Rare Vedio : Act as If You Have Very Limited Time ( Part-1 ) || alan watts black screen

- Speaker A talks about an old optical illusion and explains that it is a result of the illusion of an illusion with which we are so used to. It is an example of illusions brought about by the acceptance of certain conventions. - Man has been called a time binding animal because he can plan his life, to prepare for future eventualities. But because he doesn't realize that the true reality in which he lives is the present moment, he develops a kind of chronic anxiety about time. - In the general hindu view, things tend to get worse in every cycle of time. The names of the yugas are given to them in the indian game of dice. It is because time tends more and more to pursue the future.

I suppose most of you are familiar with this old optical illusion. And you're asked the question, which of the three thick black lines is the longer? And I suppose one's natural reaction is to say, the one on the left. And I think you know that this is a result of the illusion of an illusion with which we are so used to which we are so used, and by which we are so easily fooled once we've accustomed ourselves to it. You might, if that picture were drawn more vividly, even be predisposed to thinking that was a real passage stretching away from you with doors at the end. Of course, if you came up against that kind of thing painted against the wall, you might make the mistake of walking into it and banging your nose. But this is an example of what we were talking about last time as Maya, that word from indian philosophy which generally has the meaning of illusions. Or rather illusions brought about by the acceptance of certain conventions of which perspective was an example. When we are not aware that certain things which we take for granted, like the separateness of each of things from each other, when we are not aware that this is a matter of convention, we are apt to be fooled. Now, I think one of the conventions by which we tend to be fooled more than almost any other is time. And for all human beings, time is a matter of extraordinary importance. And perhaps this is one of the principal ways in which we differ from animals. Because man has been called a time binding animal. That is to say, a creature who is vividly aware of the fact that his life moves, as it were, along a line from the past through the present and into the future. Animals apparently live pretty much moment by moment. They don't appear to have very strong memories. But because man has a strong memory, he is able to bear the past in mind, and, as it were, cast it forward into visions of the future based upon what has happened in the past. And therefore, although this facility gives man the most extraordinary ability to plan his life, to prepare for future eventualities, at the same time, there is a very heavy price which he pays for it. And especially if he takes this ability too seriously. In other words, if he doesn't realize that the true reality in which he lives is the present moment. Now, for example, the animal probably doesn't concern itself very much with problems of future disease, death or starvation and things of that kind. If an animal sees another dead animal lying around, I don't suppose he thinks to himself, well, one day that's going to happen to me. Rather, he just sees a dead animal. Sniffs it sees whether it's good to eat and wanders away. But for human beings it's entirely different. Because we actually spend most of our time and a great deal of our emotional energy. Living in time, which is not here. Living in an elsewhere, which is not concretely real. So much so that although we may be quite comfortable and happy in our present circumstances, if there is not a guarantee, not a promise of a good time coming tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. We are at once unhappy, even in the midst of pleasure and affluence. And so we develop a kind of chronic anxiety about time. We want to be sure more and more. Because of our sensitivity to the feeling of time. We want to be sure more and more that our future is assured. And for this reason, the future becomes of more importance to most human beings than the present. And in this sense, we are hooked, taken in by a Maya. Because it is of very little use to us to be able to control and plan the future. Unless we are capable, at the same time, of living totally in the present. And so, when in civilized societies, we spend so much of our time living for the future. We become very much like those celebrated donkeys, you know, that have a carrot fastened on a stick that's tied to the neck, you know, behind here. And it comes over and there's the carrot dangling in front of them. And they pursue it, pursue it, pursue it, but could never reach it. And so in exactly the same way, it's that way with us. My goodness, don't you remember when you went first to school, you went to kindergarten. And in kindergarten, the idea was to push along so that you could get into first grade. And then push along so that you could get into second grade, third grade, so on going up and up. And then you went to high school. And this was a great transition in life. And now the pressure is being put on. You must get ahead. You must go up the grades. And finally be good enough to get to college. And then when you get to college, you are still going step by step, step by step, up to the great moment in which you're ready to go out into the world. And then when you get out into this famous world. Comes the struggle for success in profession or business. And again there seems to be a ladder before you. Something for which you're reaching all the time. And then suddenly, when you're about 40 or 45 years old, in the middle of life, up one day and say, huh, I've arrived. And by Jove, I