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We’ve got this, as it were, one fundamental point, which is what is called in Hindu philosophy a bindu. Bindu is an atom, but not a physical atom in the sense of what our physicists mean by an atom. This is an intellectual atom.
The finest that any grain can get. It’s almost like the Euclidean point: having position but no magnitude. Except that it isn’t quite as abstract as that.
The eenie-weenie is very much alive. It is a unit of UNGH. And I use this word UNGH to indicate what is common to all senses—a unit of sight, of sound, of touch, of taste, of smell.
And all these senses, as you begin to realize with psychedelics, are really one sense specialized in five different ways. That’s why you, in certain cases, hear colors, see sounds, and so on. It all seems to go together.
Well, of course it would. Because they’re all specializations of our basic sensitivity. All senses are fundamentally a sort of touch.
So the eenie-weenie is this fundamental unit of touch. Now, as you know about a neuron, a neuron is such that it can give either yes or no as a message. That is to say, either it fires or it doesn’t.
So then, the eenie-weenie is like that. It’s either black or white. But you begin to see that it’s both, because black always involves white and white always involves black.
So this eenie-weenie is one, but two-faced. Also, its being one implies all the others. “One” implies “many” because you can’t think “one” unless you can think “many,” you can’t see “many” unless you can think “one.” The concepts are inseparable.
“One” doesn’t mean anything unless you know what “many” is. “Many” doesn’t mean anything unless you know what “one” is. So suddenly the eenie-weenie, being one, implies all the others, and being itself, it implies an outside which is not itself.
But if you can’t have the outside without the inside—in other words, if you can’t have the space around the eenie-weenie without the eenie-weenie, and you can’t have the eenie-weenie without the space—then somehow it’s very difficult to say that the eenie-weenie, the one little unit, and everything else are different. They’re not. They go together.
And this leads you into the most fascinating of all aspects of psychedelic experience, which I would call the experience of relativity. This gets us back to significance: what is important? Now, we human beings think we’re important, and that we have a very complex civilization.
That our libraries, our cities, our organizations, our institutions, our nations, our wonders of religion and philosophy and art and architecture and so on, they’re the most complicated and the most significant thing that ever existed on Earth. And when we look at and realize that there are little cells in our bodies that have a sort of independent civic life, and that there are all kinds of microorganisms which, when we see them, we don’t see the familiar human shape, we see something more or less globular. We say, “Well, that’s a very primitive shape compared with the shape of man.
It doesn’t have a highly organized nervous system as ours, and therefore is obviously an inferior creature.” But with the psychedelic you have time to think about things you don’t ordinarily think about. You say, “Nu-uh! Not so hurried.
Not so hurried.” How do you know this thing isn’t as complicated as you are? You haven’t been really looked. Start looking.
And we know a scientist can start looking, and he can find that one small, tiny microorganism is very complicated indeed. And why wouldn’t it be that, from the point of view of this microorganism, its affairs are extraordinarily complex and very important? I mean, imagine just something that we know a lot about—it’s a long way from a microorganism—let’s consider a bee: what do bees know about subtle distinctions between different kinds of honey that we’ve never thought of?
Supposing a bee is arranged that it does exactly what it likes. And yet, at the same time, this is always socially acceptable. It’s a pretty groovy sort of civilization, that, wouldn’t it be?
You never have to stop to think, “Would this offend anybody?” or anything like that. You do just what you feel like doing, and everybody accepts it. It’s perfectly fine.
You play the rules automatically. Well, human beings would say that’s not much of a challenge. After all, it’s more significant if you could do something wrong, if you could make a mistake.
Well, that’s our way of thinking of it; that’s our particular taste—that we think it’s more fun to play it that way. They may think it’s more fun to play it the other way. They say, “What would you want to introduce all that nonsense for?
When you can live a perfectly satisfactory life like a bee, why do you want to go and bring in a kind of principle of evil choice just to make everything messy?” Well, it’s another form of game, you know? Every game has some kind of a forfeit in it. You’ve got to lose something in order to find it, or to win it back.
