Watts The Wisdom Of Insecurity 3c411s
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by ALAN
yv. WAl�TS
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Copyri1�t. 1951, by Pantheon ac.,
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All right, racned under lntanational and Pan-Amerk:an Copyright Convmt:ion1. Publilhed in New York by Pantheon Book1, a division of Random Hou.e, Inc. and in Canada by Random Houae of Canada l,haited, Toronto. •
Ma,au/«tu,wt ht the Vmud S,.,a o/ dnaerb
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Preface
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CON1'ENTS
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The Age of Anxiety Pain and Time
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9 15 19 59
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The Great Strearn
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IY The Wisdom of the lk>dy ..
On Being Aware
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YI The Marvelous Moa1ent
Creative Morality
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lleligioo R.eriewed
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YU The Tnnsfo1111ation. of Life· YID
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PB!EFACE •
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I haw always been fAscinated "1 the In, of f'evnsetJ eDon. Sometimes I call it the .,bacltwards law.• When ,au try to stay on the su,tace of the watn, 1ou sinlt; but when ,ou try to sinl 1•e>U /loal. When 1ou hold 1our bf'ealh 1ou lose it which immediatel1 calls to mind an ancient and much negle.,ted sa,ing, Whosoevn would ave his soul shall lose it..• . This bool is an expl01ralion of this In, in relation to man's quest for psycholo,gical securit1, and to his eDons to find spiritual and in,t�llectual cntaint1 in religion . and philosoph,. It is umitten in the conviction that no theme could be mOTe app�opriate in a time when human li/e seems to be so peculi:arl1 insecure and uncertain. II maintains that this inseci,rit1 is the result of trying to be ucure, and that, contrariiwise, salvation and sanit1 con sist in the most radical rercognition thal we haw no wa, of saving ourselves. This begins to sounci lilte something from Alice Through the is00king Glass, of which this bool is a sort of philosophical equiwu'ent. For the f'eadn will fre quentl1 find himself in • topsy-tun,y world in which the nonnal ordn o/ things se,ems to be completel1 revnsed, and common sense tume,d inside out and upside down. · · Those who have read sonae of m1 foman bools, such as Behold the Spirit and Tl1e Supreme Identity, will find .things thal seem to be total contradictions o/ much that l haw said be/ore. This, however, is true onl1 in some • • . I 11
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minoT respects. FOT I h"roe discovered that the essence and crux of what I was trying to say in those boolts was seldom understood; the· frameworlt. and the context of my thought often hid tht� meaning. My intention hne is to approach the same rriaeaning from entirely diDerent ;remises, and in ternas which do not con/we thought with the multitude of in�elevant associations_ which time and tradition have hung.upon them. In those boolts I was conce,,aed to vindicate certain ;,inciples of religion, l>hilosophy, and metaphysic b1 • reinterpreting them. This was, I thinlt., lilt.e putting legs on a snalte-unneces.sa,y and con/wing, becawe onl1 doubt/ ul truths need d,e/ense. This boolt., however, is in the spirit of the Chiniese sage T-00-tzu, that -master of the law· of reversed eD01rt1 who declared that those who jwti/y themselves do nc,t convince, that to lcnow truth one mwt get rid of lt.notA1Jledge, and that nothing is more powerful and creative tla1an emptiness-from which men .. shrinlt.. Here, then, m:, aim is to show-baclt.wards /ashion that those essiential realities of religion and metaphysic are vindicated in doing without them, and manifested in being destroyed. It is my haptr, duty tio aclt.nC'wledge that the frtepara tion of this boolt. has bt�en made possible by the gener osity of the Foundation established by the late Franlt.lin .. ]. Matchette of New Yo,rlc, a man who devoted much of his life to the ;roblenas 1of science and metaphysic, being one of those somewhat rare bwineu men who are not wholly absorbed in the vicious circle of malt.ing money to malt.e money to malt.e· money. The Matchette Foundation is the,:e/OTe dedicated to the pursuit of metaph,si•
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cal studies, and, needle�, to sa1, it is to me a sign of in• sight and imagination oi,a their part that they have been willing to interest thenuelves in so "contrary• an at>roach to metaphysical .ltnowledge.
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San Francisco.
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I . T H E A G E: O F A N X I E T Y •
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BY ALL OUTWARD APPU,RANCES OUR LIFE IS A SPAlllt .of light between one et,emal darkness and another. Nor is the interval bet�1een these two nights an un- • clouded day, for the mc•re we are able to feel pleasure, the more we arc:� vulnerable to pain-and, . whether in background or foreground, the pain is always with us. We hav·e been accustomed to make this existence worth-whitle by the belief that there is · more than the outward ,appearance-that we live for a future beyond. this lifie here. For the outward ap pearance docs not seem to make sense. If living is to end in pain, inco1nple:teness, and nothingness, it seems a cruel and futile: experience for beings who • are born to reason, hope�, create, and love. Man, as a being of sense, wants hils life to make sense, and he has found it hard to believe that it does so unless · there is more than what he sees-unless there is an eternal order and an eternal life behind the uncer tain and momentary ex1>erience of life-and-death. I may not, perhap.1, be forgiven for introducing ·sober matten with a frivolous notion, bu,t the prob lem of making sense out of the seeming chaos of ex. pc:riencc reminds me ol f my childish desire to send • someone a parcel of water in the mail. The recipient . unties the string, releasing the deluge in his lap. But •
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THE WJSD01M OF INSECURITY
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the game would nevci� work, ·since it is irritatingly impossible to wrap a11ad tic a pound of water in a paper package. There 4lre kinds of paper which won't distintegrate when wet, but the trouble is to get the ,vater itself into any m.1nageable shape, and to tie the string without buntin1{ the bundle. • The more one studic!S attempted solutions to prob lems in politia and economics, in art, philosophy, and religion, the more one has the impression of extremely gifted people ,wearing out their i�genuity at the impossible and fultilc task of trying to get the · water of life into neat .lnd perananent packages. There are many re,tSOns why this should be par· ticularly evident to a Jf)Crson living today. We kno,v .. so much about history:, about all the pack.ages which have been tied and wh,ich have duly come apan. We know so much detail a:bout the problems of life that they resist easy simplification, and seem more com plex and shapeless th.in ever. Funher111ore, science and industry have so increased both the tempo and · the violence of living that our packages seem to come apart faster and faster 1every day. · There is, then, the feeling that we live in a time of unusual insecurity. In the past hundred years so many long-established traditions have broken down . -traditions of family :and social life, of government, of the economic order1, and of religious belief. As the - years go by, there see1n to be fewer �nd fe,ver rocks to which we can holcl, fewer things ,vhich we can . �
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THE AGE OF ANXIETY
regard as absolutely righ1 t and true, and fixed for all _ time. - To some this is a welcome release from the re straints of moral, social, and spiritual dogma. To ot'1en it is a dangerous and terrifying breach with reason and sanity, tending to plunge human life into hopeless chaos. To mmit, perhaps, the immediate sense of release has give11 a brief exhilaration, to be follo,ved by the deepest ;lnxiety. For if all is relative, • ,. if life is a to11ent without: fo1111 or goal in whose flood absolutely nothing save: change itself can last, it seems to be something i11l which there is .. no future" and thus no hope. Human beings appear· to be happy just so long as they have a future to wh: ich they can look forward whether it be a ..good tin1e" tomorro,v or an everlast- ing life beyond the grav«�. For various reasons, more and more people find it ]�ard to believe in the latter. _ On tlae other hand, the ffo1111er has the disadvantage that when this ..good tirne" arrives, it is difficult to enjoy it to the full ,vith()•Ut some promise of more to come. If happiness al,va1rs depends on something ex_ pected in the future, we :ilre chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, uotil the future, and our selves, vanish into the ab,yss of death. As a matter of fact, ()>Ur age is no more insecure than any other. Povert)', disease, ,var, change, and death are nothing ne,v. l: n the best of times ..security" • has never been more th:iln temporary and apparent. •
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THE W�J� OF INSECURl'IY •
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But it has been possible to make the insecurity of human life ab:le by belief in unchanging things beyond the rcalch of calamity-in God, in man's immortal soul, and in the government of the universe by eternal lawn of right. · Today such convicti<>ns are rare, even in religious circles. There is no levcel of society, there must even .. be few individuals, to11ched by modem education, where there is not somt: trace of the leaven of doubt. . It is simply self-evident: that during the past century the authority of science has taken the place of the' authority of religion in the popular imagination, and · . that scepticism, at least in spiritual things, has be come more general tha1ri belief. The decay of belief has come about through the honest doubt, the carc:ful and fearless thinking ot highly intelligent me11l of science and philosophy. Moved by a zeal and r-everence for facts, they have tried to see, understan
f their miracles in this world has been the disappearaLDce of the world-to-come, and one is inclined to ask. tlile old question, ..What shall ·it � profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his � soul?" Logic, intcllige1r1ce, and reason are satisfied, but the heart goes hunigry. For the bean has learned to feel that we live l:or the future. Science may, .. , •
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slowly and uncertainly, ��ve us a better future for a : few yean. And then, for c�ch of us, it will, end. It will '11 end. However long J?<>Stponed, �erything co�:. _posed must deco�posc. . Despite some opinionn to the contrary, this is still the general view of scientce. In literary and religious circles it is now often su.pposed that the conflict be- · tween science and belief is a thing.of the past. There arc even some rather wuihful scientists who feel that when modem physia al�andoned a crude atomistic materialism, the chief n:asons for this conftict were removed. But this is not .at all the case. In most of our g1 eat centen . of leaminig, those who make. it their business to study the fulll implications of science and its methods arc as far as ever from what they understand as a religious point of view. Nuclear physia and rc�lativity have, it is true, done away with the old materialism, but they now give us a view of the universe in which there is even less - room for ideas of any .absolute purpose or design. The modem scientist is not so naive as to deny God because he cannot be fo1und with a telescope, or the soul because it is not re,,ealed by the scalpel. He has merely noted that the idea of God is logically un necessary. He even doubts that it has any meaning. It docs not help him to exi,lain anything which he can not explain in some othc�r. and simpler, way. . . He argues that if ever;ything ,,,hich happens is said to be under the provide;ncc and contr�l of God, this
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actually amounts to saying nothing. To say that . everything is governed and created by God is like saying, ..Everything is tip,"-,vhich means noth�ng at all. The notion does n()t help us to make any veri6- predictions, and �K>, from the scientific standable point, is of no .value l1thatsoever. Scientists may be right in this respect. 1'"hey may· be ,vrong. It is not our purpose here to a11�e this point. We need only . · note that such scepticis1rn has immense inftl1ence, and sets the prevai�irig mood of the age. What science has saiicl, in sum, is this: We do not, and in all probability cannot, know ,vhether God exists. Nothing that �,e do know suggests that he does, and all the argum,ents ,vhich claim to prove his existence are found to be ,vithout logical meaning. . There is nothing, inde:!ed, to prove that there is no God, but the burden 4>f proof rests ,vith those who propose the idea. If, the sci�tists would say, you believe in God, you mu!;t do so on purely emotional grounds, ,vithout basi�s in logic or fact. Practically • speaking, this may amo,unt to atheism. Theqretically, it is simple agn0$ticisrn. For it is of the essence of scientific honesty that you do not pretend to le.now what you do not lc.no,v, and of the essence of scientific· method that you do riot employ hypotheses ,vhich · � · , cannot be tested. The immediate rest:alts of this honesty have been deeply unsettling and depressing. For man see1ns to be unable to live witli,out myth, without the belief .
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that the routine and d1rudgery, the pain and fear of this life have some me41ning and goal in the future. At once new myths co1 me into being-political and economic myths with extravagant promises of the best of futures in the present world. These myths give the individual a certain sense,, of meaning by making him pan of a �vast social effort, in which he loses something of his <>wn emptiness and loneliness. Yet the very violence c,f these political religions betrays the anxiety bent!ath them-for they arc but men huddl�ng togethe1r and shouting to give them selves courage in the d,1rk. Once there is the s1 uspicion that a religion is a myth, its power has g-one. It may be necessary for man to have a myth, t•ut he cannot self
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THE WISDOM OF INSECURITY •
It is for this reason tl�at most of the cu11cnt return to orthodoxy in some iintcllectual circles has a rather hollow ring. So much c,f it is more a belief in bcliev. ing than a belief in G•:>d. The contrast between the insecure, neurotic, e
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THE AGE OF ANXIEIY
However much they ma1, try to bury it in the depths of their minds, they are'. well aware that these joys ... are both uncertain and brief. This has two results. On the one hand, there is the anxiety that one may be miaing something, so that the mind flits nervously and gaecdily from one F•leasure to another, without finding rest and satisfactiion in any. On the other, the &ustration of having al�rays to punuc a future good in a tomo11ow which n(ever comes, a�d in a world where everything must disintegrate, gives men an attitude of ..What's the ,�se anyhow?" ... C:Onsequcntly our ag.: is one of &ustration, anx iety, agitation, and add.iction ·to ..dope." Somehow we must grab what we can while we can, and drown out the realization that 1the whole thing is futile and meaningless. This ..dop:" we call our high standard of living, a violent and complex stimulation of the senses, which makes theun progressively less sensitive and thus in need of yet ll[lOrc violent stimulation. We .:l c1 ave distraction a ptnorama · of . sights, sounds, thrills, and titillations :into which as much as pos sible must be aowded ira the shortest possible time. To keep up this ..sta111dard" most of us are willing to put up with lives that: consist largely in doing jobs that are a bore, earning 1the means to seek relief &om the tedium by intervals c>f hectic and expensive pleas . sure. These intcmls ane supposed to be the real living, the real purpose seirved by the necessary evil of . work. Or we imagine that the justification of such
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work is the rearing •t>f a family to go on doing the same kind of thing, iin order to rear another family . -=• • . and so ad infiniirum. . This is no caricatu1re. It is the simple reality of mil lions of lives, so com1monplace that we need hardly dwell upon the details, save to note the anxiety and &ust1ation of those �rho put up with it, not knowing what else to do. • But what are we t,o do? The alternatives seem to be two. The fint is, somehow or other, to discover a new myth, or convin(cingly resuscitate an old one. If science cannot fwove there is no God, we can try to live and act on the bare chance that he may exist after all. There seems to be nothing to lose in such a gamble, for if death iis the end, we shall never know that we have lost. llut, obviously, this will never amount to a vital faitth, for it is really no more than to say, ..Since the whole thing is futile anyhow, let's pretend it isn't." Th•� second is to try grimly to face the. fact that life is ..a tale told by an idiot," and make · of it what we can, ]letting science and technology serve us as well as they may in our journey &om nothing to nothing. · . Yet these are not tli,e only solutions. We may begin by granting ·all the agnosticism of a critical science. We may it,. &anikly, that we have no scientific grounds for belief ini God, in penonal immortality, . or in any absolutes. i,ve may refrain altogether &om trying to bcl�ieve, taking life just as it is, and no more• •
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From this point of departure there . is yet another way of life that requires neith.er myth nor despair. But it . requires a complete revo,lution in our ordinary, ha bitual ways of thinking a11d feeling. The extraordinary thing about this revolution is that it reveals the truth behind the so-called myths of traditional religion and metaphysic. It reveals, not beliefs, but act1ial realiti•es corresponding-in an un expected way-to the idc4lS of God and of eternal life. There arc reasons for SUJ>posing that a revolution of this kind was the originaJl source of some of the main religious ideas, standing in relation to them as real common error ity to symbol and ca11sc t,o effect. The • of ordinary �eligious pra. cticc is to mistake the symbol for the reality, to loo,k at the finger pointing the way and then to suck. it lfor comfon rather than fol low it. Religious ideas a.re like words-of little use, and often misleading, ur1less you know tl1c concrete realities to which they r•efer. The word ..water" is a useful means of commu11ication amongst those who know water. The same ils true of the word and the "idea called ..God." · I do not, at this point, wish to seem mysterious or to be making claims to ..suret knowledge." The real ity which corresponds to1 ..God" and "eternal life" is honest, above-board, plalin, and open for all. to see. But the seeing requires �l correction of mind, just as .. dear vision sometimes 1�cquires a co11cction of the · eyes. . ·
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The d iscovery of t:his reality is hindered rather than helped by belief., whether one believes in God or believes in atheisml. We must here make a dear distinction between b4�lief and faith, beca•1sc, in gen eral practice, belief has come to mean a state of mind which .il. �most the 01,posite of faith. Belief, as I use the word here, is the i1nsistence that the truth is what · one would ..lief' or wrish it to be. The believer will open his mind to 'the truth on condition that it fits in with his preconcei,,cd ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an u.nrescrved opening of the mind to the truth, whateve1r it may tum out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; Jt is a plunge into tfic- llD• Belief ·clings, but faith-lets go. In this seme know�. • - of the word, faith is 1the essential vinue of science, and likewise of any rel igion that is not self-deception. Most of us believe in order to feel secure, in order to make our individual lives seem valuable and mean ingful. Belief has thlllS become an attempt to bang on to life, to grasp andl keep it for one's own. But you cannot undentand lilfe and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. In.deed, you cannot grasp it, juat as you cannot walk o·ff with a river in a bucket. If you try to capture ru.nning water in a bucket, it ii clear that you do not 1L1ndentand it and that you will always be disappointf::d, for in the bucket the water does not run. To "ha,,e" running water you must let go of it and let it run. The same is true of life and of . God. •
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The present phase of h.uman thought and history .. is especially ripe for thu, ..letting go." Our minds have been prepared for it by this very colJapsc of the beliefs in which we hav•: sought security. From a . point of view strictly, if strangely, in accord with certain religious traditic•ns, this disappearance of the old rocks and absolute:s is no calamity, but rather a blessing. It almost com1pcls us to face reality with open minds, and you can 4Dnly know God through an open �ind just as you ca111 only sec the sky through a · dear window. You will r.aot sec the sky if you have covered the glass with blu.e paint. But ..religious" people who resist the scraping of the paint &om the glass., who regard the scientific attitude with fear and 11t1istrust, and confuse faith • with dinging to certain i
f belie·f, of any clinging to . a future life for one's o,m, agd of any attempt to . f cscapc from finitudc and mortality, is areglllar and Ji}or·,1�ili�ge in the way c>f the spirit. Indeed, this is actually such a .. first pri11ciple" of the spiritual life . that it should have been o,bvious &om the beginning, and it seems, after all, su.rprising that learned thco . logians should adopt anything but a · cooperative at titude towards the criticall philosophy of science. Surely it is old news that salvation comes only •
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through the death of lthe human for1i1 of God. But it was not, perhaps, so easy to see that God's human fo1111 is not simply th1e historic Christ, but also the images, ideas, a11d beliefs in the Absolute to which man clings in his min.d. Here is the full sense of the commandment, "Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor thf� likeness of anything that is in 'heaven above; • . • . 1lhou shalt not bo,v down to ,J\hem, nor ,vorship thC!�m." · Ab\ To discover the ul1timate Reality of life the • so�ute, the eternal, C�od-you must cease to try to grasp it in the forms of idols. These idols are not just · crude images, such as. the mental picture of God as · an old gentleman on :a golden throne. They are our beliefs, our cherishe�l preconceptions of the truth, which block the unrteserved opening of mind and heart to reality. The legitimate use of images- is to . express the truth, not. to possess it. This was always re,cognized in the great Oriental traditions such as Bu4:fdhism, Vedanta, and Taoism. The principle has no1t been unknown to Christians, for it was implicit in t:he whole story and teaching of Christ. His life was firom the beginning a complete acceptance and emb1c1cing of insecurity. "The foxes have holes, and the IJ•irds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath 1not ,vhere to lay his head." The principle is yet more to the point if Christ is regarded as divine in tthe most orthodox sense-as the unique and s�cial in,camation of God. For the basic .. . •
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theme of the Christ-story is that this "express image" of God becomes the source of life in the very act of being destroyed. To the ,disciples who tried to cling to his divinity in the fo1:m of his human individu ality he explained, .. Unl«� a grain of corn fall into .. the ground and die, it re11nains alone. But if it dies, it • brings forth much fruit." In the same vein he warned · thein, ··Jt is expedient fo:r you that I go away, for if I go not away the Paracle�te (the Holy Spirit) cannot • �...e unto you." ,. These words arc mo1·e than ever applicable to Christians, and speak exa:ctly to the whole condition of our times. For we hav«� never actually undentood .. the revolu�ionary sense bc:neath them-the incredible truth that what religion calls the vision of God is found in giving up any belief in the idea of God. By .the same law of reversed eflon, we discover the in • finite-" and the ..absolute," not by straining to escape I from the finite and relative world, but by the most complete acceptance of i1ts limitations. Paradox as it may seem, we likewise find life meaningful only when ,ve have see11 that it is without purpose, and know the .,mystery of tli1e universe" only when we are convinced that we lc.raow nothing about it at all. • · The ordinary agnostic, r,elativist, or materialist fails to reach this point because he does not follow bis line of thought consisten1tly to its end-an end which ., . ,vould be the surprise· (]1f his life. All too soon he abandons faith, openness to reality, and lets his mind 11
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harden into doctrine. The discovery of the mystery, the wonder beyond alll wooden, needs no belief, for we can only believe ir1 what we have a.lready known, preconceived, and im:agined. But this is beyond any imagination. We have but to open the eyes of the mind wide enough, airid "the. truth will ouL" -
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TIMES ALMOST ALL 40F US ENVY THE ANIMALS.
· They suffer and die, but they do not seem to make a ..problem" ()( it. Their· lives seem· to have so few complications. They eat when they are hungry and sleep when they are tire1d, and instinct rather than _ anxiety seems to govern their few preparations for the future. As far as we can judge, every animal is � busy with what he is rlloing at the moment that it never enten his head to alSk whether life has a mean ing or a future. For the animal, happiness consists in enjoying life in the immediate present-not in the · assurance- that there is a whole future of joys ahead of . him • . This is not just becaw� the animal is a relatively insensitive clod. Often e11lough his eyesight, his sense � of hearing and smell, an� far more acute than oun, and one can hardly doubt that he enjoys his food ... and sleep immensely. Despite his acute senses, he bas, however, a somewt.aat insensitive brain. It is more specialized than oun, for which reason he is a aeature of habit; he is 11nable to reason and make abstractions, and has extre111ely limited powen of memory and prediction. Unquestionably the sc!nsitive human brain adds • immeasurably to the ric:hness of life. Yet for this ,
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we pay dearly, because the ·increase in over-all sen. sitivity makes us pec1Jliarly ·vulnerable. One can be less vulnerable by bc�coming less sensitive-more of a stone and less of a 1nan and so less capable of enjoyment. Sensitivity 1requires a high degree of soft ·ness and fragility e·yeballs, eardrums, taste buds, and nerve ends culnainating in the highly delicate organism of the braiu1. These arc not only soft and fragile, but also perishable. There seems to be no effective way of decr,easing the delicacy and perish ability of living tissu1c without also decreasing its · · vitality and sensitivity. If we are to have intense pleasures, we must also be liable to intense pains. The pleasure we love, and the pain we hate, b1�t it seems impossible to have the for111cr without t.he latter. Indeed, it looks as if the two mwt in somte way alternate, for continuous .. pleasure is a stimulu!1 that must either pall or be inc1 eased. And the i111crease will either harden the sense buds with its &iiction, or tum into pain. A con sistent diet of rich 1food either destroys the appetite or makes one sic:k.. To the dcg1cc, thc·n, that life is found good, death must be proponiona1tcly evil. �-more we arc able to love another penon and t� enjoy h1S compinL_ \ lithe greater must be �>urgr1ef_ at his death, or in sep aration. The further the po,ver of consciousness ven tures out into expcr·icnce, the more is the price it •
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must pay for its knowledge. It is undentandablc that we should sometimes ask ,whether life has not gone · too far in this direction, wlhether ..the game is worth the candle," and whether it might not be better to tum the counc of evoluti<>n in the only other possi ble direction-backwards, Ito the relative peace of the animal, the vegetable, and. the mineral. • Something of this kind is often attempted. There is the woman who, havinit suffered some deep emo- . • tional injury in love or mtarriage, vows never to let another man play on her jfeelings, anuming the role of the hard and bitter spinster. Almost more com mon is the sensitive boy �1ho learns in school to en crust himself for life in tllte shell of the ..tough-guy" attitude. AJ an adult he plays, in self-defen�, the role of the Philistine, to ·whom all intellectual and emotional culture is wom1anish and ..sissy." Carried • to its final extreme, the l()Jgical end of this type of re action to life is suicide. Tlhe hard-bitten kind of person is always, as it were, a partial suicide; some of himself is already. dead.,, If, then, we are to be f1lllly human and fully alive and aware, it seems that ·we must he · willing to. suf-.__.., J�out such willingness there ' �fc _ ! for pleasures. Wit our \ can be no growth in the intensity of consciousness. Yet, generally speaking, ·we are not willing, and it _ ·mlay be thought strange t:o suppose �at we can be. For ..nature in us.. so rc:'.bels against pain that the
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ve1y notion of ..willingness" to put up with it beyond a certain poir.at may appear impossible and meaningless. U ndcr these circutmstanccs, the life that we live is a contradiction an.d a conflict. Beca•ase conscio\,,. ness mwt involve lx>th pleasure and pain, to strive for pleasure to the e:xclusion of pain is, in effect, to · strive for the loss of: consciousness. Because such a loss is in principle the same as death, this means that the more we struggl�� for life (as pleasure), the more we are actually killi11g what we love• . Indeed, this is the common attitude of man to so much that he loves. For the greater pan of human activity is designed to make pe111aanent those ex• pericnces and joys 1vhich arc only lovable bcca11se they are changing. �fusic is a delight bcca11se of its rhythm and flow. Yet the moment you a11est the · flow and prolong a 1note or chord beyond its time, the rhythm is destrc,ycd. Because life is likewise a flowing process, cha11gc and death are its necessary parts. To work for daeir exclusion is to work against life. However, the simJple experiencing of alternating pain and pleasure is, by no means the bean of the human problem. TI1e reason that we want life to mean something, th.at we seek God or eternal life, is not merely that ,ve� are trying to get away &om an immediate expericnc:e of pain. Nor is it for any such ... •
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reason that we auume alttitudes and roles as habits of perpetual self-defense.. The .real problem docs not come &om any momentary sensitivity to pain, bu� from our marvelous po,wers of memory and fore. sight-in shon &om our· consciousness of time. For the animal to be l!tappy it is enough that this moment be enjoyable. ]But man is hardly satisfied with this at all. He is mtach more concerned to have enjoyable memories an.d expectations - especially the latter. With these ansured, he can put up with an extremely miserable present. Without this u aurance, he can be extre1rnely miserable in · the midst of immediate physical pleasure. . .. Here is a person who, knows that in two wceb' time he has to undergo :a surgical operation. In the meantime he is feeling no physical pain; he has plenty to cat; he is surr,ounded by &iends and hu man affection; he is doi11g work that is nor111ally of great interest to him. B11t his power to enjoy these · things is taken away by c:onstant dread. He is insen sitive to the immediate realities around him. His mind is preoccupied wit:h something that is �ot yet here. It is not as if he �,ere thinking about it in a practical way, trying to decide whether he should , have- the operation or nc>t, or making plans to take care of his family and �lis affairs if he should die. These decisions have aln�ady been made. Rather, he is thinking about the op:ration in an entirely futile
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way, which both ruirus his present enjoyment of life and contributes nothi1ng to the solution of any prob lem. But he cannot he�lp himself. . Thia is the typical human problem. The object of dread may not be ;Ln operation in the immediate future. It may be the problem of next month's rent, of a threatened war o,r social disaster, of being able to save enough for old age, or of .death at the last. · This "spoiler of the p»rcsent" may not even be a fu. ture dread. It may IJ� something out of the past, some memory of an iinjury, some aime or indiscre tion, which haunts th«� present with a sense of resent ment or guilt. The pc,wer of memories and expecta tions is such that for· _most human beings the past and the future are n•:>t as real, but more real than the present. The prcsc�nt cannot be lived happily un- . less .the past has been "cleared up" and the future is bright with promise. There can be no dc>ubt that the power to remem ber and predict, to nuke an ordered sequence out of a helter-skelter ch:aos of disconnected moments, is a wonderful develo,pment of sensitivity. In a way it is the achievemen1t of the human brain, giving man the most extrao1·dinary powen of survival and adaptation to life. Bttt the way in which we gener ally use this power is :apt to destroy all its advantages. For it is of little use to us to be able to and predict if it mak�:s us unable to live fully in the . . present. . . •
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What is the use of pla11ning to be able to eat next week unless I can really enjoy the meals when they come? If I am so busy planning how to eat next week that I cannot fully enjo�� what I am eating . now, I will be in the same preclicament when next week's meals become "now." . If my happiness at this; moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this p1resent. I shall still be · dimly aware of the present wtaen the good things that I - have been expecting coniie to . For I shall have for,ned a habit of look.irag behind and ahead, mak ing it difficult for me to clttend to the here and now: If, then, my awareness otf the past and future makes me less aware of the prcs«�nt, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually liv1ing in the real world. After all, the future is, quite meaningless and unimportant unless, sooner· or later, it is going to be come the present. Thus to plan for a future which is not going to become pt-esent is hardly more·absurd than to plan for a future which, when it comes to '._ ........, · me, will find me "absen.t," looking fixedly over its shoulder instead of into i.ts face. . This kind of living illl the fantasy of expectation , rather than the reality CJ•f the present is the special uouble of those business men who live entirely to � make money. So many people of wealth undentand much more about maki:ng and saving money than ing and enjoyi11g it. They fail to live be-
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ca11se they are always preparing to live. Instead of earning a living they are mostly earning an earning, and thus when the time comes to relax they are un able to do so. Many ll ..successful" man is bored and miserable when he f1etires, and returns to his work only to prevent a you1nger man from taking his place. From still another point of view the way in which we 11se memory and Jprediction makes us less, rather than more, adaptablei to life. If to enjoy even an en joyable present we :must have the assurance of a happy future, we ar·e ..£!Ying fQr the moon." We have no such assuranc:e. The best predictions are still matters of probability rather than certainty, and to the best of our knol\rledge every one of us is going to suffer and die. If,, then, ,ve cannot live happily without an assured future, we are certainly not adapted to living in al finite world whett, despite the best plans, accid�nts will happen, and where death . comes at the end. � This, then, is the h1uman problem: there is a price ' to be paid for eyery inc1ease in consciousness. We cannot be more sensiitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to palin. By ing the past we can plan for the future. But the ability to plan · for pleasure is offset by the "ability" to dread pain and to fear the unknlOWD. Furthe11nore, the growth of an acute sense of the past and the future gives us a co11espondingly di1n sense of f:he present. In other words, we seem to �each a point where the advan.
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tages of being conscious are outweighed by its disad vantages, where extrem1e sensitivity makes ua �n adaptable. Under these ciraimsULnccs we feel in conftict with our own bodies and the world around them, and it is consoling to be able 1:0 think that in this contra dictory world we are b11t "strangen and pilgrims." For if our desires are out of accord with anything that the finite world can offer, it might seem that our nature is not of th�s world, that our hearts are made, not for the finite:�, but for infinity. The ducontent of our souls would appear to be the sign and · acal of their divinity. But does the desire fc,r something prove that the thing exists? We know that it does not necessarily do so at all. It may be consoling to think that we are citizens of another world than this, and that after our exile upon eanh we may return to the true home of our bean's desire. But if we are citizens of this world, and if there can be no final satisfaction of the soul's discontent, has not nature, in bringing fonh man, made a seric,us mistake? For it would seem tha.t, in man, life is in hopeless conflict with itself. To be happy, we must have what we c.annot have. In ma1ri, nature has conceived de sires which it is impossib�le to satisfy. To drink more fully of the fountain of p,leasure, it has brought forth capacities which make 11�n the more susceptible to pain. It has given us the power to control the future
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but a little-the price� of which is the &ustration of • knowing that we mw1t at last go down in defeat. If we find this absurd, this is only to say that nature has conceived intellit{ence in us to berate itself for absurdity. Consciom:ness · seems to be nature.., in- ' genioua mode- of self..torture. Of course we do 1riot want to think that this is true. But it would IJ� easy to show that most rea soning to the contraJ1' is but wishful thinking-na ture's method of putting off suicide so that the idiocy can continue. Reaso11ing, then, is not enough. We must go deeper. We 1nmt look into this life, this na ture, which has bec�•me aware .within us, and find out whether it is really in conflict with itself, whether -it actually desires th,e security and the painleuncsa · which its individual forms can never enjoy. •
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nly to be tortured by anxiety -.... tlic!D. The conflict iis not only octwecn ourselves ... _ ,ana· the su11ounding umivenc; it is between our selves and ourselves. f4or intractable nature is both around and within us. 1fhe exasperating ..life" which is at one( lovable and 1.crishable, pleasant and pain ful, a blessing and a cu1rse, iis also the life of our own bodies It is u if we were divided into two parts. On the one hand there iis the co,nscious "I," at once intrigued and baffled, the c1catu1re who is caught in the trap. On the other hand the1:-c is "me," and "me" is a pan of nature-the waywa1·d flesh with all its concur rently beautiful and frlL1Strating limitations. "I" fan cies itself u a reasonab, le fellow, and is forever crit icizing ..me" for its pe�rvenity-for having ions which get "I" into tro1llble, for being so easily subject to painful and irriitating diseases, for having or gans that wear out, a.nid for having appetites which can never be satisfied�so designed that if you try to • . " • • 39
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allay them finally and fully in one big "b111t,• you get sick. Perhaps the most e,c:asperating thing about •me,• about nature and the ·universe, is -that it will never ·stay put." It is lilte woman who will - - -·-a -beautiful _ never be _caught, and whose very -flightiness is her_ cha1m. For the pcrisl11ability and changefulncss of the world is pan and parcel of its liveliness and lovelineu. This is why the :poets are so often at their best when speaking of cha:nge, of .. the transitoriness of human life." The beau1ty of such poetry lies in some thing more than a note of nostalgia which brings a catch in the throat.
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Our revels now are ended. These our aetms, • As I foretold you, w,ere all spirits, and · Are melted into air,, into thin air: • And, lilte the baseli·ss fabric of this vision, The cloud-cal'fJ'd tc>wers, the gorgeow palaces, • The solemn teml'le.s, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inlaerit, shall dissolve, . And, lilte this insu!•stantial pageant faded, Leave not a raclt be,,.ind.
