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The the original stuffed shirt, the appalling grandfather, in whose presence you daren’t show any kind of sprightliness. Because, after all, you know, when we are children and we are very exuberant and we leap around and bounce all over the place, we make the adults tired. Because the moment a child starts getting exuberant, we try to give him a guilty conscience.
You have no business having so much fun. There are other people in the world who hurt. There are people who are starving.
There are people who suffer. And for you to go around, leaping around, as if the whole thing were gorgeous is a kind of irreverence. So be guilty!
Shut up! So as a result of that, where we think that an occasion is of particular celebrity—where you’re in church or in court or standing in a row of Marines or something saluting the flag—everybody gets grim. And so there is no delight in religion of that kind.
Well, this nun agreed with me that they really ought to do something about that. And I said, “Well, maybe I’ll come to your convent and teach you how to sing.” But, you see, all of that is because of the fear that the nothing will win over the something. Now, it’s true: in games there is a winner and there is a loser.
But in a fight it’s different. In a fight the object of victory is to get rid of the defeated party because he’s bad and he ought not to be there at all. But in a game it’s quite different, because if there is to be a winner, there has to be a loser.
So it’s terribly important not to get rid of the opponent. You could have no chess unless you had the black side as well as the white. Impossible!
So in a game, we admire a person we call a good loser—that is to say, a good sport—because he does not take the loss seriously. It’s very instructive, for example, to play any game that you know well (whether it’s chess or checkers or whatever), but with yourself. And each time you move over to the opposite side, play it with your best skill.
For example, you can play a very marvelous game. You take two cocktail olive toothpicks. You know, the kind they make in the little plastic swords?
And you do a fencing match with yourself and actually try to stick one of your hands, on the other hand really tries to defend itself. You’ll find this is extremely interesting. It’s a meditation exercise.
And then you realize, you see, what is the nature of a game? Because if you are a good chess player you may congratulate yourself, if your opponent wins, if you have given him a good contest. Because then the game as such was interesting, and you come to realize that you and your opponent in a game of chess together constitute a single organism, like your right hand on your left hand fencing with each other.
Let not your left hand know what your right hand doeth. That means: have a conspiracy to pretend that they don’t belong to one organism and that they’re different, like black and white, like space and solid. They must look as different as possible, but underneath—in order that there be a game; in order that there be, in other words, a relationship of these two—there has to be a secret agreement.
They have to be tacitly one, but openly two. Exoterically two, esoterically one. Because, you see, on the stage, when you get the hero and the villain, they are really friends behind the scenes because they belong to the same company of actors.
But this mustn’t be admitted on the stage because that would give the show away. Now, you see, it is true. We must not give the show away.
That’s why there are esoteric teachings. But on the other hand, there is another opposite extreme, which is not realizing that the show is a show. And that’s as bad as giving the show away.
So you have always, when you are in the theater—say you go to the movies, and you go to see some great horror movie, you know? Awful thing. Well, why does one do it?
You want a thrill. And the whole of the universe wants a thrill. That’s what it’s all about.
Otherwise it would be boring. But when you go to the movie, you know in your heart of hearts that it’s only a movie. And yet you contrive to some degree to forget this while you you’re there, and therefore get scared and feel real creeps.
But that’s great. Some people like to go and cry. They go and see some tragedy and just love to weep.
Because it’s a catharsis, it gets all the salt out of you or something, I don’t know. And so you you do this thing, and we say it’s vicarious, yep. But that is the spirit of showmanship, of play.
So one might say, then, that it is possible in this life to attain a sort of metaphysical courage in which you know (really know, deep within) that the most harrowing experiences that physical existence can offer are a show. Now, this is what you might call ultimate nerve. And, for example, when the samurai in Japan studied Zen, that’s what they wanted to get from it.
They wanted to get ultimate nerve so that absolutely nothing would phase them. So there is a poem which says: Don’t hesitate, you see? Don’t be blocked.
