of social environment that you enter so that everybody knows who you are otherwise it's disconcerting you see so we are made to believe that we have a real self that is to say somebody who we really are and whom we have to find to find yourself to settle down to grow up you see means to fit into a role and there are a lot of people you see who are troubled in our society and who seem to be Misfits in a terribly unhappy because they just can't find the role that they're supposed to fit they don't know who they are there is an inner pandemonium and conflict but it's obvious isn't it that the role you play is a social institution because you can't be an object to your own Consciousness at least not in the ordinary way you are a subject from your own point of view and you can only become an object to the extent that you adopt the attitudes that other people take towards you other people from the beginning of Life are mirrors and by the way they respond to you you begin to learn what they think of you and therefore Who You Are we all tell each other Who We Are and so the the role we play the identity that we have in that sense is a social institution but going further there is the ego itself there is this feeling that inside us there is an eye center which receives experience and directs action and this is the inmost myself and we have all of course been taught in this day and age that if this is not our soul it is a function of our body it is a chemical chemical sort of efflorescence of the brain the feeling of I now as I have told many of you before in various ways this sensation of being a separate eye cut off from all other eyes is an illusion it's a pure hallucination because that is not the way we are functioning physically we are functioning physically not as separate entities but as beings that live in such a close relationship with everything else that there really is no way of dividing us from it and so you see the Mystic in all times and places discovers the illusory nature of this ego and realizes with a glorious shock that the true I myself the thing that one really is fundamentally is the entire game the works some people call it God or Brahman or the Dao or whatever you want the name doesn't make the slightest difference fundamentally what you are is the witch then which there is no Witcher and so relax don't worry [Laughter] because you know if you see this doesn't ordinarily come into Consciousness in just the same way that the structure of your brain doesn't ordinarily come into Consciousness it's very much there but you don't see it directly and you have no memory of it so in the same way you have no memory of being the Witch and which there is no Witcher but there's no need to have a memory of that because the thing doesn't need a memory memories are only necessary for creatures that have to defend themselves and two of creatures that have problems they need memories but the perfectly gloriously happy person wouldn't remember anything because every experience will be completely satisfactory all memory is really a form of regurgitation of undigested experience [Music] but you see also don't forget as we all know memory can be fun and uh so can burping and uh but but memory isn't necessary for the whole thing [Music] except in in certain uh brief forms of memory where the continuance of anything at all you see of any particular form is a sort of memory in the sense that is a repeated gyration of certain physical vibrations but it's possible you see to wake up and realize that your ego is a game and that what we call the necessity for survival is also a game but Society is playing a very very weird game the first rule of which is this game is not a game this game is serious and so the the great great social institutions that we inherit from the past like the church our places to be serious I don't think there ever was a Jester in church of course the Church formed itself around a particular jester and uh who couldn't be stood and so had to be crucified it was just too much but uh the whole attitude you see of the church is that you are standing in the presence of the most serious God the Father who really is in Earnest and no fooling you see and everybody has to keep a straight face so you see the the thing is that the game there's always the fear the underlying fear that the game may be given way if we can make believe that the game is real whatever that means we are not really very clear about that but somehow we know what it means in our bones if we don't know very well in our heads what is for Real and we're always testing things out what is for Real but when the whole world game becomes too real and people become too earnest it's highly necessary to play a new game which is the game of game against non-game as how far can you get away with giving the show away about the game nobody really wants to go the whole hog until you're ready for final Nirvana you know then you then you you give the show away so far as you're concerned and that's it but in the meantime the fascination of seeing how to put together knowing it's a game and still playing it and doing this is what is Mahayana Buddhism is called being a bodhisattva a bodhisattva is a person who doesn't give his show away completely he doesn't simply release his consciousness from playing the human game he is released and yet still in it he knows the human game is a game but he goes on playing it with considerable gusto and his Gusto derives in a great deal from the fact of knowing it's a game you see you can do that to be able 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