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There is more in th1is beauty than the succession of melodious images, -and the theme of dissolution docs not simply borro,, its splendor from the things dissolved. The truth is rather that the images, though beautiful in tbtemselvcs, come to life in the act of vanishing. The poet takes away their static solidity, and turns a beauty which would otherwise •
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be only statuesque and architectural into music, which, no sooner than it is sounded, dies away. The towen, palaces, and te1111plcs become vibrant, and break from the exceu o:f life within them. To be ing is to live; to remain and continue is to die. .. Unleu a grain of com &lll into the ground and die; it remains alone. But if it dies, it brings fonh much &uit." For the poets have seer.a the truth that life, change, movement, and insecurity are so many names for the same thing. Here, if an,where, truth is beauty, for movement and rhythm a1�e of the essence of all things lovable. _In sculpture, arc:hitecture,. and painting the finished form stands stilJl, but even so the eye finds pleasure in the fo1111 onl�y when it contains a certain lack of symmetry, when, &ozen in stone as it may be, it looks as if it were in th.e midst of motion. Is it not, then, a stranige inconsistency and an un natural paradox that '' I" resists change in "me" and in the su11ounding universe? For change is not merely a force of destruc:tion. Every fo1m is really a · pattern of movement, arid every living thing is like the river, which, if it dici not flow out, would never have been able to ftow in. Life and death are not two opposed forces; they are simply two ways of looking at the same force, for th,e movement of change is as / much the builder as the ,destroyer. The human body lives because it is a com.plex of motions, of circula tion, respiration, and diJfCStion. To resist change, to •
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, try to cling to life, is therefore like holding your breath: if you penist you kill yourself. In thinking of ou1rselves as divided into ..I" and "me," we easily forget that consciousness also lives because it is moving. It is as much a part and product of the stream of cha1r1ge as the body and the whole natural world. If you look at it carefully, you will see . . that consciousncss-tlhe thing you call .. I"-is really a stream of experien«:es, of sensations, thoughts, and feelings in constant motion.- But because these ex. perienccs include me:mories, we have the impression that ..I" is somethin.g solid and still, like a tablet upon which life is W1riting a record. Yet the ''tablet" m1oves with the writing finger as the river Bows along ,;vith the ripples, so that memory is like a record written on water a record� not of • graven characten, b11t of wave1 stirred into motion by other waves whictl arc called sensations and facts. The difference bctwteen "I" and ..me" is largely an illusion of memory. :In truth, ..I" is of the same na ture as "me." It is part of our whole being, just as · the head is part of the� body. But if this is not realized,
· ..I" and "me," the h.ead and the body_, will feel at odds with each other·. "I," not undentanding that it · too is part of the stn�am of change, will try to make sense of the world a11d experience by attempting to fix it. We shall then ha,,e a war between consciousnca and nature, between the desire for pc111,anence and '
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the fact of flux. This wa.r must be utterly futile and &ustrating-a vicious ci:rclc-bccausc it is a conflict between two paru of ttac same thing. It must lead thought and action· int•:> circles which go nowhere faster and faster·. For wh(en we fail to sec that our life is change, we set oursel,,es against ourselves and become like Ouroboros, th,e misguided snake, who tries - to eat his own tail. Our,oboros is the perennial symbol of all vicious circles, of every attempt to split our being asunder and make: one part conquer the other. Struggle . as we may, .. fixing" will never make sense#out of change. The ·only way to make sense out of change is to plungc_into i!,.movc wi_th it, and the -...�... dance. . ... . Religion, as most of· u1s have known it, has quite obviously tried to make sense out of life by fixation. It has tried to give this ing world a meaning by . relating it to an uncha111ging God, and by seeing its goal and purpose as an immortal life in which the -. individual becomes one with the changeless nature . of the deity. .. Rest eternal grant unto them, 0 Lord, . and let light perpetual s.hine upon them." Likewise, it atte111pts to make seruse out of the swirling move ments of history by relaLting them to the fixed laws of God, ..whose Word e11dureth for ever." We have thus made a problem for ourselves by confusing the intclligiblle with the fixed. Wc think �t making sense out otf life is impossible u,nless the flow of events can some:how be fitted into a frame#
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work of rigid forms. ·ro be meaningful, life must be undcntandablc in tcirms of fixed ideas and laws, and these in tum must c:011espond to unchanging and ctc111al rcali�ics behiind the shifting sc.cnc.1 But if this is what .. making sense out of life" means, we have · _set ounelvcs the implSSible. task of making fixity out . of ftux. Before we can find •t>ut whether there is some better way of undcntandi111g our universe, we must sec · dearly how this con:fusion of ..sense" with .. fixity" has come about. The root of the difficulty is that we have developed the power of think.ins� so rapidly and one-sidedly that we have forgotten the proper relation between thoughts and events,, words and things. Conscious thinking has gone· ah,ead and c1eatcd its own world, and, when this is fCJ1und to conflict with the real world, we have the a.ensc of a profound discord be tween ..I," the consciious thinker, and nature. This · one-sided developmc1rit of man is not peculiar to in tellectuals and ..brai:ny" people, who arc only ex- . treme examples of a �cndcncy which has affected our entire civilization. What we have forgc>ttcn is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take convcn-
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Lacer on in this boot. we shall aee that «hete metaphysical idea of the unchanging airld the �temal can have another aeme. They do not necc11arily ia11ply a atatic •iew of reality, and while Ol'dinuily med • a«tempu1 to "&x the 8ux" they have not alwaJI been .,_ 1
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tions too seriously. A 400nvention is a social con venience, u, for cxampl,e, money. Money gets rid of the inconveniences of batrter. But it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth, beca•1se it will do you n<> good to eat it or wear it for clothing. Money is more or less static, for gold, silver, strong paper, or a bank balance can ·'1tay put" for a long time. But real we;llth, such u food, is perish able. Thus a communit;Y may possess all the gold in the world, but if it do«� not far111 its c1 ops it ,viii - · . . starve. In somewhat the samac way, thoughts, ideas, and words are ..coins" for re41l things; They arc not those things, and though the·y represent them, there are many ways in which the�y do not correspond at all. /u \\'ith money and wealth, so with thoughts and things: ideas and words are more or less 6xed, !,Vhereas real "" things change. . .. It is easier to say ... than to point to your own body, and to say ··wantt" than to try to indicate a vague feeling in the mo•uth and stomach. It is more convenient to say ..wate1r" than to lead your friend to a well and make swta:ble motions. It is also con venient to agree to use the same words for the same things, and to keep th. ese words unchanged, even though the things we a1rc indicating arc in constant motion. In- the beginning, th4e power of words must have seemed magical, and, indeed, the mii:acles which
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verbal thinking has wrought have justified the im pression. What a malrvel it must have been to get rid of the nuisances <>f sign-language and summon a &iend simply by mal�ing a short noise-his namel It is no wonder that n2lmes have been considered un canny manifestatio�s of supernatural power, and that men have identitied their names with their souls or used them to invoilte spiritual forces. Indeed, the power of words has g.one to man's head in more than one way. To define has come to mean almost the same thing as to un
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the activity of the gods 01r God, the etc11ial Word. At a later time science emplloys the same process, studying every kind of regularity in the universe, naming, dassifying, and . making use of them in ways still • more miraculous... ·. But bcca11sc it is the lllse and nature of words and thoughts to be fixed, defi1 nite, isolated, it is extremely hard to describe the mos1 t important characteristic of life�its movement and tluidity. Just as money does not represent the perish;lbility and edibility of food, so words and thoughts dlo not represent the vitality of life. The relation b:tween thought and move ment is some!hing li_kc tl�.e differenc� between a real man - running and a moti,on-picturc .film which shows - �e running as a series olf ''stills." / We reson to the conv-ention of stills whenever we want to describe or thir1k about any moving body, such as a train, stating tliat at such-and-sl1ch times it t is at such-and-such places. But this is not quite true. You can say that a train at a panicular point "now I" But it took you some tin1e to say "nowl" and during that time, however shon:, the train was still moving. � You c.an only say that the moving train actually is (i.e., stops) at a paniculalr point for a particular mo tnent if both are infinitelly small. But i.nfinitely small points and fixed moments arc always imaginary points, being denizens of �thcrnatical theory rather ' than the real world. It is most convenient for scientific calculation to
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think of a movement .as a series of very small jcru or stills. But confusion airises when the world described and measured by suchl conventions is identified with the world of cxpcrier.ace. A series of stills docs not, unless rapidly moved before our eyes, convey the es sential vitality and be;auty of moveanent. The defini tion, the description, leaves out· the most imponant ,,.• • thing. Useful as these cou1vcntions are for purpmcs of calculation, language·, and logic, absurdities arise when we think that tlhc kind of language we use or the kind of IQgic wit.h which we reason can really define or explain the physical" world. Pan of man's &ustration is that he has become accustomed to ex • pect language and thought to offer explanations . which they cannot gi vc. To want life to be ..intelli gible" in this sense iis to want it to be something other than life. It is to prefer a motion-picture film to a real, running man. To feel that life is meaning less unless .. I" can �� per111anent is like having fal. . lcn desperately in lov(e with an inch. Words and measurtes do not give life: they merely symbolize it. Thus all. ..explanations" of the universe couched in language ;are circular, and leave the most essential things unexF•lained and undefined. The dietionary itself is circular. It defines words in tea111s of other ·words. The dic:tionary comes a little closer to life when, alongside some '!ord, it gives you a pic . ture. But it will be nc>ted that all dictionary pictures 1 ..
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are attached to nouns rather than verbs. An illust1 ation of the verb to ,un �,ould have to be a series of stills like a comic strip, £.>r words and static pictures can neither define nor cx1plain a motion. Even the nouns arc cornvcntions. You do not define this real, living ..somcthiriag" by associating it with the noise man. When we sa)', ..This (pointing with the finger) is a man," the thiu1g to which we point is not man. To be dearer we should have said, ..This ii symbolized by the noise man." What, then, is this? We do not know� That ts to say, we cannot define it in any fixed way, though:, in another sense, we know it u our immediate ex1;,eriencc a flowing process without definable begin11ting or end. It is convention alone which pcnuades m1c that I am simply this body bounded by a skin . in space, �d by birth and death • • m time. . ..... Where do I begin ancl end in space? I have rclalions to the sun and air which arc just u vital parts of my existence as my bean. The movement in which I am a pattern or convolution began incalculable ages before the (convention.ally isolated) event called birth, and will continue long after the event called death. Only words and conventions can isolate us &om the entirely undel5nable something which ii everything. . . Now these arc useful words, so long as we treat them as conventions and use them like the imaginary - lines of latitude and longitude which arc drawn upori
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maps, but are not actt11ally found upon the face of the earth. But in practice we are all _bewitched by words. We confuse them witlra the real woi-ld, and try tolive in the real world as if' it were the\ world of wordsl As· a consequence, we are dismayed and dumbfounded when they do not fit. The more we try to live in the world of words, the n1ore ,ve feel isolated and alone, ,., the ·more all the joy and liveliness of things is ex changed for mere cc�nainty and security. On the other hand, the more we are forced to it that we actually live in the rC4al world, the more we feel igno rant, uncenain, and iinsccure about everything. But there can be u10 sanity unless the difference between these two worlds is recognized. The scope and purposes of scie111ce arc woefully misunderstood when the universe ,vhich it describes is confused with the universe in ,vhich man lives. Science is talk ing about a symbol of the real universe, and this symbol has much the same use as money. It is a con venient timesaver f,or -making practical a11ange ments. But when mioney and wealth, reality and science are confused, the symbol becomes a burden. Similarly, the uni,,ene described in £01111al, dog matic religion is nott1ing more than a symbol of the real world, being lilc.4:wisc c;onstructed out of verbal and conventional distinctions. To separate ·'this per son" from the rest of the universe is to make a con ventional separation.. To want this person" to be eternal is to want the:: words to be the reality, and to
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insist that a convention c111durc for ever and ever. Wc hunger for the pcrpetuitJ' of something which never existed. Science has ..dcst1·oyed" the religious symbol of the world beca 11se, when symbols arc confused with reality, different ways of symbolizing reality will. seem contradictory• . The scientific way of symboli�ing the world is more suited to utilitarian purposes than the religious way, but this docs not 11r1ean that it has any more . "truth." Is it truer to classify rabbits according to their meat or according to their fur? It d�pcnds on · what you want to do witl1 them. The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems • of definition arc relative� to various purposes, and that none of them actually ..g.asp" reality. And be· cause religion was being misused as a means for ac- . tually grasping and posse:ssing the mystery of life, a certain measure of ..debunking" was highly neces. sary. . . But in the process of s·ymbolizing the universe in this way or that for this 1�urposc or that we seem to have lost the actual joy and meaning of life itself. All the various definitioras of the universe have had ulterior motives, being ironcerned :with the future rather than the present. l�e�igio!l. �!)ts t� assure the- . .. \fut�re beyond death, anc:l science wants to a�urc it . • �nt1I death, !nd !O _ postJpone death� But tomorrow and plans for tomorrow , can have no significance at
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all unless you are in full with the reality o{ the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live· . There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live lfor the future would be t9 miss the point everlastinglly. But it is just this 1reality of the present, this mov. ing, vital now whict1 eludes all the definitions and descriptions. Here is the °:tYSterious real world which • words and ideas can never pin down. Living always for the future, we al-e out of touch with this source and center of life; and as a result all the magic of naming and think.i111g has come to something of a .. . . temporary breakdow�. The miracles of ·tiechnology cause us to live in a
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hectic, clockwork. wo,rld that docs violence to human biology, enabling us: to do nothing but punue the · future faster and fas1ter. Deliberate thought finds itself unable to controJl the upsurge of the beast in man -1111a beast more ..bealstly" than any creature of the wild, maddened an�l exasperated by the punuit of illusions. Spccializa1:ion in verbiage, classification, and mechanized thir1king has put man out of touch with many of the 1narvelous powen of ..instinct" which govern his body. It has, funher111ore, made him feel utterly sep;1rate from the universe and his own "me." And th\JlS when all philosophy has dis solved in relativism, and can make fixed sense of the universe no longer, iisolated .. I" feels miserably inse- 51 •
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cure and panicky, find in@� the real world a flat contra • diction of its whole being:. Of course there is nothing new in this predicament • of discovering that ide�s and words cannot plumb · the ultimate mystery of life, that Reality or, if you .,. · will, God cannot be c<J1mprehended by the finite mind. The only novelty is that the predicament is • now social rather than individual: it is widely felt, l not confined to the few. ,�lmost every spiritual tradil tion recognizes that a po,int comes when two things I must happen: man must su11ender his separate-feel •• ing ..I," and must face th1e fact that he cannot know, f that is, define the ultimate. l These traditions also recognize· that beyoi:id this point there lies a ..visiora of God" which can·not be l put into words, �d whic:h is certainly something ut- · l terly different from perceiving a radiant gentleman •• ' on a golden throne, or a l:iteral ftash of blinding light. • They also indicate that �his vision is a restoration of l something which we ona� had, and. .. lost" beca11se we •• did not or could not •F•preciate iL This vision ia, £ then, the unclouded awareness of this undefinable ' ..something" which we call life, present reality, the l g1eat stream, the eternal now-an awarenea without ' the sense of separation &om iL •• The moment I name iit, it is no longer God: it is I man, nee, green, black, red, soft, hard, long, short, • atom, universe. One would readily agaee with any •.. theologian who deplores pantheism that these deni-
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zens of the world of verbiage and convention, these sundry .. things" con,ceived as 6xed and distinct en tities� are not God. llf you ask me to show_ you God, I will point to the suno or a tree, or a wo1m. But ij_you say, ..You mean, theu1, that God is the sun, the uee, the wo11n, and all other things?"-I shall have to say that you have missedl the point entirely. '
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What is reality? To all su1ch questions we must give St. - Augustine's answer t.o _ the question "What is �imc?:-·�1 le.now but wh�:ru_o� aslc. m! ! �on't." Ex• perience, life, motion, anci reality are so many noises • used to symbolize the sum of sensations, thoughts, feelings, and desires. And if you a.sic., "What are sensa. tions, et cetera?" I can 0111ly answer, .. Don't be silly. You know very well wha1t. they arc. We can't go on defining things indefinitely without going round in cirdes. To define means to fix, and, when you get down to it, real life isn't f�xed." , It was suggested at the 1end of the last chapter that this ultimate something ,�hich cannot be defined or fixed can be represented l>y the word God. If this be true, we know God all th•e time but when we begin • to think about it we dor1'L For when we begin to • think about experience we try to fix it in rigid forms and ideas. It is the old problem of trying to tie up � water in parcels, or- attempting to shut the wind in a · · . box. Yet it has always been taught ·in religion that ..God" is something from which one can expect wis dom and guidance. We h1ave become accustomed to the idea that wisdom-that is, knowledge, advice, and • . . .. .. • • • • !;5 .. I
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info1111ation-can be expressed in verbal statements consisting of specific directions. If this be true, it is hard to see ho,v any wisdom can be extracted from something impossible� to define. d4 But in fact the ki111d of wisdom ,vhich can be put 11 in the form of specific directions amounts to very d4 • little, and most of th1e wisdom which we employ in w everyday life never aLme to us as verbal infor111ation. le · It was not through s1tatemcnts that we learned how a · h4 to breathe, swallow, sec, circulate the blood, digest food, or resist diseases,. Yct these things are pcrfor111ed lil by the most complex and marvelous processes which no amount of book.-1,earning and technical skill can a . reproduce. This is re,al wisdom-but our brains have Ill little to do with it. This is the kind of wisdom which l
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The •instruments" whic:h achieve these feits are, indeed, organs and p�ses of the body-that is to say, of a mysterious· pattel'ln of movement whic:h we do not really understand aind cannot actually define. In general, however, human �ings have ceased to develop the instruments of the body. More and more we try to effect an adaptation to life by means of extemal gadgets, and attemp1t to solve our problems by conscious thinking rather than unconscious .. know·how." This is muc:h less tio our advantage thain we like to suppose. There are, for instance, "primitive" wora1en who can deliver themselves of cl child while working out in the fields, and, after doillag the few things necessary to see that the baby is safe�, wa1m, and comfortable, resume their work as before. On the other hand, the civilized womain has to be· moved to a complicated hospital, aind there, surro,1nded by docton, nurses, and innumerable gadgets, force the poor thing into the world with prolonged.a:ontonions and excruciat ing pains. It is true that :antiseptic conditions prevent rnany mothen and ha.hies from dying, but why can't we have the antiseptiic conditions and the natural, easy way of birth? The answer to this, and :many similar questions, is that we have been taught: to neglect, despise, and violate our bodies, and to 1>ut all faith in our brains. Indeed, the special disease of civilized man might be described as a block or sch�5m between his brain (spe-
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cifically, the conex)� and the rest of his body. This corresponds to the s,plit between "I" and "me," man and nature, and to the confusion of Ouroboros, the mixed-up make, wlho does not know that his tail belongs with his heald. Happily, there have, in recent yean, been at least ttwo scientists who have called at· - tention to this schism, namely Lancelot Law Whyte and Trigant Burrow.• Whyte calls this disease the "European dissociation," not because it is peculiar to European-America111 civilization, but beca11se it is specially characteris;tic of it. Both Whyte and Burrow have given a clinical de scription or diagnotSis of the schism, the details of which need not de'41in us here. It is simply saying in ..medical" language that we have allowed brain think ing to develop and «:lominate our lives out of all pro portion to .. instinctu1al wisdom," which we are allow ing to slump into attrophy. As a consequence, we are at war within ourselves-the brain desiring things which the body does not want, and the body desiring ... things which the br.ain does not allow: the brain giv ing directions which the body will not follow, and 1
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Of L L Whyte', l,oob. The Next Dewlo/Jmenl in Mon
(Henry Holt, New York, 19-15) is quite readable and deeply inter· . esting, while The Unita"., Principle in Physics and Biology (Henry Holt, New York, 1949) strictly for the scientific reader. Burrow's Social Basis of Conscioumeu (London, 1917) and The Structure of Insanity (London, 19;51) are unhappily out of. print, but most . of the material is contaiined in his NeuTosis of Man (Routledge, London, 1948). There ar1e probably other acientisu working on the same lines. but I am not aware of them.
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. the body giving impulses �which the brain cannot un dentand. In one way or another civilized man agrees with . St. Francis in thinking otf the body as Brother Ass. But even theologians have: recognized that the source of evil and stupidity lies n,ot in the physical organism as a whole, but in the cut-4)fl, dissociated brain which · they te1111 the ..will." When we compare hullnan with animal desire we find many extraordinary' differences. The animal . tends to eat with his stom1ach, and the man with his brain. When the animal's stomach is full, he stops eating, but the man is nevier sure when to_stop. When he has eaten as much as his belly can take, he still feels empty, he still feels an urge for further gratifica- • tion. This is largely due tc> anxiety, to the knowledge that a constant supply of: food is unccnain. There fore eat as much as you am wl1ile you can. It is due, also, to the knowledge tU1at, in an insecure world, pleasure is uncertain. ·rherefore the immediate pleasure of eating must b«� exploited to the full, even though it �oes violence tc� the digestion. Human desire tends t4) be insatiable. We are so . anxious for pleasure that ·we can never get enough of it. We stimulate our senS4e organs until they become insensitive, so that if pl«!asure is to continue they must have stronger and stronger stimulants. In self defense the body gets illl &om the strain, but the brain wants to go 01!_ and on. The brain is in punuit • . . . . '. . .. . • J;g • • ' • • •
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of happiness, and because the brain ii much more . concerned about the future than the present, it con- ceives happiness as the guarantee of an indefinitely long future of plcas: ures. Yet the brain aJso knows that it docs not hav�: an indefinitely long future, so that, to be happy, it must try to c1owd all the plCU. _ ures of Paradise and. eternity into the span of a few
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This· is �hy mode1m civilization is in almost every respect a vicious cirdc. It is insatiably hungry be cause its way of life condemns it to perpetual frust1a· tion. As we have seen, the root of this frustration is that we live for the :future, and the future is an ab straction, a rational i1rifercnce from experience, which exists only for the l>rain. The "primary conscious ness," the basic mind which knows reality rather than ideas about it, does n.ot know the future. It lives com pletely in the prese1iit, and perceives nothing more than what is at this moment. The ingenious brain, however, loob at tlhat pan of present experience called memory, and by studying it is able to make predictions. These F�redictions are, relatively, so accurate and reliable (e.g., "everyone will die") that the future assumes a. high dcgaec of reality 10 high that the present losea its value. But the future is sttill not here� and cannot become a pan of cxpericnc:cd reality until it is prescnL Since what we kno,v of the future is made up of purely abstract ancl logical clements inferences,
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. guesses, deduction-it ca1nnot be eaten, felt, smelled, seen, heard, or otherwise enjoyed. To pursue it is to punue a constantly ret1reating phantom, and the faster you chase it, the htSter it runs ahead. This is why all the affain of civilization arc rushed, why hardly anyone enjoys wltiat he has, and is forever seeking more and more. Happiness, then, will con sis·t, not of solid and substtantial realities, but of such . abstract and superficial things as promises, hopes, and assurances. Thus the "brainy" eco,nomy designed to produce this happiness is a fantastiic vicious circle which must either manufacture more and more pleasures or col lapse-providing a constant titillation of the ean, eyes, and nerve ends with incessant streams of almost inescapable noise and visual distractions. The per· feet "subject" for the ai11ns of this economy is the . penon �ho continuousl�y itches his . can with the radio, preferably using ttiae portable kind which can go with him at all hours and in all places. His eyes flit without rest from teleit1ision sc:1cen, to newspaper, .. to magazine, keeping hi11r1 in a son of orgasm-with out-release through a se1ries of tnsing glimpses · of shiny automobiles, shiny· female bodies, and other \ · sensuous surbces, interspersed with such restorers of . sensitivity-shock treatm1cnts-as ..human interest" shots of aiminals, man:gled bodies, wrecked air planes, prize fights, and t,uming buildings. The lit· erature or discourse that ,goes along with this is simf;1 •
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ilarly manufactured to tease without satisfaction, to · replace every partiall gratification with a new desire. . For this stream of stimulants is designed to pro duce aavings for mCJ•re and more of the same, though louder and faster, airid these mvings drive us to do work which is of n<> interest save for the money it pays-to buy more lalvish radios, sleeker automobiles, glossier magazines; .md better television sets, all of ,· which will someho,� conspire to persuade us that \; happiness lies just a:round the .corner if we will buy one more. · Despite the imme·n se hubbub and nervous strain, we are convinced tl1at sleep is a waste of valuable time and continue tto chase these fantasies far into the night. Anima!_s_ �pend �uch of_th_cir t��e dozing �d jdl_i�g_ ple�sar:i�� bul;�cau_� lif� is sflon, _ human beings m�.t c•am_into the yean the highest possible amount olf consciousness, alenness, and chroni� insomnia so as to be sure not to miss the last fragment of startlint� pleasure. It isn't that the p�ople who submit to this kind of thing are immoral. ][ t isn't that the people who pro- vide it are wicked ex:ploiters; most of them are of the same mind as the exJploited, if only on a more expen sive horse in this sorry-go-round. The real trouble is that they are all tota1lly &ustrated, for trying to please the brain is like trying to drink through your can. · Thus they are inc1easingly incapable of real pleasure,
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insensitive to the most aci11te and subtle joys of life •• which are in fact extreme1ly common and simple. The vague, nebulous, alnd insatiable character of �rainy desire makes it particularly hard to come down to earth-to be material and real. Generally t) speaking, the civilized maln does not know what he ,t wants. He works for suCCC!�, fame, a happy marriage, ,, 1f " fun, to help other peoplei, or to be a "r� person." But these are not real wan1ts because they are not ac .t tual things. They are the IJ•y-products, the ftavon and y atmospheres of real things shado,vs which have no • existence apart from somie substance. Money is the l, perfect symbol of all such desires,. being a mere sym- • e bol of real wealth, and t(]� make it one's goal is the most blatant example of confusing measurements I., with reality. It is therefore far &om ,co11ect to say that modern :t civilization is materialistic:, that is, if a materialist is i a person who loves matter.. The brainy modem loves not matter but measures, no solids but surfaces. He drinks for the percentage: of alcohol ("spirit") an� not for the "body" and taste of the liquid.- 1:.1�, bujJdsto p�t _up an impressive "'front" rather than to pr<>=. e vide a space for living. Th1erefote he tends to put up structures which appear from the outside to be ba I ronial mansions but are inwardly warrens. The in • dividual living-units in tU1ese warrens are designed as for a�-!ti�g_ .!_ n impression. The lea for living • ., • • ' • , • a 6, 5 , •
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main space is devoted to a "living room" of propor. tions suitable to a l;arge house, while such essential spaces for living (rather than mere ..entertaining") as the kitchen arc recluced to small closets where one can hardly move-1nuch less cook. Consequently � these wretched little� galleys provide fare which is chiefly gascous-coclk.tails and ..appetizers" rather than honest meals. B�causc we all want to be ..ladies and gentlemen" and. look as if we had servants, we do not soil our handa with growing and cooking real food. Instead we bu·y products designed for Nfront" and appearance· rat�aer ... than content-immense and tasteless &uit, bread which is little more than a light froth, wine faked ,vith chemicab, and vegetables flavored with the ari
OS'e that the most outright example of civilized man's b.eastliness and animality is his ion for sex, but in fact there is almost nothing beastly or animal about it. Animals have sexual in tercourse when they feel like it, which is usually in • some sort of rhythllaic pattern. �tween whiles it • docs not interest theJ[n. But of all pleasures sex is the ,,,. one which the civili,� man punues with the great est anxiey. That the� c1aving is brainy rather than bodily is shown by the common impotence ·of the male when he comes to the act, his brain punuing what his genes do 111ot at the moment desire. This confuses him hopelc�ly, beca11se he simply cannot
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understand not wantinJf the great delicacy of sex when it is available. He has been hankering after it for hours and days on e1rid, but when the reality ap pears his body will not oe>-operate. rAs in eating his ..eyes �tre bigger than his stomach," • so in love he judges w<>m�� by standards that are r largely visual and cerel=•ril rather than sexual and • visceral. He' is attracted tto his panner by the surface •• gloss, by the film on th.e skin rather than the real l • body. He wants somethi11g with a bone structure like a boy's which is sup�.ed to the exterior l curves and smooth undlltlations of femininity-not a t woman but an inflated r·ubber dream. The function • of sex e ver, so much in the domain itself remains, how · l of .. instinctual wisdom" that little can be done to in crease its already inte�� pleasure, to make it faster, • • fancier, and more frequent. The only means of ex ploiting it is through ce·rebral fantasy, through sur rounding it with coquetterie and suggestions of u.n• . specified delights to corrle-as if a more ecstatic em l brace could always be a11anged through surface al• t te-r-at1ons. •• A particularly si ifiolnt example of brain· against gn • body, or measures agai1nst matter, is urban man's l total slavery to clocks. A clock is a convenient device •.. . for a11anging to meet a friend, or for helping people to do things together, allthough things of this kind s happened long before they were invented. Clocks .; t should not be smashed; they should simply be kept . . ... 65 ' \ •
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· · in their place. And thley are very much out of place when we try to adapt our biological rhythms of eating, sleeping, evacuation, working, and relaxing to ·. .. their unifor111 circula1� rotation. Our slavery to these mechanical drill masrten has gone so far and our whole culture is so in·volved with it that refo11n is a forlorn hope; withou·t them civilization would col- . . lapse entirely. A less 'brainy culture woul� learn .to_......._ synchronize its body 1rhythms rather �than its clocks. The capacity of the brain to foresee the future bas · .. much to do with the fear of death. One knows of many people who wotald have said with Stevenson, .. •
Undn the wide and starry slc1 Dig me a �r;rave and let me lie; . Glad did I li·ve and gladly die, And l laid me down with a will.
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For when the body is ,.vom out and the brain is tired, the whole organism ,velcomes death. But it is diffi cult to undentand how death can be welcome when you are young and strc>ng, so that you come to regard it as a dread and terrible event. For the brain, in its • immaterial ,vay, loobi into the future and conceives it a good to go on and. on and on forever-not realiz ing that its own n1a.terial wo�d at last find the process intolerably tiresome. Not taking this into , the brain fails to see that, being itself material and subject to change�. its desires wjll change, and a time will come when cleath will be good. On a bright • . • ' _,,. , . 66 .. .. • ' ,. . I .. • • , f. •• • •• • • J
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morning, after a good nit�ht's rest, you do not want to � go to sleep. But after a hard day's work the sensation , ..,..,,. of dropping into uncorusciousncss is extraordinarily pleasant. · · Unfortunately, not v1ery many of us die peacefully. We die through accidents and painful diseases, and it is tragic indeed when a person whose .. mind" · is still young and alert s1 truggles uselessly with a dy- · .........'°_. · ing body. I am sure, ho�tevcr, that the body_ dies because it wants to. It finds it beyond its power to resist · . the disease or to mend the injury, and so, tired out �-r.r�� t with the struggle, turns t.o death. If the consciousness were more sensitive to the feelings and impulses of , '. the whole organism. it �,ould share this desire, and, "·�..... indeed, sometimes does ,o. We come close to it when, ... · in serious sickness, we wc>uld just as soon die, tho.ugh · "or.,.� sometimes we survive, e:ither because medical treat_ment reinvigorates the bcxly, or because there arc still unconscious forces in tht� organism which are able to
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Accustomed, as it is, t�t> think of man as a dualism · '"' · of mind and body, and t, o regard the £01,ner as ..sen sible" and the latter as a ' "dumb" animal, our culture is an affront to the wisd4)m of nature and a ruinous exploitation of the hum.an organism as a whole. We are perpetually frustrate.ti bcca11se the verbal and ab- stract thinking of the braiin gives the false impression . of �ing able to �t loos.e from all finite limitations. It forgets that an in6nit)r of anything is not a reality .;, "'�� •
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. but an abstract conceJpt, and penuades us that we de sire this fantasy as a n:al goal of living. � · The externalized s1rmbol of this way of thinking is � that almost entirely rational and inorganic object, the machine, which f�ves us the sense of being able . to approach infinity. For the machine can submit to · st1ains far beyond th.e capacity of the body, and to monotonous rhythms, which the human being could never stand. Uscful a!! it would be as a tool and a serv ·ant, we worship its r:ationality, its efficiency, and its · power to abolish limitations of time and apace, and thus pe11nit it to regllllate our lives. Thus the work ' ing inhabitants of a ntlodem city are people who live . inside a machine to l>e batted around by its wheels. They spend their day;s in activities which largely boil down to counting and measuring, living in a world of rationalized abstnlction which has little relation to or ha1 rnony with tl�e great biological rhythms and . processes. · As a matter of factt, mental activities of this kind · can now be done fair more efficiently by machines than by men so mu,ch so that in a not too distant future the human brain may be an obsolete mecha nism for logical calculation. Already the human com. puter is widely displaced by mechanical and elec. . trical computers of far greater speed and efficiency. If, then, man's princlipal anet and value is his brain and his ability to calc·ulate, he will become an unsale able commodity in an era when the mechanical op-
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eration of reasoning ca111 be done more effectively by machines.1 Already man uses innumerable gadgets to displace the work done by bodily organs in the animals, and it would surely be in line with this tendency to ex ternalize the reasoning functions of the brain-and thus hand ·over the go·vcmment of life to electro magnetic monsters. In Cl1ther words, the interests· ind goals of rationality are not those of man as a whole organism. If we are to C<>ntinue to live for the (uture, and to make the chief ,.vork. of the mind prediction and calculation, man m1�t eventually become a para sitic' appendage to a mas-s of clock.work.. There is, indeed, a viewpoint &om which this ..rationalization" of life is not rational . The brain is clever enough to see th.e vicious circle ,vhich it has made for itself. But it can do nothing about it. Seeing that it is unreasonable to worry does not stop worry worry :the more at being unreason-• ing; rather, you • t I take my facts on this ma1tter from Norbert Wiener·s rmtark.·
able book Cybernetics (New York & Paris. 1948). Dr. Wien� ii one of the mathematicians chiefly responsible for the development
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of the more elaborate elcctriical computen. Having likewise an advanced knowledge of ncur, ology. he is well able to judge the extent to which these inventii ons can reproduce the work of the human organism. His book c:ontains the following pertinent ob servation: "It is internting tCJ• note that we may be facing one of those limitations of nature, in which highly specialized organs reach a level of declining �fllicicncy. and ultimately lead to the extinction of the species. Th•e human brain m:ay be as far along on iu road to this destructive specialization as the great nose horns of the last of the titanothncs:· (p. 18o.)
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· able. It is unreasonab,le to wage a modem war, in • which everybody loses.. Neither side actually wants a war, and yet, because ·we live in a vicious circle, we · start the war to preve11t the other side &om starting first. We arm ounelvc!S knowing that if we do not, the other side will-w·hich is quite true, because if we do not a1m the ot1lter side will do so to gain itf , advantage without act1ually fighting. · . • From this rational FK>int of view we find ourselves in me dilemma of St. JPaul-"To will is present with me; but how to pcrfo11rn that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not." But this is not, as St. Paul supposed, because the will or the ..spirit" is reasonable ;Lnd the flesh perverse. It is be_cause ,..a house_ djviste,d_ aga!nst itself cannot stand.� The whole organism is pervene because the brain is • i split from the belly arid me head unconscious of its . , i , · union with the tail. , :'f' There are few grou1rids for hoping that, in any im mediate future, there will be any recovery of social sanity. It would seem 1that the vicious circle must be� · come yet more intole1rable, more blatantly and des perately circular befor·e any large numbers of human beings awaken to the t:ragic trick. which they are play ing on themselves. Burt for those who see clearly that it is a circle and why i1t is a circle, there is no alterna• . tive but to stop circli1t1g. For as soon as you see the ...... whole circle, the illu!sion that the head � sep3:?ate · · ; • . &om the tail disappea1rs. • • • ' 70 /:• • ..
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An� then, when experience stops oscillating and writhing, it can again ll>ecomc sensitive to the wis- . dom of the body, to the Jriiddcn depths of its own sub. - • s�nce. Because I speak of th,e wisdom of the body and of : . the necessity for recogt1izing that we are material, this is not to be taken alS a philosophy of "material ism" in the accepted serusc. I am not asscning that the ultimate reality is matt«�r. Matter is a word, a noise, which refcn to the forms and patterns taken by a • proceu. We do not kno�, what this process is, becau� it is not a "what"-that iis, a thing definable by some fixed concept or mcasu�e. If we want to keep the old language, still using sulch u "spiritual" and ..material,� the spiritu;al must mean ..the indefin1 able," that which, because it is living, must ever . ·� escape the framework <>f any fixed foran. Matter is . , spirit named. After all this, the brain deserves a word for itsclfl For the brain, includin:g its reasoning and .calculating ccnteas, is 'a part andl product of the body. It is u natural as the heart and stomach, and, rightly used, is , anything but an cnem.y of man. But to be used rightly it must be put :in its place, for the brain is made for man,_ not man :for his brain. In other words, · the function of the brain is t� serve the present and the real, not to send rr1an chasing wild�y after the • · . · .. .. - • phantom of the future. Furthern1ore, in our habitual state of mcnw ten• - - . . 71 • • • • • .. .. , .• • (
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sion the brain does not: work properly, and this is one reason why its abstrac:tions seem .to have so great a reality. When the hear·t is out of order, we are clearly · conscious of its beating; it becomes a distraction, • pounding within the loreast. It seems most probable that our preoccupatio1ri with thinking and planning, • togethe.r with the seruse of mental fatigue, is a sign of some disorder of the! brain. The brain should, and in some cases does, cal1culatc and reason with the un • • conscious ease of the ,other bodily organs. After all, the brain is not a muscle, and is thus not designed for effort and strain. But when people try to think or concentrate, they behave as if they we1-e trying to push their brains aroWld. They screw up their faces, knit their brows, and approach mental Jproblems as if they ,verc some. thing like heaving b1·icks. Yet you do not have to • •• grind a�d strain to digest food, and still less to sec, • hear, and receive other neural impressions. The , ..lightning calculator"' who can sum a long column of figures at a glance, the intellectual genius who can • comprehend a whole page of reading in a few seconds, and the musical prodigy, such as Mozart, who seems to g,asp har111on1y and counterpoint from baby hood, arc examples of: the proper use of man's most .. marvelous instrument. ,. Those of us who ar4: not geniuses know something of the same ability. 1�ake for example the anagram POCATELDIMC. You aan work over these lctten for ...
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houn, trying system aft�er system of rca11angement in order to discover the� sc1ambled word. Try, in- ""' "'" stead, just looking at tl1e anagram with a relaxed mind, and in a very shon space of time your brain .. will deliver the answer ,without the slightest effort. 1 We rightly mistrust the "snap" answen of strained and wandering minds, b,ut the tapid, effortless, and almost unconscious solu1tion of logical problems is what the brain is supposed to deliver. Working rightly, the !brain is the highest for111 of · � ..instinctual wisdom." Thus it should work like the homing instinct of pigeo,ns and the fo1 mation of the foetus in the womb-witlnout verbalizing the process _ or knowing "how" it 4ioes it. The sclf
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only asked by those ,vho ido not undcntand the prob lem. If a problem can be· solved at all, to undentand it and to know what to de• about it are the same thing. On the other hand, doi11g something about a prob1cm which you do not 11ndentand is like trying to dear away darkness by thrusting it aside with your hands. When light is brc>ught, the darkness vanishes
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This applies paniculalrly to the problem now be fore us. How arc we to heal the split between .. I " arid ..me," the brain andl the body� man and nature, . and bring all the vicious circles which it produces to an end? How arc we to 4experience life as something .1• �" 1 other than a ho�ey trap, in which we arc the strug; gling fties?' How�are we tto find security and peace of · -... nature is insecurity, imind in a world whose �rmanence, and uncea!sing change? All these ques- . :',,,,... · tions demand a method. and a coune of action. At the same time, all of thcitn show that the problem has not been undentood. lVc do not need action-yet. .. We need more light. Light, here, means a�,arencss-to be aware of life, · • of experience as it is alt this moment, without any . • judgments or ideas abc>ut it. I n other words, you .. ·
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have to see and feel ,what you are experiencing as it is, and not as it is naJ1ned. This very simple ..opening of the eyes" brings about the most extraordinary transfor111ation of u.ndentanding and living, and sho,vs that many �f ,our most baffling problems are pure illusion. This may sound like an over-simplifica tion because most pc�ple imagine themselves to be fully enough aware 10( the present already, but we shall see that this is fa.r from true.1 Because awareneu. is a view of reality &ee from ideas and judgments, it is clearly impossible to define and write down what'. it reveals. Anything which can be described is an ide2, and I cannot make a positive statement about somc:thing-the real world-which is not an idea. I shall thlerefore have to be content with' . talking about the faLse impressions which awareness removes; rather than the truth which it reveals. The latter can.only be sym1bolized with words which mean little or nothing to those without a direct under , standing of the truth in question. . What is true and positive is too real and too living . -to be described, and to try to describe it is like put ting red paint on a re� rose.·Therefore most of what follows will have to have a rather negative quality. · The truth is rev�ale�l by removing things that stand in its light, an art nolt unlike sculpture, in which the · artist creates, not by building, but by hacking away. word ..awarenesa"' is used in the' sense given to it by J. Krishnamurti, whose writiinp discuss cbis theme with extraordinary perception.