That’s the essence of a game. That’s why you shuffle the deck of cards at the beginning: to create chaos. And then you work against it, you see?
So everybody has some kind of thing that’s a forfeit to play their life game. Otherwise, there’d been no game, see? We think it’s important to survive.
Well, it isn’t. But we say so, you see? It doesn’t make the slightest difference whether you live a short time or whether you live a long time.
After all, here are these fruit flies, drosophila: they come and go, come and go, come and go with extraordinary rapidity. Generation after generation in a few days. But from their point of view, this is perfectly satisfactory, normal life.
Because I think the same about myself. And if I cannot assume similar processes in other creatures which are going on in me, then I am reduced to total solipsism. That is to say: that there are people who argue that, although you can learn Chinese, you will never—however much you study Chinese and however much you speak with Chinese people—you will never do anything, really, that understands Chinese.
Because you weren’t born with it. You are always translating it into English, and so you’re permanently precluded from understanding another culture. Well, you can carry that argument right down to understanding another person of your own culture.
Say: well, he’s another person, and you never really know another person. So we all are broken up into island universes which have no real communication between each other at all. Well, the only reason I reject that is that it affords the basis is a game rule which has very little play in it.
In other words, it’s as boring as tossing to see whether it will be heads or tails. But the assumption that other people and other cultures really can be understood, and that the further assumption that things that are not human, that maybe insects or mammals or fish also are highly civilized, is far more interesting assumption than that they’re merely creatures of no importance. But so, you see, though, that it is an assumption that we ought to go on living.
But, you see, it’s a meaningless assumption when you really examine it, because mere going on, mere quantitative length of time, is just so much time. It has no special qualitative meaning to it. So we say a person died a glorious death: he died for some great cause, you see.
And woom! he went out, you see? But we say that thing that went on for a few minutes: short life.
He was a young man. He went up in a bang, but it was a glorious explosion. And everybody builds monuments to him and says he was a great man.
See? So there is a value, then, to the short and explosive as well as to the long and dull roar kind of a scene. But when you’re really fixed on a game rule, you see—like: you ought to go on living—it’s very, very difficult indeed to see that you really don’t have to.
To see, in other words, what this so often comes down to is relativity. Well, let me postpone that for a moment. I want to further the idea of relativity.
So what you see, then, is that at every level of being, all creatures are confronted with the same tasks and have the same problems and are really in the same situation. The infinitely small is as big as the big can be, and the big is as small as the small can be. Because, after all, when you get down, down, down, down to the most minute things you can conceive, it turns out that they are surrounded with spaces that are (relatively) as vast as the spaces between the bodies of the solar system or between the different galaxies on the large scale.
So if there are beings of any kind of sensitivity dwelling on these minute points of whatever, they will look out, and what we see as galaxies will not be visible to them at all. They will find themselves in the same sort of universe we find ourselves in. Because the kind that—you see, every creature that is sensitive finds itself in the middle.
See, each one of you is in the middle of the world. Because you radiate a sensitivity—in other words: the extent to which your eyes will see, your ears will pick up sound, is always a circle or a sphere. And you can expand that sphere by instruments—telescopes and radio astronomy, or whatever it may be; telephones—but still, you’re in the middle.
That’s the most important place. Everybody’s in the most important place. The middle.
And we say: man is the measure of all things. It’s a funny feeling that man stands in the middle. Of course he does!
He knows, as it were, so much higher than himself and so much lower than himself. Probably equal in both directions. So much bigger, so much littler.
So when you get down to very tiny, that thing, too, feels in the same place that you do. But you might say: “Oh, well, but really, it’s very tiny.” Because, after all, we are fairly tiny. And there may be, in other words, beyond all the galaxies that we are aware of, vast systems that we have no knowledge of at all.
And they are, after all, bigger. Are they? Are you sure?
Bigger? Or are they just in the same place? You see?
Eventually you can construct a scheme where you get bigger and bigger and bigger, and that bigger is the same place as the tiniest. It goes round in a circle. That’s, you might say at first, difficult to think about.
