#type/ref/video #a/status/done/finished [Open](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C48hI9Qb2q4&pp=QAFIAg%3D%3D) Title:: Alan Watts - Myth of Myself Full Lecture Part 1 - Alan Watts Organization Official Description:: Amazing explanation of [[Inter-being|Interbeing]] and [[Sunyata]]. This is an explanation for those who are scientifically inclined. Authors:: [[Official Alan Watts Org]], [[Alan Watts]] Published:: 2020-01-24 Keywords:: [[High value content]] Date added:: [[2024-10-24]] ## Notes - Defining the question: what am I? - Defining the status quo - My heart beats, I don't beat my heart. It's not the same as when we raise our hand, or take a step. We don't identify ourselves with our body entirely. - Rather, we identify as a locus of consciousness that's responsible for feeling, thinking, and producing action, that's located somewhere behind the eyes inside of this bag of skin. - Two myths that have shaped western thought - 1) Everything is created, like a table that is built in a workshop, so too man is created as a clay figurine and life blown in it afterwards. - 2) The universe is dumb, human intelligence only happened as a kind of anomaly, and we humans are the only intelligent thing in contrast to the rest of the universe. - This myth serves to replace the previous one. - It's a myth because intelligent things are not born from non intelligent things. - A foreground cannot exist without background. We are not born into this world, we are born from it. Like a leaf on a tree. You cannot describe man, without describing the environment. You cannot explain a man walking without mentioning the floor. - > My personal thought was that if you have an image of dumb universe, intelligent man, you HAVE to make a distinction somewhere where the universe ends and man begins. You have to draw a line. A serial killer that upon autopsy was found to have a tumor in his brain that caused his brain to get all messed up in the parts of compassion and violence can get excused for his behavior, because it was an anomaly of the dumb universe. But a serial killer that does not have a tumor in his head cannot be excused. The more we learn with science, the more we come to understand the human body and mind, the more vague it becomes where we draw the line. Addiction is a biological affair, we have a lot of science that explains it. Some people can feel compassion for addicts because they know they'd also be unable to stop were they in their situation. Others, however, still see addiction as a choice of the addict, and blame it on their lack of willpower. Still, most people draw the line between dumb universe and intelligent man somewhere. For example, Chandler had this [[Matthew Perry went head-to-head with journalist Peter Hitchens on drug addiction in 2013|wild comment]] about addiction: "I'm in control of the first drink, and so I do all these things to protect myself from not having the first drink, but once I have that drink, the allergy of the body kicks in, this is all documented alcoholism proof, then I can't stop after that". It's just the type of discussion of where to draw the line. But even Chandler, who's arguing to make the box of the dumb universe a lot larger, is wrong in that he still puts something on the outside of the box. There is no box. There's just the universe. (whether he still has a choice or not after he has the first drink is another question. I think the other guy was trying to argue that we need stricter laws so that addicts have more incentive to stop. I think that doesn't sound that unreasonable, because it's not that Chandler doesn't have a choice after his first drink, it's just that his choice is the outcome of the circumstances, so if you change the circumstances, the choice can be influenced.) To me this whole contradiction is such a clear argument, that in order to have a dumb universe intelligent man (in other words [[Free will]] that is separate from the universe) you need to draw a line somewhere between the two, and science is moving the line further and further until intelligent man doesn't exist anymore. The only reason intelligent man still exists is that science hasn't caught up so far. But because people have the notion that the universe is dumb, it is really hard to accept that man is not other than the universe but part of it. If we could just accept that the universe is very intelligent, it might be just a little bit easier to accept that man is part of it, not something separate. Then hopefully we can see both serial killers with the eyes of compassion, because they both were anomalies of the universe. - After debunking the myths, he goes on to explain our two modes of attention Spotlight Attention and Floodlight Attention. I link these to 6th and 8th mind, in my current understanding: [[System 1]] and [[System 2]]. - We identify with Spotlight Attention. When driving a car, Spotlight Attention is talking with our friend next to us, while Floodlight is driving the car. Floodlight is always working. You can have dinner with someone, and afterwards get asked the question what the other person was wearing and you could have the faintest idea. Still your Floodlight was always noticing it. - This identification with only part of our being is what makes us feel like a self. If you have a clear experience of Floodlight, it's what's called mystical experience, satori, bodhi, moksha, etc.. It's the realization that you are the whole, not a part. - Then he explains that "I" just refers to an expression/manifestation of the whole. Like a sun has many rays.