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We saw that the ques1tions about finding security and peace of mind in an impermanent world showed that the problem had n,ot been undentood. Before going any further, it mulSt be clear that the kind of security we are talking :about is primarily spiritual and �ychological. To iexist at all, human beings m\llSt have a minimum )livelihood in of food, drink, and clothing-wi1th the undentanding, how ever, that it cannot last indefinitely. But if the as surance of a minimum livelihood for sixty yean would even begin to satinfy the heart of man, human problems would amoun1t to very little. Indeed, the very reason why we do_D40t have this assurance is that we want so much more than the minimum neces-
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It must be obviolllS, &om the stan, that there is a contradiction in wantin1� to be perfectly secure in a • universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity. But the contra.diction lies a little deepe� . than the mere conflict between the desire for security and the fact of change. Jjc I want to be secure, that is, protected from the flux of life, I am wanting to be separate from life. Yet it is this very sense of separate ness which makes me fieel insecure. To be secure means to isolate and fort:ify the "I,': but it is just the feeling of being an isolated "I" which makes me feel . lonely and afraid. In ot�ler words, the more security . I can get, the more I shall want. To put it still more plainly: the desire for security •
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and the feeling of in:security are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a · breath-retention con test in which everyone is as taut 1 as a drum a1'd as purple as a beet. c.r :·· We look. for this S4�curity by fortifying and enclos • ing ourselves in inr1umerable ways. We want the protection of being ..exclusive" and ..special," seeking to belong to the· safest church, the best nation, • ,': the highest class, the right set, and the ..nice" people. · ' · , These defenses lead to divisions between us, and so to more insecurity demanding more defenses. Of course it is all done iin the sincere belief that we arc trying to do the right: things and live in the best way; but this, too, is a coratradiction. I can only think se·riot1sly of trying to live up to an ideal, to improve m1,self, if I ain split in two pieces. There must be a good ..I" who is going to improve Jhe bad ..me." .. I," �,ho has the best intentions, will · . go to work on wa)'\valrd ..me," and the tussle between the two will very mu1ch stress the difference between them. Consequently .. I" will feel more separate than · ever, and so merely increase the lonely and cut-off , feelings which make ..me" behave so badly. We can hardly beJpn to consider this problem un� less it is clear that tt1e c1aving for security is itself a pain and a contradic:tion, and that the more we pur sue it, the more pai1r1ful it becomes. This is true in ., · - whatever for111 security may be conceived. · .. -, • .. ' �
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You want· to be happy·, to forget yourself, and yet the more you try to fo�gct yourself, the more you the self you �,ant to forget. You want to escape from pain, but the more you struggle to · escape, the more you i11Ramc the agony. You are afraid and want to be l�ravc, but the effon to be brave is fear trying to rur1 away from itself. You want • peace of mind, but the attempt to pacify it is like . · trying to calm the waves with a Rat-iron. · We are all familiar wi1th this kind of vicious circle in the for111 of worry. iwe know that worrying ia . futile, but we go on doin1g it because calling it futile .. does not stop it. We worry because we feel unsafe, and want to be safe. Yet it is perfectly useless to say that we should not want to be safe. Calling a desire l bad names doesn't get ricl of it. What we have to dis • cover is that there is no safety, that seeking it is pain •• ful, and that when we im.aginc that we have found it, ·� l we don't like it. In othc1� words, if we can really unl dentand what we are loo, king for-that safety is isola l tion, and what we do to
not want it at all. No one f has to tell you that you J:hould not hold your breath · for ten minutes. You kn40W that you can't do it, and • that the attempt is most · uncomfortable. The principal thing is. to undentand that there is ·. � l • .20 safety or security. On,e of the wont vicious circles � �• is the problem of the alcc•holic. In very many cases he l knows quite clearly tha1t he is destroying himself, •
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.. that, for him, liquo1� is poison, that he actually hates being drunk, and c·ven dislikes the taste of liquor. And yet he drinks. ]For, dislike it as he may, the ex perience of not dri11king is worse. It gives him the ..hor,ors," for he stands face to face with the un veiled, basic insecurity of the world. Herein lies the a"Ux of the matter. To stand face to face with insccu,·ity is still not to undcntand it. To undentand it� y<>u must not face it but be it. It is like the Pcnian story of the sage who came to the door of Heaven and knocked. From within the voice of God asked, ..Whoi is there" and the sage answered, .. It is I." ..In this Hc,use," replied the voice, ..there is no room for thee au1d me." So the sage went away, and spent many years pondering over this answer in deep meditation. Rt!turning a second time, the voice asked the same question,' and again the sage an swered, .. It is I." T'he door remained closed. After · some years he returr1ed for the third time, and, at his knocking, the voice once more demanded, ..Who is there?" And tl1e sagce cried, ··it is thyself!" The door , ,vas opened. · _.Ts, undentand that there is no security is far ll!Ofe than to agree with the theory that all things .change,. more even than to <>bscrve the transitoriness of life. . The notion of secu1rity is based on the feeling that there is something ,vithin us ,vhich is permanent, something ,vhich er1dl1res through all the days and changes of life. We arc struggling to make sure of 8o
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are ing. In iother words, you are not look.. ing at the actual paslt at all. You arc looking at a · present trace of the ptSt. : It is like seeing the tracks of a bird on the sand. I .. sec the present tracb. I do not, at the same time, see • the bird making those tracb an hour before. The bird has flown; and I ;lm not aware of him. From the tracks I infer that a bird was there. From memories you infer that there h1ave been past events. But you arc not aware of any J�t events. You know the past only in the present an1d as pan of the present. !J We are seeing, thein, that our experience is altogether momentary. F'rom one point of view, each ·-� moment is so elusive and so brief that we cannot even think about it before i.t has gone. From another point of view, this moment is always here, since we know no other moment tha;n the present moment. It is al ways dying, always be1coming past more rapidly than imagination can conoeivc. Yet at the same time it is - always being born, �1lways new, emerging just as rapidly from that conriplete unknown which we call the future. Thinkin1� about it almost makes you breathless. • To say that expe�i,ence is momentary is really to say that experience a11d the present moment are the � same thing. To say th:at this moment is always dying, or becoming past, ancl al,vays being born, or coming · out of the unknown, is to say the same thing of cx·""_ ...�, pcrience. The cxperi4:ncc you have just had has van� ... . ",;. 8I .
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ished irretrievably, and 4111 that remains of it is a son l of wake or track in t he present, which we call .. memory. While you can make a guess as to what ex . periencc is coming nextt, in actual fact you do not know. Anything might !happen. But the experience which is going on now iis, as it were, a newborn in- • fant which vanishes bcf-orc it can even begin to get older. While you are watchiing this present experience, arc you aware of someonie watching it? Can you find, in ad4ition to the exper·ience itself, an experiencer? Can you, at the same tiime, read this sentence and think about younelf reac:ling it? You will find that, to think about yourself reading it, you must for a brief second stop reading. The fint experience is reading•. The second experience is the thought, "I am read ing." Can you find any tthinker, who is thinking the thought, .. I am reading?"' In other words, when prescnt experience is the tlnought, .. I am reading," can you think about yoursellf thinking this thought? .· Once again, you mw;t stop thinking just, "I am reading." You to a tJnird experience, which is the thought, ''I am thinking� that I am reading." Do not let the rapidity with whi,ch these thoughts can change deceive you into the feeling that you think them all at once. But what has hap�ned? Never at any time were you able to separate ,,ourself · &om your present thought, or your presen. t experience. The fint pres... . . • . 85 .
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ent experience was reading. When you tried to think about yourself reading, the experience changed, and the next present experience was the thought .. I am reading." You could :not separate yourself from this · experience without Jing on to another. It was "ring around the ros,'." When you were thinking, ..I am reading this scnteJrice" you were not reading it. In other words, in eachL present experience you were only aware of that ex1?Crience. You were never aware ..._o�_bcing aware. You ,were never able to separate the thinker &om the d,ought, the knower &om the known. All you ever found was a new thought, a new experience. To be aware, then, is to be aware of thoughts, feel desi:res, and all other forms of ex,. ings, sensations, • perience. Never at any time are you aware of anything which is not ex.perience, not a thought or feel ing, but instead an e>tperiencer, think.er, or feeler. If this is so, what makes us think that any such thing exists? We might say, for •example, that the "I" who is the • " thinker is this physiail body and brain. But this body is in no way separate &om its thoughts and sensations. When you hav,e a sensation, say, of touch, that sensation is pan of your body. While that sensation is going on, you canr,ot move the body away &om it any more than you <:an walk away &om a headache , or from your own fe·e�. So long as it is present, that .. . sensation is your bociy and is you. You can remove •
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the body from an unconifortable chair, but you can· not move it from the sensation of a chair. _ The notion of a sepalrate thinker, of an ..I" dis- . ... tinct from the experienc:e, comes from memory and from the rapidity with ,¥hich thought changes. It is like whirling a burning istick to give the illusion of a · continuous circle of fire. If you imagine that memory is a direct knowledge of the past rather than a present experience, you get the illusion of knowing the past and the present at the �1me time. This suggests that • there is something in )'Olli distinct from both the past, and the present experic�nces. You reason, ..I know this present experience, and it is different from that past experience. If I can compare the two, and notice that experience has cha:nged, I must be something constant and apan." But, as a matter of fact, you cannot compare this present experience with. a past experience. You can enly compare it with a Dl�mory of the past, which is a ... _ part of the present expe1rience. When you see dearly that memory is a fo1m �•f present experience, it will be obvious that trying t4t> separate younelf from this experience is as impossiible as trying to make your teeth bite themselves. �rhere is simply experience. There is not something ,or someone experiencing experiencel You do not fcc:l feelings, think thoughts, or sense sensations any mo1:e than you hear hearing, see sight, or smell smelling:. "I feel fine.. means that a fine feeling is pre.cot. ltt docs not mean that there ii . 85 . • '
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amoebas, and try to prc>tect ourselves from life by ; · splitting in two. Sanity, ,vholeness, and integ,ation lie in the realization th;at we are not .. divided, that � ... man and - his present experience are one, and that no .: AY";II! �para�e :·_1:· or mind cant be £011nd. While the notion that I am separate from my ex perience remains, there· is confusion and turmoil. Because of this, there is raeither awareness nor under standing of experience, and thus no real possibility of auimilating it. To unclentand this moment I must not try to be divided frc,m it; I must be aware of it with my whole being. This, like refraining from holding my breath for te�n minutes, is not something I should do. In reality, it is the only thing I can do. Everything else is the insanity of attempting the impossible. To understand music, you must listen to it. But so : long as you are thinki11g, ..I am listening to this music," you arc not liste:ning. To understand joy or fear, you must be wholly and undividedly aware of it. So long as you are calling it names and saying, "I am happy," or ..I am a&a.id," you are not being aware of iL Fear, pain, sorrow,, and boredom must remain problems if we do not understand them, but under·. g r�ires a singl�� and undivided mind. This, _ .. surely, is the meaning of that strange saying, "If thine eye be single, thy• w�ole loody shall be full of light." · · •' . .. • ., •
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this moment, who are y•)u?" How will you answer this question immediately and spontaneously, without stopping to find worcis? If the question does not shock you out of listeninig, you will answer by hum ming the song. If the q,ucstion surprised you, you will answer, ..At this mo1rncnt, who arc you?" But if you stop to think, you will try to tell me, not about this moment, but about the past. I shall get info1111a tion about your name ancl address, your business and personal history. But I asked who you af'e# not who you wne. · For to be awclrc of reality, of the living present, is to discover tlliat at each moment the ex-• periencc is all. There is nothing else beside it-no • experience of ..you" cxpe�riencing the experience. Even in our most apjparently self-conscious mo ments, the ..self" of whicU1 we arc conscious is always some particular feeling ir sensation-of muscular tensions, of war111th or o>ld, of pain or irritation, of · · ;.. breath or of pulsing blood. There is never a sensa tion of what senses scn�iations, just as there is no . ., meaning or poaibility in the notion of smelling one's • nose or kissing one's owr1 lips. In times of happiness and pleasure, ,vc are usu- : ally ready enough to be a.ware of the moment, and to •
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·· let the experience l:.e all. In such moments we ..for. get ourselves," and 1he mind makes no attempt to di vide itself &om itself, to be separate from experience. . But with the arriv.al of pain, whether physical or , emotional, whether· actual or anticipated, the split begins and the circl,e goes round and round. As soon as it bec:omes dear that "I" cannot pos sibly escape &om th.e reality of the present, since "I.. . is nothing other than what I know now, this inner tur,rioil must stop. :No possibility remains but to be aware of pain,-- feari, boredom, or grief in the same ' ., complete way that one is aware ot ..pleasure. The human organism rulS the most wonderful powen of adaptation to both physical and psychological pain. But these can only come into full play when the pain is !l{)t being consta�ntly restimulated by this inn� ... effon to get away from it, to separate the �1� _f!o_!!l ·� th� feeling. The e�Fon creates a state of tension in which the pain thri ves. But when the tension ceaK1, · mind and body begiin to absorb the pain as water re acts to a blow or cut. There is another story of a Chinese sage who wu asked, .. How shall �,e escape the heat?"-meaning, of course, the heat of s1uffering. He answered, "Go right into the middle of tU1e fire." ..But how, then, shall we escape the scorchin:g ftame?· .. No funher pain will uouble youl" We d.o not need to go as far as China. The same idea com�!I in The Divine Comed1, where ' 1
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�tc an� VirgiJ .ftnd- that:,. the-- way out of Hell lies at . l• JU very center. . a •• In moments of great jo�r we do not, as a rule, stop ., Jr to think, ..I am happy," or·, ..This is joy." Ordinarily, • lt we do not pause to think 1thoughts of this kind until the joy is past its peak, or \1nless there is some anxiety that it will go away. At su«:h times we are so aware of s. .. the moment 'that no atten1pt is made to compare its experience with other experiences. For this reason we do not name it, for naroes which arc not mere ex • clamations are based on comparisons. ..Joy" is dis tinguished from ..sorrow" by contrast, by comparing one state of mind with the other. Had we never 1. ' known joy, it would be imtpossible to identify sorrow as SOIIOW. · But in reality we cannort compare joy with sorrow. · . . Comparison is possible oraly by the very rapid alter D n - nation of two states of mind, and you cannot switch back and forth between the genuine feelings of joy and sorrow as you can shift your eyes between a cat and a dog. Sorrow can 01r1ly be compared with the memory of joy, which is rlot at all t]le same thing as II · joy itself. · . · ,f Like words, memories; never-really succeed in lt ':fr ..catching" reality. Memo1ries are some,vhat abstract:- ., .': 'e being a knowledge about things rather than of things. ,. u ' Memory never captures t he essence, the present in1. tensity, the concrete reality of an experience. It is, as..... · ; ! 'e •
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it were, the corpse e:>f an experience, from which the 01 life has vanished. ,What we know by memory, we 01 know only at sccoitldhand. Memories are dead be cause fixed. The 11tlemory of your deceased grand e, mother can only re1peat what your grandmother wu. , al • But the real, prese;nt grandmother could always do 11] or say something ne!W, and you were never absolutely sure what she woul,cl do next. There are, then, two ways of undentanding an ex perience. The first iis to compa�e it with the memories of other ex_periencc�,_a�� � !� n�me and define it. w This is to interpret it in accordance with the dead tt and the p�t. The !-CCOAd_ is to be aware of it as it U: cc as when, in the intensity of joy, we orget-past and al .., future, let the pres-ent be all, and thus do not even stop to think, "I au1 happy." Both ways of untderstanding have their uses. But they correspond to1 the difference between knowing a thing by words and knowing it immediately. A al menu is very useh1l, but it is no substitute for the dinner. � guideboo�_.is an irable tool, but it is el0 hardly to be comp;Lred with the country it describes. d The point, then, is that when we try to understand C1 , the present by contlparing it with memories, we do .rnot understand it �lS deeply as when we are aware of V it ,vithout comparison. This, however, is usually the · way in which we ,lpproach unpleasant experiences. 0 Instead of being a,vare of them as they are, we try to · E deal ,·.·ith them in of the past. The frightened
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or lonely person begins at once to think, "I'm afraid," or, .. I'm so lonely." This is, of course, an att,empt to avoid the experi ence. We don't want to be aware of this present. But , as we cannot get out of the present, our only escape is . : into memories. Here we feel on safe ground, for the past is the fixed and the b1own-but also, of coune, · the dead. Thus to try to get out of, say, fear we en deavor at once to be separ.ate from it and to "fix" it by interpreting it in te11111 of memory, in tcr111s of what is already fixed and k.nown. In other words, we try to adapt ounclves to c:he mysterious present by comparing it with the (rem1cmbered) past, by naming and ..identifying" it. This would be all very ·well if you were trying to get away from something from which you can get ., , away. It is a useful process Jfor knowing when to come in out of the rain. But it d<� not tell you how to live with things from which yc•u cannot get away, which are already part of younself. Your body does not eliminate poisons by mowJng th_cir names. To try to control fear or dressio111 or boredom by calling them .names is to resort t:o superstition of trust in . _. -. curses and invocations. . It is so easy to sec wh,r this does not work. Obviously, we try to know, · name, and define fear in order to make it "objccti�,e,.. that is, separate from ..I." But why are we tryinJf to be separate from fear? Bcca11se we are afraid. In other words, fear is trying
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every moment we are cau1 tious, hesitant, and on the . · defensive. And all to no a,vail, for life thrusts us into ... the unknown willy-nilly, and resistance is as futile and exasperating as trying: to swim against a roaring · torrent. . The art of living in this ..predicament" is neither careleu drifting on the 01r1e hand nor fearful cling ing to the past and the kr.10,vn on the other. It con sists in being completely : sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly r1ew and unique, in having the mind open and ,vholly· receptive. This is not a philosoph.ical theory but ·an experiment. One has to make 1 the experiment to under: sta11d that it brings into play altogether new powen ·. of adaptation to life, of li1terally absorbing pain and insecurity. It is as hard to describe how this absorp tion works as to explain thie beating of one's heart or the formation of genes. Thle ..open" mind does this as_ most of us breathe: witho,ut being able to explain it at all. The principle of the: thing is clearly something ... like ludo, the gentle (ju) w·ay (do) of mastering a� OP: posing force by giv!!!_g in t�o 1t. The natural world give:s us many examples of the . ".. � ·great effectiveness of this ,way. The Chinese philosophy of ,vhich judo itself is an expression-Taoism- · _ drew attention to the pow•er of water to overcome all obstacles by its gentleness and pliability. It showed how the supple willow suirvives the tough pine in a snowstorn1, for whereas· tl1e unyielding branches of
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the pine accumul;Lte snow until they c1 ack, the springy boughs of tltie willow bend under its weight, - .. .· drop tltie snow, and jump back again. If, when swimming, you are caught in a strong current, it is fatal tto resist. You must swim with it and gradually edge to the side. One who falls &om a I] height witlti sti& li1mbs will break them, but if he relaxes like a cat he ,viii fall safely. A building with . l out "give" in its s1tructure wjll easily collapse in g stor1n or earthquak,c, and a car without the cushion sl ing of tires and springs will soon come apart on the Ii • road. · The mind has ju�1t the same powers, for it has give a and can absorb shocks like water or a cushion. But e this giving way to aln opposing force is not at all the 1: same tltiing as run11ting away. A body of water docs \t not run away whe11 you push it; it simply gives at 1: the point of the puslti and encloses your hand. A shock C absorber docs not �lll down like a bowling-pin when struck: it gives, ancl yet stays in the same place. To r · ( run away is the cinly defense of something rigid_..... against an overwhelming force. Therefore the good I shock absorber has not only "give," but also stability I or .,weight.'! f ,. This weight is Ii•�ewise a function of the mind, and I appcan in the muc:h-misundentood phenomenon of I lazineu. Significantly enough, nervous and frustrated �·. . people are always b,usy, even in being idle, such idle ness being the "laziness" of fear, not of rest. But the • 4'
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mind-body is a system whiich conserves and accumu- . )ates energy. · While doinJ� this it is properly lazy. When the energy is stored, it is just as happy to move, the line of least' re- and yet to move - skillfully--along ., istance. ·Thus it is noto111ly necessity, but also laziness, .which is the mother iof invention. One may ob icrve the unhurried, .. hea,,y" movements of a �ltillful · laborer at some hard task., and even in going against gravity the good mo11ntaineer uses gravity, taking slow, heavy strides. He se'.ems to tack. up the slope, like a sailboat against the wind. · In the light of these pri11ciples, how does the mind absorb suffering? It disc,oven that resistance and escape-the "I" process-is; a false move. The pain is inescapable, and resistance� as a defense only makes it worse; the whole system is jarred by the shock. See ing the impossibility of this course, it must act ac cording to its naturc-remtain stable and absorb. To remain stable is to r-efrain from trying to separate yourself from a pain 1!>ecause you know that you cannot. Running away fro,m fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pair1. The thinker has no other form than his thought. 1rhere is no escape. But so long as you are not awa1re of · the inseparability of thinker and thought, you will try to escape. From this follows, quite naturally, absorption. It is no effort; the mind d<Ja it by itself. Seeing that there is no escape from tl1e pain, the mind yields so
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it, absorbs it, and becomes ·conscious of just pain. without any "I" fe4eling it or resisting it. It experi"' ences pain in the sairne complete, unselfconscious way in which it experie· nces pleasure. Pain is the nature of this present mornent, and I can only live in tbis .. .. · moment. Sometimes, whe111 resistance ceases, the pain simply goes away or dwindlles to an easily tolerable ache. At other times it remains, but the absence of any resist ance brings about a way of feeling pain so unfamiliar as to be hard to clescribe. The pain is no longer roblematic. I feel it, but there is no urge to get rid of it, for I have d�5eovered that pain and the effo1t to be separate &om it are the same thing. Wanting t� get out of pain is tlile pain; it is not the "reaction" of an ..I.. distinct fro;m the pain. When you discover , this, the desire to 4!scape "merges" into the pain it self and vanishes. Discounting aspitrin for the moment, you cannot remove your head from a headache as you can re move your hand fr,om a flame. "You" equab ..head" equals "ache." Wh,en you actually see that you are the pain, pain ceues to be a motive, for there is no one to be moved. It becomes, in.the true sense, of no consequence. It hurts-period.� This, however, �, not an experiment to be held in reserve, as a trick, fcor moments of aisis. It is a way of life. It means bein@� aware, alert, and sensitive to the present moment al�ys; in all actions and relations. •
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whatsoever, beginning at t:his instant. This, in tum, depends upon seeing that ·you have really no choice ay but to be aware-because ir.ou cannot separate your re ' self &om the present and '.fOU cannot define it. You ill can, indeed, refuse to itt this, but only at the cost of the immense and futil•: effon of spending your ·· ly whole life resisting the inevitable. �t Once this is undentood, it is really absurd to say It• that there is a choice or an alternative between these ill" two ways of life, between n�isting the stream in fruit er less panic, and having one's eyes opened to a new id world, transfo1111ed, and e,,er new with wonder. The n key is undentanding. To �lSk. how to do this, what is the technique or method, what are the steps and to rules, is to miu the point: utterly. Methods are for of acating things which do inot yet exist. We arc coner • ce111cd here with undenta1nding something which is lt• -the prese,nt moment. This is not a psychological or spiritual discipline for sclf-improve111ent. It is simply ot being aware of this presen1t experience, and realizing that you can neither dcfiine it nor divide yourself &om it. There is no rule IJ•ut ..Lookl" re It is no mere poetic scnt:iment to say that, with the 10 mind thus opened, we looll� into a new world, as new 10 as on the fint day of c1e;ation ..when the morning stan sang together, and alll the sons of. God shouted for joy." By trying to und�ntand everything in te11111 of of memory, the past, and 'Words, we have, as it were, had our noses in the guide:book for most of our lives, DS. • •
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and have never loolked at the view. Whitehead's criti cism of traditional education is applicable to our whole l\'aY of livin1�: . .. We are too excluisively bookish in our scholastic rou • tine. • • • In the G·arden of Eden Adam saw the animals . before he named 1:hem: in the traditional system, chil· dren named the anitmals before they saw them.I •
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In the widest sc1ue of the word, to name is to in- . tcrpret experience by the past, to translate it into te1111s of memory, t�o bind the unknown into the sys tem of the known.. Civilized man knows of hardly �y other way of t1ndcntanding things. Everybody, everything, has to lhave its label, its number, cenificatc, registration, dlassification. What is not classified is irregular, unpreciictable, and dangerous. Witl\out pon, binh certificate, or membenhip in some nation, one's cxistc�nce is not recognized. If you do not agree with the capitalists, they call you a com munist, and vice 11nS!L A person �ho agrees with neither point of vic::w is fast becoming unintelligible. That there is a way of looking at life apan from all conceptions, belie6s, opinions, and theories is the re motest of all pouit•ilities from the modem mind. If such a point of view exists, it can only be in the vacant brain of a mtoron. We suffer from the delusion that the entire uni�versc is held in order by the cate gories of human tlieought, fearing that if we do not l A. N. Whitehead,
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hold to them with the u1tmost tenacity, everything will vanish into chaos. • We must repeat: memo,ry, thought, language, and . logic are cuential to human life. They are one half � of sanity. But a person, a society, which is only half sane is insane. To look at: life without words is not to lose the ability to fom1 words-to think, remem ber, and plan. To be silentt is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, it is onl;y through silence that one cap_ discover something .nc:w to talk about. One who talked inceuantly, without stopping to look and ·listen, woµld repeat himse1f ad naweam. It is the same with thinking, which is really silent .. talking. It is not, by itselt�, open to the discovery of anything new, for its onlJ1 novelties are simply rear rangements of old words and ideas. There was a time • when language was consta1r1tly being enriched by new • words-a time when men, like Adam, sa,v things before they named them. T<xlay, almost all new words are rea11 angements of old ·words, for we are no longer thinking c1eatively. By tliais I do not mean that we ought all to be popping w1ith inventions and revolutionary discoveries. This is the-always rare-power of tliaose who can both see the unknown and interpret it. For most of us, the othc�r half of sanity lies simply in seeing and enjoying th•e unknown, just as we can • enjoy music without k.no1Ning either how it is writ ten or how the body hearn it. _Certainly the revolutioinary mink.er must go be�
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L yond thought. He k;nows that almost all his best ideas b come to him when: thinking has stof,ped. He rnay • It have struggled and struggled to undcntand a prob " lem in . tc1•••I of old ways of thinking, only to find it 0 impossible. But wl1cn thought stops &om exhaus tion, the mind is open to see the problem as it is not u it is verbalized-aLnd at once it is undentood. tl But going bcyonid thought is not reserved to men d of genius. It is ope11, to all of us in so far as .. the mys tery of life is not a problem to be solved, but a real� ity to be cxperien�ced." It is given to many to be . 11 0 seen, but to few to, be prophets. Many can listen to fi music, but few cant perfo1111 and compose. But you . t4 . cannot even listen if you can hear only in tcr,ns of e past. What sho,uld we make of one of Mozan's the 14 symphonies if our can were attuned only to the fi music of tom-tomsi• We might get the rhythms, but C almost nothing of the ha101ony and melody. In other P words, we should faLil to discover an essential clement 0 . of the music. To· l>e able to hear, much less write, . such a symphony 1nen had to discover new noises 11 the vibrations of c1tgut, the sound of air in a tul>C, and t�e hum of a plucked wire. They had to discover the whole worl<:f of tone, as something entirely different from pulse. If I can only co1nceivc pulse, .1 cannot appreciate tone. If I can thirilc. of painting only as a way of rnak C . ing colored photog:raphs without a camera, I can sec s· nothing but ineptiitude in a Chinese landscape. We
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learn nothing of very much importance when it can be explained entirely in t«=nns of past experience. If LY it were possible to unde1sttand all things in te11i,s of !,.. • what we know already, we could convey the sense of It color to a blind man with nothing but sound, taste, touch, and smell �t If this is true in the vari•�us arts and sciences, it is a tho11sand times more true when we come to the un dentanding of life in a lU]ger sense and want to have rssome knowledge of the ultimate Reality, or God. It llte1 surely absurd to seek (;od in ins of a preconis :,e to · ceived idea of what God iis. To seek thus is only to find what we know alread)r, which is why it is so easy )U to deceive oneself into all manner of "supernatural" . of experiences and visions. 1ro believe in God and to t's look for the God you believe in is simply to seel con�e fir111ation of an opinion. ·ro ask for a revelation of ut God's wi-1, and then to ..t«�t" it by reference to your er preconceived moral stand:ards is to make a mockery nt of asking. You knew the answer already. Seeking for te, . . God" in this way is no more than asking for the stamp of absolute authority and certainty on what: ,e, you believe in any case, fc•r a guarantee that the un· mown and the future will be a continuation of what you want to retain from thle past a bigger and better •· fonress for .. I." Ein feste 4Burg! Lte If we are open only to discoveries which will ac lk- cord with . what ·we know1 already, we may as well ee stay shut. This is wh)I the 1marvelous achievements of ,,
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science and tcchno1logy are of so little real use to us. It is in vain ·that we can predict and control the course of events in 1thc future, unless we know how to live in the present. It is in vain that doctors prolong life if we spend tht� extra time being anxious to live still longer. It is in1 vain that engineers devise faster and easier means ojf travel if the new sights that we sec arc merely sortc�d and understood in ter111s of old prejudices. It is in vain that we get the power of the atom if we arc just to continue in the rut of blowing ,people up. Tools such as the�, as well as the tools of language and thought, arc of real use to men only if they are .. awake-not lost in the dreamland of past and future, but in the closest tc,uch with that point of experience where reality can aLlone be discovered: this moment. Here life is alive, vibrant, vivid, and present, con taining depths which we have hardly begun to ex plore. But to see and understand it at all; the mind must not be divid«!d into "I" and "this experience." The moment must: �what it always is-all that you arc and all that yo,u kno,v. In this house thcr� is no -• room for thee and mcl • · •
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THE WHITE MAN FANCIE� HIMSELF AS A PRACTICAL
person who wants to "gc:t results." He is impatient with theory, and ,vith an·y discuuion ,vhich does not .. immediately get down to conc1ete applications. This is why the behavior of W'estem civilization might be · described, in gc:neral, as. "Much Ado About Noth ing... The proper meaniing of "theory" is not idle .. · speculation but vision, 2lnd it was rightly said that " "!Y�ere there JS no vision the people perish." But vision in this sense� does not mean dreams and ideals for the future. It........1neam understanding - - -�of--- life as it is, of- what we are, anld what ,ve are ··- doing. With- out such ondentanding it is simply ridiculous to talk of being practical a11d getting results. It is like walking busily in a fog: y,ou just go round and round. You do not know where you arc going, nor what re- • · suits you really·,vant. .. . � To minds that think in this way, ,vhat we have discussed so far may seem too theoretical. These ideas arc all very well, but do they work? Yet I must ask, ..What do you mean by ,work?" The usual ..working test'"- � a philosophy �I whether it makes people •
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better and happier, �whether it results in peace, co operation, and prospierity. Yet this is a meaningless criterion without mu.ch .. theoretical" understanding. What do you mean IJ•y happiness? What are .. better" people better for? A' bout . what will you co-operate? " What will you do wi1th peace and prosperity? The answer to the!se questions depends entirely on what we are and wruat we actually want now. If, for . example, we want at: the,13me time both peace and isolation, brotherhoc>
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discussing these until we� have made up our minds. There is, in tum, no pc,ssibility of making up our minds so long as they arc� split in two, so long as ..I .. am one thing and ..exper·ience" another. If the mind is the directive force behind action, the mind and iu " vision of life must be h1ealed before action can be anything but conflict. • Something must thereifore be said about the healed vision of life which comc:s with full awareness, for it involves a deep transfo1mation of our view of th� world. As well as words. can describe it, this trans fo1111ation consists in k11aowing and feeling that the world is an organic unit)f. In the ordinary way, �,e "know" this as a matter of information but do not fe�l it to be true. Cenainly most people feel separate from everything that surrounds them. On the or.ae hand there is myself, and l on the other the rest of t hc univene. I am not rooted in the earth like a tree. I rattle around independently. I seem to be the center of everything, and yet cut off and alone. I can feel what is going on inside my own body, but I can only guess what is going on in othen. My conscious mind must have its roots and origins in the most unfathomable depths of be ing, yet it feels as if it lived all by itself in this tight little skull. Nevertheless, the phy·sical reality is that my body exists only in relation tc> this universe·, and in fact I am as attached to it and •:lependent on it as a leaf on a • ••
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tree. I feel cut off onl�y because I. am split ,vithin my self, because I try to be divided from my own feel ings and sensations. \�at I feel and sense therefore seems foreign to me. .And on being aware of the un reality of this divisio,n , the universe does not seem • foreign any more. For I am what I knc>w; what I know is I. The sensation of a house across: the street or of a star in outer space is no less I tharn an itch on the sole of my foot or an idea in ·my brain. In another . sense, I am also • what I do not know. I am not aware of my own brain as a brain. In just thie same way, I am not aware of the ho11se ac1oss the utreet as a thing apan from my sensation of it. I kno�, my brain as thoughts and feel ings, and I know the J1011se as sensations. In the same way and sense that I tdo not know my own brain, or the house as a thinJ�-in-itself, I do not know the private thoughts in yc>ur brain. But my brain, whiich is also I, your brain and the thoughts within it, ais well as the house ac1oss the street, arc all £01 ms of an inextricably interwoven process called the rc;al world. Conscious or uncon scious of it � I may be, it is all I in the sense that the sun, the air, and hum;an society are just as vital to me · · as my brain or my l11ngs. If, then, this brain is my brain-unaware of it :as I am-the sun is my sun, the air my air, and societJ, my society. Certainly I cannot: command the sun to be cgg �apcd, nor force yo11r brain to think differently. I •
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THE TRANSF01RMATION OF LIFE
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cannot see the inside of the sun, nor can I share your private feelings. Yet neiither can I change the shape or structure of my own l>rain, nor have a sensation of it as a contraption like a. cauliflower. But if my brain is nonetheless I, the sun. is I, the air is I, and society, ·· of which you are a me1mber, is also I-for all these things are just as csseratial to my• existence as my brain. That _!here is a sun a �n from my �nsaiimt of_it_is---.. �n inference. The fact t.hat I have a brain, though J _ i .. cann� ��....1.C L b.Ke�i�J(Ciiifcrence..::.we know apou! these tilings onl)(_j!!__th�ory, af!d �� by im mediate experience!... B1ut this ..external" world of theoretical objects is, :apparently, just � much a unity as the .. internal" .world of experience. From experience• I infer that ilt exists. And because experience is a unity-I am my sensations-I must likewise infer that this theoreticnl universe is a unity, that my • . body and the world forrn a single process. Now there have bec::n many theories about the unity of the universe. ]But they have not delivered human beings from th1e isolation of egotism, from conflict, and from the £,ear of life, because there is a world of. difference bet,veen an inference and a feeling. You can reason thalt the universe is a unity ,vith• out feeling it to be so. 'You ca� establish the theory that your body is a mov1ement in an unbroken proc ess wh·ich includes all :suns and stars, and yet con tinue to feel separate an,d lonely. For the fe�ling will • •
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, not correspond to tliae theory until you have also discovered the unity c>f inner experience. Despite all theories, you will feel that you are isolated from -life so long as you are diviided within. But you will cease Ito feel isolated when you recog nize, for example, thcat you do not have a sen�tion of the sky: you aTe trult sensation. For all purposes of feeling, your sensatioit1 of the sky is the sky, and thc!C is no ..you" apan from what you sense, feel, and know. This is why th4e mystia and many of the poets give frequent utterar1cc to the feeling that they are ..one with the All," o,r ..united with God," or; as Sir Edwin Arnold expres.scd it,, . 1 Ftrregoing seiff, the univnse grows I. • Sometimes, indeecl, this feeling is purely senti mental, the poet beilng "one with Nature" just so · long as she is on her IJ.est behavior. • I live not in myself, but I become • PoTtion o/ that aro1und me; and to me • High mountains a,·e a feeling, but the hum .., , 0/ human cjties to1rture: l can see • . •· , · Nothing to loathe 1in nature, save to be . f · .. A linl reluctant in a fleshl' chain, Classed among CTet.1tures, when the soul can flee, • And with the sl,, t'he peal, the heaving plain · Of ocean, trr the st4ws, mingle, and not in vain. t This ivral rapture from Byron is quite beside the point. He has only a>mc to with nature to the extent that he has beffricnded his own human nature. • .. ·• • 1 10 f
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un • The fty likes the swectnt!II of the honey, but not its · stickiness, which makes tiaim THE TRANSFOltMATION OF
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A linl f'eluctan,r in a fleshl1 chain, Classed among c':f'eatuf'es.
The �ntimcntalist does not·look into the depths -of . nature and see Sluggish e,cistences gFazin1g thne, swpended, or slowl7 aawling close to the bo1rtom: • • • The leaden-eyed shaf'l, thi e walnu, the turtle, the hairy sea-leopard, and the sti,1g-ra,1 ions there, wars, pu,,.suit.s, tribe$ sight in those ocean depths breathin1g that thicl breathing aif'. •
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Man has to discover tliat everything which he be holds in nature the clan1my foreign-feeling world of • the ocean's depths, the ,vastes of ice, the reptiles of the swamp, the spiders atnd scorpions, the deserts of lifeless planets-has its c:ounterpart within himself. • He is not, then, at one �rith himself until he realizes that this ..under side" off nature and the feelings of horror which it gives hirn are also ..I." For all the qualities which we ire or loathe in the world aro11nd us a1·e reflections from within though from a within ,tl1at is also a beyond, uncoo • sciou.�, vast, unknown. Q1ur feelings about the c1awl ing world of the wasps'. nest and the snake pit are feelings about hidden asipects of our own bodies and brains, and of all their Jf>Otential ities for unfamiliar aeeps and shivers, for unsightly diseases, and unimaginable pains. _ . _ , . .. ••
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I do not kno,v wht�ther it is true, but it is said that some of the great S3f�es and ··holy men" have an ap parently supernatunnl power over beasts and reptiles which are always dangerous to ordinary mortals. If this is true, it is cena:inly because they are able to live · at peace with the .. bc�asts and reptiles" in themselves. They need not call 1the wild elephant Behemoth or the sea-monster Le,,iathan; they address them fa . miliarly as .. Long-N-ose" and ..Slimy." The sense of unit)' with the ..All" is not, however, a nebulous state of 1nind, a sort of trance, in ,vhich all form and distinc1tion is abolished, as if man and the universe merge
resenting ,vhat is at once obvious to sense and feeling, and an enigima to logic and description. A young man in search of spiritual wisdom put himself under the instruction of a celebrated holy man. The sage made, him his personal attendant, and after some months t:he young man complained that thus far he had recceived no instruction. ..What do you meal)!" exclain1ed the holy man. ..When you •
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brought me my rice, didn't I cat it? When you .brought me my tea, didra 't I drink it? When yo� made salutations to me, didn't I return them? When have 1 ever neglected to give you instruction?" .. I'm afraid I don't understand," said the young man, totally mystified. ..When you �,ant to see into it," answered the sage, ..see�nto it d.irectly. When you begin to think about it, it is alt()J�ther missed."
