Alan Watts - What did you forget? | Текст песни

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• Alan Watts
• What did you forget?

The web of life; let me try from the first to indicate the point that we are aiming at. The point is this, that human consciousness is at the same time being a form of awareness, sensitivity, and understanding; it's also a form of ignorance. The ordinary everyday consciousness that we have leaves out more than it takes in. And because of this it leaves out things that are terribly important. It leaves out things that would if we did know them a lay our anxieties and fears and horrors. And if we could extend our awareness to include those things that we leave out we would have a deep interior peace. Because we would all know the one thing that you mustn't know--according to the rules of our particular social game--the one thing you mustn't know, that is not allowed, that's really the low-down of life, and the low-down means the real dirt on things. But the low-down is also what's profound, what is mysterious, what is in the depths; and there is something left out. But our everyday consciousness screens this out in the same way as when you say you have weaving. When one weaves the back will be the obverse pattern of the front. Now the world is like that.
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Our sense organs are selective. They pick out certain things, they are receptive. For example, we have a small small band of what you may call a spectrum of light, of sound, of tactile sensations and so on to which the human organism is sensitive. We know that outside that small band there is a huge range of vibrations to which we have built instruments that are sensitive; things like cosmic rays, ultra violet rays, gamma rays, x-rays, and so on. They are all outside the band of our spectrum. And obviously, there are things outside the range of our instruments. We may build new instruments some day which will evoke, bring into our consciousness other orders of vibration altogether. But as yet we don't know about them.

So you can imagine the Universe is a vast vast system of vibrations. And it has infinite possibilities. All these vibrations are like strings on a harp. And the harps that the angels are supposed to play in heaven are really this huge possibility--see when you play the harp you select strings, you don't play all the strings; it's stupid to run your fingers through all of them back and forth, back and forth. What you do is you pick out with your fingers certain strings/notes and these make the patterns. But at the same time as you pick out, you reject what you don't pick out. But it's all there constituting a fundamental continuity. The kind of continuity of the thread as they go up to the back of the woven material and make up the obverse of the pattern on the front.

Now, the question that is absolutely basic for all human beings is: what have you left out? You see, you are focused on certain things that constitute what you call everyday reality. Look, you single out people and you see them sitting, sitting, sitting, all around, and you know there are things that are really there. And then behind the people are the houses or whatever we live in, and the Earth, and behind all that the sky, and so on. But we see the world as a collection of rather disjointed events and things. And I might say to you as you came in here today: "Now, my goodness you all forgot something; what did you forget?" And you think, "my goodness did I put my pants on, wear a sweater, my glasses, a wig, etc.." No, no, it's none of that; it's something you forgotten, everybody has forgotten something. You left it out, you just missed it. And so, I can bring this out (what you forgotten) if I ask you: "Who Are You?" You say "well my name is Paul Jones" or whatever your name happens to be. I say No, no, no, don't give me that stuff. "Who Are You REALLY?" And you think "I'm just me! I don't want to hear that nonsense, you're playing a trick on me!" I say "Really deep down who are you?" you say "I don't know." Well that's the thing to find out. That's the thing that's been forgotten. See, that's the underside of the tapestry; the thing that's been left out.

Because what we are carefully taught to ignore is that everyone of us fundamentally, deep deep inside, let's put it that way, is an act of, a function of, a performance of, a manifestation of, The Works. The whole blinking Cosmos with all its galaxies and forever and ever and ever and whatever it is beyond that. What you might call God in the Western tradition or Brahman in Hindu philosophy or Tao in Chinese. Everyone of us is really that but we are pretending we aren't. And we are pretending with tremendous skill and deception.