Don’t be phased, nonplussed, by the illusion. Now, you would say, well, that’s all very well, but I can’t bring myself to that. I start to shake and I can’t stop it.
It’s not to do with my will. And no amount of gritting my teeth, clenching my muscles, exercising my willpower, can get rid of the shakes when I am really scared. That’s true, but you must remember that the secret to all this is not to be afraid of fear.
When you can really allow yourself to be afraid and you don’t resist the experience of fear, you are truly beginning to master fear. But when you refuse to be afraid, you are resisting fear, and that simply sets up a vicious circle of being afraid of fear, and being afraid of being afraid of fear, and so on. And that’s what we call worry.
Worry is simply a chronic condition, and people who worry are going to worry no matter what happens. Because when one possible threat is exterminated, they will immediately discover another. Because worry is an infinitely skinned onion.
And you can go on and on and on, because the moment you reduce the size of the onion and you get your worry out about this, suddenly your whole sense of distance and size changes. And because you’re looking so intently at this little onion, it fills your whole field of vision and is once again a big onion. You see?
You start peeling that down. But as you get another one about this size, then it enlarges itself in your judgment and your sense of values. And once more, it’s colossal.
Now, that’s always going on. So if you are disposed to worry, there is always plenty to worry about. You make plenty of money and you have no troubles about that, then you start wondering if you’re going to get a disease.
And the doctor says, “No, it’s alright. Nothing wrong with you.” Then you wonder if you’re going to get into an accident. And then you take precautions.
And then you wonder if there’s gonna be a political revolution, et cetera, whether your house is going to be robbed. There’s always something. So really, this kind of worrying is a completely useless pursuit, and yet we feel a little guilty if we don’t do it.
Because it somehow put into us that a proper amount of worrying is showing a good sense of responsibility. You’re concerned. And Paul Tillich used this word, “concern,” in a special way.
Quakers always use the word concern. And all people, you might say, who are socially conscious are concerned. So when we say I’m concerned, it means I have a frown on my face, and I’m worried—about you, about the nation, about the war, and so on.
Concerned. And Tillich said religion is ultimate concern. I am concerned about the universe.
And he used his wonderful decontaminated word for God, which he got from Eckhart: the “ground of being.” You see, “God” still has whiskers on it. But the “ground of being” doesn’t, obviously. And so the ultimate concern is to be concerned about the ground of being.
Well, now, I don’t think—I’m not sure about Tillich. I knew him, and he was a very wonderful man. But what I call concern—the way I would want to interpret it instead of this sort of frown, is something more like amazement.
In other words, that existence is extremely peculiar. I mean, I can’t explain this feeling because I don’t know quite how to ask a question about existence so that I could be said to be wondering about it in some sort of clear thinking way. This is a very nice thing to consider to yourself: that, if you were going to have an interview with the Lord God, and you would have only five minutes, and you might ask one question, what would you ask?
And you’ve got plenty of time to think this over in advance. And you realize, question after question you say: no, that’s not really the thing I want to get at. Nuh-uh, it’s not that.
Like, “Do you exist?” God would say, “Well, of course! Yes, here I am.” “Am I having a hallucination?” He said, “No.” “How can I be sure that this isn’t a hallucination?” You see? Then you reject all that sort of question.
And when you finally come down to it, you don’t know what to ask. There is a sort of question in your mind—not so much a question as a questioning. A feeling of: it’s all unbelievable.
It’s amazing. I wonder at it. I marvel at it.
It is a miracle that there is anything. But it’s like a friend of mine who went to a Zen master. Got an interview after a good deal of trouble [finding] an interpreter.
And he sat down and said, “You know, now I’m here. I don’t know what to ask. I just feel like laughing.” The Zen master said, “Well, let’s laugh!” And they just broke up.