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Pluclting chrysanthenaums ·along the East fence; Gazing in silence at tl.ae southern hills; The birds flying hom�� in pairs • Through the soft moi,ntain air of dwlt_ · In these things there i's a deep meaning, • • • · But when w� are abon,t to express it, • • • We suddenl1 forget tJae words•
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The _meaning is not the contemplative, twilight, and, perhaps, superficially idyllic atmosphere b:' • loved of Chinese poets. This is already expressed, r , •... and the poet does not gild the lily. He will not, like so many Western poet:s, tum philosopher and say s that he is ..one with" th•: Rowen, the fence, the hills, 1 · and the birds. This, too, is gilding the lily, or, in his o,vn Oriental idiom, ··p•utting legs on a snake." For t when you really unden,tand that you are what you y sec and know, you do 11ot run around the country i side thinking, ··1 am all this." There is simply ..all t this." ) The feeling that we stand face-to-face with the I
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world, cut off and set :apan, has the greatest influence on thought and acti4)n. Philosophen, · for example, often fail to recognize that tl1eir remarks about the universe apply also t<) themselves and their remarks. • · If the universe is in1eaningless, so is the statement that it is so. If this w<J•rld is a vicious trap, so is its acc, and the pot is <:ailing the ke�tlc black. In the strictest scinsc, we annot actually think about life and reality at all, because this would have to include thinking 2lbout thinking, thinking about · thinking about thinl�ing, and so ad infinitum. ..One . can only attempt a rational, descriptive philosop'!I • of the universe on th�e assumption that one is totally separate from it. Bult if you and your thoughts arc pan of this universe, you cannot stand ou�d� them t� describe them. Tillis is why all philosophical an� t!teological systems rnust ultimately fall apart. T� .. kno,v" reality you cannot stand outside it and define it; you must enter in1to it, be it, and feel it. Speculative philosc>phy, as we know it in the West, is almost entirely a S}'mptom of the divided mind, of man trying to stand ,outside himself and his experi ence in order to verb.llize and define it. It is a vicious . circle, like everythin,g else which the divided mind attempts. On the - other handi, the realization that·thc mind is actually undivided 11r1ust have a corresponding and equally far-reaching influence on thought and action.
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As the philosopher tries to stand outside himself and his thought, so, as we h1ave seen, the ordinary man . ·. tries to stand outside himself and his emotions and sensations, his feelings :and desires. The result is a fantastic confusion an4i misdirection of conduct which discovery of the mind's unity must bring to · an end So long as the mind is split, life is perpetual con ftict, tension, frustratio11, and disillusion. Suffering is piled on suffering, fe:ar on fear, and boredom on boredom. The more the fly struggles to get out of the · honey, the faster he is st11ck. Under the pressure of so much strain and futilit}', it is no wonder at all that men seek release in viol•ence and sensationalism, and .,a in the reckless exploitation of their bodies, their ap- , , pe�ites, the material w•)rld, and their fellow men. " What this must add to tl1e necessary and unavoidable • · pains of existence is incalculable. . But the undivided mind is free &om this tension . ... · of trying always to stan,d outside oneself and to be elsewhere than here ancl now. Each moment is lived · completely, and there. is thus a sense of fulfillment · and completeness. The divided mind comes to the dinner table and pecb, at one dis�after another, rushi�g on without dii�ting anything to find one better than t�e last. It finds nothing good, because there is nothing which it really tastes. · When, on the other hand, you realize that you · - '1
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live in, that indeed yo1u are this moment now, and no other, that apart horn this there is no past and no future, you must relax an� taste to the full, whether it be pleasure or pai1n. At once it becomes obvious why this universe exiists, why conscious beings have been produced, wh1r sensitive organs, why space, time, and change. Tl1e whole problem of justifying nature, of trying to make life mean something in of its future, disappears utterly. Obviously, it all exists for this moment. It is a dance, and when you are dancing you are not intent on getting some- . where. You go roundl and round, but not under the illusion that you are pursuing something, or Heeing from the jaws of bell. How long have the: planets been circling the suq? Are they getting any,vhere, and do they go faster and faster in order to an�ive? How often has the spring returned to the earth;? Does it come faster and fancier every year, to be sure to be better than last spring, and to hurry on its ,�1ay to the spring that shall out. spring all springs? The meaning and 1purpose of dancing is the dance. Like music, also, it i!, fulfilled in each moment of its course. You do not pllay a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if tine meanings of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales. It might, h<J•,vever, be observed in ing that the 1nusic specicillly characteristic of our culture is progressive in som<� respects, and does at times see111
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to be decidedly on its ·way to a · future climax. But when it gets there, it d<Ja not know what to do with i�lf. Beethoven, Brahcns, and Wagner were particu larly guilty of working up to colossal climaxes and conclusions, and then blasting away at the same chord over and over ag;ain, ruining the moment by being reluctant to leave it. When each moment becomes an expectation life is deprived of fulfillme'.nt, and death is dreaded for it seems that here expecctation must come to an end. While there is life ther,e is hope and if one lives on hope, death is indeed tltie end. But to the undivided mind, death is another moment, complete like every moment, and cannot yield its sec1et unless lived to_ the full,
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Death is the epitome c,f the truth that in ea_�h mo ment we are thrust into1 the unknow_n. Herc all cling ing to security is com1,elled to cease, and wherever ... the past is dropped a,v;ay and safety abandoned, life is renewed. Death is th,e unknown in which all of us lived before birth• Nothing is more c1eaLtive than death, since it is the whole sec1et of life. It means that the past must be abandoned, that the tanknown cannot be avoided, that ..I" c;annot contin,ue, and that nothing can be ultimately ��ed. When: a man knows this, he lives for •
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. the fint time in hi!s life. By holding his breath, he loses it. By letting it. go he finds, it. . _ .. • •
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more than a technical consultant. He has become a scold. From his pulf•it or his- study he harangues the human race, issuing praise and blame-mostly blame -like fire from the u1outh of a dragon. For people do . not take his advice. They ask. how it is best to aa under such-and-suet, circumstances. He tells them, and they seem to apec that he is right. But then they go away and do som«�thing different, for they find his advice too difficult CJ•r have a strong desire to do the opposite. This happ�ns so regularly that the moralist loses his temper and. begins to call them bad names. When this has no e:ffcct, he resorts to physical vio lence, implementing· his advice with policemen, pun ishments, and prisorns. For the community is its own moralist. It elects a1r1d pays judges, policemen, and preachers, as if to ALY, .. When I am difficult, please kick me." • At fint sight the :Problem seems to boil down to this: Morals are for avoiding an unfair distribution , of pleasure and pain. This means that some indi viduals must get less pleasure and more pain. As a rule, these individwlls·will only submit to the aaaifice under the threat of still more pain if they do not co-o�rate. This is based on the assumption that every man is for hirnself, and observes the interests of the community· only to the extent that these are obviously his own i11tterests. From this, morali:sts have evolved the theory that man is basically selfis,h, or that he has an inherent bias • •
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towards evil. The "nat11ral" man lives for one motive: 'to protect his body &oun pain and to ·associate it with pleasure. Because he aln only feel with his own body, he has little interest i11 the feelings of other bodies. Therefore he will onl�r take interest in other bodies under the stimulus of 1:-ewards and punishments, that is, by an exploitation <>f his self-interest in the inter est of the community. Happily, the proble'.m is not quite so simple. For among the things tha1t give man pleasure are rela tions with other human beings-conversation, eating together, singing, dan•cing, having children, and cooperation in work whiich "many hands make light." Indeed, one of the higlltest pleasures is to be more or less unconscious of 01rie's own existence, to be ab sorbed in interesting sights, sounds, places, and peo ple. C:Onversely, one •of the greatest pains is to be self-conscious, to feel unabsorbed and cut off from the community and th.e surrounding world._ • But this whole prol:•lem has no solution while we think about it in ter1n1s of the pleasure-pain motiva tion, or, indeed, in of any ''motivation'' at all. For man has a moral J>roblem, which other commu nity-living animals do not have, for the very reason that he is so much co:ncemcd with motives. If it is true that man is neces.sarily motivated by the pleasure-pain principle, th,ere is no point whatsoever in �isc11ssing human con«Juct. Motivated conduct is de termined conduct; it ,�ill be what it will be, no lnat· Ill •
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ter what anyone has tc, say about it. There can be no aeative morality unl1ess man has the possibility of &eedom. -. This is where the n1oralists make their mistake. If they want man to chatnge his way of life, they m11st assume that he is freei� for if he is not, all the raging and protesting in the ·world will make no difference. On the other hand, 2l man who is acting &om the fear of a moralist's tJ1reats or &om the lure of his promises is not malting a &ee actl If man is not nee, . threats and promises may modify his conduct, but they will not change it in any essential �spect. If he is £1ce, threats and pr·omiscs will not make him use his freedom. The meaning of fn�om can· never be g1asped by the divided mind. If 1[ feel separate &om my experi ence, and &om the w1orld, &eedom will seem to be · the extent to which :1 can push the world around, and fate the extent t10 which the world pushes me around. But to the w:hole mind there is no contrast of ''I'' and the world.. There is just one process act ing, and it does everything that happens. It raises my little finger and it creates earthquakes. Or, if you want to put it that way, I raise my little finger and also make earthqualc.c=s. No one fates and no one is being fated. . Of course this is a s1trange view of &eedom. We are to think 1that, if there ii any &eedom at accustomed •
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all, it resides, not in ruLture, but in the separate human will and its powe1� of choice. But what we ordinarily mean by choice is not &cedom. Choices are us,nally decisions motivated by pleasure and pain, an�l the divided mind acts with the sole purpose of getting ••1•• into pleasure and out of pain. But the best J?leasures are those for which we do not plan, and th�e worst pan of pain is expect· ing it and trying to giet away &om it when it has come. You cannot plan to be happy. You can plan to exist, but in themselves existence and non-existence . are · neither pleasurablie nor painful. I am even as sured by doctors that t'here are circumstances under which death can be a lilighly pleasant experience. . The sense of not beiing free comes &om trying to do things which are irnpossible and even meaning less. You are not ..free:" to draw a square circle, to live without a head, or· to stop certain reflex actions. These are not obstaclesi to freedom; they are the con ditions of freedom. I a.m not free to draw a circle if perchance it should tu:rn out to be a square circle. I · am not, thank heaven, &ee to walk out of doors and leave my head at homle. Likewise I am not free to live in any moment bt1t this one, or to separate my self from my feelings. J[n shon I am not free when I am trying to do somet1hing contra�ictory, such as to. move without changing position, or to bum my finf - :....,...�, ger without feeling pain. · ... .... .s
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On the other hand, I am free, the world proceu 11 &ee, to do anything ,which is not a contradiction. The question then ari1SCS: is it a contradiction, is it impossible, to act or Ito_ decide without pleasure as the ultimate aim? Th,e theory that we must inevitably do what gives uis the greater pleasure or the lesser pain, is a meaningless assertion based on ver• bal confusion. To say that I decide to do something because it pleases me says only that I decide to do it because I decide to do, it. If ..pleasure" is defined in the beginning as ..what I prefer," then what I prefer will always be pleasur.e. If I prefer pain, like a mas ochist, then pain will be pleasure. In short, the the ory begs the question alt the start by saying that pleas ure means what we d,esire: therefore anything that we desire is pleasure. . But I fall straight intto contradiction when I try to act and decide in ord,er to be happy, when I make ..being pleased" my fu1ture goal. For the more my ac tions are directed towatrds future pleasures, the more I am incapable of enjc>ying any pleasures at all. For all pleasures are preseint, and nothing save con1plete awareness of the preM�nt can even begin to guaran tee future happiness. 1: can act in order to eat tomor row, or take a trip to 1the mountains next _week, but ' thcre·is really no way of being certain that this will • · make me happy. On the contrary, it is common ex perience that nothing ruins a ..pleasure" so much as watching yourself in 1:he midst of it to see whether •
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it pleases you. You ca111 only live in one moment at a time, and you cann<>t think simultaneously about listening to the waves , and whether you are enjoying listening to the wavC!i. Contradictions of this kind are the only real types of action without freedom. . · There is another theory of dete11ninism which states that all our acti1ons are motivated by .. uncon scious mental mechaniisms," and that for this reason even the most spontaneous _decisions are not free. This is but another �xample of split-mindedness, for what is the differena� between "me" and "mental mechanisms" whethe1r conscious . or unconscious? Who is being moved t,y these processes? The notion · that anyone is being nootivated co1nes from the per sisting illusion of ul.'' The real man, the organism in-relation-to-the-univ•erse, is this unconscious moti vation. And beca11se hte is it, he is not being moved by it. In other words, it is not motivation; it is sim ply operation. Moreo,,er, there is no "unconscious" 1 mind distinct from tl1e conscious, for the _.. uncon scious" mind is co�ious, though not of itself, just as the eyes see but do u1ot see themselves. There remains the !.upposition that the whole op eration, the who�e pr.ocess of action which is man and-univc�, is a dete1mined series of events in is the inevitable result of past which every event • causes. We cannot go into this problem exhaustively or even adequately. But jit is perhaps enough to realize 115
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for the moment that 1this is one of the biggest "open questions" of science,1 which is far &om reaching a · decision. The idea th�1t the past deter1nines the present can be an illusi�n1 of language. Because we must describe the present in of the past, it would seem that the past ",explains" the present. To say "how" something ha1>pened, we describe the chain of events of which it :seemed to be a pan. The bottle smashecl. It fell to the floor. I let it go. . My fingen were slipJ>ery. I had soap on my hands. Is it legitimate to put the word ··because" between, these statements? We ,do so as a rule, for we can make the safe bet that if I :let go of the bottle, it will fall to the floor. But this 1docs not prove that I caused it to fall, or that it must have fallen. Events look in evitable in retrospect because when_ they have hap pened, nothing can c:hange them. Yet the fact that -· . I can make safe bets could prove equally well that events are not detn,irained but consistent. In other words, the univenal process acts &cely and sponta neously at every mounent, but tends to throw out • events in regular, andl so predictable, sequences. · However t.'lis issue may be decided, the undivided · mind certainly has tlile feeling of f1ecdom, and cer tainly brings into thle moral sphere a way of life which has all the ma1rks of &ee and aeative action. It is easy to sec that: most of the acts which, in convcntional morals, are called evil can be traced to the · divided mind. By fal· the greater part of these acts
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come &om cxaggeratcci desires, desires for things which arc not even rcm,otely ncccs,ary for the health of mind and body, gra1riting that ..health" is a rela- · tive tel 01. Such outla11dish and insatiable desires come into being because man is exploiting his appetites to give the "I" a K�nse of security. I am depressed, and ,nnt to get ..I" out of this de pression. The opposite of depression is elation, but because depression is n«>t elation, I cannot force my self to be elated. I ca111, however, get drunk. This makes me wonderfully ,elated, and so when the next depression arrives, I halve a quick cure. The subse quent depressions have a way of getting deeper and blacker, becat1sc I am not digesting the depressed , state and eliminating i.ts poisons. So I need to get even drunker to drownl them. Very soon I begin to hate myself for getting· so drunk, which makes me still more depressed arid ·so it goes. Or perhaps I have a large family, and am living in a �ortgaged house on �,hich I have spent all my sav ings. I have to work haird at a job in which I am nOt panicularly interested in order to pay the bills. I don't mind working so much, but I keep wondering . what will happen if I giet sick, or if a war comes and I am drafted. I would :rather not think about these things, so I want to get: .. I" out of this worry. For I am sure that I shall get sick if it goes on. But it's so hard to stop, and as this, makes sickness more certain, · the worrying digs. deCJi>Cf. -1 must find relief &om •
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this, and so in desperation I begin to "play the po C nies," trying to offset: the worry with the daily hope ] . , that my horse may win. And so it goes. • The conventional moralist has nothing to con ] • tribute · to these proiblems. He can point out the I frightful effects of alc·oholism and gambling, but that I is sin1ply more fuel for depression and worry. He . can promise rewards in heaven for suffering pa- • • • tiently endured, but that, too, is a gamble of a kind. I He can attribute the depression or the worry to the ] social system, and u�ge the unfortunates to the ] revolution. In short, he can ei1ther frighten the "I" or encour I I age it, in one case miaking the individual run away I from himself, and in the other making him run after C himself. He can pai111t glowing pictures of the vir tues and encourage o, then to find strength in the ex1 amples of great men.. He can succeed to the extent • of arousing the most ·vigorous efforts to imitate saint C liness, to curb the ions, and to practice restraint . j and charity in action.. Yet none of this brings anyone I to freedom, for behir1d all the imitation and tl1e disI cipline there is still rootive. t If I am afraid, mJ' effortJ to feel and act bravely are moved by the fea:r, for I am afraid of fear, which is simply to say that 1ny efforts to escape from what I am are moving in a circle. Beside the examples of t saints and heroes I tfeel ashamed that I amount to nothing, and so I be��in to practice humility beca11se
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of my wounded pride, an(jl charity because of my self• love. The urge is ever to make "I" amount to some , thing. I must be right, good, a real person, heroic, loving, self-effacing. I efface myself in order to assen myself, and give myself ;Lway in order to keep my-self. The whole thing is a contradictiO!). The Christian mind h�u always been haunted by the feeling that the sins ci1f the saints are worse than • the sins of the sinnen, that in some mysterious way ..,. the one who is strugglint{ for salvation is nearer to hell and to the bean of evil than the unashamed har• lot or thief. It has recognized that the Devil is an an gel, and as pure spirit is u1ot really interested in the sins of the flesh. The sins after the Devil's bean arc the intricacies of spiritwLI pride, the mazes of self .. deception, and the subt:le mockeries of hypocrisy · where mask hides behind mask behind mask and • reality is lost altogether. . The would-be saint wallb straight into the meshes • of this web because he would become a saint. His .. I" · finds the deepest securit}' in a satisfaction which is the more intense for bei1ng so cleverly hidden-the. satisfaction of being con1trite for his sins, and con trite for taking pride in his· contrition. In such an involved vicious circle tllte masks behind masks are • infinite. Or, to put it in a.nother way, he who would stand outside himself to kick himself, must then kick the self that stands outsid,e. And so forever. , So long as there is the: motive to become some\
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thing, so long as th,e mind believes in the possibility of escape from whaLt it is _at this moment, there can be no freedom. Vi:rtue will be pursued for exactly the same reason as ,vice, and good and evil will alter• nate as the opposite poles of a ,ingle circle. The · ..saint" who appears to have conquered his self-love by spiritual violen•:e has only concealed it. His ap parent success con·vinces others that he has found the .. ,rue way," anid they follow his example long ·enough for the cou. rsc to swing to its opposite pole, when license becoot1cs the inevitable reaction to pu• • _,ntan1Sm; Of course it sou1rads as if it were the most abject fatalism to have to it that I am what I am, and that no escape or �livision is possible. It seerns . that if I am afraid, the11 I am ..stuck" with fear. But in fact I am chained t<> the fear only so long as I a_m try· ing to get away ·froim it. On the other hand, when I " · do not try to get a,vay I discover that there is noth ing ..stuck" or fixed about the reality of the moment. When I am aware c>f this feeling without naming it, without calling it ·fear'" ..bad," '!negative," etc..� it changes instantly i111to something else, and life moves • &eely ahead. The feeling no longer perpetuates it : self by c1eating the feeler behind it. We can perhaps 1sec now why the undivided mind is not moved into those escapes from the present which are usually called "evil." The further truth - that the undivided mind is aware of experience as a 0
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-�nity, of the world as iu1elf, and that the whole na ture of mind and aware11cu is to be one with what it knows, suggests a state tthat would usually be called love. For the love that e>�presses itself in c1cative ac tion is something much 1rnore t�n an emotion. It is not something which y(>u can ..feel" and .. know,• · and define. l�ve is the organizing and .. ·, .: unifying principle ,vhich makes the world a universe and the disintegrated mass a community. It is the very essence and character of mind, and becomes • manifest in action when the mind is whole. For the mind mwt be� interested or absorbed in something, just as a mimt>r must always be reflecting · something. When it is n<>t trying to be interested in itself as if a mirror woulld reflect itself-it must be · · interested, or absorbed, iin other people and things. There is no problem of how to love. We love. We are love, and the only F•roblem is the direction of .love, whether it is to go straight out like sunlight, or to try to tum bad on itself like a "candle under a bushel." . Released from the ci1·de of attempted self-love, the mind of man draws 1 the whole universe into its own unity as a single de,.vdrop seems to contain the entire sky. This, rather than any mere emotion, is • the power and principle of free action and creative morality. On .the other liand, the morality of rules and regulations based on rewards and punishments, even when the� are aa in1tangible as the pain of guilt
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and the pleasure �of self-respect, has no relation to &ee action. It is a w�y of ruling slaves by ..benevo lent exploitation" ,of their illusions, and, however far punued, can neve:r lead to freedom. Where there is to be creative action, it is quite beside the point t
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..well" it wishes to others is not security but liberty. Nothing is really more inhuman than human relations based on m1orals. When a man gives bread in order to be charit.1ble, lives with a woman in order . to � faithful, eat!. with a Negro in order to be un prejudiced, and n:f••ses to kill in order to be peace ful, he is as cold as a clam. He does not actually see the other person. Only a little less chilly is the be nevolence springirag &om pity, which acu to remove suffering because it finds the sight of it disgusting. But there 1s nc• formula for generating the authentic warmth olf love. It cannot be · �pied. You cannot talk youneilf into it or ro11se it ·by attaining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself sole•••nly to 151
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the service of mankind. Jgveryone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossi bility and the frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will n<J•t come through condemna tions, through hating oneself, through calling self love all the bad names ir1 the universe. It �mes only in the awareness that onte has no self to love.
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WE BEGAN THIS BOOK WITH THE A&1UMPTION THAT
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science and scientific pl1il�phy give no grounds for religious belief. We did not argue the point, but took it as the point of departure. We adopted the prevalent view that the� existence of God, of any ab solutes, and of an ete111al order beyond this world is without logical suppo1� or meaning. We accepted · the notion that such id.eas arc of no value for scientific prediction, �nd tliat all known events can be explained more aimpl}' without them. At the same time, we said mat reli,gion had no need to oppose this view, for almost all the spiritual traditions rec- og11ize mat there is a stage in man's development when belief-in contrast to faith and its securities have to be left behind. . To this point, I do n•i>t think that we have claimed anything which cannot be verified by experiment, or asserted anything whic:h seriously conflicts with a scientific view of the w·orld. Yet we have now come . · to a position from whiich the principal ideas of �ligion and traditional meta.physia can once more . · become intelligible an•:I meaningful-not as beliefs, but as valid symbols of experience. Science and religion. arc talking about the same - universe, but they are using different kinds of Ian-
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guage. In gene1al, tJ:ie statements of science have to do with the past anid the future. The scientist de scribes events. He tAells us "how" things happen by giving us a detailed of what has happened. He finds that events ,occur in various frequencies and orders, and on this basis he makes bets or predictions in the light of whidt we can make practical a11ange mcnts and adaptatic>ns to the course of cventi. To make these bets, he� docs not need to know about · God or ctc1 11al life. He needs to know the past what has happened .afrcady. . On the other han
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discover the grounds up>n which these predictions arc made, he finds them emotional rather than ra tional. Religious people hope or believe that these things will be true. Nevertheless, in the hiatory of every important re ligion there have been those who undentood reli� gious ideas and statcmc11lts in a very different way. On the whole, this has l,een more true of the East than of the West, thoug�t Christian history contains a long list of men and women who could have talked on common ground wiith onhodox Hindus and Buddhists. From this other and, we think, deeper point of view, religion is not a sys1tcm of predictions. Its doc trines have to do, not with the future and the ever lasting, but . with the present and the eternal. They are not-a set of beliefs atnd hopes but, on the con trary, a set of graphic S)'lnbols about present experi·
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· Traditionally, these syimbols are of'�inds. One describes the rcligio� way of understanding the .present in the fo1an of concrete images and stories. The other describes it iiri an abstract, negative lan guage which is often simlilar to the language of aca- _., demic philosophy. For co•nveniencc, we can call these two kinds of symbol the religious and the metaphy sical. But we must remf�mber that ..metaphysic" in this sense is not speculative philosophy. It. is not an attempt to anticipate scilence and give a logical de- · •
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Kription of I.he uni·verse and its origins. It is a way of representing a k�nowledge of the present. Reli gious symbols are 1,pecially characteristic of Chris tianity, Islam, and J·udaism, whereas doctrines of the . Oriental type are n1ore metaphysical. We said that scierace and religion are both talking · about the same worlld, and throughout this book we have never been co111cerned with anything but evuyday life, with things whjch can be seen, felt, and ex- · perienced. We shalll therefore be told, by religious aitics, that we are rc!ducing religion to ..naturalism," .. that we are identify'ing God with nature, and mak ing a moc�ery and travesty of religion by taking away ..its essential supernatural content." But when you as•� theologians what they mean by the �·supernatural," they burst immediately into sci entific language. 1''hey talk about a God having "conc1ete reality distinct &om this universe," and · speak of him in temris of past history and future pre- . dictions. They insist that the supernatural world is not of the same ..o,·der" as the universe studied by science, but exists o,n another plane of being invisi'. ble to our· natural senses. It begins to sound like _ something psychic, something of the same order as the phenomena of ��lepathy, clairvoyance, and clair� • audience. • Yet this is naturalism pure and simple; it is even pseudo.science. For science and naturalism are n� necessarily concerned only with things visible to the
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senses. No one has seen t!lecuona or quanta, nor been able to construct a aenstaal image of curved space. If psychic phenomena exu�t, there is no reason to sup.. pose that they cannot IJ.c studied scientifically, and that they arc not simplJ' another aspect of ..nature." Indeed, science is co11cemed with innumerable · things which cannot be experienced with the senses, and which are not presc!nt to immediate experience -for example, the entme past, the process of gravity, the nature of time, andl the weights of planets and 1tan. These invisible tltiings arc inferred &om im mediate experience by logic. They are hypotheses .: which seem to give a 112SOnable explanation of ob. • • Ktved events. The theological God is exactly the same thing a hypothes:is ing .. all-expcri. for · cnces. . . . When a theologian unakes such a hypothesis he uses the methods of science and enters the field of science. He must expect, therefore, to be questioned, examined,· and criticize«:l by his fellow naturalists. . But the difference between the natural and the · supem�tural can be uu1dentood in a simpler and much more useful way. :If .. nature" is the province of science, we can say that. nature is this world as it is named, measured, and classified. Nature is the world which thought has analyzed and soned into groups called .. things." It has, as we saw, given things an identity by naming th4:m. It distinguishes motion &om stillness by compa1ring something which moves
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rapidly in relation to, something which moves slowly, �ough both move. Thus the whole w·orld of nature is relative and is produced by thouglnt and comparison. Is the head ..really" distinct fro1n the neck? Why shouldn't we have made the ''th:ing'' called head include the .. thing" called neck, just as it includes the nose? It ia a convention of thoug:ht that head and neck are two things instead of one. In this sense, the ancient meta physicians are perfec:tly right when they say that the whole universe is a p,roduct of the mind. They mean ... the universe of "thir.ags... On the other hancl, the supernatural and absolute world comists of th. e mysterious reality which we have so named, dass:ified, and divided. This is not a product of the mind.. But there is no way of defining or describing what .it is. At every moment we are aware of it, and it is our awareness. We feel and sense it, and it is our feelings and sensations. Yet try· ing to know and define it is like trying to make a knife cut itself. Wluat is this? This is a rose. But ... rose" is a noise. Wh•t is a noise? A noise is an impact of air waves on the �eardrum. Then a rose is an im pact of air waves on 1the eardrum? No, a rose is a rose • • • • • • IS a rose II a rc:i.se IS a rose• • • • Definition is sim1>ly making a one-to-one co11e1pondence between s�oups of sense data and noises, but because noises are• sense data, the attempt is ultimately circular. T'he real world which both pro•
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vides these data and tb1e organs wherewith to sense .. them 1emains unfathor111ably mysterious. From this point of vi,ew we need have no difficulty in making sense of sornc of the ancient scriptures. . The Dhammapada, a collection of sayings of the Buddha, begins: ..All tlnat we are is the result of what we have thought. It is founded on our thoughts; it is made up of our tho,(lghts." This is, in effect, the same statement that op�ns St. John's Gos�l: ··10 the beginning was the W<J•rd, and the Word was with · God, and the Word wc1LS God. . • • All things were made by him (the Wo1�d), and without him was not · anything made that Wa!• made." By thoughts, or men � words, we distinguish or "make" things. With out thoughts, there arc no .. things"; there is just un defined reality. If you want to be poetic, you can liken this unde• fined reality to the Fattier, because it is the origin or _ basis of "things." You can call thought the Son ..of · one substance with the· Father�--the Son ..by whom all things were made," the Son who must be cruci fied if we are to see the: Father, just as we must look. at reality without wor
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Otherwise, we can •ase the negative, metaphysical languag� about this undefined reality. It is the infinite, not the definitte. It is the eternal, the cvcr prcscnt, not the past :and future, not the conventions of· thought and time�. It is the unchanging in the sense that the idea (j•f change is but another word, , another definition, �,hich the reality called change sures. Obviously, if all movement is relative. · there is no absolute movement. It would be mean ingless to say that all bodies in th� universe are moving unifo1mly at ten tho11sand miles per minute, be ca•isc ··an" has cxcluc:lcd any other body with respect to which they could lbc said to move. .. Metaphysical lang:uage is negative because it is trying to say. that wo1rds and ideas do not explain reality. It is not tryin1� to pcnuadc us that reality· is · something like a boundless mass of transparent jelly. It does not speak oic some impalpable abstraction, but of this very world in which we live. This cxpcriencc which WC calJl things, colors, sounds, smells, wtes, for111s, and wc�ights is, in itself, no thing, no forn1, no number, n,o nothing-but at this moment we behold it. We are,, then, beholding the God which traditional doctrin�, call the boundless, formless, · · infinite, eternal, undivided, unmoved, and unchang. ing Reality::-�� �bsolute behii:t� ��-�1eJa_tiye th� bchin� thloughts_ an� W0!�- Naturally ..Meaning . • is likewise what. Vedanta docuine taw cbe Self. tbe a""4n, tnosceoding all etperienced ..lbi':'P." 1 This •
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the Meaning is meanir1g-lcss because, unlike words, it docs not have meaning but is meaning. By iuclf, a uec is meaningless, 'but it is the meaning of the word ..tree." It is easy to sec that this kind of language, whether in its religious or metau>hysical fo1•••S, can lead to all manner of misundentaLDding. For when the mind is divided, and ..I.. wants to get away &om present ex perience, the whole notion of a supernatural world is its happy hide-out. The ..I" is resisting an unhappy · change, and so clings tc> the ..unchanging" Absolute, fol"gCtting that this At>SOlute is also the ..unfixed." .. When life provides so1ne bitter experience, the ... can only it witlh the guarantee that it is pan of the plan of .a lovin.g Father-God. But this very guarantee makes it imJ>OSSible to realize the "love of God," which, u is well known, requires the giving up of "I." The misundentandi1ng of religious ideas is vividly illustrated in what me111 have made of the doctrine of - immortality, heaven, ait1d hell. But now it should be dear that eternal life the realization that the pres ent is the only reality, and that past anti future can be distinguished &oml it in a conventional sense alone. The moment is the ..door of heaven," the ··straight and narrow way that leadeth unto life,'' be cause there is no room in it for the separate ··1.'' In this experience there no one experiencing the ex perience. • The · ''rich mtan'' cannot get through this
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door because he can·ies too much baggage; he is ". clinging to the past an.d the future. ·one might quote l1hole pages from the tpiritual literature of all times :and places to show that eternal life has been undent•ood in this sense. The follow- ,. • ing from Eckhan will suffice: -4
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The Now-moment i11l which God made the fint man and the Now-moment in �,hich the last man will disappear,, and the Now-moment .in which I am speaking are all one in God, in whom ther•� is only one Now. Look.I The per· son who lives in the lii ght of God is conscious neither of time past nor of time to come but only of one eternity. • • • Therefore he geu. nothing new out of future events, nor from chance, for h.e lives in the Now-moment that ii, unfailingly, ..in verdu1re newly clad."
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mcnt, would-be scientific predictions about what will happen after death a1re of little consequence. The whole glory of it is that we do not know. Ideas of survival and annihilation are alike based on the past, on memories of waking and sleeping, and, in their differcnt ways, the ncttions of everlasting continuity and everlasting nothi1r1gness are without meaning. It needs but slight imagination to realize that ever lasting time is a mo1r1strous nightmare, so that be tween heaven and hell as ordinarily undentood there is little to choose. Th,e desire to continue always can only seem attractive when one thinks of indefinite time rather than infi111ite time. . It is one thing to have . l ff
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as. much time as you wa111t, but quite another to have time without end. For there is no joy in -continuity, in the perpetual. We desire it only becatase the present is empty. A person who is trying to ieat money is always hungry. When someone says, ..T:ime to stop nowl" he is in a panic because he has had nothing to eat yet, and wants more and more tlime to go on eatin·g money, ever hopeful• of satisfactic>n around the corner. We do not really want continuiity, but rather a present experience of total happiniess. The thought of wanting such an experience to go on and on is the result of being self-conscious in the experience, and thus incom pletely aware of it. So lc,ng as there is the feeling of an ··1" having this experiience, the moment is not all. Eternal life is realized ,vhen the last trace of differ..ence between .. I" and ..now" has vanished-when there is just this ..now" and nothing else. By contrast, hell or "e·verlasting damnatien" is not the everlastingness of tiime going on forev�, but of the unbroken circle, the: continuity and frustration of going round and rou1nd in pursuit of something which can never be atta:ined. Hell is the fatuity, the everlasting impossibilit)r, of self-love, self-consciousness, and self-possession. It is trying to see one's own eyes, hear one's own eatis, and kiss one's own lips. To see, however, that life is complete in each mo ment-whole, undivided!, and ever new-is to under stand the sense of the cioctrine that in eternal life ,,
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God, the undefinablce this, is all-in-all and is the Final Ca11se or End for \\rhich everything exists. Beca•ise the future is everlas1:ingly unattainable, and, like the dangled carrot, alwtJrys ahead of the donkey, the ful. fillment of the divin.e purpose does not lie in the fu. ture. It is found in tU1e present, not by an act of resig nation to immovablce fact, but in seeing that there is no one to r�es1gn. For this is the meaning of that univenal and everrepeated religious principle that to know God, man must give up himself. It is as familiar as any plati tude, and yet nothing has been harder to do, and nothing so totally 1nisundentood. How can a self, · which is selfish, gi,,e itself up? Not, say the theo logians, by its own power, but through the gift of ,, divine grace, the po"�er which enables man to achieve what is beyond his own strength. But is this grace given to all or to a chosen few, who, when they re ceive it, have no ch<J�ice but to surrender themselves? Some say that it comlcs to all, but that there are those who accept its aid and those who refuse. Others say that it comes to a chosen elect, but still, for the most pan, insist that the iindivi�ual has th.e power to take it or leave it. But this docs not. solve the· problem at all. It re places the problem of holding or surrendering the self by the problem of accepting or refusing divine · grace, and the two plroblems are identical. �he Chris•
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tian religion contains its own hidden anwer to the problem in the idea that man can only sur1cnder . himself ..in Christ.._" Fo,r �·Christ" stands for the reality that there is no separate self to su11cnder. To give • up "I" is a false proble'.m. "Christ" is the realization •that there is no separat,e "I." "I do nothing of myself. I I • . . I and the Fathe1· are one• • • • Before Abra ham was, I am." , .• If there is any probJlem at all, it is to see that in l this instant you have 1r10 "I" to surrender. You are completely free to do this at any moment, and noth l ing whatever is stoppi1ng you. This is our freedom. ., We are not, howev..er, free to improve ounelves, to su11ender ourselves, tc• lay ounelves open to grace, f 'fo! _all such_spl�_t·mind,edneu is the denial and post� e ponement of· our free.1om.\ It is trying to eat your .. e ..,. .. inouth instead of breac:l. · �Is it neceuary to un•derline the vast difference be. ? tween the realization tl1at "I and the Father arc one," · e and the state of mind ,of the i,erson-who,-as we -say, "thinks he is God"? If, still thinking that there is an , t . isolated "I," you ident:ify it with God, you become e the insufferable ego-m:aniac who thinks himself suc cessful in attaining tine impossible, in dominating experience, and in p11nuing all vicious circles to satisfactory conclusiorus. r ... · · 1 am the mm:tn of my fate; · • · 1 am the ,captain of my soul!
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When the snake s,nllows his tail he has a swelled head. It is quite a1nother thing to see that you arc your ••fate," and th�1t there is no one either to master it or to be mastered, to rule or to surrender. Must we also iru1ist that this loss of .. 1·· in God is · not a mystic mias1na in which the ..values of per sonality" are oblite1rated? The .. I.. was not, is not, and never will be a part of human personality. There is nothing unique, 01� ..different,.. or interesting about it. On the contrary·, the more human beings punue it, the more uniform, uninteresting, and impersonal they become. The faster things move .in circles, the sooner they becom4e indistinguishable blun. It is ob vious that the only interesting people are interested people, and to be c mpletely interested is .10 ...ha• forgotten about ..I .." J We can see, th,en, that the basic principles of philosophy, religio:n, and metaphysia may be under stood in two entir·ely diflerent ways. They can be seen as symbols of the _undivided mind, expressions of the truth that in each moment life and experience are a complete whiole. ..God.. is not a definition of this state but an· f�xclamation about it. Ordinarily, however, they are used as attempu to stand outside �neself and the u11livene to grasp them and to rule them. This process, is circular, however complex and devious. Because men ha·ve been circling for so many ages, • • .. 148 •
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the powe1s of technolc.gy have availed for little save to speed the process to a point of unbearable tension. Civilization is ready tc• fly apart by sheer centrifugal force. In such a predic:ament the self-conscious type of religion to which we: have so long been accustomed is no cure, but part of the disease. If scientific thought has weakened its power we need have no re• grets, for the ..God" tcl• which it could have brought us was not the unltno�rn Reality which the name sig .nifies, but only a projection of ourselves a cosmic, discamate ..I" lording it over the universe. The true splendor o,f science is not so much that it names and clauifies, ft!Cords and predicts, but that it observes and desires to, know the facts, whatever they may tum out to be. flowever much it may conf11se facts with conventions:, and reality with ar�itrary di visions, in this opennesiS and sincerity of mind it bean some resemblance to n:ligion, understood in its other and deeper sense. The �ater the scientist, the more he is impreued with his ignorance of reality, and the more he realizes that h1is laws and labels, descriptiona and definitions, arc thee products of his own thought. They help him to use the world for purposes of his own .devising rather tiaan to undentand and explain
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, What he does not lrnow seems to inaease in geo metric progreuion tc> what he knows. Steadily he ap proaches the point ,�here what is unknown is not a mere blank space in a web of words but a window in the mind, a window �whose narne is not ignorance but • \f.Onder. , ,__- • ., The timid mind ishuts this window with a bang, and is silent and th<J•ughtless about what it does not know in order to chatter the more about what it thin� it knows. It fills up the IU}chaned spaces with mere repetition of ,vhat has already been explored. But the open mind l�nows that the most minutely ex plored territories ha.ve not really been known at all, but only marked a1nd m�asured a thousand times over. And the fasci11aating mystery of what it is that we mark and measu:� must in the end "tease us out of thought" until tile · mind forgets to circle and to punue its own prooesses, and becomes aware that to be at this moment i2s pure miracle. In ways that differ but little, this is the last word .,. of Western and Ea!1te1n wisdom alike. The Hindu Upanishads say: •
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Or there are the words of St. John of the Cross, one of the greatest seen of the Christian tradition: .,
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The highest to whidn man can attain is wonder: and if the prime phenomeno111 makes him wonder, let him be content: nothing highier can it give him, and nothing further should he seek for behind it; here is the limiL
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One of the greatest : favon bestowed on the soul tranaiently in this life is toj enable it to see so distinctly and to feel so profoundly tlhat it cannot comprehend God at all. These souls are h«�rein somewhat like the saints in heaven, where they whc• know him most perfectly perceive m01t clearly that he i1 infinitely incomprehensible; for those who have the leu clear vision do not perceive IO clearly as do these othe:n how greatly he uanscends their • • vuaon.