But it is perfectly logical concept. Perfectly simple. Only it’s unfamiliar.
So is the sense—you see, as this grows—you realize that everything is in the same position. I remember I was thinking about this once and at the same time listening to Hindu music. And the concept of this immense relativity was really moving in me, and I was full of marvel at it.
And it was somewhat terrifying. Somehow, the Hindu music is very deep stuff. You have to have quite a trained ear to go and see that it is something just as profound as anything written by Bach or Beethoven.
But I suddenly said: you know, there are moments in this music when God himself calls out for help. I don’t know what I meant by that, but something like this: in the Hindu philosophy, as you know, they believe that God plays hide and seek with himself, and that he, for, as it were, half the time (whatever time is; anyway, half of it), he gets lost deliberately and forgets that he’s God. And he gets as lost as last can get, you know, which is the end of experience that we call the screaming meemies.
And that’s when God calls out for help. Immediately he answers, of course, because he wakes up and finds out who he really is. But what you begin to see through this relativity thing, that everything is central, everything is as important as everything else—however big, however little—you realize it’s all God in the same position.
But now that begins to scare you, because you say: well, I can’t believe that I’m God. That would surely be very blasphemous. Because, after all, I’m not very good, and God is supposed to be good.
And I’m not very powerful, and God is supposed to be all-powerful. What do you mean, you’re not powerful? It isn’t a question of whether you are powerful or not powerful.
Powerful and impotent are just two opposites of the same game. If you didn’t feel some lack of power, you wouldn’t feel any power. I mean, you couldn’t be all-powerful because that would mean nothing.
There would be just nothing happening if you were all powerful. But power and impotence—to be able and not to be able—are two phases of the same thing. So in the same way is the voluntary (what I can do) and the involuntary (what I can’t or can’t help doing) They are phases of the same.
You wouldn’t know one without the other. And you begin to see: ah yes! Isn’t that fascinating?
And then, in a funny way, you begin to realize it’s a sort of secret that you are willing what happens to you without your will. Because you see that you couldn’t will anything unless there was also that that was other, that you couldn’t will, that was beyond your control. And it begins to dawn.
You begin to see the whole thing: that you’re not just something fighting the world all on your little lonesome, but that the whole thing that you think you’re fighting is the other side of you. But the whole game is to make it seem as other and as strange as possible, as foreign, because that’s getting way out. That’s making excitement.
And you say: well now, why, then, can’t I just switch it off? Couldn’t I suddenly realize—bang! Like this, sitting here—that all that is other than me, all that I don’t will, is really me?
Why can’t I just do that, see? I only ask you. You think you can’t because you think about it superficially.
Would you want to? Would you want the disintegration of the other? And find out that it’s merely you in the sense of your ego?
No! The self has to contain something more complex than merely “ego.” It has to have an element in it which seems to resist. See, when you move your arm like this, you have here what are called antagonistic muscles.
And dependent on these is motion. I prefer to call them complementary muscles, but still, they are called antagonistic. It’s alright.
So when this muscle contracts and the bicep contracts, this one relaxes. And so the opposite way when you do this. Now, you see, they play with each other, against each other.
And so they make a movement possible. So it is with the voluntary and the involuntary, the power and the non-power: where I conquer and where I surrender. See?
You get this feeling now, see? You see, I played it all the way through. Everything, every creature, every center of sensitivity, every eenie-weenie in the world is the same one.
They’re all in the same position. But the whole thing is to look as if they weren’t, because that’s the hiding part of the game, the concealing part. So that every single eenie-weenie or human being or whatever you want—any unit of sensitivity, however you want to measure it—looks down and looks up and says, “Well, those things aren’t me.
They’re weird, they’re very different,” see? “And especially I don’t like spiders or snakes”—or whatever it is that you don’t like, and: “No, no, that’s not human.” And we talk about snake’s eyes, you know? How they have no warmth in them.
