I've never heard a preacher, to this day, give a sermon on the passage in the Sermon on the Mount, which begins, be not anxious for the morrow. They do occasionally refer to it and say, well that's all very well for Jesus. But the actual putting into practice of this, nobody would agree with. They say it's not practical to not give a damn about how we're going to provide for the next day's meals and all that sort of thing. But it is practical. It's much more practical than what we're doing. If you mean by practical that it has survival value. Only, I want to point out, that this is a kind of a two-step way.

[01:01]

You see, the first step is not being anxious for the morrow. Not dreaming for one moment that you can change anything or improve anything. Which of you, by being anxious, can add one cubit to his stature? You see? But this, just like the belief in predestination, has an unexpected consequence. Namely, the making of the energy available. So that, in fact, you can take care of the morrow, but for the simple reason that you're no longer worrying about it. And thus it comes about that people who do not live for the morrow have some reason to make plans. But those who live for the morrow have no reason to make plans for anything, because

[02:11]

they never catch up with the morrow. Because they don't live in the present. They live for a future which never arrives. And that is very stupid. But you see, all this is said in quite another spirit than the spirit of sermonizing. I'm not talking at all about something you should do. All I'm doing is explaining the situation, and you can do anything you like about it. Actually, you know, you cannot lift yourself up by your own bootstraps however hard you try. And I'm merely pointing out that it can't be done. I'm not saying that you shouldn't try, because it may be your lifestyle to be constantly attempting to do things that can't be done. I do this, in a way, because all poets do. The poet is always trying to describe what cannot be said.

[03:11]

And he gets close, you know. He often really gives the illusion that he's made it. And that's a great thing, to be able to say what can't be said. I am trying to say, to express the mystical experience. And it just can't be done. And therefore, everything I'm saying to you is a very elaborate deception. I'm weaving all kinds of intricate nonsense patterns, which sound as if they were about to make sense. And they don't, really. But you see, we can take that to another level and say, well, that's just life. Once, I was talking with Fritz Perls, at the Essman Institute, and he said, the trouble

[04:14]

with you is your old words. Why don't you practice what you preach? So I said, I don't preach. And furthermore, don't put words down. Because the patterns that people make with words are just like the patterns of ferns, or of the marks on seashells. They are a dance. And they are just as much a legitimate form of life as flowers. He said, you're impossible. But you see, that's very important, and that is why, in certain forms of methods of meditation and religious rituals, we use words in a way that is not ordinarily in accord with

[05:17]

the use of words. Words are normally used to convey information, but in religious rituals, words are not used to convey information. Words are used musically, for the sake of sound. And this is a method of liberating oneself from enthrallment with words. When you say any ordinary word, just take a word like body, see? And you say it once, and it seems to be quite sensible, but say it four or five times, body, [...] body. And you think, what a funny noise. Isn't that curious? Or apple-dumpling. Apple-dumpling. That's kind of a nice sound, apple-dumpling. And so, in one of the great methods of meditation, which is called mantra yoga, the use of sound

[06:27]

for liberating consciousness is precisely that. You take all sorts of nonsense and chant it, and you concentrate on these sounds, quite apart from anything that they may mean. See, this is why the Catholic Church has made a ghastly mistake in having mass celebrated in the vernacular. Now, everybody knows what it means, and it really wasn't so hard after all. Whereas, while it was an intent that was completely incomprehensible, it had this sense of mystery to it. And furthermore, if you knew how to use it as a sadhana, a method of meditation, you could do very well. All monks were trained, when they recited the Divine Office, they would explain to a novice, don't think about the meaning of the words.

[07:31]

Just say the words with your mouth, and keep your consciousness on the presence of God. They used it that way, see? So, it's a very good thing then, to use words in this way, to overcome slavery to words. I have just written a book of nonsense ditties, which are to be used in this way. To get the rhythm going, which is an incantation, which is a way of getting beyond the bondage of thought. Because, you see, you cannot think without words. You can use numbers, and a few things like that, but if you preoccupy your consciousness

[08:36]

with meaningless words, that very simply stops you from thinking. And then you dig the sound. Do you know what it is to dig the sound of anything? Anybody who's had a psychedelic experience knows exactly what this means. That you, you, I can only call it, you go down into sound, and you listen to that vibration, and you go into it, and into it, and into it, and you suddenly realize that that vibration that you're listening to, or singing, is what there is. That's the energy of the cosmos. That's what's going on. And everything that's going on is a kind of a pulsation of energy, which in Buddhism is called softness, or dampness, da-da-da, you see, what's da-da-da, [...] and that's what we're all doing.