In such wonder th,ere is not hunger but fulfill ment. Almost everyor1e has known it,_ but only in rare instants when the startling beauty or strange ness of a scene drew tbLe mind away from its self-pur suit, and for a momen: t made it unable to find words for the feeling. We ai�e, then, most fortunate to be living in a time whera human knowledge has gone so far that it begins tCJ• be at a loss for words, not at · the strange and marv·elous alone, but at the most ordinary things. The clust on the shelves has become as much of a mystery �u the remotest stan; we know enough of both to kn<>w that we know nothing. Ed. dington, the physicist,� is nearest. to the mystics, not . in his airier flights of fancy, but when he says quite simply, .. Something u1nknown is doing we don't know what." •
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In such a confessio:n thought has moved full circle, and we are again as children. To those still fever ishly intent upon exJplaining all things, upon secur ing the water of life firanly in paper and string, this confession says nothing and means nothing but de feat. ·To others, the fact that thought has completed a circle is a revelatio:n of �hat. man has been doing, not only in philosophy, religion, and speculative science, but also in psychology and morals, in every day feeling and livint�· His mind has been in a ,vhirl to be away £Tom itself arid to catch itself. .. . · l'e suUn from yc>urselves, none else compels, · None other hc>lds you that ye live and die And whir upon 1the wheel, and hug and "iss ., its spo•es of agony, -Its tire of tearJ;, its nave of nothingness. Discovering this the mind becomes whole: the split between I and me, man and the world, the ideal and the real, comes to an end. Paranoia, the mind beside itself, becomes meta,aoia, the mind with itself and so &ee from itself. Fre.e from clutching at tht-msclvea the hands can handle�; free from looking after them aelves the eyes can see:; free from trying to understand itself thought can thilnl. In such feeling, seeing·, and thinking life requirc:s no future 10_ �9mplcte itself nor explanation to .jtutify itself. In this morncot it ii ·. finished. . •
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Jqyous Cosmology; Natu,·e, Man, and Woman; Behold the Spirit; The BooJt; Does It Matter1; This ls It; The Supreme ldentit:y; Beyond Theology; and Cloud Hidden, WhereabtJ•uts Unknou,n. He died in
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ALAN W. WA"l'I'S, whc:• held both a masters degrce in theology and a d4t>Ctorate of divini�. is best -. � known as an interpreter of Zen Buddhism in p�r ticular, and of I ndian a: nd Chinese philosophy i n general. Standing apan, however, from sectarian hip, he has earn4:d the reputation of being · one of the most original a1 nd "u11rutted" philosophen of the century. He was t.he author of some twenty book.s on tl1e philosophy ; and psychology of religion, including (in Vintage Bo<>ks) The Way of Zen; The
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by ALAN
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A Division of Random H0>11se New YDTl
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Copyri1�t. 1951, by Pantheon ac.,
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All right, racned under lntanational and Pan-Amerk:an Copyright Convmt:ion1. Publilhed in New York by Pantheon Book1, a division of Random Hou.e, Inc. and in Canada by Random Houae of Canada l,haited, Toronto. •
Ma,au/«tu,wt ht the Vmud S,.,a o/ dnaerb
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CON1'ENTS
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The Age of Anxiety Pain and Time
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The Great Strearn
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IY The Wisdom of the lk>dy ..
On Being Aware
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YI The Marvelous Moa1ent
Creative Morality
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I haw always been fAscinated "1 the In, of f'evnsetJ eDon. Sometimes I call it the .,bacltwards law.• When ,au try to stay on the su,tace of the watn, 1ou sinlt; but when ,ou try to sinl 1•e>U /loal. When 1ou hold 1our bf'ealh 1ou lose it which immediatel1 calls to mind an ancient and much negle.,ted sa,ing, Whosoevn would ave his soul shall lose it..• . This bool is an expl01ralion of this In, in relation to man's quest for psycholo,gical securit1, and to his eDons to find spiritual and in,t�llectual cntaint1 in religion . and philosoph,. It is umitten in the conviction that no theme could be mOTe app�opriate in a time when human li/e seems to be so peculi:arl1 insecure and uncertain. II maintains that this inseci,rit1 is the result of trying to be ucure, and that, contrariiwise, salvation and sanit1 con sist in the most radical rercognition thal we haw no wa, of saving ourselves. This begins to sounci lilte something from Alice Through the is00king Glass, of which this bool is a sort of philosophical equiwu'ent. For the f'eadn will fre quentl1 find himself in • topsy-tun,y world in which the nonnal ordn o/ things se,ems to be completel1 revnsed, and common sense tume,d inside out and upside down. · · Those who have read sonae of m1 foman bools, such as Behold the Spirit and Tl1e Supreme Identity, will find .things thal seem to be total contradictions o/ much that l haw said be/ore. This, however, is true onl1 in some • • . I 11
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minoT respects. FOT I h"roe discovered that the essence and crux of what I was trying to say in those boolts was seldom understood; the· frameworlt. and the context of my thought often hid tht� meaning. My intention hne is to approach the same rriaeaning from entirely diDerent ;remises, and in ternas which do not con/we thought with the multitude of in�elevant associations_ which time and tradition have hung.upon them. In those boolts I was conce,,aed to vindicate certain ;,inciples of religion, l>hilosophy, and metaphysic b1 • reinterpreting them. This was, I thinlt., lilt.e putting legs on a snalte-unneces.sa,y and con/wing, becawe onl1 doubt/ ul truths need d,e/ense. This boolt., however, is in the spirit of the Chiniese sage T-00-tzu, that -master of the law· of reversed eD01rt1 who declared that those who jwti/y themselves do nc,t convince, that to lcnow truth one mwt get rid of lt.notA1Jledge, and that nothing is more powerful and creative tla1an emptiness-from which men .. shrinlt.. Here, then, m:, aim is to show-baclt.wards /ashion that those essiential realities of religion and metaphysic are vindicated in doing without them, and manifested in being destroyed. It is my haptr, duty tio aclt.nC'wledge that the frtepara tion of this boolt. has bt�en made possible by the gener osity of the Foundation established by the late Franlt.lin .. ]. Matchette of New Yo,rlc, a man who devoted much of his life to the ;roblenas 1of science and metaphysic, being one of those somewhat rare bwineu men who are not wholly absorbed in the vicious circle of malt.ing money to malt.e money to malt.e· money. The Matchette Foundation is the,:e/OTe dedicated to the pursuit of metaph,si•
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cal studies, and, needle�, to sa1, it is to me a sign of in• sight and imagination oi,a their part that they have been willing to interest thenuelves in so "contrary• an at>roach to metaphysical .ltnowledge.
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BY ALL OUTWARD APPU,RANCES OUR LIFE IS A SPAlllt .of light between one et,emal darkness and another. Nor is the interval bet�1een these two nights an un- • clouded day, for the mc•re we are able to feel pleasure, the more we arc:� vulnerable to pain-and, . whether in background or foreground, the pain is always with us. We hav·e been accustomed to make this existence worth-whitle by the belief that there is · more than the outward ,appearance-that we live for a future beyond. this lifie here. For the outward ap pearance docs not seem to make sense. If living is to end in pain, inco1nple:teness, and nothingness, it seems a cruel and futile: experience for beings who • are born to reason, hope�, create, and love. Man, as a being of sense, wants hils life to make sense, and he has found it hard to believe that it does so unless · there is more than what he sees-unless there is an eternal order and an eternal life behind the uncer tain and momentary ex1>erience of life-and-death. I may not, perhap.1, be forgiven for introducing ·sober matten with a frivolous notion, bu,t the prob lem of making sense out of the seeming chaos of ex. pc:riencc reminds me ol f my childish desire to send • someone a parcel of water in the mail. The recipient . unties the string, releasing the deluge in his lap. But •
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the game would nevci� work, ·since it is irritatingly impossible to wrap a11ad tic a pound of water in a paper package. There 4lre kinds of paper which won't distintegrate when wet, but the trouble is to get the ,vater itself into any m.1nageable shape, and to tie the string without buntin1{ the bundle. • The more one studic!S attempted solutions to prob lems in politia and economics, in art, philosophy, and religion, the more one has the impression of extremely gifted people ,wearing out their i�genuity at the impossible and fultilc task of trying to get the · water of life into neat .lnd perananent packages. There are many re,tSOns why this should be par· ticularly evident to a Jf)Crson living today. We kno,v .. so much about history:, about all the pack.ages which have been tied and wh,ich have duly come apan. We know so much detail a:bout the problems of life that they resist easy simplification, and seem more com plex and shapeless th.in ever. Funher111ore, science and industry have so increased both the tempo and · the violence of living that our packages seem to come apart faster and faster 1every day. · There is, then, the feeling that we live in a time of unusual insecurity. In the past hundred years so many long-established traditions have broken down . -traditions of family :and social life, of government, of the economic order1, and of religious belief. As the - years go by, there see1n to be fewer �nd fe,ver rocks to which we can holcl, fewer things ,vhich we can . �
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regard as absolutely righ1 t and true, and fixed for all _ time. - To some this is a welcome release from the re straints of moral, social, and spiritual dogma. To ot'1en it is a dangerous and terrifying breach with reason and sanity, tending to plunge human life into hopeless chaos. To mmit, perhaps, the immediate sense of release has give11 a brief exhilaration, to be follo,ved by the deepest ;lnxiety. For if all is relative, • ,. if life is a to11ent without: fo1111 or goal in whose flood absolutely nothing save: change itself can last, it seems to be something i11l which there is .. no future" and thus no hope. Human beings appear· to be happy just so long as they have a future to wh: ich they can look forward whether it be a ..good tin1e" tomorro,v or an everlast- ing life beyond the grav«�. For various reasons, more and more people find it ]�ard to believe in the latter. _ On tlae other hand, the ffo1111er has the disadvantage that when this ..good tirne" arrives, it is difficult to enjoy it to the full ,vith()•Ut some promise of more to come. If happiness al,va1rs depends on something ex_ pected in the future, we :ilre chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, uotil the future, and our selves, vanish into the ab,yss of death. As a matter of fact, ()>Ur age is no more insecure than any other. Povert)', disease, ,var, change, and death are nothing ne,v. l: n the best of times ..security" • has never been more th:iln temporary and apparent. •
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But it has been possible to make the insecurity of human life ab:le by belief in unchanging things beyond the rcalch of calamity-in God, in man's immortal soul, and in the government of the universe by eternal lawn of right. · Today such convicti<>ns are rare, even in religious circles. There is no levcel of society, there must even .. be few individuals, to11ched by modem education, where there is not somt: trace of the leaven of doubt. . It is simply self-evident: that during the past century the authority of science has taken the place of the' authority of religion in the popular imagination, and · . that scepticism, at least in spiritual things, has be come more general tha1ri belief. The decay of belief has come about through the honest doubt, the carc:ful and fearless thinking ot highly intelligent me11l of science and philosophy. Moved by a zeal and r-everence for facts, they have tried to see, understan
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slowly and uncertainly, ��ve us a better future for a : few yean. And then, for c�ch of us, it will, end. It will '11 end. However long J?<>Stponed, �erything co�:. _posed must deco�posc. . Despite some opinionn to the contrary, this is still the general view of scientce. In literary and religious circles it is now often su.pposed that the conflict be- · tween science and belief is a thing.of the past. There arc even some rather wuihful scientists who feel that when modem physia al�andoned a crude atomistic materialism, the chief n:asons for this conftict were removed. But this is not .at all the case. In most of our g1 eat centen . of leaminig, those who make. it their business to study the fulll implications of science and its methods arc as far as ever from what they understand as a religious point of view. Nuclear physia and rc�lativity have, it is true, done away with the old materialism, but they now give us a view of the universe in which there is even less - room for ideas of any .absolute purpose or design. The modem scientist is not so naive as to deny God because he cannot be fo1und with a telescope, or the soul because it is not re,,ealed by the scalpel. He has merely noted that the idea of God is logically un necessary. He even doubts that it has any meaning. It docs not help him to exi,lain anything which he can not explain in some othc�r. and simpler, way. . . He argues that if ever;ything ,,,hich happens is said to be under the provide;ncc and contr�l of God, this
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actually amounts to saying nothing. To say that . everything is governed and created by God is like saying, ..Everything is tip,"-,vhich means noth�ng at all. The notion does n()t help us to make any veri6- predictions, and �K>, from the scientific standable point, is of no .value l1thatsoever. Scientists may be right in this respect. 1'"hey may· be ,vrong. It is not our purpose here to a11�e this point. We need only . · note that such scepticis1rn has immense inftl1ence, and sets the prevai�irig mood of the age. What science has saiicl, in sum, is this: We do not, and in all probability cannot, know ,vhether God exists. Nothing that �,e do know suggests that he does, and all the argum,ents ,vhich claim to prove his existence are found to be ,vithout logical meaning. . There is nothing, inde:!ed, to prove that there is no God, but the burden 4>f proof rests ,vith those who propose the idea. If, the sci�tists would say, you believe in God, you mu!;t do so on purely emotional grounds, ,vithout basi�s in logic or fact. Practically • speaking, this may amo,unt to atheism. Theqretically, it is simple agn0$ticisrn. For it is of the essence of scientific honesty that you do not pretend to le.now what you do not lc.no,v, and of the essence of scientific· method that you do riot employ hypotheses ,vhich · � · , cannot be tested. The immediate rest:alts of this honesty have been deeply unsettling and depressing. For man see1ns to be unable to live witli,out myth, without the belief .
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that the routine and d1rudgery, the pain and fear of this life have some me41ning and goal in the future. At once new myths co1 me into being-political and economic myths with extravagant promises of the best of futures in the present world. These myths give the individual a certain sense,, of meaning by making him pan of a �vast social effort, in which he loses something of his <>wn emptiness and loneliness. Yet the very violence c,f these political religions betrays the anxiety bent!ath them-for they arc but men huddl�ng togethe1r and shouting to give them selves courage in the d,1rk. Once there is the s1 uspicion that a religion is a myth, its power has g-one. It may be necessary for man to have a myth, t•ut he cannot self
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It is for this reason tl�at most of the cu11cnt return to orthodoxy in some iintcllectual circles has a rather hollow ring. So much c,f it is more a belief in bcliev. ing than a belief in G•:>d. The contrast between the insecure, neurotic, e
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However much they ma1, try to bury it in the depths of their minds, they are'. well aware that these joys ... are both uncertain and brief. This has two results. On the one hand, there is the anxiety that one may be miaing something, so that the mind flits nervously and gaecdily from one F•leasure to another, without finding rest and satisfactiion in any. On the other, the &ustration of having al�rays to punuc a future good in a tomo11ow which n(ever comes, a�d in a world where everything must disintegrate, gives men an attitude of ..What's the ,�se anyhow?" ... C:Onsequcntly our ag.: is one of &ustration, anx iety, agitation, and add.iction ·to ..dope." Somehow we must grab what we can while we can, and drown out the realization that 1the whole thing is futile and meaningless. This ..dop:" we call our high standard of living, a violent and complex stimulation of the senses, which makes theun progressively less sensitive and thus in need of yet ll[lOrc violent stimulation. We .:l c1 ave distraction a ptnorama · of . sights, sounds, thrills, and titillations :into which as much as pos sible must be aowded ira the shortest possible time. To keep up this ..sta111dard" most of us are willing to put up with lives that: consist largely in doing jobs that are a bore, earning 1the means to seek relief &om the tedium by intervals c>f hectic and expensive pleas . sure. These intcmls ane supposed to be the real living, the real purpose seirved by the necessary evil of . work. Or we imagine that the justification of such
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work is the rearing •t>f a family to go on doing the same kind of thing, iin order to rear another family . -=• • . and so ad infiniirum. . This is no caricatu1re. It is the simple reality of mil lions of lives, so com1monplace that we need hardly dwell upon the details, save to note the anxiety and &ust1ation of those �rho put up with it, not knowing what else to do. • But what are we t,o do? The alternatives seem to be two. The fint is, somehow or other, to discover a new myth, or convin(cingly resuscitate an old one. If science cannot fwove there is no God, we can try to live and act on the bare chance that he may exist after all. There seems to be nothing to lose in such a gamble, for if death iis the end, we shall never know that we have lost. llut, obviously, this will never amount to a vital faitth, for it is really no more than to say, ..Since the whole thing is futile anyhow, let's pretend it isn't." Th•� second is to try grimly to face the. fact that life is ..a tale told by an idiot," and make · of it what we can, ]letting science and technology serve us as well as they may in our journey &om nothing to nothing. · . Yet these are not tli,e only solutions. We may begin by granting ·all the agnosticism of a critical science. We may it,. &anikly, that we have no scientific grounds for belief ini God, in penonal immortality, . or in any absolutes. i,ve may refrain altogether &om trying to bcl�ieve, taking life just as it is, and no more• •
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From this point of departure there . is yet another way of life that requires neith.er myth nor despair. But it . requires a complete revo,lution in our ordinary, ha bitual ways of thinking a11d feeling. The extraordinary thing about this revolution is that it reveals the truth behind the so-called myths of traditional religion and metaphysic. It reveals, not beliefs, but act1ial realiti•es corresponding-in an un expected way-to the idc4lS of God and of eternal life. There arc reasons for SUJ>posing that a revolution of this kind was the originaJl source of some of the main religious ideas, standing in relation to them as real common error ity to symbol and ca11sc t,o effect. The • of ordinary �eligious pra. cticc is to mistake the symbol for the reality, to loo,k at the finger pointing the way and then to suck. it lfor comfon rather than fol low it. Religious ideas a.re like words-of little use, and often misleading, ur1less you know tl1c concrete realities to which they r•efer. The word ..water" is a useful means of commu11ication amongst those who know water. The same ils true of the word and the "idea called ..God." · I do not, at this point, wish to seem mysterious or to be making claims to ..suret knowledge." The real ity which corresponds to1 ..God" and "eternal life" is honest, above-board, plalin, and open for all. to see. But the seeing requires �l correction of mind, just as .. dear vision sometimes 1�cquires a co11cction of the · eyes. . ·
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The d iscovery of t:his reality is hindered rather than helped by belief., whether one believes in God or believes in atheisml. We must here make a dear distinction between b4�lief and faith, beca•1sc, in gen eral practice, belief has come to mean a state of mind which .il. �most the 01,posite of faith. Belief, as I use the word here, is the i1nsistence that the truth is what · one would ..lief' or wrish it to be. The believer will open his mind to 'the truth on condition that it fits in with his preconcei,,cd ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an u.nrescrved opening of the mind to the truth, whateve1r it may tum out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; Jt is a plunge into tfic- llD• Belief ·clings, but faith-lets go. In this seme know�. • - of the word, faith is 1the essential vinue of science, and likewise of any rel igion that is not self-deception. Most of us believe in order to feel secure, in order to make our individual lives seem valuable and mean ingful. Belief has thlllS become an attempt to bang on to life, to grasp andl keep it for one's own. But you cannot undentand lilfe and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. In.deed, you cannot grasp it, juat as you cannot walk o·ff with a river in a bucket. If you try to capture ru.nning water in a bucket, it ii clear that you do not 1L1ndentand it and that you will always be disappointf::d, for in the bucket the water does not run. To "ha,,e" running water you must let go of it and let it run. The same is true of life and of . God. •
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The present phase of h.uman thought and history .. is especially ripe for thu, ..letting go." Our minds have been prepared for it by this very colJapsc of the beliefs in which we hav•: sought security. From a . point of view strictly, if strangely, in accord with certain religious traditic•ns, this disappearance of the old rocks and absolute:s is no calamity, but rather a blessing. It almost com1pcls us to face reality with open minds, and you can 4Dnly know God through an open �ind just as you ca111 only sec the sky through a · dear window. You will r.aot sec the sky if you have covered the glass with blu.e paint. But ..religious" people who resist the scraping of the paint &om the glass., who regard the scientific attitude with fear and 11t1istrust, and confuse faith • with dinging to certain i
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through the death of lthe human for1i1 of God. But it was not, perhaps, so easy to see that God's human fo1111 is not simply th1e historic Christ, but also the images, ideas, a11d beliefs in the Absolute to which man clings in his min.d. Here is the full sense of the commandment, "Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor thf� likeness of anything that is in 'heaven above; • . • . 1lhou shalt not bo,v down to ,J\hem, nor ,vorship thC!�m." · Ab\ To discover the ul1timate Reality of life the • so�ute, the eternal, C�od-you must cease to try to grasp it in the forms of idols. These idols are not just · crude images, such as. the mental picture of God as · an old gentleman on :a golden throne. They are our beliefs, our cherishe�l preconceptions of the truth, which block the unrteserved opening of mind and heart to reality. The legitimate use of images- is to . express the truth, not. to possess it. This was always re,cognized in the great Oriental traditions such as Bu4:fdhism, Vedanta, and Taoism. The principle has no1t been unknown to Christians, for it was implicit in t:he whole story and teaching of Christ. His life was firom the beginning a complete acceptance and emb1c1cing of insecurity. "The foxes have holes, and the IJ•irds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath 1not ,vhere to lay his head." The principle is yet more to the point if Christ is regarded as divine in tthe most orthodox sense-as the unique and s�cial in,camation of God. For the basic .. . •
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theme of the Christ-story is that this "express image" of God becomes the source of life in the very act of being destroyed. To the ,disciples who tried to cling to his divinity in the fo1:m of his human individu ality he explained, .. Unl«� a grain of corn fall into .. the ground and die, it re11nains alone. But if it dies, it • brings forth much fruit." In the same vein he warned · thein, ··Jt is expedient fo:r you that I go away, for if I go not away the Paracle�te (the Holy Spirit) cannot • �...e unto you." ,. These words arc mo1·e than ever applicable to Christians, and speak exa:ctly to the whole condition of our times. For we hav«� never actually undentood .. the revolu�ionary sense bc:neath them-the incredible truth that what religion calls the vision of God is found in giving up any belief in the idea of God. By .the same law of reversed eflon, we discover the in • finite-" and the ..absolute," not by straining to escape I from the finite and relative world, but by the most complete acceptance of i1ts limitations. Paradox as it may seem, we likewise find life meaningful only when ,ve have see11 that it is without purpose, and know the .,mystery of tli1e universe" only when we are convinced that we lc.raow nothing about it at all. • · The ordinary agnostic, r,elativist, or materialist fails to reach this point because he does not follow bis line of thought consisten1tly to its end-an end which ., . ,vould be the surprise· (]1f his life. All too soon he abandons faith, openness to reality, and lets his mind 11
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harden into doctrine. The discovery of the mystery, the wonder beyond alll wooden, needs no belief, for we can only believe ir1 what we have a.lready known, preconceived, and im:agined. But this is beyond any imagination. We have but to open the eyes of the mind wide enough, airid "the. truth will ouL" -
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TIMES ALMOST ALL 40F US ENVY THE ANIMALS.
· They suffer and die, but they do not seem to make a ..problem" ()( it. Their· lives seem· to have so few complications. They eat when they are hungry and sleep when they are tire1d, and instinct rather than _ anxiety seems to govern their few preparations for the future. As far as we can judge, every animal is � busy with what he is rlloing at the moment that it never enten his head to alSk whether life has a mean ing or a future. For the animal, happiness consists in enjoying life in the immediate present-not in the · assurance- that there is a whole future of joys ahead of . him • . This is not just becaw� the animal is a relatively insensitive clod. Often e11lough his eyesight, his sense � of hearing and smell, an� far more acute than oun, and one can hardly doubt that he enjoys his food ... and sleep immensely. Despite his acute senses, he bas, however, a somewt.aat insensitive brain. It is more specialized than oun, for which reason he is a aeature of habit; he is 11nable to reason and make abstractions, and has extre111ely limited powen of memory and prediction. Unquestionably the sc!nsitive human brain adds • immeasurably to the ric:hness of life. Yet for this ,
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THE WISDOM OF INSECURITY
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we pay dearly, because the ·increase in over-all sen. sitivity makes us pec1Jliarly ·vulnerable. One can be less vulnerable by bc�coming less sensitive-more of a stone and less of a 1nan and so less capable of enjoyment. Sensitivity 1requires a high degree of soft ·ness and fragility e·yeballs, eardrums, taste buds, and nerve ends culnainating in the highly delicate organism of the braiu1. These arc not only soft and fragile, but also perishable. There seems to be no effective way of decr,easing the delicacy and perish ability of living tissu1c without also decreasing its · · vitality and sensitivity. If we are to have intense pleasures, we must also be liable to intense pains. The pleasure we love, and the pain we hate, b1�t it seems impossible to have the for111cr without t.he latter. Indeed, it looks as if the two mwt in somte way alternate, for continuous .. pleasure is a stimulu!1 that must either pall or be inc1 eased. And the i111crease will either harden the sense buds with its &iiction, or tum into pain. A con sistent diet of rich 1food either destroys the appetite or makes one sic:k.. To the dcg1cc, thc·n, that life is found good, death must be proponiona1tcly evil. �-more we arc able to love another penon and t� enjoy h1S compinL_ \ lithe greater must be �>urgr1ef_ at his death, or in sep aration. The further the po,ver of consciousness ven tures out into expcr·icnce, the more is the price it •
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must pay for its knowledge. It is undentandablc that we should sometimes ask ,whether life has not gone · too far in this direction, wlhether ..the game is worth the candle," and whether it might not be better to tum the counc of evoluti<>n in the only other possi ble direction-backwards, Ito the relative peace of the animal, the vegetable, and. the mineral. • Something of this kind is often attempted. There is the woman who, havinit suffered some deep emo- . • tional injury in love or mtarriage, vows never to let another man play on her jfeelings, anuming the role of the hard and bitter spinster. Almost more com mon is the sensitive boy �1ho learns in school to en crust himself for life in tllte shell of the ..tough-guy" attitude. AJ an adult he plays, in self-defen�, the role of the Philistine, to ·whom all intellectual and emotional culture is wom1anish and ..sissy." Carried • to its final extreme, the l()Jgical end of this type of re action to life is suicide. Tlhe hard-bitten kind of person is always, as it were, a partial suicide; some of himself is already. dead.,, If, then, we are to be f1lllly human and fully alive and aware, it seems that ·we must he · willing to. suf-.__.., J�out such willingness there ' �fc _ ! for pleasures. Wit our \ can be no growth in the intensity of consciousness. Yet, generally speaking, ·we are not willing, and it _ ·mlay be thought strange t:o suppose �at we can be. For ..nature in us.. so rc:'.bels against pain that the
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ve1y notion of ..willingness" to put up with it beyond a certain poir.at may appear impossible and meaningless. U ndcr these circutmstanccs, the life that we live is a contradiction an.d a conflict. Beca•ase conscio\,,. ness mwt involve lx>th pleasure and pain, to strive for pleasure to the e:xclusion of pain is, in effect, to · strive for the loss of: consciousness. Because such a loss is in principle the same as death, this means that the more we struggl�� for life (as pleasure), the more we are actually killi11g what we love• . Indeed, this is the common attitude of man to so much that he loves. For the greater pan of human activity is designed to make pe111aanent those ex• pericnces and joys 1vhich arc only lovable bcca11se they are changing. �fusic is a delight bcca11se of its rhythm and flow. Yet the moment you a11est the · flow and prolong a 1note or chord beyond its time, the rhythm is destrc,ycd. Because life is likewise a flowing process, cha11gc and death are its necessary parts. To work for daeir exclusion is to work against life. However, the simJple experiencing of alternating pain and pleasure is, by no means the bean of the human problem. TI1e reason that we want life to mean something, th.at we seek God or eternal life, is not merely that ,ve� are trying to get away &om an immediate expericnc:e of pain. Nor is it for any such ... •
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reason that we auume alttitudes and roles as habits of perpetual self-defense.. The .real problem docs not come &om any momentary sensitivity to pain, bu� from our marvelous po,wers of memory and fore. sight-in shon &om our· consciousness of time. For the animal to be l!tappy it is enough that this moment be enjoyable. ]But man is hardly satisfied with this at all. He is mtach more concerned to have enjoyable memories an.d expectations - especially the latter. With these ansured, he can put up with an extremely miserable present. Without this u aurance, he can be extre1rnely miserable in · the midst of immediate physical pleasure. . .. Here is a person who, knows that in two wceb' time he has to undergo :a surgical operation. In the meantime he is feeling no physical pain; he has plenty to cat; he is surr,ounded by &iends and hu man affection; he is doi11g work that is nor111ally of great interest to him. B11t his power to enjoy these · things is taken away by c:onstant dread. He is insen sitive to the immediate realities around him. His mind is preoccupied wit:h something that is �ot yet here. It is not as if he �,ere thinking about it in a practical way, trying to decide whether he should , have- the operation or nc>t, or making plans to take care of his family and �lis affairs if he should die. These decisions have aln�ady been made. Rather, he is thinking about the op:ration in an entirely futile
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way, which both ruirus his present enjoyment of life and contributes nothi1ng to the solution of any prob lem. But he cannot he�lp himself. . Thia is the typical human problem. The object of dread may not be ;Ln operation in the immediate future. It may be the problem of next month's rent, of a threatened war o,r social disaster, of being able to save enough for old age, or of .death at the last. · This "spoiler of the p»rcsent" may not even be a fu. ture dread. It may IJ� something out of the past, some memory of an iinjury, some aime or indiscre tion, which haunts th«� present with a sense of resent ment or guilt. The pc,wer of memories and expecta tions is such that for· _most human beings the past and the future are n•:>t as real, but more real than the present. The prcsc�nt cannot be lived happily un- . less .the past has been "cleared up" and the future is bright with promise. There can be no dc>ubt that the power to remem ber and predict, to nuke an ordered sequence out of a helter-skelter ch:aos of disconnected moments, is a wonderful develo,pment of sensitivity. In a way it is the achievemen1t of the human brain, giving man the most extrao1·dinary powen of survival and adaptation to life. Bttt the way in which we gener ally use this power is :apt to destroy all its advantages. For it is of little use to us to be able to and predict if it mak�:s us unable to live fully in the . . present. . . •
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What is the use of pla11ning to be able to eat next week unless I can really enjoy the meals when they come? If I am so busy planning how to eat next week that I cannot fully enjo�� what I am eating . now, I will be in the same preclicament when next week's meals become "now." . If my happiness at this; moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this p1resent. I shall still be · dimly aware of the present wtaen the good things that I - have been expecting coniie to . For I shall have for,ned a habit of look.irag behind and ahead, mak ing it difficult for me to clttend to the here and now: If, then, my awareness otf the past and future makes me less aware of the prcs«�nt, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually liv1ing in the real world. After all, the future is, quite meaningless and unimportant unless, sooner· or later, it is going to be come the present. Thus to plan for a future which is not going to become pt-esent is hardly more·absurd than to plan for a future which, when it comes to '._ ........, · me, will find me "absen.t," looking fixedly over its shoulder instead of into i.ts face. . This kind of living illl the fantasy of expectation , rather than the reality CJ•f the present is the special uouble of those business men who live entirely to � make money. So many people of wealth undentand much more about maki:ng and saving money than ing and enjoyi11g it. They fail to live be-
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ca11se they are always preparing to live. Instead of earning a living they are mostly earning an earning, and thus when the time comes to relax they are un able to do so. Many ll ..successful" man is bored and miserable when he f1etires, and returns to his work only to prevent a you1nger man from taking his place. From still another point of view the way in which we 11se memory and Jprediction makes us less, rather than more, adaptablei to life. If to enjoy even an en joyable present we :must have the assurance of a happy future, we ar·e ..£!Ying fQr the moon." We have no such assuranc:e. The best predictions are still matters of probability rather than certainty, and to the best of our knol\rledge every one of us is going to suffer and die. If,, then, ,ve cannot live happily without an assured future, we are certainly not adapted to living in al finite world whett, despite the best plans, accid�nts will happen, and where death . comes at the end. � This, then, is the h1uman problem: there is a price ' to be paid for eyery inc1ease in consciousness. We cannot be more sensiitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to palin. By ing the past we can plan for the future. But the ability to plan · for pleasure is offset by the "ability" to dread pain and to fear the unknlOWD. Furthe11nore, the growth of an acute sense of the past and the future gives us a co11espondingly di1n sense of f:he present. In other words, we seem to �each a point where the advan.
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tages of being conscious are outweighed by its disad vantages, where extrem1e sensitivity makes ua �n adaptable. Under these ciraimsULnccs we feel in conftict with our own bodies and the world around them, and it is consoling to be able 1:0 think that in this contra dictory world we are b11t "strangen and pilgrims." For if our desires are out of accord with anything that the finite world can offer, it might seem that our nature is not of th�s world, that our hearts are made, not for the finite:�, but for infinity. The ducontent of our souls would appear to be the sign and · acal of their divinity. But does the desire fc,r something prove that the thing exists? We know that it does not necessarily do so at all. It may be consoling to think that we are citizens of another world than this, and that after our exile upon eanh we may return to the true home of our bean's desire. But if we are citizens of this world, and if there can be no final satisfaction of the soul's discontent, has not nature, in bringing fonh man, made a seric,us mistake? For it would seem tha.t, in man, life is in hopeless conflict with itself. To be happy, we must have what we c.annot have. In ma1ri, nature has conceived de sires which it is impossib�le to satisfy. To drink more fully of the fountain of p,leasure, it has brought forth capacities which make 11�n the more susceptible to pain. It has given us the power to control the future
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but a little-the price� of which is the &ustration of • knowing that we mw1t at last go down in defeat. If we find this absurd, this is only to say that nature has conceived intellit{ence in us to berate itself for absurdity. Consciom:ness · seems to be nature.., in- ' genioua mode- of self..torture. Of course we do 1riot want to think that this is true. But it would IJ� easy to show that most rea soning to the contraJ1' is but wishful thinking-na ture's method of putting off suicide so that the idiocy can continue. Reaso11ing, then, is not enough. We must go deeper. We 1nmt look into this life, this na ture, which has bec�•me aware .within us, and find out whether it is really in conflict with itself, whether -it actually desires th,e security and the painleuncsa · which its individual forms can never enjoy. •
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SEEM TO BE UKE l?'LIES CAUGHT IN HONEY.
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. cause life is sweet we d4o not want to give it up, and yet the· more we bccolnc involved in it, the more we arc trapped, limitc
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allay them finally and fully in one big "b111t,• you get sick. Perhaps the most e,c:asperating thing about •me,• about nature and the ·universe, is -that it will never ·stay put." It is lilte woman who will - - -·-a -beautiful _ never be _caught, and whose very -flightiness is her_ cha1m. For the pcrisl11ability and changefulncss of the world is pan and parcel of its liveliness and lovelineu. This is why the :poets are so often at their best when speaking of cha:nge, of .. the transitoriness of human life." The beau1ty of such poetry lies in some thing more than a note of nostalgia which brings a catch in the throat.
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Our revels now are ended. These our aetms, • As I foretold you, w,ere all spirits, and · Are melted into air,, into thin air: • And, lilte the baseli·ss fabric of this vision, The cloud-cal'fJ'd tc>wers, the gorgeow palaces, • The solemn teml'le.s, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inlaerit, shall dissolve, . And, lilte this insu!•stantial pageant faded, Leave not a raclt be,,.ind.
