What Would You Do If You Were God? – Alan Watts

so we're always seeking for someone else upon whom to push the responsibility won't take it ourselves we're always complaining that where we are is the result of our past my mother and father were neurotic you know and therefore they made me nearby and their fathers and mothers were neurotic and made them erotic and so it goes back to Adam and Eve and you remember what happened in the Garden of Eden God set a trap by saying there is that specific tree and you mustn't eat the fruit of it if you'd really not wanted them to eat the fruit he wouldn't have said anything about it but by drawing attention to it in this way it was obvious they were going to eat it so when he saw Adam looking guilty and he said Adam hast thou Eden of the fruit of the tree whereof I told thee thou shalts not he and he said the woman you gave me she tempted me and I didn't eat and he looked very severely at Eve and said eve have you eaten of the fruit of the tree whereof I told thee thou shall not eat and she said the serpent of God passing the buck was saying and God looked at the serpent and this isn't written in the Bible but they went [Laughter] because they had planned long in advance that the Universe was not going to be a merely obedient arrangement well I God say you shall do thus and so and you will automatically do it it won't be no fun in that because there would be no surprises so it is the Hebrew theology that God put into the heart of Adam at the creation a thing called the yet Sahara which means the Wayward spirit just the kind of little just like you won't when you make a stew you put some salt in it you don't want the whole stew to be salt but just a touch see So Gone in creating Adam put just a touch of wickedness so that something surprising and different would happen which God would not be able to prognosticate now this is very important you see what we're going to talk about mainly is our sense of identity our sense of alienation and the complications we put ourselves into by regarding survival as a duty these all connect together you may not see the connection immediately but if you imagine yourself in the position of being God in the literal popular sense of God the Father Almighty it means you're a male chauvinist Pig ah you're in charge of everything you know all pasts you know all futures you're completely in control of the cosmos who are absolute power and your bored to death so you say to yourself man get lost I want a surprise and here you are oh you mustn't admit it the Hallmark of insanity is to know that you're God that's absolute taboo not her name in the Christian religion because Jesus got crucified for knowing that and the Christians said okay okay Jesus was God but let it stop right there nobody else but the gospel was the Revelation to us all that the Hindus knew forever [Music] and if Jesus had lived in India they would have congratulated him for finding out instead of crucified when many people in India who knew they were God in disguise SRI ramakrishna SRI Ramana maharshi SRI Krishna himself Buddha everybody they they discovered because it's not an exclusive claim I alone am that but you all are and as I look into your eyes I see the universe looking back so we're in a situation where it's a taboo we mustn't admit that we know who we are so as to have the the thrill uh the sort of self-goucing effect of feeling lost feeling strange feeling alone of not belonging and we say in popular speech that I came into this world you did nothing of the kind you came out of it just in the same way as the fruit comes out of the tree the egg from the chicken the baby from the womb we are symptomatic of the universe we are its nerve endings just as in the retina there are myriads of nerve endings so all of us are nerve endings of the universe and there are many of us so that the universe's point of view of itself will not be prejudiced have been many sided and so fascinating things happen we want to find out what it is that's going on and we look with telescopes to find the farthest out things and with microscopes to find the farthest in things and the more powerful our instruments become the more the world runs away from us as our telescopes become more powerful the universe expands as it's ourselves running away from ourselves the more accurate our physics becomes and we investigate the nucleus but some years ago we thought we had it we found a thing called the atom and that was that then whoops an electron turned up then bang There was a proton and then when we got after those that came out all kinds of things Masons antimatter it got worse and worse and worse because we got sharper and so we are a self-observing system which is like the snake or rubber off that bites its own tail and Endeavors to swallow itself to find out what it is it's like um the the whole quest of who am I would like to see me but look at your head can you see it it's completely invisible and it isn't black it isn't a like the the there's a dark spot behind my life it isn't even blurry it's plain nowhere thereby hangs the tail most of us assume as a matter of Common Sense that space this is nothing [Music] this is not important it has no energy but as a matter of fact space is the basis of existence how could you have stars without space stars shine out of space something comes out of nothing in just the same way if you listen in an unprejudiced way with your ears to find out you see I've got these sense organs here and I'm going to trust them to find out what is going on what really is a new list and you hear all these sounds coming out of Silence foreign just the space is the origin of stars just this woman is the origin of man so also if you listen and pay real attention to what is you will discover that there is no past no future and no one listening