[09:41]

Only, we look around, and you know, here we all are, we're people, we've got faces on, and we talk, and we're supposed to be making sense, but actually, we're just going da-da-da, [...] in very complicated ways, you see. And we're playing this life game, and the thing is that, if we don't get with it, we, it passes us by. That's alright. You can miss the bus, it's your privilege, you see, but it really is a great deal more fun to go with the dance, and know that that's what you're doing, instead of agonizing about the whole thing. See that's one thing why we cannot really defeat those funny little yellow people in

[10:51]

Vietnam. It's like trying to shoot mosquitoes with machine guns. You watch those faces, and you see that they are much more, they're much more like flowers or animals than we are, in the sense that life is transient, nobody ever expected it to be anything else. Life for years and years and years and years has been nothing but war. So what? That's the way it goes, and therefore they don't have this tremendous hang-up on survival as such. They, when we think that that's sort of inhuman, that that's a kind of depersonalization, you

[12:01]

find this also among Chinese people. When I had a friend who used to fly the hunk in the war, and he used to carry laborers to work on the Burma Road, from central China to Burma, and they used to play a gambling game, in which the loser would jump off the plane, they thought that was great fun, and we think that that is dehumanizing in some way, because it shows a lack of respect for life. It doesn't show a lack of respect for life. It shows a great respect for life, because the whole thrill of the game was that it would hit someone, someone would lose life, and that was what made the game exciting. But they feel, you see, that life is something that simply keeps happening.

[13:02]

You know, it isn't just, yes, I know I'm, and you are, we are all very unique. There's nothing else like us. But don't forget, we keep coming back. It's as you concentrate, and you look too closely, you get myopic about the uniqueness of each individual, and you say, well, listen, that's never going to happen again. Too bad. But when you look at it, and you had never seen human beings before, and you were from Mars, and you came here, everybody would look identical. You wouldn't even be able to tell the difference between men and women. And so they would say, well, this is something that keeps happening. So it depends what level of magnification you're looking at, where you're putting your value. So if you stop giving yourself a name, as all holy men do, no, we give up your name when you become a holy man.

[14:05]

They give you some comic name that's religious. You become Brother Peter or something. Or Brahmananda, you know, means the bliss of God. Or Sister Karita, charity. You give up your name. And you simply become this particular form of human jazz, which repeats itself again and again, forever. You've been listening to Alan Watts with Part 2 from a seminar entitled Veil of Thoughts. If you'd like to hear this particular lecture again or play it for a friend, you can have a cassette copy by sending $9 to this address, MEA Box 303, Sausalito, California, 94965.

[15:17]

Be sure to specify Veil of Thoughts, Part 2. And the address again, MEA Box 303, and the zip code 94965. On March 31st, there will be a special benefit concert for Arabs of Africa. A Bay Area group sending greatly needed food and medical aid to Ethiopia and Sudan. The concert will feature... Another way is to have it happen by the grace of the good Lord where I meet an English girl and we get married. Because she's an English citizen. And I know American guys that have been married to an English girl. It's difficult to get the work permit.

[16:27]

But if you're a citizen, there's no problem. So you can either get a work permit by working for a company that has offices there. You can marry someone who is English and become a citizen by marriage. Or go over there and buy a business. Buy something. Buy our livelihood and start doing it. A lot of Americans have. They've gone over there. They've bought pubs. They've bought hotels. They've bought bed and breakfast. But you don't sometimes, because you can't. In Mexico, for example, it must be basically foreign. Well, there's a lot of Americans that own businesses down there. But you can do it from the front. I have friends that went down and had their baby there on purpose so they could start their business down there. I thought that was pretty cool. So you've got three options. You can go through a corporation. You could have to go over there and find someone you want to marry, which is a whole other issue. And the third way would be to actually buy a business, if that's possible, which means an amount of capital.