But that feeling, you see, of the marvelousness of being is what I call (or would want to mean by) Tillich’s phrase “ultimate concern.” It’s also: love is involved in it. See, that’s the part of the problem. An abstractionist culture such as ours—as I indicated, we are not materialists, we’re abstractions.
A materialist is a lover, and therefore is somebody related to the present. Because, you see, you you can’t love except in the present. When you have under your hands a piece of wood, and you say, “My, isn’t that a gorgeous grain?” You know?
And you fondle it. If it moves fondly. And you you run over this and think, “Hey, isn’t that gorgeous?” You see?.
Well, you’re loving it. It may be that it’s an apple in your hand and you say, “I love you so much I could eat you.” And you eat it. And you relish it.
That’s loving in a special way. So concern and love—and there are many forms of love. There’s a whole spectrum of different kinds of love which runs from the red of libido to the violet of divine charity.
But all of them are equally important because, as you know, you can’t have the violet end without the red and vice versa. You wouldn’t know what violet was unless you had all the other colors. The colors create each other.
So it isn’t simply black and white. Between black and white is the spectrum. And just as black and white arise mutually, so, you know red in relation to yellow, in relation to green, in relation to blue, and so on.
But if they all come out of black and white. That’s the secret. I think Mr. Land has invented a camera that made a rather spectacular demonstration of this.
So if, then, you try to obliterate fear—the fear that black may win—you’re working in the wrong way. To attack a fear is to strengthen it. Because immediately you feel guilty if you don’t succeed.
Or you feel inadequate. But fear is something that arises naturally and spontaneously under certain circumstances just as you will feel warm if you get near a fire. And you can’t go up to a fire without some sort of self-hypnosis and then say, “Well, I refuse to be warm.” There’s something a bit weird about that.
Besides, you often want to feel warm when you get near a fire. No, on the contrary, it is very natural to be afraid. And so if you don’t try to knock it down, you don’t try to make yourself over into some sort of preconceived idea of what you ought to be, then you are on the track.
Now, when you think, for example, that I ought to change myself into something different, what is the agency which will affect this change? Well, we could say two things. On the one hand, it’s the same self that you want to change, so how can it change it?
Or, on the other hand, you can say that the idea that there is a sort of separate ego in you which can go to work on the rest of you is a hallucination. And that’s why gurus and teachers set their students weird tasks [so that] they may discover that the dissociated ego is indeed a hallucination. Now, for example, one of the ones that is commonly used is to get yourself a pure mind.
And that means you control your thoughts and emotions. You mustn’t have any violent or hateful emotions. You must not hate anybody.
You mustn’t have any sexy emotions. All pure ideas. Clean up!
You know what happens? So many—in the parent/child relationship many parents can’t stand their children. They are a nuisance, they are the result of bad rubber goods, and they didn’t mean to have them anyway, and they’re expensive and noisy, and they’ve disturbed the peace of the place, and they detest them.
But you cannot admit (in this culture) that you detest your child. That’s the most awful thing. But you see what happens if you don’t admit it is that, whereas outwardly you go through the motions of being loving and dutiful, you don’t smell right and the child gets it.
The child knows intuitively and inwardly that there’s a crossed-up message here. It says “love,” but it acts “hate.” Vise versa: a lot of children hate their mothers, hate their fathers. That’s supposed to be very bad.
And the whole pandemonium that’s going on these days is largely due to that nobody can come out and be honest about it. So now: control your thoughts. Watch that hate the moment it arises.
Doinggg! Knock it down. Well, now, you know, the guru who’s teaching you all this—you’ve projected quite a bit on him.
The fact that you accepted a guru at all shows that you have endowed another person with much greater wisdom than yourself. That’s your opinion, incidentally. And therefore, people will invariably attribute to gurus all kinds of astounding powers, especially of a telepathic nature.
And indeed, a good guru is a very sensitive fellow and can tell by people’s eyes and gestures and tone of voice all sorts of things about them, as can any experienced psychologist. But, you see, when you are trying to control your thoughts and you know you have some kind of wrong thought, you project upon the guru to recognize it instantly. He reads you.