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There is more in th1is beauty than the succession of melodious images, -and the theme of dissolution docs not simply borro,, its splendor from the things dissolved. The truth is rather that the images, though beautiful in tbtemselvcs, come to life in the act of vanishing. The poet takes away their static solidity, and turns a beauty which would otherwise •
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be only statuesque and architectural into music, which, no sooner than it is sounded, dies away. The towen, palaces, and te1111plcs become vibrant, and break from the exceu o:f life within them. To be ing is to live; to remain and continue is to die. .. Unleu a grain of com &lll into the ground and die; it remains alone. But if it dies, it brings fonh much &uit." For the poets have seer.a the truth that life, change, movement, and insecurity are so many names for the same thing. Here, if an,where, truth is beauty, for movement and rhythm a1�e of the essence of all things lovable. _In sculpture, arc:hitecture,. and painting the finished form stands stilJl, but even so the eye finds pleasure in the fo1111 onl�y when it contains a certain lack of symmetry, when, &ozen in stone as it may be, it looks as if it were in th.e midst of motion. Is it not, then, a stranige inconsistency and an un natural paradox that '' I" resists change in "me" and in the su11ounding universe? For change is not merely a force of destruc:tion. Every fo1m is really a · pattern of movement, arid every living thing is like the river, which, if it dici not flow out, would never have been able to ftow in. Life and death are not two opposed forces; they are simply two ways of looking at the same force, for th,e movement of change is as / much the builder as the ,destroyer. The human body lives because it is a com.plex of motions, of circula tion, respiration, and diJfCStion. To resist change, to •
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, try to cling to life, is therefore like holding your breath: if you penist you kill yourself. In thinking of ou1rselves as divided into ..I" and "me," we easily forget that consciousness also lives because it is moving. It is as much a part and product of the stream of cha1r1ge as the body and the whole natural world. If you look at it carefully, you will see . . that consciousncss-tlhe thing you call .. I"-is really a stream of experien«:es, of sensations, thoughts, and feelings in constant motion.- But because these ex. perienccs include me:mories, we have the impression that ..I" is somethin.g solid and still, like a tablet upon which life is W1riting a record. Yet the ''tablet" m1oves with the writing finger as the river Bows along ,;vith the ripples, so that memory is like a record written on water a record� not of • graven characten, b11t of wave1 stirred into motion by other waves whictl arc called sensations and facts. The difference bctwteen "I" and ..me" is largely an illusion of memory. :In truth, ..I" is of the same na ture as "me." It is part of our whole being, just as · the head is part of the� body. But if this is not realized,
· ..I" and "me," the h.ead and the body_, will feel at odds with each other·. "I," not undentanding that it · too is part of the stn�am of change, will try to make sense of the world a11d experience by attempting to fix it. We shall then ha,,e a war between consciousnca and nature, between the desire for pc111,anence and '
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the fact of flux. This wa.r must be utterly futile and &ustrating-a vicious ci:rclc-bccausc it is a conflict between two paru of ttac same thing. It must lead thought and action· int•:> circles which go nowhere faster and faster·. For wh(en we fail to sec that our life is change, we set oursel,,es against ourselves and become like Ouroboros, th,e misguided snake, who tries - to eat his own tail. Our,oboros is the perennial symbol of all vicious circles, of every attempt to split our being asunder and make: one part conquer the other. Struggle . as we may, .. fixing" will never make sense#out of change. The ·only way to make sense out of change is to plungc_into i!,.movc wi_th it, and the -...�... dance. . ... . Religion, as most of· u1s have known it, has quite obviously tried to make sense out of life by fixation. It has tried to give this ing world a meaning by . relating it to an uncha111ging God, and by seeing its goal and purpose as an immortal life in which the -. individual becomes one with the changeless nature . of the deity. .. Rest eternal grant unto them, 0 Lord, . and let light perpetual s.hine upon them." Likewise, it atte111pts to make seruse out of the swirling move ments of history by relaLting them to the fixed laws of God, ..whose Word e11dureth for ever." We have thus made a problem for ourselves by confusing the intclligiblle with the fixed. Wc think �t making sense out otf life is impossible u,nless the flow of events can some:how be fitted into a frame#
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work of rigid forms. ·ro be meaningful, life must be undcntandablc in tcirms of fixed ideas and laws, and these in tum must c:011espond to unchanging and ctc111al rcali�ics behiind the shifting sc.cnc.1 But if this is what .. making sense out of life" means, we have · _set ounelvcs the implSSible. task of making fixity out . of ftux. Before we can find •t>ut whether there is some better way of undcntandi111g our universe, we must sec · dearly how this con:fusion of ..sense" with .. fixity" has come about. The root of the difficulty is that we have developed the power of think.ins� so rapidly and one-sidedly that we have forgotten the proper relation between thoughts and events,, words and things. Conscious thinking has gone· ah,ead and c1eatcd its own world, and, when this is fCJ1und to conflict with the real world, we have the a.ensc of a profound discord be tween ..I," the consciious thinker, and nature. This · one-sided developmc1rit of man is not peculiar to in tellectuals and ..brai:ny" people, who arc only ex- . treme examples of a �cndcncy which has affected our entire civilization. What we have forgc>ttcn is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take convcn-
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Lacer on in this boot. we shall aee that «hete metaphysical idea of the unchanging airld the �temal can have another aeme. They do not necc11arily ia11ply a atatic •iew of reality, and while Ol'dinuily med • a«tempu1 to "&x the 8ux" they have not alwaJI been .,_ 1
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tions too seriously. A 400nvention is a social con venience, u, for cxampl,e, money. Money gets rid of the inconveniences of batrter. But it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth, beca•1se it will do you n<> good to eat it or wear it for clothing. Money is more or less static, for gold, silver, strong paper, or a bank balance can ·'1tay put" for a long time. But real we;llth, such u food, is perish able. Thus a communit;Y may possess all the gold in the world, but if it do«� not far111 its c1 ops it ,viii - · . . starve. In somewhat the samac way, thoughts, ideas, and words are ..coins" for re41l things; They arc not those things, and though the·y represent them, there are many ways in which the�y do not correspond at all. /u \\'ith money and wealth, so with thoughts and things: ideas and words are more or less 6xed, !,Vhereas real "" things change. . .. It is easier to say ... than to point to your own body, and to say ··wantt" than to try to indicate a vague feeling in the mo•uth and stomach. It is more convenient to say ..wate1r" than to lead your friend to a well and make swta:ble motions. It is also con venient to agree to use the same words for the same things, and to keep th. ese words unchanged, even though the things we a1rc indicating arc in constant motion. In- the beginning, th4e power of words must have seemed magical, and, indeed, the mii:acles which
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verbal thinking has wrought have justified the im pression. What a malrvel it must have been to get rid of the nuisances <>f sign-language and summon a &iend simply by mal�ing a short noise-his namel It is no wonder that n2lmes have been considered un canny manifestatio�s of supernatural power, and that men have identitied their names with their souls or used them to invoilte spiritual forces. Indeed, the power of words has g.one to man's head in more than one way. To define has come to mean almost the same thing as to un
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the activity of the gods 01r God, the etc11ial Word. At a later time science emplloys the same process, studying every kind of regularity in the universe, naming, dassifying, and . making use of them in ways still • more miraculous... ·. But bcca11sc it is the lllse and nature of words and thoughts to be fixed, defi1 nite, isolated, it is extremely hard to describe the mos1 t important characteristic of life�its movement and tluidity. Just as money does not represent the perish;lbility and edibility of food, so words and thoughts dlo not represent the vitality of life. The relation b:tween thought and move ment is some!hing li_kc tl�.e differenc� between a real man - running and a moti,on-picturc .film which shows - �e running as a series olf ''stills." / We reson to the conv-ention of stills whenever we want to describe or thir1k about any moving body, such as a train, stating tliat at such-and-sl1ch times it t is at such-and-such places. But this is not quite true. You can say that a train at a panicular point "now I" But it took you some tin1e to say "nowl" and during that time, however shon:, the train was still moving. � You c.an only say that the moving train actually is (i.e., stops) at a paniculalr point for a particular mo tnent if both are infinitelly small. But i.nfinitely small points and fixed moments arc always imaginary points, being denizens of �thcrnatical theory rather ' than the real world. It is most convenient for scientific calculation to
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think of a movement .as a series of very small jcru or stills. But confusion airises when the world described and measured by suchl conventions is identified with the world of cxpcrier.ace. A series of stills docs not, unless rapidly moved before our eyes, convey the es sential vitality and be;auty of moveanent. The defini tion, the description, leaves out· the most imponant ,,.• • thing. Useful as these cou1vcntions are for purpmcs of calculation, language·, and logic, absurdities arise when we think that tlhc kind of language we use or the kind of IQgic wit.h which we reason can really define or explain the physical" world. Pan of man's &ustration is that he has become accustomed to ex • pect language and thought to offer explanations . which they cannot gi vc. To want life to be ..intelli gible" in this sense iis to want it to be something other than life. It is to prefer a motion-picture film to a real, running man. To feel that life is meaning less unless .. I" can �� per111anent is like having fal. . lcn desperately in lov(e with an inch. Words and measurtes do not give life: they merely symbolize it. Thus all. ..explanations" of the universe couched in language ;are circular, and leave the most essential things unexF•lained and undefined. The dietionary itself is circular. It defines words in tea111s of other ·words. The dic:tionary comes a little closer to life when, alongside some '!ord, it gives you a pic . ture. But it will be nc>ted that all dictionary pictures 1 ..
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are attached to nouns rather than verbs. An illust1 ation of the verb to ,un �,ould have to be a series of stills like a comic strip, £.>r words and static pictures can neither define nor cx1plain a motion. Even the nouns arc cornvcntions. You do not define this real, living ..somcthiriag" by associating it with the noise man. When we sa)', ..This (pointing with the finger) is a man," the thiu1g to which we point is not man. To be dearer we should have said, ..This ii symbolized by the noise man." What, then, is this? We do not know� That ts to say, we cannot define it in any fixed way, though:, in another sense, we know it u our immediate ex1;,eriencc a flowing process without definable begin11ting or end. It is convention alone which pcnuades m1c that I am simply this body bounded by a skin . in space, �d by birth and death • • m time. . ..... Where do I begin ancl end in space? I have rclalions to the sun and air which arc just u vital parts of my existence as my bean. The movement in which I am a pattern or convolution began incalculable ages before the (convention.ally isolated) event called birth, and will continue long after the event called death. Only words and conventions can isolate us &om the entirely undel5nable something which ii everything. . . Now these arc useful words, so long as we treat them as conventions and use them like the imaginary - lines of latitude and longitude which arc drawn upori
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maps, but are not actt11ally found upon the face of the earth. But in practice we are all _bewitched by words. We confuse them witlra the real woi-ld, and try tolive in the real world as if' it were the\ world of wordsl As· a consequence, we are dismayed and dumbfounded when they do not fit. The more we try to live in the world of words, the n1ore ,ve feel isolated and alone, ,., the ·more all the joy and liveliness of things is ex changed for mere cc�nainty and security. On the other hand, the more we are forced to it that we actually live in the rC4al world, the more we feel igno rant, uncenain, and iinsccure about everything. But there can be u10 sanity unless the difference between these two worlds is recognized. The scope and purposes of scie111ce arc woefully misunderstood when the universe ,vhich it describes is confused with the universe in ,vhich man lives. Science is talk ing about a symbol of the real universe, and this symbol has much the same use as money. It is a con venient timesaver f,or -making practical a11ange ments. But when mioney and wealth, reality and science are confused, the symbol becomes a burden. Similarly, the uni,,ene described in £01111al, dog matic religion is nott1ing more than a symbol of the real world, being lilc.4:wisc c;onstructed out of verbal and conventional distinctions. To separate ·'this per son" from the rest of the universe is to make a con ventional separation.. To want this person" to be eternal is to want the:: words to be the reality, and to
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insist that a convention c111durc for ever and ever. Wc hunger for the pcrpetuitJ' of something which never existed. Science has ..dcst1·oyed" the religious symbol of the world beca 11se, when symbols arc confused with reality, different ways of symbolizing reality will. seem contradictory• . The scientific way of symboli�ing the world is more suited to utilitarian purposes than the religious way, but this docs not 11r1ean that it has any more . "truth." Is it truer to classify rabbits according to their meat or according to their fur? It d�pcnds on · what you want to do witl1 them. The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems • of definition arc relative� to various purposes, and that none of them actually ..g.asp" reality. And be· cause religion was being misused as a means for ac- . tually grasping and posse:ssing the mystery of life, a certain measure of ..debunking" was highly neces. sary. . . But in the process of s·ymbolizing the universe in this way or that for this 1�urposc or that we seem to have lost the actual joy and meaning of life itself. All the various definitioras of the universe have had ulterior motives, being ironcerned :with the future rather than the present. l�e�igio!l. �!)ts t� assure the- . .. \fut�re beyond death, anc:l science wants to a�urc it . • �nt1I death, !nd !O _ postJpone death� But tomorrow and plans for tomorrow , can have no significance at
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all unless you are in full with the reality o{ the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live· . There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live lfor the future would be t9 miss the point everlastinglly. But it is just this 1reality of the present, this mov. ing, vital now whict1 eludes all the definitions and descriptions. Here is the °:tYSterious real world which • words and ideas can never pin down. Living always for the future, we al-e out of touch with this source and center of life; and as a result all the magic of naming and think.i111g has come to something of a .. . . temporary breakdow�. The miracles of ·tiechnology cause us to live in a
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hectic, clockwork. wo,rld that docs violence to human biology, enabling us: to do nothing but punue the · future faster and fas1ter. Deliberate thought finds itself unable to controJl the upsurge of the beast in man -1111a beast more ..bealstly" than any creature of the wild, maddened an�l exasperated by the punuit of illusions. Spccializa1:ion in verbiage, classification, and mechanized thir1king has put man out of touch with many of the 1narvelous powen of ..instinct" which govern his body. It has, funher111ore, made him feel utterly sep;1rate from the universe and his own "me." And th\JlS when all philosophy has dis solved in relativism, and can make fixed sense of the universe no longer, iisolated .. I" feels miserably inse- 51 •
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cure and panicky, find in@� the real world a flat contra • diction of its whole being:. Of course there is nothing new in this predicament • of discovering that ide�s and words cannot plumb · the ultimate mystery of life, that Reality or, if you .,. · will, God cannot be c<J1mprehended by the finite mind. The only novelty is that the predicament is • now social rather than individual: it is widely felt, l not confined to the few. ,�lmost every spiritual tradil tion recognizes that a po,int comes when two things I must happen: man must su11ender his separate-feel •• ing ..I," and must face th1e fact that he cannot know, f that is, define the ultimate. l These traditions also recognize· that beyoi:id this point there lies a ..visiora of God" which can·not be l put into words, �d whic:h is certainly something ut- · l terly different from perceiving a radiant gentleman •• ' on a golden throne, or a l:iteral ftash of blinding light. • They also indicate that �his vision is a restoration of l something which we ona� had, and. .. lost" beca11se we •• did not or could not •F•preciate iL This vision ia, £ then, the unclouded awareness of this undefinable ' ..something" which we call life, present reality, the l g1eat stream, the eternal now-an awarenea without ' the sense of separation &om iL •• The moment I name iit, it is no longer God: it is I man, nee, green, black, red, soft, hard, long, short, • atom, universe. One would readily agaee with any •.. theologian who deplores pantheism that these deni-
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zens of the world of verbiage and convention, these sundry .. things" con,ceived as 6xed and distinct en tities� are not God. llf you ask me to show_ you God, I will point to the suno or a tree, or a wo1m. But ij_you say, ..You mean, theu1, that God is the sun, the uee, the wo11n, and all other things?"-I shall have to say that you have missedl the point entirely. '
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What is reality? To all su1ch questions we must give St. - Augustine's answer t.o _ the question "What is �imc?:-·�1 le.now but wh�:ru_o� aslc. m! ! �on't." Ex• perience, life, motion, anci reality are so many noises • used to symbolize the sum of sensations, thoughts, feelings, and desires. And if you a.sic., "What are sensa. tions, et cetera?" I can 0111ly answer, .. Don't be silly. You know very well wha1t. they arc. We can't go on defining things indefinitely without going round in cirdes. To define means to fix, and, when you get down to it, real life isn't f�xed." , It was suggested at the 1end of the last chapter that this ultimate something ,�hich cannot be defined or fixed can be represented l>y the word God. If this be true, we know God all th•e time but when we begin • to think about it we dor1'L For when we begin to • think about experience we try to fix it in rigid forms and ideas. It is the old problem of trying to tie up � water in parcels, or- attempting to shut the wind in a · · . box. Yet it has always been taught ·in religion that ..God" is something from which one can expect wis dom and guidance. We h1ave become accustomed to the idea that wisdom-that is, knowledge, advice, and • . . .. .. • • • • !;5 .. I
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info1111ation-can be expressed in verbal statements consisting of specific directions. If this be true, it is hard to see ho,v any wisdom can be extracted from something impossible� to define. d4 But in fact the ki111d of wisdom ,vhich can be put 11 in the form of specific directions amounts to very d4 • little, and most of th1e wisdom which we employ in w everyday life never aLme to us as verbal infor111ation. le · It was not through s1tatemcnts that we learned how a · h4 to breathe, swallow, sec, circulate the blood, digest food, or resist diseases,. Yct these things are pcrfor111ed lil by the most complex and marvelous processes which no amount of book.-1,earning and technical skill can a . reproduce. This is re,al wisdom-but our brains have Ill little to do with it. This is the kind of wisdom which l
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The •instruments" whic:h achieve these feits are, indeed, organs and p�ses of the body-that is to say, of a mysterious· pattel'ln of movement whic:h we do not really understand aind cannot actually define. In general, however, human �ings have ceased to develop the instruments of the body. More and more we try to effect an adaptation to life by means of extemal gadgets, and attemp1t to solve our problems by conscious thinking rather than unconscious .. know·how." This is muc:h less tio our advantage thain we like to suppose. There are, for instance, "primitive" wora1en who can deliver themselves of cl child while working out in the fields, and, after doillag the few things necessary to see that the baby is safe�, wa1m, and comfortable, resume their work as before. On the other hand, the civilized womain has to be· moved to a complicated hospital, aind there, surro,1nded by docton, nurses, and innumerable gadgets, force the poor thing into the world with prolonged.a:ontonions and excruciat ing pains. It is true that :antiseptic conditions prevent rnany mothen and ha.hies from dying, but why can't we have the antiseptiic conditions and the natural, easy way of birth? The answer to this, and :many similar questions, is that we have been taught: to neglect, despise, and violate our bodies, and to 1>ut all faith in our brains. Indeed, the special disease of civilized man might be described as a block or sch�5m between his brain (spe-
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cifically, the conex)� and the rest of his body. This corresponds to the s,plit between "I" and "me," man and nature, and to the confusion of Ouroboros, the mixed-up make, wlho does not know that his tail belongs with his heald. Happily, there have, in recent yean, been at least ttwo scientists who have called at· - tention to this schism, namely Lancelot Law Whyte and Trigant Burrow.• Whyte calls this disease the "European dissociation," not because it is peculiar to European-America111 civilization, but beca11se it is specially characteris;tic of it. Both Whyte and Burrow have given a clinical de scription or diagnotSis of the schism, the details of which need not de'41in us here. It is simply saying in ..medical" language that we have allowed brain think ing to develop and «:lominate our lives out of all pro portion to .. instinctu1al wisdom," which we are allow ing to slump into attrophy. As a consequence, we are at war within ourselves-the brain desiring things which the body does not want, and the body desiring ... things which the br.ain does not allow: the brain giv ing directions which the body will not follow, and 1
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(Henry Holt, New York, 19-15) is quite readable and deeply inter· . esting, while The Unita"., Principle in Physics and Biology (Henry Holt, New York, 1949) strictly for the scientific reader. Burrow's Social Basis of Conscioumeu (London, 1917) and The Structure of Insanity (London, 19;51) are unhappily out of. print, but most . of the material is contaiined in his NeuTosis of Man (Routledge, London, 1948). There ar1e probably other acientisu working on the same lines. but I am not aware of them.
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. the body giving impulses �which the brain cannot un dentand. In one way or another civilized man agrees with . St. Francis in thinking otf the body as Brother Ass. But even theologians have: recognized that the source of evil and stupidity lies n,ot in the physical organism as a whole, but in the cut-4)fl, dissociated brain which · they te1111 the ..will." When we compare hullnan with animal desire we find many extraordinary' differences. The animal . tends to eat with his stom1ach, and the man with his brain. When the animal's stomach is full, he stops eating, but the man is nevier sure when to_stop. When he has eaten as much as his belly can take, he still feels empty, he still feels an urge for further gratifica- • tion. This is largely due tc> anxiety, to the knowledge that a constant supply of: food is unccnain. There fore eat as much as you am wl1ile you can. It is due, also, to the knowledge tU1at, in an insecure world, pleasure is uncertain. ·rherefore the immediate pleasure of eating must b«� exploited to the full, even though it �oes violence tc� the digestion. Human desire tends t4) be insatiable. We are so . anxious for pleasure that ·we can never get enough of it. We stimulate our senS4e organs until they become insensitive, so that if pl«!asure is to continue they must have stronger and stronger stimulants. In self defense the body gets illl &om the strain, but the brain wants to go 01!_ and on. The brain is in punuit • . . . . '. . .. . • J;g • • ' • • •
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of happiness, and because the brain ii much more . concerned about the future than the present, it con- ceives happiness as the guarantee of an indefinitely long future of plcas: ures. Yet the brain aJso knows that it docs not hav�: an indefinitely long future, so that, to be happy, it must try to c1owd all the plCU. _ ures of Paradise and. eternity into the span of a few
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This· is �hy mode1m civilization is in almost every respect a vicious cirdc. It is insatiably hungry be cause its way of life condemns it to perpetual frust1a· tion. As we have seen, the root of this frustration is that we live for the :future, and the future is an ab straction, a rational i1rifercnce from experience, which exists only for the l>rain. The "primary conscious ness," the basic mind which knows reality rather than ideas about it, does n.ot know the future. It lives com pletely in the prese1iit, and perceives nothing more than what is at this moment. The ingenious brain, however, loob at tlhat pan of present experience called memory, and by studying it is able to make predictions. These F�redictions are, relatively, so accurate and reliable (e.g., "everyone will die") that the future assumes a. high dcgaec of reality 10 high that the present losea its value. But the future is sttill not here� and cannot become a pan of cxpericnc:cd reality until it is prescnL Since what we kno,v of the future is made up of purely abstract ancl logical clements inferences,
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. guesses, deduction-it ca1nnot be eaten, felt, smelled, seen, heard, or otherwise enjoyed. To pursue it is to punue a constantly ret1reating phantom, and the faster you chase it, the htSter it runs ahead. This is why all the affain of civilization arc rushed, why hardly anyone enjoys wltiat he has, and is forever seeking more and more. Happiness, then, will con sis·t, not of solid and substtantial realities, but of such . abstract and superficial things as promises, hopes, and assurances. Thus the "brainy" eco,nomy designed to produce this happiness is a fantastiic vicious circle which must either manufacture more and more pleasures or col lapse-providing a constant titillation of the ean, eyes, and nerve ends with incessant streams of almost inescapable noise and visual distractions. The per· feet "subject" for the ai11ns of this economy is the . penon �ho continuousl�y itches his . can with the radio, preferably using ttiae portable kind which can go with him at all hours and in all places. His eyes flit without rest from teleit1ision sc:1cen, to newspaper, .. to magazine, keeping hi11r1 in a son of orgasm-with out-release through a se1ries of tnsing glimpses · of shiny automobiles, shiny· female bodies, and other \ · sensuous surbces, interspersed with such restorers of . sensitivity-shock treatm1cnts-as ..human interest" shots of aiminals, man:gled bodies, wrecked air planes, prize fights, and t,uming buildings. The lit· erature or discourse that ,goes along with this is simf;1 •
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ilarly manufactured to tease without satisfaction, to · replace every partiall gratification with a new desire. . For this stream of stimulants is designed to pro duce aavings for mCJ•re and more of the same, though louder and faster, airid these mvings drive us to do work which is of n<> interest save for the money it pays-to buy more lalvish radios, sleeker automobiles, glossier magazines; .md better television sets, all of ,· which will someho,� conspire to persuade us that \; happiness lies just a:round the .corner if we will buy one more. · Despite the imme·n se hubbub and nervous strain, we are convinced tl1at sleep is a waste of valuable time and continue tto chase these fantasies far into the night. Anima!_s_ �pend �uch of_th_cir t��e dozing �d jdl_i�g_ ple�sar:i�� bul;�cau_� lif� is sflon, _ human beings m�.t c•am_into the yean the highest possible amount olf consciousness, alenness, and chroni� insomnia so as to be sure not to miss the last fragment of startlint� pleasure. It isn't that the p�ople who submit to this kind of thing are immoral. ][ t isn't that the people who pro- vide it are wicked ex:ploiters; most of them are of the same mind as the exJploited, if only on a more expen sive horse in this sorry-go-round. The real trouble is that they are all tota1lly &ustrated, for trying to please the brain is like trying to drink through your can. · Thus they are inc1easingly incapable of real pleasure,
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insensitive to the most aci11te and subtle joys of life •• which are in fact extreme1ly common and simple. The vague, nebulous, alnd insatiable character of �rainy desire makes it particularly hard to come down to earth-to be material and real. Generally t) speaking, the civilized maln does not know what he ,t wants. He works for suCCC!�, fame, a happy marriage, ,, 1f " fun, to help other peoplei, or to be a "r� person." But these are not real wan1ts because they are not ac .t tual things. They are the IJ•y-products, the ftavon and y atmospheres of real things shado,vs which have no • existence apart from somie substance. Money is the l, perfect symbol of all such desires,. being a mere sym- • e bol of real wealth, and t(]� make it one's goal is the most blatant example of confusing measurements I., with reality. It is therefore far &om ,co11ect to say that modern :t civilization is materialistic:, that is, if a materialist is i a person who loves matter.. The brainy modem loves not matter but measures, no solids but surfaces. He drinks for the percentage: of alcohol ("spirit") an� not for the "body" and taste of the liquid.- 1:.1�, bujJdsto p�t _up an impressive "'front" rather than to pr<>=. e vide a space for living. Th1erefote he tends to put up structures which appear from the outside to be ba I ronial mansions but are inwardly warrens. The in • dividual living-units in tU1ese warrens are designed as for a�-!ti�g_ .!_ n impression. The lea for living • ., • • ' • , • a 6, 5 , •
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main space is devoted to a "living room" of propor. tions suitable to a l;arge house, while such essential spaces for living (rather than mere ..entertaining") as the kitchen arc recluced to small closets where one can hardly move-1nuch less cook. Consequently � these wretched little� galleys provide fare which is chiefly gascous-coclk.tails and ..appetizers" rather than honest meals. B�causc we all want to be ..ladies and gentlemen" and. look as if we had servants, we do not soil our handa with growing and cooking real food. Instead we bu·y products designed for Nfront" and appearance· rat�aer ... than content-immense and tasteless &uit, bread which is little more than a light froth, wine faked ,vith chemicab, and vegetables flavored with the ari
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understand not wantinJf the great delicacy of sex when it is available. He has been hankering after it for hours and days on e1rid, but when the reality ap pears his body will not oe>-operate. rAs in eating his ..eyes �tre bigger than his stomach," • so in love he judges w<>m�� by standards that are r largely visual and cerel=•ril rather than sexual and • visceral. He' is attracted tto his panner by the surface •• gloss, by the film on th.e skin rather than the real l • body. He wants somethi11g with a bone structure like a boy's which is sup�.ed to the exterior l curves and smooth undlltlations of femininity-not a t woman but an inflated r·ubber dream. The function • of sex e ver, so much in the domain itself remains, how · l of .. instinctual wisdom" that little can be done to in crease its already inte�� pleasure, to make it faster, • • fancier, and more frequent. The only means of ex ploiting it is through ce·rebral fantasy, through sur rounding it with coquetterie and suggestions of u.n• . specified delights to corrle-as if a more ecstatic em l brace could always be a11anged through surface al• t te-r-at1ons. •• A particularly si ifiolnt example of brain· against gn • body, or measures agai1nst matter, is urban man's l total slavery to clocks. A clock is a convenient device •.. . for a11anging to meet a friend, or for helping people to do things together, allthough things of this kind s happened long before they were invented. Clocks .; t should not be smashed; they should simply be kept . . ... 65 ' \ •
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· · in their place. And thley are very much out of place when we try to adapt our biological rhythms of eating, sleeping, evacuation, working, and relaxing to ·. .. their unifor111 circula1� rotation. Our slavery to these mechanical drill masrten has gone so far and our whole culture is so in·volved with it that refo11n is a forlorn hope; withou·t them civilization would col- . . lapse entirely. A less 'brainy culture woul� learn .to_......._ synchronize its body 1rhythms rather �than its clocks. The capacity of the brain to foresee the future bas · .. much to do with the fear of death. One knows of many people who wotald have said with Stevenson, .. •
Undn the wide and starry slc1 Dig me a �r;rave and let me lie; . Glad did I li·ve and gladly die, And l laid me down with a will.
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For when the body is ,.vom out and the brain is tired, the whole organism ,velcomes death. But it is diffi cult to undentand how death can be welcome when you are young and strc>ng, so that you come to regard it as a dread and terrible event. For the brain, in its • immaterial ,vay, loobi into the future and conceives it a good to go on and. on and on forever-not realiz ing that its own n1a.terial wo�d at last find the process intolerably tiresome. Not taking this into , the brain fails to see that, being itself material and subject to change�. its desires wjll change, and a time will come when cleath will be good. On a bright • . • ' _,,. , . 66 .. .. • ' ,. . I .. • • , f. •• • •• • • J
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morning, after a good nit�ht's rest, you do not want to � go to sleep. But after a hard day's work the sensation , ..,..,,. of dropping into uncorusciousncss is extraordinarily pleasant. · · Unfortunately, not v1ery many of us die peacefully. We die through accidents and painful diseases, and it is tragic indeed when a person whose .. mind" · is still young and alert s1 truggles uselessly with a dy- · .........'°_. · ing body. I am sure, ho�tevcr, that the body_ dies because it wants to. It finds it beyond its power to resist · . the disease or to mend the injury, and so, tired out �-r.r�� t with the struggle, turns t.o death. If the consciousness were more sensitive to the feelings and impulses of , '. the whole organism. it �,ould share this desire, and, "·�..... indeed, sometimes does ,o. We come close to it when, ... · in serious sickness, we wc>uld just as soon die, tho.ugh · "or.,.� sometimes we survive, e:ither because medical treat_ment reinvigorates the bcxly, or because there arc still unconscious forces in tht� organism which are able to
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Accustomed, as it is, t�t> think of man as a dualism · '"' · of mind and body, and t, o regard the £01,ner as ..sen sible" and the latter as a ' "dumb" animal, our culture is an affront to the wisd4)m of nature and a ruinous exploitation of the hum.an organism as a whole. We are perpetually frustrate.ti bcca11se the verbal and ab- stract thinking of the braiin gives the false impression . of �ing able to �t loos.e from all finite limitations. It forgets that an in6nit)r of anything is not a reality .;, "'�� •
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. but an abstract conceJpt, and penuades us that we de sire this fantasy as a n:al goal of living. � · The externalized s1rmbol of this way of thinking is � that almost entirely rational and inorganic object, the machine, which f�ves us the sense of being able . to approach infinity. For the machine can submit to · st1ains far beyond th.e capacity of the body, and to monotonous rhythms, which the human being could never stand. Uscful a!! it would be as a tool and a serv ·ant, we worship its r:ationality, its efficiency, and its · power to abolish limitations of time and apace, and thus pe11nit it to regllllate our lives. Thus the work ' ing inhabitants of a ntlodem city are people who live . inside a machine to l>e batted around by its wheels. They spend their day;s in activities which largely boil down to counting and measuring, living in a world of rationalized abstnlction which has little relation to or ha1 rnony with tl�e great biological rhythms and . processes. · As a matter of factt, mental activities of this kind · can now be done fair more efficiently by machines than by men so mu,ch so that in a not too distant future the human brain may be an obsolete mecha nism for logical calculation. Already the human com. puter is widely displaced by mechanical and elec. . trical computers of far greater speed and efficiency. If, then, man's princlipal anet and value is his brain and his ability to calc·ulate, he will become an unsale able commodity in an era when the mechanical op-
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eration of reasoning ca111 be done more effectively by machines.1 Already man uses innumerable gadgets to displace the work done by bodily organs in the animals, and it would surely be in line with this tendency to ex ternalize the reasoning functions of the brain-and thus hand ·over the go·vcmment of life to electro magnetic monsters. In Cl1ther words, the interests· ind goals of rationality are not those of man as a whole organism. If we are to C<>ntinue to live for the (uture, and to make the chief ,.vork. of the mind prediction and calculation, man m1�t eventually become a para sitic' appendage to a mas-s of clock.work.. There is, indeed, a viewpoint &om which this ..rationalization" of life is not rational . The brain is clever enough to see th.e vicious circle ,vhich it has made for itself. But it can do nothing about it. Seeing that it is unreasonable to worry does not stop worry worry :the more at being unreason-• ing; rather, you • t I take my facts on this ma1tter from Norbert Wiener·s rmtark.·
able book Cybernetics (New York & Paris. 1948). Dr. Wien� ii one of the mathematicians chiefly responsible for the development
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of the more elaborate elcctriical computen. Having likewise an advanced knowledge of ncur, ology. he is well able to judge the extent to which these inventii ons can reproduce the work of the human organism. His book c:ontains the following pertinent ob servation: "It is internting tCJ• note that we may be facing one of those limitations of nature, in which highly specialized organs reach a level of declining �fllicicncy. and ultimately lead to the extinction of the species. Th•e human brain m:ay be as far along on iu road to this destructive specialization as the great nose horns of the last of the titanothncs:· (p. 18o.)
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· able. It is unreasonab,le to wage a modem war, in • which everybody loses.. Neither side actually wants a war, and yet, because ·we live in a vicious circle, we · start the war to preve11t the other side &om starting first. We arm ounelvc!S knowing that if we do not, the other side will-w·hich is quite true, because if we do not a1m the ot1lter side will do so to gain itf , advantage without act1ually fighting. · . • From this rational FK>int of view we find ourselves in me dilemma of St. JPaul-"To will is present with me; but how to pcrfo11rn that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not." But this is not, as St. Paul supposed, because the will or the ..spirit" is reasonable ;Lnd the flesh perverse. It is be_cause ,..a house_ djviste,d_ aga!nst itself cannot stand.� The whole organism is pervene because the brain is • i split from the belly arid me head unconscious of its . , i , · union with the tail. , :'f' There are few grou1rids for hoping that, in any im mediate future, there will be any recovery of social sanity. It would seem 1that the vicious circle must be� · come yet more intole1rable, more blatantly and des perately circular befor·e any large numbers of human beings awaken to the t:ragic trick. which they are play ing on themselves. Burt for those who see clearly that it is a circle and why i1t is a circle, there is no alterna• . tive but to stop circli1t1g. For as soon as you see the ...... whole circle, the illu!sion that the head � sep3:?ate · · ; • . &om the tail disappea1rs. • • • ' 70 /:• • ..
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An� then, when experience stops oscillating and writhing, it can again ll>ecomc sensitive to the wis- . dom of the body, to the Jriiddcn depths of its own sub. - • s�nce. Because I speak of th,e wisdom of the body and of : . the necessity for recogt1izing that we are material, this is not to be taken alS a philosophy of "material ism" in the accepted serusc. I am not asscning that the ultimate reality is matt«�r. Matter is a word, a noise, which refcn to the forms and patterns taken by a • proceu. We do not kno�, what this process is, becau� it is not a "what"-that iis, a thing definable by some fixed concept or mcasu�e. If we want to keep the old language, still using sulch u "spiritual" and ..material,� the spiritu;al must mean ..the indefin1 able," that which, because it is living, must ever . ·� escape the framework <>f any fixed foran. Matter is . , spirit named. After all this, the brain deserves a word for itsclfl For the brain, includin:g its reasoning and .calculating ccnteas, is 'a part andl product of the body. It is u natural as the heart and stomach, and, rightly used, is , anything but an cnem.y of man. But to be used rightly it must be put :in its place, for the brain is made for man,_ not man :for his brain. In other words, · the function of the brain is t� serve the present and the real, not to send rr1an chasing wild�y after the • · . · .. .. - • phantom of the future. Furthern1ore, in our habitual state of mcnw ten• - - . . 71 • • • • • .. .. , .• • (
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sion the brain does not: work properly, and this is one reason why its abstrac:tions seem .to have so great a reality. When the hear·t is out of order, we are clearly · conscious of its beating; it becomes a distraction, • pounding within the loreast. It seems most probable that our preoccupatio1ri with thinking and planning, • togethe.r with the seruse of mental fatigue, is a sign of some disorder of the! brain. The brain should, and in some cases does, cal1culatc and reason with the un • • conscious ease of the ,other bodily organs. After all, the brain is not a muscle, and is thus not designed for effort and strain. But when people try to think or concentrate, they behave as if they we1-e trying to push their brains aroWld. They screw up their faces, knit their brows, and approach mental Jproblems as if they ,verc some. thing like heaving b1·icks. Yet you do not have to • •• grind a�d strain to digest food, and still less to sec, • hear, and receive other neural impressions. The , ..lightning calculator"' who can sum a long column of figures at a glance, the intellectual genius who can • comprehend a whole page of reading in a few seconds, and the musical prodigy, such as Mozart, who seems to g,asp har111on1y and counterpoint from baby hood, arc examples of: the proper use of man's most .. marvelous instrument. ,. Those of us who ar4: not geniuses know something of the same ability. 1�ake for example the anagram POCATELDIMC. You aan work over these lctten for ...
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houn, trying system aft�er system of rca11angement in order to discover the� sc1ambled word. Try, in- ""' "'" stead, just looking at tl1e anagram with a relaxed mind, and in a very shon space of time your brain .. will deliver the answer ,without the slightest effort. 1 We rightly mistrust the "snap" answen of strained and wandering minds, b,ut the tapid, effortless, and almost unconscious solu1tion of logical problems is what the brain is supposed to deliver. Working rightly, the !brain is the highest for111 of · � ..instinctual wisdom." Thus it should work like the homing instinct of pigeo,ns and the fo1 mation of the foetus in the womb-witlnout verbalizing the process _ or knowing "how" it 4ioes it. The sclf
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t Jf you don't succeed within one minute, read onl Otherwise you will begin to be annoyed eiither with younelf, or with me, and the comequent attain will inta:-fere with the process. • •
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only asked by those ,vho ido not undcntand the prob lem. If a problem can be· solved at all, to undentand it and to know what to de• about it are the same thing. On the other hand, doi11g something about a prob1cm which you do not 11ndentand is like trying to dear away darkness by thrusting it aside with your hands. When light is brc>ught, the darkness vanishes
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This applies paniculalrly to the problem now be fore us. How arc we to heal the split between .. I " arid ..me," the brain andl the body� man and nature, . and bring all the vicious circles which it produces to an end? How arc we to 4experience life as something .1• �" 1 other than a ho�ey trap, in which we arc the strug; gling fties?' How�are we tto find security and peace of · -... nature is insecurity, imind in a world whose �rmanence, and uncea!sing change? All these ques- . :',,,,... · tions demand a method. and a coune of action. At the same time, all of thcitn show that the problem has not been undentood. lVc do not need action-yet. .. We need more light. Light, here, means a�,arencss-to be aware of life, · • of experience as it is alt this moment, without any . • judgments or ideas abc>ut it. I n other words, you .. ·
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have to see and feel ,what you are experiencing as it is, and not as it is naJ1ned. This very simple ..opening of the eyes" brings about the most extraordinary transfor111ation of u.ndentanding and living, and sho,vs that many �f ,our most baffling problems are pure illusion. This may sound like an over-simplifica tion because most pc�ple imagine themselves to be fully enough aware 10( the present already, but we shall see that this is fa.r from true.1 Because awareneu. is a view of reality &ee from ideas and judgments, it is clearly impossible to define and write down what'. it reveals. Anything which can be described is an ide2, and I cannot make a positive statement about somc:thing-the real world-which is not an idea. I shall thlerefore have to be content with' . talking about the faLse impressions which awareness removes; rather than the truth which it reveals. The latter can.only be sym1bolized with words which mean little or nothing to those without a direct under , standing of the truth in question. . What is true and positive is too real and too living . -to be described, and to try to describe it is like put ting red paint on a re� rose.·Therefore most of what follows will have to have a rather negative quality. · The truth is rev�ale�l by removing things that stand in its light, an art nolt unlike sculpture, in which the · artist creates, not by building, but by hacking away. word ..awarenesa"' is used in the' sense given to it by J. Krishnamurti, whose writiinp discuss cbis theme with extraordinary perception.
