Alan Watts and the New Story
Who is Alan Watts?
The last article I wrote and posted here on Medium was entitled, “We Need a New Story.”
Shortly after I penned that article, I happened to hear a 30-minute lecture by Alan Watts entitled, “What is Reality?”
For those who don’t know Alan Watts, he was an English writer who wrote on philosophical, spiritual and mystical issues. He called himself a “philosophical entertainer.” He was most popular with the beat generation in the 1950s and 1960s. He died in 1973. His tapes and books are still widely available online. If you are looking for a deeper understanding of life, his ideas are still relevant today, if not more so.
In the particular talk mentioned above, he discussed the different stories people tell about how the universe came to be.
The Ceramic Model and the Fully Automatic Model
He said we were governed by a conflict between two stories, the Ceramic Model and the Fully Automatic Model. They represent the God created universe and the modern Big Bang story respectively.
There stories are important. They give us values, structure and meaning. They tell us where we come from, who we are, where we are going, and what our purpose is.
Even though the Alan Watts talk is four or five decades old, the battle between these two views, between Creationism/Intelligent Design and the scientific Big Bang story, still rages on.
But Watts wants to break that duopolistic hold on the debate by claiming that both views are wrong in their claim that the world is hostile to us.
Did We Come Into the World or did We Come Out of It?
This is because both views assert we came into this world, when in reality we came out of it.
When we come into a world, it is as if we were dropped into an alien environment as something “other”.
When we say we came out of the world, it implies we are a part of an organic process from which we eventually emerged.
Watts says people evolved out of the universe in the same way a rose emerged from a rose bush or an apple from an apple tree.
It’s part of an intricately connected process.
If we walk out into our garden and see roses blossoming on our rose bush, we would say the bush in flowering.
The Earth is Peopling!
In the same way, let’s suppose there were intergalactic beings traveling throughout the universe monitoring the developmental stages of earth. On one of their flyovers to gather data, they would have seen people for the first time. They would have reported back that the earth had finally started peopling just as an apple tree would apple or a rose bush would flower.
It’s all part of the process.
We would never say the apples were separate from the tree, or the roses were separate from the bush that produced it.
So why, then, Watts, wonders do we separate ourselves from the earth or the universe that created us?
We weren’t just dropped into an alien environment as the other two stories posit, but emerged from it as an apple does from a tree or a rose from a bush.
So, the question becomes, why do we believe we are separate and alienated from the world and all its inhabitants?
It’s because when the Fully Automatic Model replaced the Ceramic Model for most people, we replaced a mythological story with a scientifically backed one.
The Ink Bottle Example
Watts compares the explosion of the Big Bang to throwing a bottle of ink against a wall and watching it splatter.
In the center the ink is dense, but on the outskirts the splatter streaks will be thinner, revealing more intricate patterns.
Those intricate patterns represent the emergence of humans on the edge of creation.
Since we are so far out from the original explosion, scientists tell us we are not a part of it. Instead, we are just disconnected “things”, floating in the nether regions of the cosmos with no direction home.
“The Skin-Encapsulated Ego”
Watts calls this view, “the skin-encapsulated ego”. What is in here is me and what is out there is not me.
This creates a “us vs them” hostile relation to everything that is not me. It all becomes a threat.
Watts says this view has done enormous damage to our psyches, plus it’s not even true. It’s a myth just like the earlier Ceramic Models were myths.
But we are a part of the Big Bang. The primordial energy of the Big Bang is pulsating through our bodies and connecting us to everything. We are not separate from that.
We now know there is no such thing as separate objects or events. They are all interconnected.
Quantum physics tells us this. Everything is relationship.
I cannot define myself without taking my environment and other people around me into account. I am a composite of these relationships as is everything else.
In short, Watts says, I don’t know who I am unless you know who you are and vice versa.
The Rabbi Quote Nails It
He quotes a rabbi who says,
“If I am I because you are you, and
If you are you because I am I
Then I am not I and you are not you.”
In other words, we define each other. We are interdependent beings, not isolated things.
The external world is as much a part of us as our bodies are. The external world flows into us and our internal world flows back out into the external world We are all part of the same interconnected process.
Why Go On?
Watts quotes the French existentialist philosopher, Albert Camus, who said the only real question to ask ourselves is, “Should I kill myself.” In short, why should we go on?
The answer, Watts says, depends on whether we have a good theory of the universe to bet on. If one doesn’t, if one has the view of the Fully Automatic Model, then what’s the point of going on?
Why believe the universe is run by an unintelligent force? This view denigrates the world and ourselves as meaningless. It leads us to have hostile relations to it and ourselves.
The world then becomes a trap where we are isolated in bodies that will eventually become sick and decrepit. After a while, not even our modern day mechanics, called doctors, can put us back together again.
Why go through all that? What is the point? Why not just end it all and get it done? We weren’t supposed to be here anyway. We are uninvited guests to a party that doesn’t want us, so why not just leave?
Surely one might reply I have to do it for my kids. What would they do without me? But then when your kids grow up and have their own kids, they will be faced with the same question. Why go on? And again the response will be for my kids, and so it goes.
This is the myth the modern world has convinced us is true. Is it any wonder we see things collapsing all around us with wars, environmental degradation, and increasing cases of suicide and loneliness?
It’s all being run by mad people who have no clue what they are doing.
If that is the universe story you want to accept, then good luck to you.
But is that story true?
The Reason To Go On Depends on Your View of the Universe
Watts says if intelligence, love and beauty exist, it will be found in other people and the world around us. If we can find it there, then it must also exist in ourselves. Therefore, it must be a symptom of the scheme of things in the universe in the same way an apple is a symptom of the scheme of things of an apple tree or a rose of a rose bush.
The earth is not just a big rock invested with organisms. The earth is geological, but it grows people. People are a symptom of the Earth as the Earth is a symptom of the solar system which in turn is a symptom of the galaxies and so it goes.
It’s all interconnected and intelligent.
Now that is a theory of the universe we can bet on. That is a theory of the universe that can get us going. No longer are we confined to our physical bodies. Instead, who we are extends far beyond the physical body right back to the Big Bang and beyond.
We feel we are the eternal universe. We feel its primordial energy surging through our bodies.
If we don’t believe this, and choose to feel separate and cut off from everything in a meaningless pointless universe, then eventually we will pay the price, most likely taking the whole planet with us. Are we still then continuing on for our kids?
In that case we must hope there is life on other planets in other galaxies that have found a better way forward than we have.
But, our time is not up just yet. There is still time to overcome ourselves and reconnect to the universe and feel we are a part of a process that is bigger than ourselves. So, plug back in and find out who you really are and why you matter. Good Luck!