He sees right through you. And therefore, you know that he almost must look at you as a terrible worm, because you can never quite succeed in doing it, you see? And the lesson of this is—you see, the whole point of this lesson—is to discover that the alleged you, which is different from your thoughts and feelings, is a hallucination.
There is a stream of thought and feeling going on, just like there is a stream of water going by, and that’s you. It’s an organized stream just in the same way that when you see a whirlpool in a river, it’s organized, it’s recognizable, it has a shape. And it has an enduring shape, even though it is a constant flow.
Or take a better illustration still: a flame on a candle. It is a stream of gas. And no particle of this gas stays in the flame for but a split second.
But the flame keeps apparently there and is recognizable. I can say one, two, three flames. This one, that one, the other one.
And that’s like us. But that stream which we are—thought, feeling what we call the body, everything like that—but the body is one of the most intangible things there is. You seem to be able to grab hold of it, but it is nothing more than a vibrating pattern of energy.
And on it flows. So when you understand that, you can see a little bit more why Hindus speak of the body as māyā, as illusion, because one of the things they mean by illusion is transitoriness as distinct from permanence. That is to say, everything in this world is disintegrating.
In fact, if it weren’t, it wouldn’t be there. Disintegration is life. And it’s as important to see that as it is to see that there is no time, and that black and white go together.
Because to the extent that you see it is disintegrating, and that there’s no way of stopping this, you can get into a frame of mind where you get with it. Where you, as it were, give up and fall apart along with everything else. Now, you might think—you see, again: in our general Western frame of mind we would think, “Well, that’s just giving up!
That’s spineless. That’s cowardice. That’s awful.” And anybody who would just give up like that would be expected to become a slob.
But the contrary is true. You see, in all what you might call the dynamics of the spiritual life there are what appear to be many paradoxes: courses of action—which in common sense would lead to one result—turn out in fact lead to an opposite result. So you would think that a child who admits to hatred of parents or vice versa would act out the hatred, would do something violent.
No, it is precisely the one who does not admit it that will act out and who will do something violent. Because, like the monks of Siberia, who are fasting, grow wearier and wearier, the violence will at last bus from its cell. It can’t be contained.
And I found again and again and again, going around—especially in religious circles, where so many people are trying to not admit what they feel; especially Puritans, prudes, very frequently have a strong streak of cruelty. And this, of course, can be a kind of a sexual substitute, a sadistic or masochistic thing, that is simply because they don’t admit to having a negative side. And so the negative side will express itself in a violent way.
People who are always doing things for other people’s good will be liable to bomb them for their benefit and utterly destroy them in the name of goodness. And this is because such people are not ever going to be good soldiers. I was talking a few weeks ago to the Air Force Weapons Research Lab at Kirtland, near Albuquerque, and I was somewhat surprised to be invited to this sinister institution, but it was full of extremely brilliant people, fantastic minds, and so naturally we got onto the subject of strategy.
Because military strategy is a very, very interesting thing. It contains all the basic life problems. And I said to them, when I started out, I said, “Now, you have asked me to tell you, as a philosopher, what are my basic premises for moral behavior?” Well, I said, “They are total selfishness.
I’m not going to beat around the bush with you people, and to be sentimental or anything like that, because you’re dealing with military matters where you have to be tough, and where you have to be so tough that you’ve no time for finer feelings. So let’s begin that way.” Now, I said, “You might imagine, therefore, that if I base my behavior on total selfishness, that I would go around being rude to people and aggressive and pushing through and so on.” But I said, “I don’t because I found that doesn’t work. People put up resistance.
They get obstreperous and I don’t win them over. So my self-interest is better conserved by putting on a pretense of politeness, and that I really are concerned about you all, and so on.” But I said, “I am not. This just a big act.” Now, then, I said, “The next thing that happens is this: when I decide that I am going to base everything on total selfishness, I start wondering what I want.” Well, so many things that I thought I want—when I got them, I found out I didn’t.