[17:30]

Yeah. But you've got to go over there and talk to the people that I know and are friends with over there and see if something can be grouped up. Contact. How about doing it by mail first? Right then. I mean, it's an expensive trip to go over there and see. Oh, it is. Couldn't do it the way I feel. I have good general administrative skills. And in some ways that isn't a marketable quantity over there because there are locals, nationals, English nationals who have the same good skills as I do. To me, well, they're trying to compete against them. And the British government would be efficient for taking away the livelihood from a fellow Irish person. And I would do it. Have you ever considered going to one of these agencies that has overseas jobs? I've thought about it, but I've actually had it slip my mind in recent months or so.

[18:33]

You have total freedom to do what you want to do. And certainly one of the benefits of working for Casey is, flaky as it may be and not getting the backup that you need, but you get your free time. Your time is your own. You could go in on Monday with a holiday. You could go in on Tuesday morning to one of those agencies that advertises by the Sunday paper or look at the yellow pages and find out which of these agencies does that. You could ask base stewards from one of the agencies. You probably notice that they probably have contacts there. Go in and find out which agencies do that and go in and register with them. Always say no when they make offers to you. But I think that might be a very first step for you in recognizing your freedom. Putting yourself out there and saying, I want to live and work in the United Kingdom. These are my skills. IBM in 17 years? My God, they'll jump for you. That's a very good track record that you have

[19:37]

of good office skills in Nigeria. And you want to be able to work specifically where you want to work? I'd like to be up in and around York or Yorkshire, up that way, which is more central. Other cities? Oh, yeah. York is not a good idea. Other than that, Southeast England, London, I don't know. Southwest England, yeah. I mean, these are people who make their living by placing you in with them. So they'll be glad to see you. They'll be anxious to place you. That's their job. You'll be taking a step towards freedom and towards earning your money, your first shop or something, in a way that makes you happy. Do you think that you're ready to do something that you want to get into? I'll try it.

[20:39]

I don't want to say that. Yeah, I think I... If for no other reason than just to practice, start. And if there are two or three places, Tam, that do this work, in the Yellow Pages, or in advertising, in the Sunday YS, yeah. The reason that I know about this is I know many people who've worked in the medical field, who've been to Saudi Arabia, who've been to Ethiopia, and who've been to unusual places because of their occupation. Not through the Peace Party, but just, I think I might live in Arabia for a while. I think I'd like to see the world. Maybe I'll get a job in France. And they've just gone to these agencies. No fee. The companies pay the fees. So what I would suggest to you is to make it easy on yourself. There are three of these agencies, and you know one of them is a big one that's going to do the job for you. Who remembers first? Practice. You know that, Tim.

[21:42]

I mean, well, I need to... As I said, as I discovered recently, it came up, life is practice. That's right. That's all it is. That's right, it always is. And you never stop practicing until the day you die. It's like I didn't know that there's game and there's play. I didn't really separate the two. Game is a dirty word to me. It is to me, too. That's interesting. It is to me, too. I don't like the word game. Playing, I like. I'm playing soccer. This is the one thing, this is the thought I've had for a long time now. What spoils it for me, you get together and you play the game of soccer. As soon as you assign the word game to it, it has to be done a certain way. Don't use the word. Just say, well, let's go play soccer. As soon as you assign the word game... As soon as,

[22:52]

in anything, as soon as you assign the word game to it, or assign a structure that it has to be played this way, that goes mine. I think it was mine. Yeah. As long as you don't make it a game. As long as you don't sign it. Connotate the notes. I have to say I don't. So the connotation of game,

[23:56]

game, the denotation of the word game is totally without charge. Game. But there are connotations that you have that are negative about it. It doesn't have to be. And it might help you somewhere down the line to say, oh, it's just a game. Well, this is what a couple of people with cases were trying, you know, they're working with me, and they're saying, you can't take this as seriously. Everybody knows this. Everybody knows the problem. You can't take this as seriously. You know, what do you say? What is too important to be taken seriously? What game is what you're saying? The game of what? Play. Play. That doesn't mean that you don't need to take care of business. But it's supposed to be fun. Did you know that?

[24:58]

I never had mentioned that to you. Well, you know, I work with people like Theresa. And actually there's a sense of fun in that. Oh, of course. The highest spiritual... My heroes are her. Alan Watts. Alan Watts. Paolo Soleri. This is architecture. I've always thought of this. People have said, oh, he's not a very creative person. Thank God. But his architecture plays. You like Gavin? I've told you about Gavin. I haven't really gotten into architecture that much. You know, you and I have talked about that. You said you've seen me at a drafting board. I want to be an architect, too. I think about Michel Lebrun, the French musician, composer. He's a composer. He's a musician. He composes and plays. A lot of similarities between music and architecture.