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We saw that the ques1tions about finding security and peace of mind in an impermanent world showed that the problem had n,ot been undentood. Before going any further, it mulSt be clear that the kind of security we are talking :about is primarily spiritual and �ychological. To iexist at all, human beings m\llSt have a minimum )livelihood in of food, drink, and clothing-wi1th the undentanding, how ever, that it cannot last indefinitely. But if the as surance of a minimum livelihood for sixty yean would even begin to satinfy the heart of man, human problems would amoun1t to very little. Indeed, the very reason why we do_D40t have this assurance is that we want so much more than the minimum neces-
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It must be obviolllS, &om the stan, that there is a contradiction in wantin1� to be perfectly secure in a • universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity. But the contra.diction lies a little deepe� . than the mere conflict between the desire for security and the fact of change. Jjc I want to be secure, that is, protected from the flux of life, I am wanting to be separate from life. Yet it is this very sense of separate ness which makes me fieel insecure. To be secure means to isolate and fort:ify the "I,': but it is just the feeling of being an isolated "I" which makes me feel . lonely and afraid. In ot�ler words, the more security . I can get, the more I shall want. To put it still more plainly: the desire for security •
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and the feeling of in:security are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a · breath-retention con test in which everyone is as taut 1 as a drum a1'd as purple as a beet. c.r :·· We look. for this S4�curity by fortifying and enclos • ing ourselves in inr1umerable ways. We want the protection of being ..exclusive" and ..special," seeking to belong to the· safest church, the best nation, • ,': the highest class, the right set, and the ..nice" people. · ' · , These defenses lead to divisions between us, and so to more insecurity demanding more defenses. Of course it is all done iin the sincere belief that we arc trying to do the right: things and live in the best way; but this, too, is a coratradiction. I can only think se·riot1sly of trying to live up to an ideal, to improve m1,self, if I ain split in two pieces. There must be a good ..I" who is going to improve Jhe bad ..me." .. I," �,ho has the best intentions, will · . go to work on wa)'\valrd ..me," and the tussle between the two will very mu1ch stress the difference between them. Consequently .. I" will feel more separate than · ever, and so merely increase the lonely and cut-off , feelings which make ..me" behave so badly. We can hardly beJpn to consider this problem un� less it is clear that tt1e c1aving for security is itself a pain and a contradic:tion, and that the more we pur sue it, the more pai1r1ful it becomes. This is true in ., · - whatever for111 security may be conceived. · .. -, • .. ' �
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You want· to be happy·, to forget yourself, and yet the more you try to fo�gct yourself, the more you the self you �,ant to forget. You want to escape from pain, but the more you struggle to · escape, the more you i11Ramc the agony. You are afraid and want to be l�ravc, but the effon to be brave is fear trying to rur1 away from itself. You want • peace of mind, but the attempt to pacify it is like . · trying to calm the waves with a Rat-iron. · We are all familiar wi1th this kind of vicious circle in the for111 of worry. iwe know that worrying ia . futile, but we go on doin1g it because calling it futile .. does not stop it. We worry because we feel unsafe, and want to be safe. Yet it is perfectly useless to say that we should not want to be safe. Calling a desire l bad names doesn't get ricl of it. What we have to dis • cover is that there is no safety, that seeking it is pain •• ful, and that when we im.aginc that we have found it, ·� l we don't like it. In othc1� words, if we can really unl dentand what we are loo, king for-that safety is isola l tion, and what we do to
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.. that, for him, liquo1� is poison, that he actually hates being drunk, and c·ven dislikes the taste of liquor. And yet he drinks. ]For, dislike it as he may, the ex perience of not dri11king is worse. It gives him the ..hor,ors," for he stands face to face with the un veiled, basic insecurity of the world. Herein lies the a"Ux of the matter. To stand face to face with insccu,·ity is still not to undcntand it. To undentand it� y<>u must not face it but be it. It is like the Pcnian story of the sage who came to the door of Heaven and knocked. From within the voice of God asked, ..Whoi is there" and the sage answered, .. It is I." ..In this Hc,use," replied the voice, ..there is no room for thee au1d me." So the sage went away, and spent many years pondering over this answer in deep meditation. Rt!turning a second time, the voice asked the same question,' and again the sage an swered, .. It is I." T'he door remained closed. After · some years he returr1ed for the third time, and, at his knocking, the voice once more demanded, ..Who is there?" And tl1e sagce cried, ··it is thyself!" The door , ,vas opened. · _.Ts, undentand that there is no security is far ll!Ofe than to agree with the theory that all things .change,. more even than to <>bscrve the transitoriness of life. . The notion of secu1rity is based on the feeling that there is something ,vithin us ,vhich is permanent, something ,vhich er1dl1res through all the days and changes of life. We arc struggling to make sure of 8o
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are ing. In iother words, you are not look.. ing at the actual paslt at all. You arc looking at a · present trace of the ptSt. : It is like seeing the tracks of a bird on the sand. I .. sec the present tracb. I do not, at the same time, see • the bird making those tracb an hour before. The bird has flown; and I ;lm not aware of him. From the tracks I infer that a bird was there. From memories you infer that there h1ave been past events. But you arc not aware of any J�t events. You know the past only in the present an1d as pan of the present. !J We are seeing, thein, that our experience is altogether momentary. F'rom one point of view, each ·-� moment is so elusive and so brief that we cannot even think about it before i.t has gone. From another point of view, this moment is always here, since we know no other moment tha;n the present moment. It is al ways dying, always be1coming past more rapidly than imagination can conoeivc. Yet at the same time it is - always being born, �1lways new, emerging just as rapidly from that conriplete unknown which we call the future. Thinkin1� about it almost makes you breathless. • To say that expe�i,ence is momentary is really to say that experience a11d the present moment are the � same thing. To say th:at this moment is always dying, or becoming past, ancl al,vays being born, or coming · out of the unknown, is to say the same thing of cx·""_ ...�, pcrience. The cxperi4:ncc you have just had has van� ... . ",;. 8I .
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ent experience was reading. When you tried to think about yourself reading, the experience changed, and the next present experience was the thought .. I am reading." You could :not separate yourself from this · experience without Jing on to another. It was "ring around the ros,'." When you were thinking, ..I am reading this scnteJrice" you were not reading it. In other words, in eachL present experience you were only aware of that ex1?Crience. You were never aware ..._o�_bcing aware. You ,were never able to separate the thinker &om the d,ought, the knower &om the known. All you ever found was a new thought, a new experience. To be aware, then, is to be aware of thoughts, feel desi:res, and all other forms of ex,. ings, sensations, • perience. Never at any time are you aware of anything which is not ex.perience, not a thought or feel ing, but instead an e>tperiencer, think.er, or feeler. If this is so, what makes us think that any such thing exists? We might say, for •example, that the "I" who is the • " thinker is this physiail body and brain. But this body is in no way separate &om its thoughts and sensations. When you hav,e a sensation, say, of touch, that sensation is pan of your body. While that sensation is going on, you canr,ot move the body away &om it any more than you <:an walk away &om a headache , or from your own fe·e�. So long as it is present, that .. . sensation is your bociy and is you. You can remove •
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the body from an unconifortable chair, but you can· not move it from the sensation of a chair. _ The notion of a sepalrate thinker, of an ..I" dis- . ... tinct from the experienc:e, comes from memory and from the rapidity with ,¥hich thought changes. It is like whirling a burning istick to give the illusion of a · continuous circle of fire. If you imagine that memory is a direct knowledge of the past rather than a present experience, you get the illusion of knowing the past and the present at the �1me time. This suggests that • there is something in )'Olli distinct from both the past, and the present experic�nces. You reason, ..I know this present experience, and it is different from that past experience. If I can compare the two, and notice that experience has cha:nged, I must be something constant and apan." But, as a matter of fact, you cannot compare this present experience with. a past experience. You can enly compare it with a Dl�mory of the past, which is a ... _ part of the present expe1rience. When you see dearly that memory is a fo1m �•f present experience, it will be obvious that trying t4t> separate younelf from this experience is as impossiible as trying to make your teeth bite themselves. �rhere is simply experience. There is not something ,or someone experiencing experiencel You do not fcc:l feelings, think thoughts, or sense sensations any mo1:e than you hear hearing, see sight, or smell smelling:. "I feel fine.. means that a fine feeling is pre.cot. ltt docs not mean that there ii . 85 . • '
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this moment, who are y•)u?" How will you answer this question immediately and spontaneously, without stopping to find worcis? If the question does not shock you out of listeninig, you will answer by hum ming the song. If the q,ucstion surprised you, you will answer, ..At this mo1rncnt, who arc you?" But if you stop to think, you will try to tell me, not about this moment, but about the past. I shall get info1111a tion about your name ancl address, your business and personal history. But I asked who you af'e# not who you wne. · For to be awclrc of reality, of the living present, is to discover tlliat at each moment the ex-• periencc is all. There is nothing else beside it-no • experience of ..you" cxpe�riencing the experience. Even in our most apjparently self-conscious mo ments, the ..self" of whicU1 we arc conscious is always some particular feeling ir sensation-of muscular tensions, of war111th or o>ld, of pain or irritation, of · · ;.. breath or of pulsing blood. There is never a sensa tion of what senses scn�iations, just as there is no . ., meaning or poaibility in the notion of smelling one's • nose or kissing one's owr1 lips. In times of happiness and pleasure, ,vc are usu- : ally ready enough to be a.ware of the moment, and to •
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�tc an� VirgiJ .ftnd- that:,. the-- way out of Hell lies at . l• JU very center. . a •• In moments of great jo�r we do not, as a rule, stop ., Jr to think, ..I am happy," or·, ..This is joy." Ordinarily, • lt we do not pause to think 1thoughts of this kind until the joy is past its peak, or \1nless there is some anxiety that it will go away. At su«:h times we are so aware of s. .. the moment 'that no atten1pt is made to compare its experience with other experiences. For this reason we do not name it, for naroes which arc not mere ex • clamations are based on comparisons. ..Joy" is dis tinguished from ..sorrow" by contrast, by comparing one state of mind with the other. Had we never 1. ' known joy, it would be imtpossible to identify sorrow as SOIIOW. · But in reality we cannort compare joy with sorrow. · . . Comparison is possible oraly by the very rapid alter D n - nation of two states of mind, and you cannot switch back and forth between the genuine feelings of joy and sorrow as you can shift your eyes between a cat and a dog. Sorrow can 01r1ly be compared with the memory of joy, which is rlot at all t]le same thing as II · joy itself. · . · ,f Like words, memories; never-really succeed in lt ':fr ..catching" reality. Memo1ries are some,vhat abstract:- ., .': 'e being a knowledge about things rather than of things. ,. u ' Memory never captures t he essence, the present in1. tensity, the concrete reality of an experience. It is, as..... · ; ! 'e •
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it were, the corpse e:>f an experience, from which the 01 life has vanished. ,What we know by memory, we 01 know only at sccoitldhand. Memories are dead be cause fixed. The 11tlemory of your deceased grand e, mother can only re1peat what your grandmother wu. , al • But the real, prese;nt grandmother could always do 11] or say something ne!W, and you were never absolutely sure what she woul,cl do next. There are, then, two ways of undentanding an ex perience. The first iis to compa�e it with the memories of other ex_periencc�,_a�� � !� n�me and define it. w This is to interpret it in accordance with the dead tt and the p�t. The !-CCOAd_ is to be aware of it as it U: cc as when, in the intensity of joy, we orget-past and al .., future, let the pres-ent be all, and thus do not even stop to think, "I au1 happy." Both ways of untderstanding have their uses. But they correspond to1 the difference between knowing a thing by words and knowing it immediately. A al menu is very useh1l, but it is no substitute for the dinner. � guideboo�_.is an irable tool, but it is el0 hardly to be comp;Lred with the country it describes. d The point, then, is that when we try to understand C1 , the present by contlparing it with memories, we do .rnot understand it �lS deeply as when we are aware of V it ,vithout comparison. This, however, is usually the · way in which we ,lpproach unpleasant experiences. 0 Instead of being a,vare of them as they are, we try to · E deal ,·.·ith them in of the past. The frightened
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every moment we are cau1 tious, hesitant, and on the . · defensive. And all to no a,vail, for life thrusts us into ... the unknown willy-nilly, and resistance is as futile and exasperating as trying: to swim against a roaring · torrent. . The art of living in this ..predicament" is neither careleu drifting on the 01r1e hand nor fearful cling ing to the past and the kr.10,vn on the other. It con sists in being completely : sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly r1ew and unique, in having the mind open and ,vholly· receptive. This is not a philosoph.ical theory but ·an experiment. One has to make 1 the experiment to under: sta11d that it brings into play altogether new powen ·. of adaptation to life, of li1terally absorbing pain and insecurity. It is as hard to describe how this absorp tion works as to explain thie beating of one's heart or the formation of genes. Thle ..open" mind does this as_ most of us breathe: witho,ut being able to explain it at all. The principle of the: thing is clearly something ... like ludo, the gentle (ju) w·ay (do) of mastering a� OP: posing force by giv!!!_g in t�o 1t. The natural world give:s us many examples of the . ".. � ·great effectiveness of this ,way. The Chinese philosophy of ,vhich judo itself is an expression-Taoism- · _ drew attention to the pow•er of water to overcome all obstacles by its gentleness and pliability. It showed how the supple willow suirvives the tough pine in a snowstorn1, for whereas· tl1e unyielding branches of
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the pine accumul;Lte snow until they c1 ack, the springy boughs of tltie willow bend under its weight, - .. .· drop tltie snow, and jump back again. If, when swimming, you are caught in a strong current, it is fatal tto resist. You must swim with it and gradually edge to the side. One who falls &om a I] height witlti sti& li1mbs will break them, but if he relaxes like a cat he ,viii fall safely. A building with . l out "give" in its s1tructure wjll easily collapse in g stor1n or earthquak,c, and a car without the cushion sl ing of tires and springs will soon come apart on the Ii • road. · The mind has ju�1t the same powers, for it has give a and can absorb shocks like water or a cushion. But e this giving way to aln opposing force is not at all the 1: same tltiing as run11ting away. A body of water docs \t not run away whe11 you push it; it simply gives at 1: the point of the puslti and encloses your hand. A shock C absorber docs not �lll down like a bowling-pin when struck: it gives, ancl yet stays in the same place. To r · ( run away is the cinly defense of something rigid_..... against an overwhelming force. Therefore the good I shock absorber has not only "give," but also stability I or .,weight.'! f ,. This weight is Ii•�ewise a function of the mind, and I appcan in the muc:h-misundentood phenomenon of I lazineu. Significantly enough, nervous and frustrated �·. . people are always b,usy, even in being idle, such idle ness being the "laziness" of fear, not of rest. But the • 4'
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mind-body is a system whiich conserves and accumu- . )ates energy. · While doinJ� this it is properly lazy. When the energy is stored, it is just as happy to move, the line of least' re- and yet to move - skillfully--along ., istance. ·Thus it is noto111ly necessity, but also laziness, .which is the mother iof invention. One may ob icrve the unhurried, .. hea,,y" movements of a �ltillful · laborer at some hard task., and even in going against gravity the good mo11ntaineer uses gravity, taking slow, heavy strides. He se'.ems to tack. up the slope, like a sailboat against the wind. · In the light of these pri11ciples, how does the mind absorb suffering? It disc,oven that resistance and escape-the "I" process-is; a false move. The pain is inescapable, and resistance� as a defense only makes it worse; the whole system is jarred by the shock. See ing the impossibility of this course, it must act ac cording to its naturc-remtain stable and absorb. To remain stable is to r-efrain from trying to separate yourself from a pain 1!>ecause you know that you cannot. Running away fro,m fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pair1. The thinker has no other form than his thought. 1rhere is no escape. But so long as you are not awa1re of · the inseparability of thinker and thought, you will try to escape. From this follows, quite naturally, absorption. It is no effort; the mind d<Ja it by itself. Seeing that there is no escape from tl1e pain, the mind yields so
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it, absorbs it, and becomes ·conscious of just pain. without any "I" fe4eling it or resisting it. It experi"' ences pain in the sairne complete, unselfconscious way in which it experie· nces pleasure. Pain is the nature of this present mornent, and I can only live in tbis .. .. · moment. Sometimes, whe111 resistance ceases, the pain simply goes away or dwindlles to an easily tolerable ache. At other times it remains, but the absence of any resist ance brings about a way of feeling pain so unfamiliar as to be hard to clescribe. The pain is no longer roblematic. I feel it, but there is no urge to get rid of it, for I have d�5eovered that pain and the effo1t to be separate &om it are the same thing. Wanting t� get out of pain is tlile pain; it is not the "reaction" of an ..I.. distinct fro;m the pain. When you discover , this, the desire to 4!scape "merges" into the pain it self and vanishes. Discounting aspitrin for the moment, you cannot remove your head from a headache as you can re move your hand fr,om a flame. "You" equab ..head" equals "ache." Wh,en you actually see that you are the pain, pain ceues to be a motive, for there is no one to be moved. It becomes, in.the true sense, of no consequence. It hurts-period.� This, however, �, not an experiment to be held in reserve, as a trick, fcor moments of aisis. It is a way of life. It means bein@� aware, alert, and sensitive to the present moment al�ys; in all actions and relations. •
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whatsoever, beginning at t:his instant. This, in tum, depends upon seeing that ·you have really no choice ay but to be aware-because ir.ou cannot separate your re ' self &om the present and '.fOU cannot define it. You ill can, indeed, refuse to itt this, but only at the cost of the immense and futil•: effon of spending your ·· ly whole life resisting the inevitable. �t Once this is undentood, it is really absurd to say It• that there is a choice or an alternative between these ill" two ways of life, between n�isting the stream in fruit er less panic, and having one's eyes opened to a new id world, transfo1111ed, and e,,er new with wonder. The n key is undentanding. To �lSk. how to do this, what is the technique or method, what are the steps and to rules, is to miu the point: utterly. Methods are for of acating things which do inot yet exist. We arc coner • ce111cd here with undenta1nding something which is lt• -the prese,nt moment. This is not a psychological or spiritual discipline for sclf-improve111ent. It is simply ot being aware of this presen1t experience, and realizing that you can neither dcfiine it nor divide yourself &om it. There is no rule IJ•ut ..Lookl" re It is no mere poetic scnt:iment to say that, with the 10 mind thus opened, we looll� into a new world, as new 10 as on the fint day of c1e;ation ..when the morning stan sang together, and alll the sons of. God shouted for joy." By trying to und�ntand everything in te11111 of of memory, the past, and 'Words, we have, as it were, had our noses in the guide:book for most of our lives, DS. • •
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and have never loolked at the view. Whitehead's criti cism of traditional education is applicable to our whole l\'aY of livin1�: . .. We are too excluisively bookish in our scholastic rou • tine. • • • In the G·arden of Eden Adam saw the animals . before he named 1:hem: in the traditional system, chil· dren named the anitmals before they saw them.I •
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In the widest sc1ue of the word, to name is to in- . tcrpret experience by the past, to translate it into te1111s of memory, t�o bind the unknown into the sys tem of the known.. Civilized man knows of hardly �y other way of t1ndcntanding things. Everybody, everything, has to lhave its label, its number, cenificatc, registration, dlassification. What is not classified is irregular, unpreciictable, and dangerous. Witl\out pon, binh certificate, or membenhip in some nation, one's cxistc�nce is not recognized. If you do not agree with the capitalists, they call you a com munist, and vice 11nS!L A person �ho agrees with neither point of vic::w is fast becoming unintelligible. That there is a way of looking at life apan from all conceptions, belie6s, opinions, and theories is the re motest of all pouit•ilities from the modem mind. If such a point of view exists, it can only be in the vacant brain of a mtoron. We suffer from the delusion that the entire uni�versc is held in order by the cate gories of human tlieought, fearing that if we do not l A. N. Whitehead,
1955) P· 149... ..
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hold to them with the u1tmost tenacity, everything will vanish into chaos. • We must repeat: memo,ry, thought, language, and . logic are cuential to human life. They are one half � of sanity. But a person, a society, which is only half sane is insane. To look at: life without words is not to lose the ability to fom1 words-to think, remem ber, and plan. To be silentt is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, it is onl;y through silence that one cap_ discover something .nc:w to talk about. One who talked inceuantly, without stopping to look and ·listen, woµld repeat himse1f ad naweam. It is the same with thinking, which is really silent .. talking. It is not, by itselt�, open to the discovery of anything new, for its onlJ1 novelties are simply rear rangements of old words and ideas. There was a time • when language was consta1r1tly being enriched by new • words-a time when men, like Adam, sa,v things before they named them. T<xlay, almost all new words are rea11 angements of old ·words, for we are no longer thinking c1eatively. By tliais I do not mean that we ought all to be popping w1ith inventions and revolutionary discoveries. This is the-always rare-power of tliaose who can both see the unknown and interpret it. For most of us, the othc�r half of sanity lies simply in seeing and enjoying th•e unknown, just as we can • enjoy music without k.no1Ning either how it is writ ten or how the body hearn it. _Certainly the revolutioinary mink.er must go be�
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L yond thought. He k;nows that almost all his best ideas b come to him when: thinking has stof,ped. He rnay • It have struggled and struggled to undcntand a prob " lem in . tc1•••I of old ways of thinking, only to find it 0 impossible. But wl1cn thought stops &om exhaus tion, the mind is open to see the problem as it is not u it is verbalized-aLnd at once it is undentood. tl But going bcyonid thought is not reserved to men d of genius. It is ope11, to all of us in so far as .. the mys tery of life is not a problem to be solved, but a real� ity to be cxperien�ced." It is given to many to be . 11 0 seen, but to few to, be prophets. Many can listen to fi music, but few cant perfo1111 and compose. But you . t4 . cannot even listen if you can hear only in tcr,ns of e past. What sho,uld we make of one of Mozan's the 14 symphonies if our can were attuned only to the fi music of tom-tomsi• We might get the rhythms, but C almost nothing of the ha101ony and melody. In other P words, we should faLil to discover an essential clement 0 . of the music. To· l>e able to hear, much less write, . such a symphony 1nen had to discover new noises 11 the vibrations of c1tgut, the sound of air in a tul>C, and t�e hum of a plucked wire. They had to discover the whole worl<:f of tone, as something entirely different from pulse. If I can only co1nceivc pulse, .1 cannot appreciate tone. If I can thirilc. of painting only as a way of rnak C . ing colored photog:raphs without a camera, I can sec s· nothing but ineptiitude in a Chinese landscape. We
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learn nothing of very much importance when it can be explained entirely in t«=nns of past experience. If LY it were possible to unde1sttand all things in te11i,s of !,.. • what we know already, we could convey the sense of It color to a blind man with nothing but sound, taste, touch, and smell �t If this is true in the vari•�us arts and sciences, it is a tho11sand times more true when we come to the un dentanding of life in a lU]ger sense and want to have rssome knowledge of the ultimate Reality, or God. It llte1 surely absurd to seek (;od in ins of a preconis :,e to · ceived idea of what God iis. To seek thus is only to find what we know alread)r, which is why it is so easy )U to deceive oneself into all manner of "supernatural" . of experiences and visions. 1ro believe in God and to t's look for the God you believe in is simply to seel con�e fir111ation of an opinion. ·ro ask for a revelation of ut God's wi-1, and then to ..t«�t" it by reference to your er preconceived moral stand:ards is to make a mockery nt of asking. You knew the answer already. Seeking for te, . . God" in this way is no more than asking for the stamp of absolute authority and certainty on what: ,e, you believe in any case, fc•r a guarantee that the un· mown and the future will be a continuation of what you want to retain from thle past a bigger and better •· fonress for .. I." Ein feste 4Burg! Lte If we are open only to discoveries which will ac lk- cord with . what ·we know1 already, we may as well ee stay shut. This is wh)I the 1marvelous achievements of ,,
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science and tcchno1logy are of so little real use to us. It is in vain ·that we can predict and control the course of events in 1thc future, unless we know how to live in the present. It is in vain that doctors prolong life if we spend tht� extra time being anxious to live still longer. It is in1 vain that engineers devise faster and easier means ojf travel if the new sights that we sec arc merely sortc�d and understood in ter111s of old prejudices. It is in vain that we get the power of the atom if we arc just to continue in the rut of blowing ,people up. Tools such as the�, as well as the tools of language and thought, arc of real use to men only if they are .. awake-not lost in the dreamland of past and future, but in the closest tc,uch with that point of experience where reality can aLlone be discovered: this moment. Here life is alive, vibrant, vivid, and present, con taining depths which we have hardly begun to ex plore. But to see and understand it at all; the mind must not be divid«!d into "I" and "this experience." The moment must: �what it always is-all that you arc and all that yo,u kno,v. In this house thcr� is no -• room for thee and mcl • · •
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THE WHITE MAN FANCIE� HIMSELF AS A PRACTICAL
person who wants to "gc:t results." He is impatient with theory, and ,vith an·y discuuion ,vhich does not .. immediately get down to conc1ete applications. This is why the behavior of W'estem civilization might be · described, in gc:neral, as. "Much Ado About Noth ing... The proper meaniing of "theory" is not idle .. · speculation but vision, 2lnd it was rightly said that " "!Y�ere there JS no vision the people perish." But vision in this sense� does not mean dreams and ideals for the future. It........1neam understanding - - -�of--- life as it is, of- what we are, anld what ,ve are ··- doing. With- out such ondentanding it is simply ridiculous to talk of being practical a11d getting results. It is like walking busily in a fog: y,ou just go round and round. You do not know where you arc going, nor what re- • · suits you really·,vant. .. . � To minds that think in this way, ,vhat we have discussed so far may seem too theoretical. These ideas arc all very well, but do they work? Yet I must ask, ..What do you mean by ,work?" The usual ..working test'"- � a philosophy �I whether it makes people •
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better and happier, �whether it results in peace, co operation, and prospierity. Yet this is a meaningless criterion without mu.ch .. theoretical" understanding. What do you mean IJ•y happiness? What are .. better" people better for? A' bout . what will you co-operate? " What will you do wi1th peace and prosperity? The answer to the!se questions depends entirely on what we are and wruat we actually want now. If, for . example, we want at: the,13me time both peace and isolation, brotherhoc>
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discussing these until we� have made up our minds. There is, in tum, no pc,ssibility of making up our minds so long as they arc� split in two, so long as ..I .. am one thing and ..exper·ience" another. If the mind is the directive force behind action, the mind and iu " vision of life must be h1ealed before action can be anything but conflict. • Something must thereifore be said about the healed vision of life which comc:s with full awareness, for it involves a deep transfo1mation of our view of th� world. As well as words. can describe it, this trans fo1111ation consists in k11aowing and feeling that the world is an organic unit)f. In the ordinary way, �,e "know" this as a matter of information but do not fe�l it to be true. Cenainly most people feel separate from everything that surrounds them. On the or.ae hand there is myself, and l on the other the rest of t hc univene. I am not rooted in the earth like a tree. I rattle around independently. I seem to be the center of everything, and yet cut off and alone. I can feel what is going on inside my own body, but I can only guess what is going on in othen. My conscious mind must have its roots and origins in the most unfathomable depths of be ing, yet it feels as if it lived all by itself in this tight little skull. Nevertheless, the phy·sical reality is that my body exists only in relation tc> this universe·, and in fact I am as attached to it and •:lependent on it as a leaf on a • ••
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tree. I feel cut off onl�y because I. am split ,vithin my self, because I try to be divided from my own feel ings and sensations. \�at I feel and sense therefore seems foreign to me. .And on being aware of the un reality of this divisio,n , the universe does not seem • foreign any more. For I am what I knc>w; what I know is I. The sensation of a house across: the street or of a star in outer space is no less I tharn an itch on the sole of my foot or an idea in ·my brain. In another . sense, I am also • what I do not know. I am not aware of my own brain as a brain. In just thie same way, I am not aware of the ho11se ac1oss the utreet as a thing apan from my sensation of it. I kno�, my brain as thoughts and feel ings, and I know the J1011se as sensations. In the same way and sense that I tdo not know my own brain, or the house as a thinJ�-in-itself, I do not know the private thoughts in yc>ur brain. But my brain, whiich is also I, your brain and the thoughts within it, ais well as the house ac1oss the street, arc all £01 ms of an inextricably interwoven process called the rc;al world. Conscious or uncon scious of it � I may be, it is all I in the sense that the sun, the air, and hum;an society are just as vital to me · · as my brain or my l11ngs. If, then, this brain is my brain-unaware of it :as I am-the sun is my sun, the air my air, and societJ, my society. Certainly I cannot: command the sun to be cgg �apcd, nor force yo11r brain to think differently. I •
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cannot see the inside of the sun, nor can I share your private feelings. Yet neiither can I change the shape or structure of my own l>rain, nor have a sensation of it as a contraption like a. cauliflower. But if my brain is nonetheless I, the sun. is I, the air is I, and society, ·· of which you are a me1mber, is also I-for all these things are just as csseratial to my• existence as my brain. That _!here is a sun a �n from my �nsaiimt of_it_is---.. �n inference. The fact t.hat I have a brain, though J _ i .. cann� ��....1.C L b.Ke�i�J(Ciiifcrence..::.we know apou! these tilings onl)(_j!!__th�ory, af!d �� by im mediate experience!... B1ut this ..external" world of theoretical objects is, :apparently, just � much a unity as the .. internal" .world of experience. From experience• I infer that ilt exists. And because experience is a unity-I am my sensations-I must likewise infer that this theoreticnl universe is a unity, that my • . body and the world forrn a single process. Now there have bec::n many theories about the unity of the universe. ]But they have not delivered human beings from th1e isolation of egotism, from conflict, and from the £,ear of life, because there is a world of. difference bet,veen an inference and a feeling. You can reason thalt the universe is a unity ,vith• out feeling it to be so. 'You ca� establish the theory that your body is a mov1ement in an unbroken proc ess wh·ich includes all :suns and stars, and yet con tinue to feel separate an,d lonely. For the fe�ling will • •
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, not correspond to tliae theory until you have also discovered the unity c>f inner experience. Despite all theories, you will feel that you are isolated from -life so long as you are diviided within. But you will cease Ito feel isolated when you recog nize, for example, thcat you do not have a sen�tion of the sky: you aTe trult sensation. For all purposes of feeling, your sensatioit1 of the sky is the sky, and thc!C is no ..you" apan from what you sense, feel, and know. This is why th4e mystia and many of the poets give frequent utterar1cc to the feeling that they are ..one with the All," o,r ..united with God," or; as Sir Edwin Arnold expres.scd it,, . 1 Ftrregoing seiff, the univnse grows I. • Sometimes, indeecl, this feeling is purely senti mental, the poet beilng "one with Nature" just so · long as she is on her IJ.est behavior. • I live not in myself, but I become • PoTtion o/ that aro1und me; and to me • High mountains a,·e a feeling, but the hum .., , 0/ human cjties to1rture: l can see • . •· , · Nothing to loathe 1in nature, save to be . f · .. A linl reluctant in a fleshl' chain, Classed among CTet.1tures, when the soul can flee, • And with the sl,, t'he peal, the heaving plain · Of ocean, trr the st4ws, mingle, and not in vain. t This ivral rapture from Byron is quite beside the point. He has only a>mc to with nature to the extent that he has beffricnded his own human nature. • .. ·• • 1 10 f
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The �ntimcntalist does not·look into the depths -of . nature and see Sluggish e,cistences gFazin1g thne, swpended, or slowl7 aawling close to the bo1rtom: • • • The leaden-eyed shaf'l, thi e walnu, the turtle, the hairy sea-leopard, and the sti,1g-ra,1 ions there, wars, pu,,.suit.s, tribe$ sight in those ocean depths breathin1g that thicl breathing aif'. •
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Man has to discover tliat everything which he be holds in nature the clan1my foreign-feeling world of • the ocean's depths, the ,vastes of ice, the reptiles of the swamp, the spiders atnd scorpions, the deserts of lifeless planets-has its c:ounterpart within himself. • He is not, then, at one �rith himself until he realizes that this ..under side" off nature and the feelings of horror which it gives hirn are also ..I." For all the qualities which we ire or loathe in the world aro11nd us a1·e reflections from within though from a within ,tl1at is also a beyond, uncoo • sciou.�, vast, unknown. Q1ur feelings about the c1awl ing world of the wasps'. nest and the snake pit are feelings about hidden asipects of our own bodies and brains, and of all their Jf>Otential ities for unfamiliar aeeps and shivers, for unsightly diseases, and unimaginable pains. _ . _ , . .. ••
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I do not kno,v wht�ther it is true, but it is said that some of the great S3f�es and ··holy men" have an ap parently supernatunnl power over beasts and reptiles which are always dangerous to ordinary mortals. If this is true, it is cena:inly because they are able to live · at peace with the .. bc�asts and reptiles" in themselves. They need not call 1the wild elephant Behemoth or the sea-monster Le,,iathan; they address them fa . miliarly as .. Long-N-ose" and ..Slimy." The sense of unit)' with the ..All" is not, however, a nebulous state of 1nind, a sort of trance, in ,vhich all form and distinc1tion is abolished, as if man and the universe merge
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brought me my rice, didn't I cat it? When you .brought me my tea, didra 't I drink it? When yo� made salutations to me, didn't I return them? When have 1 ever neglected to give you instruction?" .. I'm afraid I don't understand," said the young man, totally mystified. ..When you �,ant to see into it," answered the sage, ..see�nto it d.irectly. When you begin to think about it, it is alt()J�ther missed."
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Pluclting chrysanthenaums ·along the East fence; Gazing in silence at tl.ae southern hills; The birds flying hom�� in pairs • Through the soft moi,ntain air of dwlt_ · In these things there i's a deep meaning, • • • · But when w� are abon,t to express it, • • • We suddenl1 forget tJae words•
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The _meaning is not the contemplative, twilight, and, perhaps, superficially idyllic atmosphere b:' • loved of Chinese poets. This is already expressed, r , •... and the poet does not gild the lily. He will not, like so many Western poet:s, tum philosopher and say s that he is ..one with" th•: Rowen, the fence, the hills, 1 · and the birds. This, too, is gilding the lily, or, in his o,vn Oriental idiom, ··p•utting legs on a snake." For t when you really unden,tand that you are what you y sec and know, you do 11ot run around the country i side thinking, ··1 am all this." There is simply ..all t this." ) The feeling that we stand face-to-face with the I
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world, cut off and set :apan, has the greatest influence on thought and acti4)n. Philosophen, · for example, often fail to recognize that tl1eir remarks about the universe apply also t<) themselves and their remarks. • · If the universe is in1eaningless, so is the statement that it is so. If this w<J•rld is a vicious trap, so is its acc, and the pot is <:ailing the ke�tlc black. In the strictest scinsc, we annot actually think about life and reality at all, because this would have to include thinking 2lbout thinking, thinking about · thinking about thinl�ing, and so ad infinitum. ..One . can only attempt a rational, descriptive philosop'!I • of the universe on th�e assumption that one is totally separate from it. Bult if you and your thoughts arc pan of this universe, you cannot stand ou�d� them t� describe them. Tillis is why all philosophical an� t!teological systems rnust ultimately fall apart. T� .. kno,v" reality you cannot stand outside it and define it; you must enter in1to it, be it, and feel it. Speculative philosc>phy, as we know it in the West, is almost entirely a S}'mptom of the divided mind, of man trying to stand ,outside himself and his experi ence in order to verb.llize and define it. It is a vicious . circle, like everythin,g else which the divided mind attempts. On the - other handi, the realization that·thc mind is actually undivided 11r1ust have a corresponding and equally far-reaching influence on thought and action.
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As the philosopher tries to stand outside himself and his thought, so, as we h1ave seen, the ordinary man . ·. tries to stand outside himself and his emotions and sensations, his feelings :and desires. The result is a fantastic confusion an4i misdirection of conduct which discovery of the mind's unity must bring to · an end So long as the mind is split, life is perpetual con ftict, tension, frustratio11, and disillusion. Suffering is piled on suffering, fe:ar on fear, and boredom on boredom. The more the fly struggles to get out of the · honey, the faster he is st11ck. Under the pressure of so much strain and futilit}', it is no wonder at all that men seek release in viol•ence and sensationalism, and .,a in the reckless exploitation of their bodies, their ap- , , pe�ites, the material w•)rld, and their fellow men. " What this must add to tl1e necessary and unavoidable • · pains of existence is incalculable. . But the undivided mind is free &om this tension . ... · of trying always to stan,d outside oneself and to be elsewhere than here ancl now. Each moment is lived · completely, and there. is thus a sense of fulfillment · and completeness. The divided mind comes to the dinner table and pecb, at one dis�after another, rushi�g on without dii�ting anything to find one better than t�e last. It finds nothing good, because there is nothing which it really tastes. · When, on the other hand, you realize that you · - '1
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live in, that indeed yo1u are this moment now, and no other, that apart horn this there is no past and no future, you must relax an� taste to the full, whether it be pleasure or pai1n. At once it becomes obvious why this universe exiists, why conscious beings have been produced, wh1r sensitive organs, why space, time, and change. Tl1e whole problem of justifying nature, of trying to make life mean something in of its future, disappears utterly. Obviously, it all exists for this moment. It is a dance, and when you are dancing you are not intent on getting some- . where. You go roundl and round, but not under the illusion that you are pursuing something, or Heeing from the jaws of bell. How long have the: planets been circling the suq? Are they getting any,vhere, and do they go faster and faster in order to an�ive? How often has the spring returned to the earth;? Does it come faster and fancier every year, to be sure to be better than last spring, and to hurry on its ,�1ay to the spring that shall out. spring all springs? The meaning and 1purpose of dancing is the dance. Like music, also, it i!, fulfilled in each moment of its course. You do not pllay a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if tine meanings of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales. It might, h<J•,vever, be observed in ing that the 1nusic specicillly characteristic of our culture is progressive in som<� respects, and does at times see111
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to be decidedly on its ·way to a · future climax. But when it gets there, it d<Ja not know what to do with i�lf. Beethoven, Brahcns, and Wagner were particu larly guilty of working up to colossal climaxes and conclusions, and then blasting away at the same chord over and over ag;ain, ruining the moment by being reluctant to leave it. When each moment becomes an expectation life is deprived of fulfillme'.nt, and death is dreaded for it seems that here expecctation must come to an end. While there is life ther,e is hope and if one lives on hope, death is indeed tltie end. But to the undivided mind, death is another moment, complete like every moment, and cannot yield its sec1et unless lived to_ the full,
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Death is the epitome c,f the truth that in ea_�h mo ment we are thrust into1 the unknow_n. Herc all cling ing to security is com1,elled to cease, and wherever ... the past is dropped a,v;ay and safety abandoned, life is renewed. Death is th,e unknown in which all of us lived before birth• Nothing is more c1eaLtive than death, since it is the whole sec1et of life. It means that the past must be abandoned, that the tanknown cannot be avoided, that ..I" c;annot contin,ue, and that nothing can be ultimately ��ed. When: a man knows this, he lives for •
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. the fint time in hi!s life. By holding his breath, he loses it. By letting it. go he finds, it. . _ .. • •
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t Coethc, West-oslliclatt Divan. ..As long as you do not know huw to die and come to lilre again, you are but a sony traveler on this dark canh." .
