Alan Watts - Awareness of the Self

An excerpt from an Alan Watts lecture.

Now, the Hindus say that the self--the great Self--is consciousness. But, of course, that does not mean consciousness in the sense of our ordinary-everyday consciousness. Ordinary-everyday consciousness is, indeed, a form of this kind of consciousness; shall we say: a manifestation of it.

But then, there's also consciousness which doesn't notice, but nevertheless is highly responsive.

The way your heart beats.

The way you breathe.

The way you grow your hair.

You're doing it, but you don't know how its done.

So, therefore, just in the same way that conscious attention is not aware of all the other operations of the body, we are not aware of our connection (indeed, our identity) with the Fundamental Self.

When the leaves die and fall off the trees, or the fruit drops; next year: more leaves, more fruit.

So, in the same way, when you and I die: more babies later.

If the whole human race dies?

You bet your life there are all kinds of things that feel they're human, scattered throughout the multiplicity of galaxies. Because this universe is a people-ing universe, just as an apple tree apples.

But because we are unconscious of the intervals--we are not aware of the self with our conscious attention when conscious attention isn't operating (just as you don't notice what your pineal gland is doing at the moment)--so in the same way, you don't notice the connections which tie us all together, not only here and now, but forever and ever and ever and ever.

The basic reason why we don't notice the Self, is that the Self can't look at itself.

A knife can't cut itself.

Fire can't burn itself.

Water can't quench itself.

A light can't shine on itself.

So this is the fundamental problem of having some sort of awareness of the Self.

Nevertheless, it is the whole contention of Indian philosophy (especially what we call Vedanta), that it is possible, in a certain way, to become aware of one's self in this deepest sense.

To know that you are the totality.

And this experience is the real substance of Indian philosophy as a whole, both Hindu and Buddhist. It is called Moksha, which roughly means: Liberation.

Liberation from the hallucination that you are just poor little me.

To wake up from that kind of hypnosis and discover that you--your organism, your physical body, your conscious attention (which is your ego)-- are something being done by this vast indescribable Self, which is out of time; which has no beginning, no end; it neither continues nor discontinues; it is beyond all categorization whatsoever. And so the Upanishads say all we can say of it is "neti, neti": not this, not that.

Anything, therefore, you can imagine or picture will not be the Self. So when you are trying to know the Self, you have to get rid of every idea in your head. It doesn't mean, as some people seem to think, that you have to get rid of every sense impression. It isn't as if you had to go into a catatonic state of total absorption (of course that can be done), but, the full Moksha, the full liberation, is when you come back out of absorption and see this everyday world just as it looks now, but see as clear as clear can be that it is all the Self.

You can become aware of this tremendous interconnectedness of everything.