[26:01]

Mathematics and music. I've tried to explain to people how fascinating I find it. I don't like what you're doing. But you're taking a given culture and you're taking its popular music and you're taking its most prevalent form of architecture, the downtown skyscraper, and you're taking its fashion and you're taking its language. It's all the same. One denotes the other. If you look at the music, it's not much different. I have a client who's a music critic. I want to make sure I've learned, just in the last couple of months, the correct terminology. New wave. Not rock and roll,

[27:03]

but what you're describing, the downtown skyscrapers, are part of the same cultural fabric. Not rock and roll. Rock and roll is the hippie, go back to the country, you know, good vibes, that kind of stuff. That's not downtown skyscrapers. New wave or heavy metal. Heavy metal. Language. It's all very fascinating. It's great. That's what I think. So it's all part of the town? Yeah. I find it fascinating. You can't separate it. Look at the fluidity of the Balinese music. The living structures. We'll drop that. First drop. Time to go? Yeah, we need to stop. What... I mean, there's all these things I want and need to do for myself. Do at least one of these

[28:04]

by the next time I see you again. At the very least, go into an agency where two or three of you have the time, and I think that really maintains the institution that... I'm just going to have to fudge up my time card because they don't trust me. Your time card has to go. Give them extra time somewhere. You're not going to cheat them. You're going to give them extra time somewhere. I know you do. I may work an overtime job and say, okay, don't pay me, just give me the time. You can figure that one out. You don't have to actually account for your time by being in the office. You can go out and do estimates. It's going to take you an hour, that's all. You can go on your lunch hour and work on your lunch hour. You can figure it out. But I would like you to try that. I would like you to go in and apply and see what the options are and start that process. I think it will free up some of that first shock that's stuck inside of you.

[29:05]

Let's set up an appointment for the next session. What do you want to do? At the same time as you're done, I try to explore those a little bit. Well, congratulations. Ordinarily, Tuesday nights are pretty good. But this coming Tuesday, because it's a Memorial Day weekend coming up, and I'm seeing my Monday clients on Tuesday. But next Thursday at 8 o'clock with me. I still find the Casey job. I have to, as you said, constantly give up. But that's getting worse. I was kind of tired and I went home at night and I just had a bum bum and I came to sleep and I just went home. It was good. I think it's important to do that. I went into a sleep accident because I'm kind of going into sleep and you're watching. That altered the space. Like we were talking about last night,

[30:07]

there are so many different levels of consciousness that we don't even have names for. And I want to work on this. You and I talked about it early on, about this, my ability as a psychologist. That's what the class is about. I'm a professional and you still feel that way because I have some confusion about it because I don't recognize it. I'm not sure that you want to be a professional. That doesn't seem to me. I don't see my own role. It doesn't seem to me. That's clairvoyant. Part two from the seminar entitled Veil of Thoughts, the end of today's broadcast, will give you an address that you can write to for more information about these spoken word lectures about our thoughts. Here's part two, Veil of Thoughts, with Colin Watts. Well now, in the first talk which now all of you will hear, I was explaining that the theme of this seminar was the problem of how thoughts protect us from truth

[31:10]

and what to do about it. Showing various ways in which the symbolizing process which we call thinking, the use of signs, words, symbols, numbers to represent what's going on in the external world or the world of nature leads us into a curious confusion that we confuse the symbolic process with the actual world and the temptation to do this arises from the extraordinary relative success that we have had in controlling the world of nature with the power of thought. But I don't know if it's ever struck you that we really don't know whether we have successfully controlled it or not. It could be argued

[32:13]

that a very strong case could be made that the entire intellectual venture of civilization has been a ghastly mistake and that we are now on a collision course and that all the vaunted benefits of intelligence, technology and all that is simply going to draw the human race to an extremely swift conclusion. Of course, that might not be a bad thing. I've sometimes speculated on the idea that all stars have been created out of planets and that these planets developed high civilizations which eventually understood the secrets of nuclear energy and naturally built themselves up and in the process these stars flung out lumps of rock

[33:14]

as they blew up which eventually spun around them and became planets all over again and that this is the actual method of genesis of the universe which would accord, of course, with the Hindu cosmology where it is where time and the events in time are invariably looked upon as a process of progressive deterioration through the cycles of each counter in which things get worse and worse as time goes on until it can't stand itself anymore and it blows up and after a period of rest and recuperation begins all over again. Why do we somehow have a distaste for a theory of time which runs in that direction? I mean, would you rather