So I have to go very deeply into the question, “What do I really want?” What sort of friends do I want? What sort of the house do I want? What sort of a life do I want?
What sort of a job do I want to do? And, you see, people don’t think this through. They get all sorts of ready-made ideas of what they ought to want.
Because what education does to so large an extent is to fit us into a set of prepared stereotypes, and we never stop to find out what we really want to do. Well, that’s one thing. But then something else very odd comes up when I say I’m purely selfish, which is: “What is ‘me’?” Then I come across this curious thing that I don’t know who I am unless I know who you are.
If I would live without any other people, I don’t think I would know I was there. I see myself in terms of others—that is to say, by a social relationship. I am I because you are you.
You are you because I am I. But then there’s something that’s gone screwy here. Something funny about this.
Which is, of course, that myself isn’t at all what I thought it was. Myself is almost everything else as well as myself. Well, then I really don’t know what to do, because there’s no point my thinking anymore that I can just go around attacking people and getting rid of them and so on, because all I’m doing is, sort of, if I was hungry and I started chewing on my own toes.
Because I have discovered that hurting others hurts me. Now, of course, you do have to cut your toenails and take care of your hair and things like that, and there’s always some kind of violence is necessary in life, just like you have to kill a fish to eat it, or you have to kill an apple when you chew it. Well, it’s sort of like cutting off the toenails and combing your hair and so on, clipping, things like that, and so like getting rid of dead skin and the general elimination process.
But fundamentally, you see, when you think that there are dreadfully wrong people who ought to be obliterated, or that the world outside you is something that you are in a fight with, well, that’s just like a person who is completely insensitive in the middle. So that he doesn’t know that his leg end goes with the top end. You know, if a worm gets damaged it develops a sort of callused area in it.
And the worm, when it wiggles, the rhythm of the wiggle doesn’t pass through the callused area. It has to wiggle separately on each end. So the worm, instead of going wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, goes wiggle-bump, wiggle-bump, wiggle-bump, wiggle.
And so a lot of people are like that physically. This is one of the important things that Wilhelm Reich found out: that people tend to have a state of tension in the diaphragm, as a result of which they can’t swing. You know, have you ever tried to teach anybody to dance the hula?
Lots of people just cannot bring themselves to make that hip motion. They’re too rigid. And they like the worm with the callus.
Or then, there’s another myth about this. You know, there’s a famous snake called ouroboros, and he’s always drawn chewing his own tail and eating it. Imagine what happens when the tail gets inside, and he gets inside, and inside, and then blweeah, the whole thing is clutched up, you see?
And this worm, this snake, is a symbol of what the Buddhists call saṃsāra, that is to say, the round or rat race of life and death. And this goes on so long as the worm doesn’t know that his tail is himself. When he discovers that, he lets go of it and wiggles happily along like every good snake.
Of course, there is more to it than that. You might say, well, why in the first place did he not realize that his tail was his own? Well, because he wanted something else.
See, there wasn’t anything except this snake in the beginning. Of course, the snake is the symbol of God. But in the Upanishads, in the Isha Upanishad, first line of it said that “in the beginning there was the one”—God, the Īśvara—and he said, “I’m lonely.” And so he made another, which was a woman.
And he made love to her—as a result of which all gods were born. But the woman got guilty about this, because she felt it was incest. And so she turned herself into a cow.
And he became a bull, and he made love to her. And so came all cattle. And the same thing happened.
She got guilty and turned herself into a sheep. And he turned himself into a ram, and so on. And by this means the universe was created.
So this is othering. It’s called in Christian theology by the Greek word kénōsis, which means “self-emptying:” where God others himself in the sense of getting himself into a position where he forgets he’s God; aware he has abrogated omnipotence. Now, in the theory of games it is absolutely important to abrogate omnipotence.