What do you think our look like to a snake? And I’ve often said, what about: how do the teeth of a gorgeous girl look to an oyster? So then you realize, you see, that the whole point of it is that those things have to look different.
That’s the whole point: that if you didn’t feel they were not human, they were something else, you wouldn’t know you were human! And so they, on their side, look at you. You, as a human being, have some claim—although it’s probably merely relative—to be the most predatory monster on Earth.
Because the fish stay in the sea, the birds pretty much stay in air, but human beings range through an ocean and everything after their prey. I mean, supposing the sharks could walk! So when all this starts in, you begin to experience an extraordinary kinship with all other forms of life—not only kinship with insects and worms and bacteria and so on, but also with people.
Because you begin to see that everybody’s faced with the same problem you are. Everybody has the same death problem, and that everybody’s workings aren’t to be easily dismissed as good and bad. And say: well, that’s good and that’s bad, and therefore I can feel.
Well, what’s the point of all this judgment, as a matter of fact? People judge despite the fact that Jesus said, “Judge not that you’ll be not judged,” but what’s the point of it all? Well, the point of it all is so that I feel that I’m right.
See? Because you can despise other people in certain ways, or other classes of people and say: well, they’re terrible. But you wouldn’t know you were in the right unless you had all those terrible people around you.
I was talking in a previous seminar about in-groups. And just for those of you who weren’t here I’ll say briefly: everybody’s trying to get themselves into an in-group—that is to say, to be nice people. And everybody who does constitute an in-group thinks that they’re the nice people and that the outsiders, even though they belong to a very fancy in-group, are all nasty people.
See? And so, if you’re in any given American town, say; live on the right side of the tracks and you’re the nice people, and there are all those bums and [black people] and whatever… Mexicans over there, and you say, “Ugh!” Then they, on the other hand, say, “Gee, we really live a real life. Because we have to face poverty.
We are right down close to the bone. And here, although it’s rough, the meat is sweet. And those people don’t know it.
Those wretched. They’re all big bosses, and they own all the land, and they own all the property. And they are a worthless bunch of junk.
They’re not even Christians!” And they don’t want anything to do with them. And so they feel they’re the real in-group, you see? But neither one can know it is the real in-group without the contrast or the other, see?
You depend on people who you could look down on in order to be able to feel up. And so you should recognize this and say, “Thank you very much for giving me the privilege of being an in-group, because without you I wouldn’t know where I was!” And so you see all these human games running together, and you begin to feel: gee, isn’t that marvelous! You know, at first it starts being kind of cynical.
You see everybody’s out after himself, and that some people are very loving and very cooperative because they realize that this pays, that this makes other people love them and that they’re playing a game just like the people who are hostile and grumpy and aggressive and rude, and they get their way that way. You will see everybody’s playing the game of being selfish. And the first is gives you the horrors.
You say: “Are we all, after all, nothing but little horrible island cells, each one out for itself?” And as this becomes very uncomfortable—if, you know, you’ve been brought up with a Christian conscience. But then you begin to see what is it that you’re being selfish about? What is it that you love when you say, “I love myself?” This becomes exceedingly puzzling.
You realize that what you love when you love yourself is always some other object than yourself. You like eating ice cream. You like beautiful views.
You like your house. You like your friends. You like kissing beautiful girls.
You like this. But it’s all not me! See?
You suddenly realize you can’t separate your self that you love from everything else that your self implies. Then, you know, you begin to wonder which end is up. But it soon clarifies, and you suddenly see the whole thing—and this can become with psychedelics a very, very vivid thing—the whole universe as a colossal energy play going this way and that way, totally indestructible, and it’s all you, and you didn’t know it.
It doesn’t mean you’re the only one. This thing proliferates in millions and millions of centers, but it’s all one center. And you can get the physical sensation of the thing being an enormous, as it were, sort of center of light: of joyous, whooping, glorious, loving BOOM, like that.
And this will only usually last for a few moments, where you feel you’ve actually put your finger on the center of reality. And it’s this tremendous luminous energy. Just beautiful!