[34:15]

have a rhythm that goes or one that goes I mean, which is it? Or you want one that's going up always? You see? Always getting better. You can't even imagine such a thing. Because, you know, it's relative. As you succeed in life you simply Well, there was a concept by a communist a Russian philosopher who accused the communists in their various five-year plans and progressive notions wherein people were always preparing for tomorrow of converting all human beings into caryatids. Now, you know, a caryatid is a pillar

[35:16]

shaped in a human form which supports a roof. And he said you are turning all men into caryatids to support a spade upon which others will die. But, of course, you know they never will. You have one row of caryatids supporting a floor and very soon your children are the next row of caryatids supporting another floor so that it gets higher and higher but we don't really know where we began and we're always in the same place always hoping, always thinking that the next time will be it and this, of course, is an eternal illusion. It's much better actually, one will be much happier to think that the future is simply deteriorating. I can explain that very simply. Human beings are largely engaged

[36:18]

in wasting enormous amounts of psychic energy in attempting to do things that are quite impossible. You know, as the proverb says, you can't lift yourself up by your own bootstraps. But recently, I've heard a lot of references in just general reading and listening, where people say we've got to lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps and you can't! And you can struggle and tug and pull till you're blue in the face and nothing happens except that you've exhausted yourself. All sensible people, therefore, begin in life with two fundamental presuppositions. You are not going to improve the world and you are not going to improve yourself. You are just what you are. And once you have accepted that situation, you have an enormous amount

[37:19]

of energy available to do things that can be done. And everybody else looking at you from an external point of view will say, my God, how much so and so has improved? But I know, I mean, hundreds of my friends are at work on enterprises to improve themselves by one religion or another one therapy or another this system, that system and I'm desperately trying to free people from them. And I suppose that makes me a messiah of some kind. But the thing is that you you can't do it. One very simple reason, which I think most of you are by now familiar with is that the part of you which is supposed to improve you is exactly the same as that part of you which needs to be improved.

[38:20]

In other words there isn't any real distinction between bad me and good I. Between the higher self which is spiritual and the lower self which is animal. It's all of a piece. You are this organism this integrated fascinating energy pattern. And as Archimedes said, give me a fulcrum and I will move the earth. But there isn't one. It's like, you know, betting on the future of the human race. If I were really smart, I would lay a bet that the human race will destroy itself by the year 2000. Because in practical politics one realizes that nothing is going to work out right. No candidate I've ever voted for ever won the election. So, but the trouble is there's nowhere to place the bet. And so, since I can't place the bet anywhere, I'm involved in the world and

[39:22]

must of course try to see that it doesn't blow itself to pieces. But the thing, I once had a terrible argument with Margaret Mead. She was holding forth one evening on the absolute horror of the atomic bomb. Now everybody should immediately spring into action and abolish it. But she was so she was getting so furious about it, that I said to her, you know, you scare me because I think you're the kind of person who will push the button in order to get rid of the other people who were going to push it first. And she told me that I had no love for my future generations, no responsibility for my children, that I was a phony swami who believed in retreating from facts. But I

[40:23]

maintained my position. Robert Oppenheimer, a little while before he died, said that it's perfectly obvious that the whole world is going to hell. The only possible chance that it might not is that we do not attempt to prevent it from doing so. Because, you see, all the troubles going on in the world now are being supervised by people with very good intentions. Their attempts to keep things in order, to clean things up, to forbid this and prevent that possible horrendous damage. And the more we try, you see, to put everything to rights, the more we make fantastic messes. And it gets worse. And maybe that's the way it's got to be. Maybe I shouldn't say anything at all about the folly of trying to

[41:26]

put things to the right. But simply on the principle of Blake, let the fool persist in his folly so that he will become wise. This is an argument against all kinds of do-gooding. In other words, it's simply, it's the, what I'm saying is, don't take me too seriously. I'm pitching a case for the fact that the civilization has been a mistake. That it would be much better to leave everything alone. That the wild animals are wiser than we. In that they, putting it in our crude and not very exact language, they just follow their instincts. And if a mosque mistakes a flame for the signal on which it gets a mating call and flies into the flame,

[42:26]

so what? That just keeps the moth population down. And the moth doesn't worry. You know, it doesn't go buzzing around in a state of anxiety wondering whether this sex call is the real thing or just a flame. It doesn't think consciously about the future. At least we suppose this is so. Maybe it does, but we suppose that it doesn't. And therefore, it isn't troubled. But the species of moths goes on and on and on. And so far as we know, it's been around for an incredibly long time. And maybe even longer than we have. Bees, ants, creatures of this kind, they have long since escaped from history. So far as we can see. In other words, they live a settled existence, which you might consider rather boring, because it doesn't have constant change in the way that we do.