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more than a technical consultant. He has become a scold. From his pulf•it or his- study he harangues the human race, issuing praise and blame-mostly blame -like fire from the u1outh of a dragon. For people do . not take his advice. They ask. how it is best to aa under such-and-suet, circumstances. He tells them, and they seem to apec that he is right. But then they go away and do som«�thing different, for they find his advice too difficult CJ•r have a strong desire to do the opposite. This happ�ns so regularly that the moralist loses his temper and. begins to call them bad names. When this has no e:ffcct, he resorts to physical vio lence, implementing· his advice with policemen, pun ishments, and prisorns. For the community is its own moralist. It elects a1r1d pays judges, policemen, and preachers, as if to ALY, .. When I am difficult, please kick me." • At fint sight the :Problem seems to boil down to this: Morals are for avoiding an unfair distribution , of pleasure and pain. This means that some indi viduals must get less pleasure and more pain. As a rule, these individwlls·will only submit to the aaaifice under the threat of still more pain if they do not co-o�rate. This is based on the assumption that every man is for hirnself, and observes the interests of the community· only to the extent that these are obviously his own i11tterests. From this, morali:sts have evolved the theory that man is basically selfis,h, or that he has an inherent bias • •
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towards evil. The "nat11ral" man lives for one motive: 'to protect his body &oun pain and to ·associate it with pleasure. Because he aln only feel with his own body, he has little interest i11 the feelings of other bodies. Therefore he will onl�r take interest in other bodies under the stimulus of 1:-ewards and punishments, that is, by an exploitation <>f his self-interest in the inter est of the community. Happily, the proble'.m is not quite so simple. For among the things tha1t give man pleasure are rela tions with other human beings-conversation, eating together, singing, dan•cing, having children, and cooperation in work whiich "many hands make light." Indeed, one of the higlltest pleasures is to be more or less unconscious of 01rie's own existence, to be ab sorbed in interesting sights, sounds, places, and peo ple. C:Onversely, one •of the greatest pains is to be self-conscious, to feel unabsorbed and cut off from the community and th.e surrounding world._ • But this whole prol:•lem has no solution while we think about it in ter1n1s of the pleasure-pain motiva tion, or, indeed, in of any ''motivation'' at all. For man has a moral J>roblem, which other commu nity-living animals do not have, for the very reason that he is so much co:ncemcd with motives. If it is true that man is neces.sarily motivated by the pleasure-pain principle, th,ere is no point whatsoever in �isc11ssing human con«Juct. Motivated conduct is de termined conduct; it ,�ill be what it will be, no lnat· Ill •
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ter what anyone has tc, say about it. There can be no aeative morality unl1ess man has the possibility of &eedom. -. This is where the n1oralists make their mistake. If they want man to chatnge his way of life, they m11st assume that he is freei� for if he is not, all the raging and protesting in the ·world will make no difference. On the other hand, 2l man who is acting &om the fear of a moralist's tJ1reats or &om the lure of his promises is not malting a &ee actl If man is not nee, . threats and promises may modify his conduct, but they will not change it in any essential �spect. If he is £1ce, threats and pr·omiscs will not make him use his freedom. The meaning of fn�om can· never be g1asped by the divided mind. If 1[ feel separate &om my experi ence, and &om the w1orld, &eedom will seem to be · the extent to which :1 can push the world around, and fate the extent t10 which the world pushes me around. But to the w:hole mind there is no contrast of ''I'' and the world.. There is just one process act ing, and it does everything that happens. It raises my little finger and it creates earthquakes. Or, if you want to put it that way, I raise my little finger and also make earthqualc.c=s. No one fates and no one is being fated. . Of course this is a s1trange view of &eedom. We are to think 1that, if there ii any &eedom at accustomed •
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all, it resides, not in ruLture, but in the separate human will and its powe1� of choice. But what we ordinarily mean by choice is not &cedom. Choices are us,nally decisions motivated by pleasure and pain, an�l the divided mind acts with the sole purpose of getting ••1•• into pleasure and out of pain. But the best J?leasures are those for which we do not plan, and th�e worst pan of pain is expect· ing it and trying to giet away &om it when it has come. You cannot plan to be happy. You can plan to exist, but in themselves existence and non-existence . are · neither pleasurablie nor painful. I am even as sured by doctors that t'here are circumstances under which death can be a lilighly pleasant experience. . The sense of not beiing free comes &om trying to do things which are irnpossible and even meaning less. You are not ..free:" to draw a square circle, to live without a head, or· to stop certain reflex actions. These are not obstaclesi to freedom; they are the con ditions of freedom. I a.m not free to draw a circle if perchance it should tu:rn out to be a square circle. I · am not, thank heaven, &ee to walk out of doors and leave my head at homle. Likewise I am not free to live in any moment bt1t this one, or to separate my self from my feelings. J[n shon I am not free when I am trying to do somet1hing contra�ictory, such as to. move without changing position, or to bum my finf - :....,...�, ger without feeling pain. · ... .... .s
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On the other hand, I am free, the world proceu 11 &ee, to do anything ,which is not a contradiction. The question then ari1SCS: is it a contradiction, is it impossible, to act or Ito_ decide without pleasure as the ultimate aim? Th,e theory that we must inevitably do what gives uis the greater pleasure or the lesser pain, is a meaningless assertion based on ver• bal confusion. To say that I decide to do something because it pleases me says only that I decide to do it because I decide to do, it. If ..pleasure" is defined in the beginning as ..what I prefer," then what I prefer will always be pleasur.e. If I prefer pain, like a mas ochist, then pain will be pleasure. In short, the the ory begs the question alt the start by saying that pleas ure means what we d,esire: therefore anything that we desire is pleasure. . But I fall straight intto contradiction when I try to act and decide in ord,er to be happy, when I make ..being pleased" my fu1ture goal. For the more my ac tions are directed towatrds future pleasures, the more I am incapable of enjc>ying any pleasures at all. For all pleasures are preseint, and nothing save con1plete awareness of the preM�nt can even begin to guaran tee future happiness. 1: can act in order to eat tomor row, or take a trip to 1the mountains next _week, but ' thcre·is really no way of being certain that this will • · make me happy. On the contrary, it is common ex perience that nothing ruins a ..pleasure" so much as watching yourself in 1:he midst of it to see whether •
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it pleases you. You ca111 only live in one moment at a time, and you cann<>t think simultaneously about listening to the waves , and whether you are enjoying listening to the wavC!i. Contradictions of this kind are the only real types of action without freedom. . · There is another theory of dete11ninism which states that all our acti1ons are motivated by .. uncon scious mental mechaniisms," and that for this reason even the most spontaneous _decisions are not free. This is but another �xample of split-mindedness, for what is the differena� between "me" and "mental mechanisms" whethe1r conscious . or unconscious? Who is being moved t,y these processes? The notion · that anyone is being nootivated co1nes from the per sisting illusion of ul.'' The real man, the organism in-relation-to-the-univ•erse, is this unconscious moti vation. And beca11se hte is it, he is not being moved by it. In other words, it is not motivation; it is sim ply operation. Moreo,,er, there is no "unconscious" 1 mind distinct from tl1e conscious, for the _.. uncon scious" mind is co�ious, though not of itself, just as the eyes see but do u1ot see themselves. There remains the !.upposition that the whole op eration, the who�e pr.ocess of action which is man and-univc�, is a dete1mined series of events in is the inevitable result of past which every event • causes. We cannot go into this problem exhaustively or even adequately. But jit is perhaps enough to realize 115
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for the moment that 1this is one of the biggest "open questions" of science,1 which is far &om reaching a · decision. The idea th�1t the past deter1nines the present can be an illusi�n1 of language. Because we must describe the present in of the past, it would seem that the past ",explains" the present. To say "how" something ha1>pened, we describe the chain of events of which it :seemed to be a pan. The bottle smashecl. It fell to the floor. I let it go. . My fingen were slipJ>ery. I had soap on my hands. Is it legitimate to put the word ··because" between, these statements? We ,do so as a rule, for we can make the safe bet that if I :let go of the bottle, it will fall to the floor. But this 1docs not prove that I caused it to fall, or that it must have fallen. Events look in evitable in retrospect because when_ they have hap pened, nothing can c:hange them. Yet the fact that -· . I can make safe bets could prove equally well that events are not detn,irained but consistent. In other words, the univenal process acts &cely and sponta neously at every mounent, but tends to throw out • events in regular, andl so predictable, sequences. · However t.'lis issue may be decided, the undivided · mind certainly has tlile feeling of f1ecdom, and cer tainly brings into thle moral sphere a way of life which has all the ma1rks of &ee and aeative action. It is easy to sec that: most of the acts which, in convcntional morals, are called evil can be traced to the · divided mind. By fal· the greater part of these acts
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come &om cxaggeratcci desires, desires for things which arc not even rcm,otely ncccs,ary for the health of mind and body, gra1riting that ..health" is a rela- · tive tel 01. Such outla11dish and insatiable desires come into being because man is exploiting his appetites to give the "I" a K�nse of security. I am depressed, and ,nnt to get ..I" out of this de pression. The opposite of depression is elation, but because depression is n«>t elation, I cannot force my self to be elated. I ca111, however, get drunk. This makes me wonderfully ,elated, and so when the next depression arrives, I halve a quick cure. The subse quent depressions have a way of getting deeper and blacker, becat1sc I am not digesting the depressed , state and eliminating i.ts poisons. So I need to get even drunker to drownl them. Very soon I begin to hate myself for getting· so drunk, which makes me still more depressed arid ·so it goes. Or perhaps I have a large family, and am living in a �ortgaged house on �,hich I have spent all my sav ings. I have to work haird at a job in which I am nOt panicularly interested in order to pay the bills. I don't mind working so much, but I keep wondering . what will happen if I giet sick, or if a war comes and I am drafted. I would :rather not think about these things, so I want to get: .. I" out of this worry. For I am sure that I shall get sick if it goes on. But it's so hard to stop, and as this, makes sickness more certain, · the worrying digs. deCJi>Cf. -1 must find relief &om •
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this, and so in desperation I begin to "play the po C nies," trying to offset: the worry with the daily hope ] . , that my horse may win. And so it goes. • The conventional moralist has nothing to con ] • tribute · to these proiblems. He can point out the I frightful effects of alc·oholism and gambling, but that I is sin1ply more fuel for depression and worry. He . can promise rewards in heaven for suffering pa- • • • tiently endured, but that, too, is a gamble of a kind. I He can attribute the depression or the worry to the ] social system, and u�ge the unfortunates to the ] revolution. In short, he can ei1ther frighten the "I" or encour I I age it, in one case miaking the individual run away I from himself, and in the other making him run after C himself. He can pai111t glowing pictures of the vir tues and encourage o, then to find strength in the ex1 amples of great men.. He can succeed to the extent • of arousing the most ·vigorous efforts to imitate saint C liness, to curb the ions, and to practice restraint . j and charity in action.. Yet none of this brings anyone I to freedom, for behir1d all the imitation and tl1e disI cipline there is still rootive. t If I am afraid, mJ' effortJ to feel and act bravely are moved by the fea:r, for I am afraid of fear, which is simply to say that 1ny efforts to escape from what I am are moving in a circle. Beside the examples of t saints and heroes I tfeel ashamed that I amount to nothing, and so I be��in to practice humility beca11se
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of my wounded pride, an(jl charity because of my self• love. The urge is ever to make "I" amount to some , thing. I must be right, good, a real person, heroic, loving, self-effacing. I efface myself in order to assen myself, and give myself ;Lway in order to keep my-self. The whole thing is a contradictiO!). The Christian mind h�u always been haunted by the feeling that the sins ci1f the saints are worse than • the sins of the sinnen, that in some mysterious way ..,. the one who is strugglint{ for salvation is nearer to hell and to the bean of evil than the unashamed har• lot or thief. It has recognized that the Devil is an an gel, and as pure spirit is u1ot really interested in the sins of the flesh. The sins after the Devil's bean arc the intricacies of spiritwLI pride, the mazes of self .. deception, and the subt:le mockeries of hypocrisy · where mask hides behind mask behind mask and • reality is lost altogether. . The would-be saint wallb straight into the meshes • of this web because he would become a saint. His .. I" · finds the deepest securit}' in a satisfaction which is the more intense for bei1ng so cleverly hidden-the. satisfaction of being con1trite for his sins, and con trite for taking pride in his· contrition. In such an involved vicious circle tllte masks behind masks are • infinite. Or, to put it in a.nother way, he who would stand outside himself to kick himself, must then kick the self that stands outsid,e. And so forever. , So long as there is the: motive to become some\
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thing, so long as th,e mind believes in the possibility of escape from whaLt it is _at this moment, there can be no freedom. Vi:rtue will be pursued for exactly the same reason as ,vice, and good and evil will alter• nate as the opposite poles of a ,ingle circle. The · ..saint" who appears to have conquered his self-love by spiritual violen•:e has only concealed it. His ap parent success con·vinces others that he has found the .. ,rue way," anid they follow his example long ·enough for the cou. rsc to swing to its opposite pole, when license becoot1cs the inevitable reaction to pu• • _,ntan1Sm; Of course it sou1rads as if it were the most abject fatalism to have to it that I am what I am, and that no escape or �livision is possible. It seerns . that if I am afraid, the11 I am ..stuck" with fear. But in fact I am chained t<> the fear only so long as I a_m try· ing to get away ·froim it. On the other hand, when I " · do not try to get a,vay I discover that there is noth ing ..stuck" or fixed about the reality of the moment. When I am aware c>f this feeling without naming it, without calling it ·fear'" ..bad," '!negative," etc..� it changes instantly i111to something else, and life moves • &eely ahead. The feeling no longer perpetuates it : self by c1eating the feeler behind it. We can perhaps 1sec now why the undivided mind is not moved into those escapes from the present which are usually called "evil." The further truth - that the undivided mind is aware of experience as a 0
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-�nity, of the world as iu1elf, and that the whole na ture of mind and aware11cu is to be one with what it knows, suggests a state tthat would usually be called love. For the love that e>�presses itself in c1cative ac tion is something much 1rnore t�n an emotion. It is not something which y(>u can ..feel" and .. know,• · and define. l�ve is the organizing and .. ·, .: unifying principle ,vhich makes the world a universe and the disintegrated mass a community. It is the very essence and character of mind, and becomes • manifest in action when the mind is whole. For the mind mwt be� interested or absorbed in something, just as a mimt>r must always be reflecting · something. When it is n<>t trying to be interested in itself as if a mirror woulld reflect itself-it must be · · interested, or absorbed, iin other people and things. There is no problem of how to love. We love. We are love, and the only F•roblem is the direction of .love, whether it is to go straight out like sunlight, or to try to tum bad on itself like a "candle under a bushel." . Released from the ci1·de of attempted self-love, the mind of man draws 1 the whole universe into its own unity as a single de,.vdrop seems to contain the entire sky. This, rather than any mere emotion, is • the power and principle of free action and creative morality. On .the other liand, the morality of rules and regulations based on rewards and punishments, even when the� are aa in1tangible as the pain of guilt
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and the pleasure �of self-respect, has no relation to &ee action. It is a w�y of ruling slaves by ..benevo lent exploitation" ,of their illusions, and, however far punued, can neve:r lead to freedom. Where there is to be creative action, it is quite beside the point t
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..well" it wishes to others is not security but liberty. Nothing is really more inhuman than human relations based on m1orals. When a man gives bread in order to be charit.1ble, lives with a woman in order . to � faithful, eat!. with a Negro in order to be un prejudiced, and n:f••ses to kill in order to be peace ful, he is as cold as a clam. He does not actually see the other person. Only a little less chilly is the be nevolence springirag &om pity, which acu to remove suffering because it finds the sight of it disgusting. But there 1s nc• formula for generating the authentic warmth olf love. It cannot be · �pied. You cannot talk youneilf into it or ro11se it ·by attaining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself sole•••nly to 151
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the service of mankind. Jgveryone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossi bility and the frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will n<J•t come through condemna tions, through hating oneself, through calling self love all the bad names ir1 the universe. It �mes only in the awareness that onte has no self to love.
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WE BEGAN THIS BOOK WITH THE A&1UMPTION THAT
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science and scientific pl1il�phy give no grounds for religious belief. We did not argue the point, but took it as the point of departure. We adopted the prevalent view that the� existence of God, of any ab solutes, and of an ete111al order beyond this world is without logical suppo1� or meaning. We accepted · the notion that such id.eas arc of no value for scientific prediction, �nd tliat all known events can be explained more aimpl}' without them. At the same time, we said mat reli,gion had no need to oppose this view, for almost all the spiritual traditions rec- og11ize mat there is a stage in man's development when belief-in contrast to faith and its securities have to be left behind. . To this point, I do n•i>t think that we have claimed anything which cannot be verified by experiment, or asserted anything whic:h seriously conflicts with a scientific view of the w·orld. Yet we have now come . · to a position from whiich the principal ideas of �ligion and traditional meta.physia can once more . · become intelligible an•:I meaningful-not as beliefs, but as valid symbols of experience. Science and religion. arc talking about the same - universe, but they are using different kinds of Ian-
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guage. In gene1al, tJ:ie statements of science have to do with the past anid the future. The scientist de scribes events. He tAells us "how" things happen by giving us a detailed of what has happened. He finds that events ,occur in various frequencies and orders, and on this basis he makes bets or predictions in the light of whidt we can make practical a11ange mcnts and adaptatic>ns to the course of cventi. To make these bets, he� docs not need to know about · God or ctc1 11al life. He needs to know the past what has happened .afrcady. . On the other han
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discover the grounds up>n which these predictions arc made, he finds them emotional rather than ra tional. Religious people hope or believe that these things will be true. Nevertheless, in the hiatory of every important re ligion there have been those who undentood reli� gious ideas and statcmc11lts in a very different way. On the whole, this has l,een more true of the East than of the West, thoug�t Christian history contains a long list of men and women who could have talked on common ground wiith onhodox Hindus and Buddhists. From this other and, we think, deeper point of view, religion is not a sys1tcm of predictions. Its doc trines have to do, not with the future and the ever lasting, but . with the present and the eternal. They are not-a set of beliefs atnd hopes but, on the con trary, a set of graphic S)'lnbols about present experi·
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· Traditionally, these syimbols are of'�inds. One describes the rcligio� way of understanding the .present in the fo1an of concrete images and stories. The other describes it iiri an abstract, negative lan guage which is often simlilar to the language of aca- _., demic philosophy. For co•nveniencc, we can call these two kinds of symbol the religious and the metaphy sical. But we must remf�mber that ..metaphysic" in this sense is not speculative philosophy. It. is not an attempt to anticipate scilence and give a logical de- · •
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Kription of I.he uni·verse and its origins. It is a way of representing a k�nowledge of the present. Reli gious symbols are 1,pecially characteristic of Chris tianity, Islam, and J·udaism, whereas doctrines of the . Oriental type are n1ore metaphysical. We said that scierace and religion are both talking · about the same worlld, and throughout this book we have never been co111cerned with anything but evuyday life, with things whjch can be seen, felt, and ex- · perienced. We shalll therefore be told, by religious aitics, that we are rc!ducing religion to ..naturalism," .. that we are identify'ing God with nature, and mak ing a moc�ery and travesty of religion by taking away ..its essential supernatural content." But when you as•� theologians what they mean by the �·supernatural," they burst immediately into sci entific language. 1''hey talk about a God having "conc1ete reality distinct &om this universe," and · speak of him in temris of past history and future pre- . dictions. They insist that the supernatural world is not of the same ..o,·der" as the universe studied by science, but exists o,n another plane of being invisi'. ble to our· natural senses. It begins to sound like _ something psychic, something of the same order as the phenomena of ��lepathy, clairvoyance, and clair� • audience. • Yet this is naturalism pure and simple; it is even pseudo.science. For science and naturalism are n� necessarily concerned only with things visible to the
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senses. No one has seen t!lecuona or quanta, nor been able to construct a aenstaal image of curved space. If psychic phenomena exu�t, there is no reason to sup.. pose that they cannot IJ.c studied scientifically, and that they arc not simplJ' another aspect of ..nature." Indeed, science is co11cemed with innumerable · things which cannot be experienced with the senses, and which are not presc!nt to immediate experience -for example, the entme past, the process of gravity, the nature of time, andl the weights of planets and 1tan. These invisible tltiings arc inferred &om im mediate experience by logic. They are hypotheses .: which seem to give a 112SOnable explanation of ob. • • Ktved events. The theological God is exactly the same thing a hypothes:is ing .. all-expcri. for · cnces. . . . When a theologian unakes such a hypothesis he uses the methods of science and enters the field of science. He must expect, therefore, to be questioned, examined,· and criticize«:l by his fellow naturalists. . But the difference between the natural and the · supem�tural can be uu1dentood in a simpler and much more useful way. :If .. nature" is the province of science, we can say that. nature is this world as it is named, measured, and classified. Nature is the world which thought has analyzed and soned into groups called .. things." It has, as we saw, given things an identity by naming th4:m. It distinguishes motion &om stillness by compa1ring something which moves
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rapidly in relation to, something which moves slowly, �ough both move. Thus the whole w·orld of nature is relative and is produced by thouglnt and comparison. Is the head ..really" distinct fro1n the neck? Why shouldn't we have made the ''th:ing'' called head include the .. thing" called neck, just as it includes the nose? It ia a convention of thoug:ht that head and neck are two things instead of one. In this sense, the ancient meta physicians are perfec:tly right when they say that the whole universe is a p,roduct of the mind. They mean ... the universe of "thir.ags... On the other hancl, the supernatural and absolute world comists of th. e mysterious reality which we have so named, dass:ified, and divided. This is not a product of the mind.. But there is no way of defining or describing what .it is. At every moment we are aware of it, and it is our awareness. We feel and sense it, and it is our feelings and sensations. Yet try· ing to know and define it is like trying to make a knife cut itself. Wluat is this? This is a rose. But ... rose" is a noise. Wh•t is a noise? A noise is an impact of air waves on the �eardrum. Then a rose is an im pact of air waves on 1the eardrum? No, a rose is a rose • • • • • • IS a rose II a rc:i.se IS a rose• • • • Definition is sim1>ly making a one-to-one co11e1pondence between s�oups of sense data and noises, but because noises are• sense data, the attempt is ultimately circular. T'he real world which both pro•
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vides these data and tb1e organs wherewith to sense .. them 1emains unfathor111ably mysterious. From this point of vi,ew we need have no difficulty in making sense of sornc of the ancient scriptures. . The Dhammapada, a collection of sayings of the Buddha, begins: ..All tlnat we are is the result of what we have thought. It is founded on our thoughts; it is made up of our tho,(lghts." This is, in effect, the same statement that op�ns St. John's Gos�l: ··10 the beginning was the W<J•rd, and the Word was with · God, and the Word wc1LS God. . • • All things were made by him (the Wo1�d), and without him was not · anything made that Wa!• made." By thoughts, or men � words, we distinguish or "make" things. With out thoughts, there arc no .. things"; there is just un defined reality. If you want to be poetic, you can liken this unde• fined reality to the Fattier, because it is the origin or _ basis of "things." You can call thought the Son ..of · one substance with the· Father�--the Son ..by whom all things were made," the Son who must be cruci fied if we are to see the: Father, just as we must look. at reality without wor
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Otherwise, we can •ase the negative, metaphysical languag� about this undefined reality. It is the infinite, not the definitte. It is the eternal, the cvcr prcscnt, not the past :and future, not the conventions of· thought and time�. It is the unchanging in the sense that the idea (j•f change is but another word, , another definition, �,hich the reality called change sures. Obviously, if all movement is relative. · there is no absolute movement. It would be mean ingless to say that all bodies in th� universe are moving unifo1mly at ten tho11sand miles per minute, be ca•isc ··an" has cxcluc:lcd any other body with respect to which they could lbc said to move. .. Metaphysical lang:uage is negative because it is trying to say. that wo1rds and ideas do not explain reality. It is not tryin1� to pcnuadc us that reality· is · something like a boundless mass of transparent jelly. It does not speak oic some impalpable abstraction, but of this very world in which we live. This cxpcriencc which WC calJl things, colors, sounds, smells, wtes, for111s, and wc�ights is, in itself, no thing, no forn1, no number, n,o nothing-but at this moment we behold it. We are,, then, beholding the God which traditional doctrin�, call the boundless, formless, · · infinite, eternal, undivided, unmoved, and unchang. ing Reality::-�� �bsolute behii:t� ��-�1eJa_tiye th� bchin� thloughts_ an� W0!�- Naturally ..Meaning . • is likewise what. Vedanta docuine taw cbe Self. tbe a""4n, tnosceoding all etperienced ..lbi':'P." 1 This •
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the Meaning is meanir1g-lcss because, unlike words, it docs not have meaning but is meaning. By iuclf, a uec is meaningless, 'but it is the meaning of the word ..tree." It is easy to sec that this kind of language, whether in its religious or metau>hysical fo1•••S, can lead to all manner of misundentaLDding. For when the mind is divided, and ..I.. wants to get away &om present ex perience, the whole notion of a supernatural world is its happy hide-out. The ..I" is resisting an unhappy · change, and so clings tc> the ..unchanging" Absolute, fol"gCtting that this At>SOlute is also the ..unfixed." .. When life provides so1ne bitter experience, the ... can only it witlh the guarantee that it is pan of the plan of .a lovin.g Father-God. But this very guarantee makes it imJ>OSSible to realize the "love of God," which, u is well known, requires the giving up of "I." The misundentandi1ng of religious ideas is vividly illustrated in what me111 have made of the doctrine of - immortality, heaven, ait1d hell. But now it should be dear that eternal life the realization that the pres ent is the only reality, and that past anti future can be distinguished &oml it in a conventional sense alone. The moment is the ..door of heaven," the ··straight and narrow way that leadeth unto life,'' be cause there is no room in it for the separate ··1.'' In this experience there no one experiencing the ex perience. • The · ''rich mtan'' cannot get through this
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door because he can·ies too much baggage; he is ". clinging to the past an.d the future. ·one might quote l1hole pages from the tpiritual literature of all times :and places to show that eternal life has been undent•ood in this sense. The follow- ,. • ing from Eckhan will suffice: -4
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The Now-moment i11l which God made the fint man and the Now-moment in �,hich the last man will disappear,, and the Now-moment .in which I am speaking are all one in God, in whom ther•� is only one Now. Look.I The per· son who lives in the lii ght of God is conscious neither of time past nor of time to come but only of one eternity. • • • Therefore he geu. nothing new out of future events, nor from chance, for h.e lives in the Now-moment that ii, unfailingly, ..in verdu1re newly clad."
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mcnt, would-be scientific predictions about what will happen after death a1re of little consequence. The whole glory of it is that we do not know. Ideas of survival and annihilation are alike based on the past, on memories of waking and sleeping, and, in their differcnt ways, the ncttions of everlasting continuity and everlasting nothi1r1gness are without meaning. It needs but slight imagination to realize that ever lasting time is a mo1r1strous nightmare, so that be tween heaven and hell as ordinarily undentood there is little to choose. Th,e desire to continue always can only seem attractive when one thinks of indefinite time rather than infi111ite time. . It is one thing to have . l ff
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as. much time as you wa111t, but quite another to have time without end. For there is no joy in -continuity, in the perpetual. We desire it only becatase the present is empty. A person who is trying to ieat money is always hungry. When someone says, ..T:ime to stop nowl" he is in a panic because he has had nothing to eat yet, and wants more and more tlime to go on eatin·g money, ever hopeful• of satisfactic>n around the corner. We do not really want continuiity, but rather a present experience of total happiniess. The thought of wanting such an experience to go on and on is the result of being self-conscious in the experience, and thus incom pletely aware of it. So lc,ng as there is the feeling of an ··1" having this experiience, the moment is not all. Eternal life is realized ,vhen the last trace of differ..ence between .. I" and ..now" has vanished-when there is just this ..now" and nothing else. By contrast, hell or "e·verlasting damnatien" is not the everlastingness of tiime going on forev�, but of the unbroken circle, the: continuity and frustration of going round and rou1nd in pursuit of something which can never be atta:ined. Hell is the fatuity, the everlasting impossibilit)r, of self-love, self-consciousness, and self-possession. It is trying to see one's own eyes, hear one's own eatis, and kiss one's own lips. To see, however, that life is complete in each mo ment-whole, undivided!, and ever new-is to under stand the sense of the cioctrine that in eternal life ,,
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God, the undefinablce this, is all-in-all and is the Final Ca11se or End for \\rhich everything exists. Beca•ise the future is everlas1:ingly unattainable, and, like the dangled carrot, alwtJrys ahead of the donkey, the ful. fillment of the divin.e purpose does not lie in the fu. ture. It is found in tU1e present, not by an act of resig nation to immovablce fact, but in seeing that there is no one to r�es1gn. For this is the meaning of that univenal and everrepeated religious principle that to know God, man must give up himself. It is as familiar as any plati tude, and yet nothing has been harder to do, and nothing so totally 1nisundentood. How can a self, · which is selfish, gi,,e itself up? Not, say the theo logians, by its own power, but through the gift of ,, divine grace, the po"�er which enables man to achieve what is beyond his own strength. But is this grace given to all or to a chosen few, who, when they re ceive it, have no ch<J�ice but to surrender themselves? Some say that it comlcs to all, but that there are those who accept its aid and those who refuse. Others say that it comes to a chosen elect, but still, for the most pan, insist that the iindivi�ual has th.e power to take it or leave it. But this docs not. solve the· problem at all. It re places the problem of holding or surrendering the self by the problem of accepting or refusing divine · grace, and the two plroblems are identical. �he Chris•
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tian religion contains its own hidden anwer to the problem in the idea that man can only sur1cnder . himself ..in Christ.._" Fo,r �·Christ" stands for the reality that there is no separate self to su11cnder. To give • up "I" is a false proble'.m. "Christ" is the realization •that there is no separat,e "I." "I do nothing of myself. I I • . . I and the Fathe1· are one• • • • Before Abra ham was, I am." , .• If there is any probJlem at all, it is to see that in l this instant you have 1r10 "I" to surrender. You are completely free to do this at any moment, and noth l ing whatever is stoppi1ng you. This is our freedom. ., We are not, howev..er, free to improve ounelves, to su11ender ourselves, tc• lay ounelves open to grace, f 'fo! _all such_spl�_t·mind,edneu is the denial and post� e ponement of· our free.1om.\ It is trying to eat your .. e ..,. .. inouth instead of breac:l. · �Is it neceuary to un•derline the vast difference be. ? tween the realization tl1at "I and the Father arc one," · e and the state of mind ,of the i,erson-who,-as we -say, "thinks he is God"? If, still thinking that there is an , t . isolated "I," you ident:ify it with God, you become e the insufferable ego-m:aniac who thinks himself suc cessful in attaining tine impossible, in dominating experience, and in p11nuing all vicious circles to satisfactory conclusiorus. r ... · · 1 am the mm:tn of my fate; · • · 1 am the ,captain of my soul!
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When the snake s,nllows his tail he has a swelled head. It is quite a1nother thing to see that you arc your ••fate," and th�1t there is no one either to master it or to be mastered, to rule or to surrender. Must we also iru1ist that this loss of .. 1·· in God is · not a mystic mias1na in which the ..values of per sonality" are oblite1rated? The .. I.. was not, is not, and never will be a part of human personality. There is nothing unique, 01� ..different,.. or interesting about it. On the contrary·, the more human beings punue it, the more uniform, uninteresting, and impersonal they become. The faster things move .in circles, the sooner they becom4e indistinguishable blun. It is ob vious that the only interesting people are interested people, and to be c mpletely interested is .10 ...ha• forgotten about ..I .." J We can see, th,en, that the basic principles of philosophy, religio:n, and metaphysia may be under stood in two entir·ely diflerent ways. They can be seen as symbols of the _undivided mind, expressions of the truth that in each moment life and experience are a complete whiole. ..God.. is not a definition of this state but an· f�xclamation about it. Ordinarily, however, they are used as attempu to stand outside �neself and the u11livene to grasp them and to rule them. This process, is circular, however complex and devious. Because men ha·ve been circling for so many ages, • • .. 148 •
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REUGION REVIEWED
the powe1s of technolc.gy have availed for little save to speed the process to a point of unbearable tension. Civilization is ready tc• fly apart by sheer centrifugal force. In such a predic:ament the self-conscious type of religion to which we: have so long been accustomed is no cure, but part of the disease. If scientific thought has weakened its power we need have no re• grets, for the ..God" tcl• which it could have brought us was not the unltno�rn Reality which the name sig .nifies, but only a projection of ourselves a cosmic, discamate ..I" lording it over the universe. The true splendor o,f science is not so much that it names and clauifies, ft!Cords and predicts, but that it observes and desires to, know the facts, whatever they may tum out to be. flowever much it may conf11se facts with conventions:, and reality with ar�itrary di visions, in this opennesiS and sincerity of mind it bean some resemblance to n:ligion, understood in its other and deeper sense. The �ater the scientist, the more he is impreued with his ignorance of reality, and the more he realizes that h1is laws and labels, descriptiona and definitions, arc thee products of his own thought. They help him to use the world for purposes of his own .devising rather tiaan to undentand and explain
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The more he analyzes the universe into infini tesimals, the more thi11gs he finds to classify, and the more he perceives the� relativity of all classification.
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THE WJSJDOM Olt INSECURITY
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, What he does not lrnow seems to inaease in geo metric progreuion tc> what he knows. Steadily he ap proaches the point ,�here what is unknown is not a mere blank space in a web of words but a window in the mind, a window �whose narne is not ignorance but • \f.Onder. , ,__- • ., The timid mind ishuts this window with a bang, and is silent and th<J•ughtless about what it does not know in order to chatter the more about what it thin� it knows. It fills up the IU}chaned spaces with mere repetition of ,vhat has already been explored. But the open mind l�nows that the most minutely ex plored territories ha.ve not really been known at all, but only marked a1nd m�asured a thousand times over. And the fasci11aating mystery of what it is that we mark and measu:� must in the end "tease us out of thought" until tile · mind forgets to circle and to punue its own prooesses, and becomes aware that to be at this moment i2s pure miracle. In ways that differ but little, this is the last word .,. of Western and Ea!1te1n wisdom alike. The Hindu Upanishads say: •
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He who thinb th�at God is not coa1,prehended, by him · . God is comprehend,ed: but he who thinb that God ii comprehended kno�,s him not. God is unknown to those who know him, and is known to thoae who do not know him at all. •
Goethe says. it in wcmls which, to the modem mind, __ . may be plainer: . •
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Or there are the words of St. John of the Cross, one of the greatest seen of the Christian tradition: .,
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The highest to whidn man can attain is wonder: and if the prime phenomeno111 makes him wonder, let him be content: nothing highier can it give him, and nothing further should he seek for behind it; here is the limiL
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One of the greatest : favon bestowed on the soul tranaiently in this life is toj enable it to see so distinctly and to feel so profoundly tlhat it cannot comprehend God at all. These souls are h«�rein somewhat like the saints in heaven, where they whc• know him most perfectly perceive m01t clearly that he i1 infinitely incomprehensible; for those who have the leu clear vision do not perceive IO clearly as do these othe:n how greatly he uanscends their • • vuaon.
In such wonder th,ere is not hunger but fulfill ment. Almost everyor1e has known it,_ but only in rare instants when the startling beauty or strange ness of a scene drew tbLe mind away from its self-pur suit, and for a momen: t made it unable to find words for the feeling. We ai�e, then, most fortunate to be living in a time whera human knowledge has gone so far that it begins tCJ• be at a loss for words, not at · the strange and marv·elous alone, but at the most ordinary things. The clust on the shelves has become as much of a mystery �u the remotest stan; we know enough of both to kn<>w that we know nothing. Ed. dington, the physicist,� is nearest. to the mystics, not . in his airier flights of fancy, but when he says quite simply, .. Something u1nknown is doing we don't know what." •
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THE WISl>OM OF INSECURITY •
In such a confessio:n thought has moved full circle, and we are again as children. To those still fever ishly intent upon exJplaining all things, upon secur ing the water of life firanly in paper and string, this confession says nothing and means nothing but de feat. ·To others, the fact that thought has completed a circle is a revelatio:n of �hat. man has been doing, not only in philosophy, religion, and speculative science, but also in psychology and morals, in every day feeling and livint�· His mind has been in a ,vhirl to be away £Tom itself arid to catch itself. .. . · l'e suUn from yc>urselves, none else compels, · None other hc>lds you that ye live and die And whir upon 1the wheel, and hug and "iss ., its spo•es of agony, -Its tire of tearJ;, its nave of nothingness. Discovering this the mind becomes whole: the split between I and me, man and the world, the ideal and the real, comes to an end. Paranoia, the mind beside itself, becomes meta,aoia, the mind with itself and so &ee from itself. Fre.e from clutching at tht-msclvea the hands can handle�; free from looking after them aelves the eyes can see:; free from trying to understand itself thought can thilnl. In such feeling, seeing·, and thinking life requirc:s no future 10_ �9mplcte itself nor explanation to .jtutify itself. In this morncot it ii ·. finished. . •
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Jqyous Cosmology; Natu,·e, Man, and Woman; Behold the Spirit; The BooJt; Does It Matter1; This ls It; The Supreme ldentit:y; Beyond Theology; and Cloud Hidden, WhereabtJ•uts Unknou,n. He died in
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ALAN W. WA"l'I'S, whc:• held both a masters degrce in theology and a d4t>Ctorate of divini�. is best -. � known as an interpreter of Zen Buddhism in p�r ticular, and of I ndian a: nd Chinese philosophy i n general. Standing apan, however, from sectarian hip, he has earn4:d the reputation of being · one of the most original a1 nd "u11rutted" philosophen of the century. He was t.he author of some twenty book.s on tl1e philosophy ; and psychology of religion, including (in Vintage Bo<>ks) The Way of Zen; The
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