Alan Watts: Reincarnation

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00:00...is the solution which Indian philosophy offers on the matter of the problem of death.

00:09The individual, as it were, entity is constantly changing.

00:15He does not go on, but the pattern or the karma, the pattern of action goes on.

00:22And it's all embraced by that figure you saw of the great demon of impermanence.

00:30Could we look at that demon once again?

00:32I want to say something more about him.

00:38From our Western ideas, this fellow looks pretty evil.

00:42And we might associate him with the devil in the Hebrew or Christian sense of a principle

00:47of evil.

00:49In Buddhism, demons are not evil.

00:52They are really beneficent.

00:55They have a frightening aspect, but underneath this there is a deeper meaning.

01:00This demon represents change or impermanence.

01:05But the deep insight underlying this is that change is a liberating factor.

01:15Death is a liberating factor.

01:17Did it not exist, life would not exist either.

01:22And therefore, the wise man is not afraid of the demon.

01:26He goes, as it were, straight forward to him to embrace him.

01:29And at that moment, the demon is transformed.

01:31And so in the same way, in a deeper sense, Buddhists do not think of these various realms of the

01:38wheel as literal worlds where there are angels and demons and starved ghosts.

01:44But they represent the various phases of consciousness.

01:48Equanimity, general kind of medium consciousness.

01:53Quiet consciousness is the human state.

01:56The angel state is supreme happiness.

01:58The animal state is animality.

02:01Here is misery in its extreme, and here is frustration in its extreme.

02:06But the fundamental idea of the whole wheel that we have to remember, the idea of karma, is

02:14the interlocking, the interdependence of being and not being, of death and life, and the

02:21fact that the demon of change is really a disguise of the very source of life, the death without

02:33which life is impossible, the change without which life is totally boring.

02:40Now, of course, when any idea like that is explained, the first thing that we ask is, is it true?

02:53Is there a process of rebirth?

02:57Do our patterns go on and on and have influence to an illimitable future?

03:10But you know, as this idea is held by deeply thoughtful Hindus and Buddhists, it isn't a belief

03:18in something which we can't prove.

03:20It's really quite a self-evident notion.

03:24Think of it in this way.

03:26Supposing I make two statements.

03:30Statement one, after I die, I shall be reborn again as a baby.

03:39But I shall forget my former life.

03:43Statement two, after I die, a baby will be born.

03:51Now, I believe that those two statements are saying exactly the same thing.

03:56And we know that the second one is true.

03:59Babies are always being born.

04:01Conscious beings of all kinds are constantly coming into existence after others die.

04:07But why would I think that the two statements are really the same statement?

04:13Because after all, if you die and your memory comes to an end, and you forget who you were,

04:23being reborn again is exactly the equivalent of somebody else being born.

04:28Because we have no consciousness of our continuity unless we have memory.

04:33And if the memory goes, then we might just as well be somebody else.

04:38But it seems to me that the fascinating thing about this is that although a particular set

04:45of memories vanishes, death is not the end of consciousness.

04:52In other words, we are deluded by a kind of fantasy.

04:57If we think of death as endless darkness, endless nothingness is not only inconceivable,

05:08but it's logically absolutely meaningless.

05:12Because we aren't able to have any idea, much less sensation of nothing, unless it can

05:17be compared with a sensation of something.

05:21These two things go together.

05:24And therefore, I think what is meant is that the vacuum created by the disappearance of a

05:30being, by the disappearance of his memory system, is simply filled by another being who

05:39is I just as you feel your I.

05:43The funny thing though about being I, about feeling that one is sort of a center of the

05:47universe, is that you can only experience this I sensation in the singular.

05:53You can't experience being two or three I's all at the same time.

06:00Now then, it seems to me that this idea has three very important consequences.

06:07One is that the disappearance of our memory in death is not really something to be regretted.

06:18Of course, everybody wishes to hold forever to the memories and to the people and the situations

06:25that he particularly loves.

06:28But surely, if we think this through, is that what we actually want?

06:34Do we really want to have those we love, however greatly we love them, for always and always

06:40and always and always?

06:43Isn't it inconceivable that even in a very distant future, we wouldn't get tired of it?

06:51And this indeed is the secret of the book.

06:54This is why the demon of impermanence is been absent.

06:59Because it is forgetting about things that renews their wonder.

07:04Just think.

07:05When you opened your eyes on the world for the first time as a child, how brilliant colors

07:12were.

07:13What a jewel the sun was.

07:16What marvels the stars.

07:18How incredibly alive the trees were.

07:22That's all because they were new to your eyes.

07:26Or in the same way you know how it is you've been reading a mystery story.

07:30And you're looking around the house, you want something to read, and you pick up an old

07:33mystery story.

07:34If you read it years and years ago and you've forgotten all about the plot, it still excites

07:38you.

07:39But if you remember the plot, it doesn't excite you.

07:43And so by the dispensation of forgetting, the world is constantly renewed, and we are able

07:51to see it again and again, and to love again and again, to have people to whom we are deeply

07:58attached and deeply fond, always with renewed intensity, and without the contrast of having

08:07seen them before, before, before, before, for always, and always, and always.

08:13Another consequence of this is a very curious realization to me.

08:21Remember that question, who would I be if my mother had married someone else?

08:28Who, if I were you, we often say.

08:32One might so easily have been you.

08:36I might so easily have been born in China and India.

08:38Why do I feel that the world is centered in this place, as distinct from some other place?

08:43You jolly well know the world is centered where you are.

08:49And this gives one a very strange feeling of the idea that other people jolly well exist

08:57in the same sense you do.

08:59Everybody's name is I.

09:01That's what you call yourself.

09:04So there will always be I's in the world.

09:10Every I is, in a way, the same I.

09:13We all might be anyone else.

09:16And there is no escape.

09:18It goes on and on and on and on.

09:21So long as there is consciousness anywhere, there is I.

09:25You then, in a way, look out through all eyes.

09:29And that, perhaps, is the secret of the great virtue of compassion.

09:32All right, let's go with compassion.

09:34This message is starting from now.

09:35We are planning to make the bible of about theologie that accompanies part of the earthquake.

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