[43:29]

They live the same rhythm again and again and again and again, but because they don't bother to remember it consciously, it never gets boring. And because they don't bother to predict, they're never in a state of anxiety. And yet, they survive. Now, we who look before and after, as Emerson says, and predict and are always concerned whether this generation is going to be better or worse than the one that came before, we are tormented. And we just don't realize because of this tremendous preoccupation with time, we don't realize how beautiful we are. In spite of ourselves. Because, you see, the conscious radar is a troubleshooter. It's always on the watch out for variations in the environment which may bring about disaster. And so,

[44:30]

consciousness is from one day's end to another entirely preoccupied with time and with planning and with what has been and with what will be. And since troubleshooting is its function, we then get the general feeling that man is born to trouble. And we ignore in this preoccupation with conscious attention how marvelously we get on. How for most of the time our physical organs are in a fantastically harmonious relationship. How our body relates by all sorts of unconscious responses to the physical environment. So that if you became aware of all the adjustment processes that are being managed spontaneously

[45:33]

and subconsciously by your organism, you would find yourself in the middle of great music. And of course this occasionally happens when the mystical experience is nothing other than becoming aware of your true physical relationship to the universe. And you're amazed, thunderstruck by the feeling that underneath everything that goes on in this world, the fundamental thing is a state of unbelievable bliss. Well, why not? Why else would there be anything happening? Because if the game isn't worth the candle, if the universe is basically nothing but a tormented struggle, why have one? Hasn't it ever struck you that it would be much

[46:33]

simpler not to have any existence? It would require no effort. There would be no problems. So why is there anything going on? Let me say not why, but how is there anything going on? Because if it's all fundamentally a drag, I just don't see any reason for its being. Everything would have committed suicide long ago. And to be at rest. Abu bin Adham may his tribe decrease by cautious birth control and be at peace. So, we might work on this possibility then. That civilization is a mistake. And that we've taken completely the wrong track.

[47:33]

And should have left things to nature, as it were. And of course this is the same problem that is brought up in the book of Genesis. Actually, the fall of man in Genesis is his venture into technology. Because in the Bible, the Hebrew words for the knowledge of good and evil are connected with techniques. What is technically expeditious and what is not. Words connected with actually metallurgy. And to be as God, you see, when you eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and you become as God, means you think you're going to control your own life. And God says, OK, baby, you wanted to be God, you try it. But the trouble with you is you've got a one-track mind. And therefore you can't

[48:36]

be God. To be God you have to have an infinitely many-tracked mind. Which is, of course, what your brain has, you see. The brain is infinitely many-tracked, but consciousness is not, it's one-tracked. As we say, you can only think of one thing at a time. And you cannot take charge of the universe with that kind of a consciousness. Because there's too much of it. As I explained before, too many variables. And our science can take care of a few variables, or of an enormous number of variables, as in quantum mechanics, by statistical methods. As we can use statistical methods to predict that most people will live to be 65 years old, at least. But we cannot say of any given individual whether he

[49:37]

will live to 65 or not. That's what we wanted to know. But the problem is that the variables on each individual are too complicated. And we have not yet, you see, developed a science which can deal with, say, 50, 100, or 500 variable systems. It's too complicated to think about, but computers are going to help us. But, as yet, we're either on the low number or the extremely high number. And these are outside the range of the problems with which we are really concerned. That's why, for example, a lot of people have taken to using the I Ching, the Book of Changes. Because if you are tossing a coin to make your decisions, and everybody does fundamentally make their decision by tossing coins, it's better to have a 64-sided coin

[50:39]

than a 2-sided coin. The I Ching gives you 64 possibilities of approach to any given decision instead of just to yes or no. It's based on yes or no, because it's based on the yang and the yin. But in the same way that computers, digital computers, use a number system which consists only of the figures 0 and 1, out of which you can construct any number. And this was invented by Leibniz who got it from the Book of Changes. It's amazing how this book is somehow always with us. But this then is a way of arriving, of helping your own

[51:42]

multivariable brain arrive at decisions cooperating with your own mind. Because then again, after you've tossed your 64-sided coin, the oracle that you read that explains each particular hexagram in the Book of Changes is a sort of Rorschach plot. It is very laconic remarks into which everybody reads just exactly what they want to read. But that helps you make a decision by the fact that you don't really have to accept responsibility for it. See, then you can say it told me. I consulted the oracle. Same way when you go to a guru.