feel pretty much the same as I've always felt. In fact, I'm not so sure that I don't feel a little bit cheated, because, you see, you were fooled. You were always living for somewhere where you aren't. And while, as I said, it is of tremendous use for us to be able to look in this way and to plan, there is no use planning for a future which, when you get to it and it becomes a present, you won't be there. You'll be living in some other future which hasn't yet arrived. And so in this way, one is never able actually to inherit and enjoy the fruits of one's action. You can't live at all unless you can live fully now. And because now is never satisfactory, because we're never really living in it, we get more and more avid to go ahead and pursue the future. We develop our technology to a fantastic ability where we can more and more fulfill our desires for the future, almost immediately working towards a sort of push button world. But have you ever stopped to think what the world would be like if you could fulfill every wish the moment you wished it? Suppose, for example, on going to bed at night, you could always dream whatever you wanted to dream. What would happen after a while. Of course, I suppose at first you would dream fantastic pleasures, wonderful adventures, fulfillment of all the things you ever wished. Then, as time went on, don't you think you'd want to be, oh, a little bit surprised, to have a little bit less control over what was happening to you? And after you'd. If you've experimented with this for some months or years, you might even want dreams in which you suffer, because there is no real delight, no real fulfillment without delay. Doesn't every child know on a hot day, and you think, I'm terribly thirsty and I'd like an ice cream soda. Haven't you tried the experiment of putting off drinking it? Putting off so that you get thirstier and thirstier, and it's so much fun when you finally get to it. And so, in the same way, impatience with time, always wanting the future, is frustrating. Now, you know, in indian thought, one of the basic myths or ideas is of braHma, the world creator, who has infinite power and has everything that he wants. But he is LiKE our dreamer, and he wants to do something with the infinite time that is disposal. And therefore, what he does is to dream just like this, to dream the existence of the world. And he does it over enormous and incalculable periods of time, dreaming that he is the knower, the self, in every single creature that exists in the world, dreaming them all at once experiencing their joys and sorrows, completely plunging himself into the adventure of forgetting who he is. But he does this for immense and vast periods, rivaling in conception the latest modern astronomical ideas of the extent of time. You know, the basic REckoning period of time in the life of BRAHMA, the creator is called a kaLpa, and that is a period of 4,320,000 years. And the Kalpas are called the days of Brahma. One day, for Brahma's life, is a kalpa. And so there are the periods which you can call his days or nights, whichever you wish, where he goes into dream and he dreams the world. Then, for the following Kalpa, he wakes up and realizes who he is again. And then he dreams again, going on and on and on through years of kalpas, of 360 days and nights, of centuries of kalpas, endlessly, endlessly, endlessly. For the Hindu doesn't think of time in quite the same way that we do. Obviously, we think of time as linear, day after day after day after day, going along in a line. Or sometimes we like to think of time as this sort of line, going up and up and up and up and up and up, and getting better and better and better. But that's nothing. The fundamental idea of time for almost any people in the world outside of western civilization, in nearly every other part of the world, time is thought out as a circle. And they say, after all, isn't it reasonable for it to be a circle? Look at your watch. Doesn't your watch go round and round? But the Hindus not only think of time as cycling, going round and round and round forever, just as the earth cycles round and around the sun, they also think of it in another, quite fundamentally different way from our conception of time. I referred to this idea that's common among us, that time is going up and up and things are getting better and better. But in the general hindu view, in every cycle of time, things tend, on the whole to get worse. They divide the kalpa into a number of shorter periods, each of which is called a yuga. But the yugas are so arranged that there are four of them in what is called a mahayuga, or great yuga. The first one occupying this period is the longest. The second one occupies a shorter period from here to here, the third still shorter than the second, the fourth, the shortest of all. And the names that are given to them are the names of the throws. In the indian game of dice. The best throw, the throw of four, is called creta. And that lasts for the longest time. It is a golden age where everything is just fine. The next one is called treta, the throw of three. Pretty good but not quite so good. The third is called dwapara, the throw of two. And here good and evil are equally balanced. Not so hard. The final throw, the throw of one is called kali, the worst throw and that's the shortest period. And of course according to hindu ideas we're living in it now. But in Kali yuga everything goes to pieces and becomes dreadful and time goes faster now. Why do they feel that time deteriorates in this way? It is because as one lives in time and becomes more and more conscious of time we tend more and more to pursue the future, as I said a little while ago. And as we pursue the future present time becomes more and more unsatisfactory and we feel that we have to chase our happiness at greater. I.