We suffer from a hallucination of our own existence. We believe that “I” myself is a center that confronts an external world. But we do not “come into” this world — we come out of it. Just as an ocean waves, the universe peoples. Every individual is an expression of the whole universe at one unique focal point.
Simple Picture
ELI5: you think you are a drop of water that fell into the ocean. Actually, you are a wave the ocean is making. You were never separate — you just forgot. The forgetting is the game.
God likes to play hide and seek, but because there is nothing outside God, he has no one to play with but himself. So he pretends to be you and me and everything else. He does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself — but that is the whole fun of it. He does not want to find himself too quickly, for that would spoil the game.
The First Illusion
The first result of believing yourself separate is that you regard “outside” as mostly hostile. You are forever “conquering” everything. The second result is that we share no common ground — it is just my opinion against yours, and the most aggressive propaganda makes the decisions.
An organism cannot be fully described without fully describing its environment. Leg motion requires description of the ground. Blood in the veins is not the same as blood in a test tube. A person can be killed by chopping off his head, but you can kill him just as effectively by separating him from his proper environment. The individual is separate from the environment only in name — and when this is not recognized, you have been fooled by your name.
This is Arendt’s loneliness at the ontological level: the separation is not just social but existential. The lonely person has lost connection with others; Watts says the deeper problem is that we have lost connection with the universe that is producing us. The cat never had this problem — cat-identities are universe-constructed, looking outward rather than at the social mountain.
The Double Bind
Society is our extended mind and body, inseparable from us, yet it tries its best to convince us that we are individuals. This creates a double bind: “We demand that you love us because you want to and not because we say you ought to.” It is a demand for spontaneity.
Children raised in such an environment are perpetually confused. The education system prepares you for a future instead of showing you how to be alive now. From grade school to college to the real world, you finally enjoy the fruits of your labors in retirement only to find your body is failing. If instead at every stage you had been able to play it as a game, you could find every stage fascinating.
This is the finite game trap: life organized as a series of steps toward some ultimate Success, each stage merely preparation for the next. impro describes the same mechanism: education teaches you to reject the first thought in favor of a “better” one until you cannot think at all. Watts identifies the root: for a life forced to be lived is not a life.
Nothing fails like success, because to succeed is to force things to happen which are acceptable only when they happen without force. This is the inner game paradox: Self 1 grabs for the zone and it vanishes. The only way to get there is to leave Self 1 behind.
The Ego Has No Exit
To “try” to be egoless is to try not to think of a monkey. The more we try to behave without greed or fear, the more we realize we do these things out of greedy or fearful reasons. Saints declared themselves abject sinners because their aspirations to saintliness were motivated by spiritual pride — the desire to admire oneself as a supreme success in the art of love.
Only by accepting the absurdity of the ego can it be dispelled, not through will. When you go to museums for “culture” you gain nothing. When you meditate for spiritual awakening you get nothing. It is only in the frustration of these attempts that you realize their absurdity. When all the rules are double-binds and all the moves self-defeating, the game reveals itself as fiction. The car parable captures this perfectly: every technique for transcending the ego is a dashboard button, and getting out has nothing to do with buttons.
This is self-acceptance at its deepest: self-rejection is a strategy, and trying to accept yourself is self-rejection wearing a mask. Singer’s walls break down when you stop supporting them. Blanton’s phony struggle produces struggle rather than results. Watts adds the final twist: the “I” who is trying to solve the problem is the problem. There is no seed of truth implanted — tear off every disguise and there is nothing left.
Anyone who brags about knowing this doesn’t understand it. It is deeply offensive to those who honestly believe themselves to be lonely spirits, because you have created an in/out dynamic: “You’re not good enough to be ‘in’; follow my teachings and you will be.” Even De Mello’s awakened person can fall into this trap. The social cost of clarity is exactly this danger made relational: seeing through the game is not superiority, but it does make you incompatible with those who need you to keep playing.
Purpose Defeats Purpose
Only things done without purpose are true things, as things done with purpose seek the purpose and not the thing. Man defined as a separate ego is incapable of pleasure, let alone creative power. Hoaxed into being an independent source of action, he cannot understand why what he does never comes up to what he should do.
For a society that defines one so separately cannot persuade him to behave as if he really belonged. Thus he feels chronic guilt and makes heroic efforts to placate his conscience. Yet these efforts only bring new and increasingly terrible problems. The vast social and economic problems of the world cannot be settled by mere effort and technique. The outsider who has no sense of belonging invariably interferes.
This is the organizing principle problem: organizing around pain (or purpose, or self-improvement) always produces its opposite. Happiness can only be spread by those who are happy. Peace can only be made by those who are peaceful. If you are incapable of enjoyment, you have nothing to give to anyone. Without this, all social concern will be meddling and all work for the future will be planned disaster.
The Game of Black and White
Life is at root a game, and the game becomes a fight when we fail to see the connection between on and off, crest and trough, black and white. The more vividly you know the future, the more it makes sense to say you already know it — and when the outcome is certain, we call it quits and begin another. In the game of order-vs-chance, order must not win. Similarly, chance must not win. The winning of either removes the value of the game.
Sages are not models of virtue — they come with all their human flaws. But involved as you may be in conflicts, you can no longer see the enemy as something to be eliminated but a partner in a game. This gives you the priceless ability to contain conflicts and the willingness to compromise. This “honor among thieves” is far less dangerous than those who do not recognize that they are thieves. The strong gods are dangerous not because they are strong but because people who wield them deny being players in a game.
Common Misread
The dimwit take is “nothing matters — it’s all an illusion, so do whatever you want.”
The midwit take is “this is intellectual parlor trick philosophy with no practical application.”
The better take is that the realization that life is a game does not make it less serious — it makes it more sincere. Playing is trivial when playing with toys, but sincere when playing an instrument. To want love to be sincere is better than to want it to be serious. For love in play is true love. The sadness turns to joy when you realize it is only a game — not because games don’t matter, but because awareness of our own existence is so impoverished that nothing seems more boring than just being, and this infinite hunger for an infinite future is the only disease.
Main Payoff
The goal of action is always contemplation — knowing and being rather than seeking and becoming. As it is, we are gulping down undigested experiences as fast as we can stuff them in. Self-knowledge leads to wonder, and wonder to curiosity and investigation. Nothing interests people more than people. To be infinitely curious about yourself is to be so about others and their being.
The people we call clods seem to find nothing fascinating about being human. Their humanity is incomplete as it has never astonished them. This is the final test: not whether you have achieved enlightenment, but whether being alive still amazes you.
References:
- Alan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are