[52:44]

You say, my guru is very wise and he has instructed me to do this, this, that and the other. But it was you who decided on this guru. How did you know he was a good one? See, you gave him his authority because you picked him out. It always comes back to you. But we like to pretend it doesn't. But the thing is that oneself is certainly not the stream of consciousness. Oneself is everything that goes on underneath that. And of which the stream of consciousness is a mere what it has about the same relation to oneself as the bookkeeping

[53:47]

aspect of business. And if you're selling grocery, there's very little resemblance between your books and what you move over your shelves and counters. There's just a record of it. That's what our consciousness keeps. Now supposing then we work with the argument that we've made an awful mistake in bringing out civilization. And we're not going to survive. Now there are various things that can be said about this. Just as I made the joke that all stars used to be planets. One could say, well, is it such a good thing to survive? You know T.S. Eliot's

[54:49]

Waste Land where it says this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper. But some people would rather end with abandonment. Some people are stingy and they like to burn up their fire very gradually conserving the fuel and just keep enough heat going so that they get a long time. Other people prefer a kind of a potlatch situation where they have a huge whiz-bang fire that goes out in a hurry. Now who is right? Do you want to be a tortoise? You know, the tortoise that lives for hundreds of years but drags itself around all the time very slow, slow, slow song. Or would you rather be some little hummingbird? Yeah, yeah, a hummingbird.

[55:50]

That's the thing. See, that dances and lives at a terrific pace. Well, you can't say one is right and the other is wrong. And so there may be nothing wrong with the idea of a world, a civilization, a culture that lives at a terrific increasing pace of change and then explodes. That may be perfectly okay. My point is that if we could reconcile ourselves to the notion that that is perfectly okay, then we would be less inclined to push that button. It's the anxiety. If you cannot stand anxiety and if you cannot simply be content for issues to be undecided, you are liable to push the button because you say, let's get it over with.

[56:51]

People who have trouble with the law and are manipulating the courts in one way or another always learn to delay everything, put it off, introduce legal red tape, manage to like Ralph Ginsberg who has been in trouble because of the Hear Us magazine. He's got a very smart attorney who simply, although the case has gone to the Supreme Court, he's simply mumbling away and putting up all sorts of things so that he keeps Ralph out of jail. And that's life. Life is simply a way of postponing death. And that's what we have to do. So then, let's say, well, civilization wasn't really a mistake. It was just as natural

[57:57]

as anything else. A being that exists under conditions of illusion that imagines that it's controlling its own destiny, that thinks it's capable of improving itself, and by virtue of this illusion destroys itself rapidly in an interesting way. You see? Let's suppose that's what we are. But you still come back to the point that you are spending an enormous amount of energy in doing things that can't be done. That is to say, tugging at the bootstraps. And if you find this frustrating, if you really don't like it, you don't have to do it. You can stop.

[58:58]

And the paradox is that when you stop, you become happier and more energetic. People always wondered about the Calvinists, because Calvinists believed that from the beginning of time God had foreordained who was to be saved and who was to be damned. And you have no choice. Predestination. Predestination. Therefore, the logical assumption would be that people who believed in predestination would be, they say, fair. They're just sitting waits. There's nothing we can do about it. But Calvinists were quite other than that. They were very energetic people. Too energetic. Very, very vigorously moral.

[60:06]

They gave us the Protestant ethic. But they believed in predestination. Because, you see, they simply had all the psychic energy which Catholics were getting, were dissipating upon wondering whether they were saved or not. See? And being in a state of fear and trembling about, have I made the right decision? Did I act rightly? And so on. So they didn't have as much energy as the Calvinists. So then in this day and age, we say in the line of thought of psychiatry or of most schools of psychotherapy, it's important that people who believe in

[61:04]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