And then, as as this passes off, you see, as it were, the reflected glory of this in everything you look at. And at that moment, you see, in the experience, you begin to come down. And as you look more and more, you see, of course: I don’t object to being in a different state of consciousness than what I’ve just been in.
You go back to being ordinary because now I’ve seen what ordinary consciousness is underneath. It’s this fantastic game of hide and seek. And it’s perfectly alright to come back, because actually, since all is one, there is no difference between my perfectly everyday existence and this stupendous vision of glory that I’ve just seen, because the one implies the other.
They go together. This is the game. This is the hide and seek.
And so you can come back into an extremely integrated, restful, quiet sense of peace, never forgetting that you have seen relativity and that relativity is the key to the fundamental unity. Because that which is related—all extremes are related to each other in a polar way. They are not things that are separate from each other, as if the opposing forces of light and darkness came from such opposite ends of the cosmos that there wasn’t even a joining point between them, and met in a clash.
It is rather that, as a flower expands from a center and blossoms, you could draw diameters across it, picking out opposite petals, but they all come from the same center. I have left around a number of (what I would call) psychedelic books, which you will notice consist very largely of photographs of pattern in nature: crystal structures, shells, bone structures, leaf structures, animalcules, erosion patterns, patterns in marble, all kinds of pattern in nature. Because, for some reason or other, one of the strongest effects that I had from the use of psychedelics was a vastly renewed appreciation of this dimension of the natural world; a kind of perception that the whole world is pattern.
This is a very strange feeling, because our common sense normally bases the world on substance. We think of primordial and more or less solid stuff, which is found in dense forms as in granite or a ball of steel, and found in very refined forms such as a gas. And we think that all the world is shapes of, forms of, this primordial stuff.
But one of the extraordinary consequences of using psychedelics is that everything suddenly turns into transparency. I think that’s what some physicists have tried to say. I’m thinking of Sir Arthur Eddington in particular, when he remarked that it seems to turn out that the stuff of the world is the same as the stuff of our consciousness—as if awareness itself and material substance were really not different.
And whatever this means scientifically, the psychological implication of it is somehow to make the physical world light lighter—in every sense: somehow less heavy, less burdensome, and lighter in the sense of more permeated with light. If you look, for example, at those reproductions of Persian miniatures that I brought out, you will see what I mean by the vision of the world as being lit internally; illuminated from within. But the interesting thing about this from a scientific point of view is that the physical description of the world does not require the concept of substance.
It requires only the concept of pattern. Because upon a physical analysis, all substances (however solid) are finally described in terms of patterns: the patterns of their molecules, atoms, electrons and so forth. And it is always the description of the pattern that seems to count.
Common sense seems to urge us to ask the question: but what’s the pattern made of? In other words, if we see everything reduced to a lot of circles or winding lines, we want to know what are those lines made of? But when you think it through, the only way anybody can ever tell you about them is to describe still smaller patterns within them.
Nobody can really think of a way of talking about stuff. Because if it has no pattern and it’s just sort of homogeneous all the way through and has really no shape in itself, I can’t imagine a way of talking about it. But you can number and describe and make out, delineate, patterns.
And so the world takes on (from this point of view) what I would best call a musical quality—music having the peculiarity of being a language, a form of art, in which the principal delight is pattern, and the whole meaning is in the pattern. Music, you see, really doesn’t mean anything at all. It’s a great art.
But one can have absolutely magnificent music which represents nothing and describes nothing; one enjoys it simply for itself in the same way as you might enjoy fireworks, or watching ripples on water, or watching the shapes of clouds. They don’t mean anything, and yet they’re orderly. And so one becomes peculiarly aware of this world as play.
I have described an experience in The Joyous Cosmology which was actually based on an experiment with the Mexican mushrooms, with psilocybin, in which I was listening to some Hindu music at the time in which the players were doing nothing but vocalizing the rhythm of drums. And they have a way of doing it with the syllables dit-dee dit-dah. You know?
Dit-dee, dit-dah. Dah-dit dee-dah. So on.