Recently, I listened to an excerpt of a talk by the inimitable Alan Watts (1915-1973). Only half in jest, Watts called himself a “spiritual entertainer,” but he was a very smart man and a profound thinker. Watts, an Anglo-American, was an ordained Episcopal priest, but was a student of all religions and went a long way towards familiarizing American audiences with the great Asian religious and spiritual traditions. Thanks to YouTube and podcasts, he is probably better known today than during his lifetime.

In this talk, Watts addressed the preeminent topic of all religion, dying and death. He says we make too much fuss about them because we’re not paying attention. If we did, our attitude would shift dramatically.

So then, we need to see death and its allied phenomena in its “suchness.” That is to say, it is just that after a certain time, as the leaves in the fall disintegrate and fall off the trees, and we say well what a lovely Autumn it was, this New England breeze, a very gorgeous season.

So, in the same way human beings fall apart. And, well, we say that’s terrible. But supposing the unanimity of the social attitude was quite different, and there is no reason why it shouldn’t be. And falling apart is considered quite the thing to do. After all it helps to clean things up. It gets old stuff out of the way and so we, us, I can all go on. We renew, we come back.

And so, the whole thing you see is this: You can’t suddenly switch from death as an awful horror to death as a great event. You have to go through a certain intermediate point, where you have to see it, … that this is very useful.

As you probably know, I have recently been having my own experience of “falling apart” of a bio-mechanical nature. For unknown reasons, except what Watts alludes to above, my hip joint became increasingly nonfunctional and so, I had it replaced. Slowly, and somewhat painfully, my body is integrating and adjusting to this new reality.

This comes after many years of dental fillings, eye glasses, lens replacements via cataract surgery, and a dental implant. All in response to this tendency of my body to fall apart. And who knows what more lies ahead. Except I can be sure that, again to use Watts’ language, eventually my “leaf will fall off the tree.” How awful. But is it, really?

As Watts says, things being born, maturing, and dying are all around us. It’s what the natural world is all about. It can’t be any other way. Yet, in our case we think this is wrong somehow, and therefore a source of great sorrow. So, Watts asks, why don’t we save ourselves a lot of distress and emotional turmoil by changing our attitude and decide that “falling apart is … quite the thing to do”?

Watts, of course, knows the answer. The obstacle to adopting such a logical attitude is our sense of self, this thing called our “ego.” But our ego, according to Watts in another talk, is a “hallucination.” It’s a collection in our mind of countless ideas and images of our ourself, accumulated over our lifetime, often for the benefit of those around us. But it’s not real.

I wonder what you mean when you use the word “I.” What most civilized people mean by that word is a hallucination, an identification of ourselves with our idea of ourselves. Or I would rather say, with our image of ourselves. And that’s the person, or the ego. You play a role. You identify with that role. I play a role. It’s called Alan Watts. But I assure you it’s a mask and I don’t take it seriously. So I know I’m not that.  But most of us are taught to think that we are whom we are called. When you’re a little child and you begin to learn a role and your parents and your peers approve of your being that, they know who you are.

It’s obvious now that as our world careens towards ecological disaster, something must fundamentally change. We will not “invent” our way out of this. Watts sounded an early alarm about what we were doing to the planet and saw unmasking the ego as essential to changing our relationship with the natural world.

We speak of coming into this world and this whole sensation that we are brought up to have of being an island of consciousness locked up in a bag of skin facing outside us a world that is profoundly alien to us in the sense that what is outside me is not me. This sets up a fundamental sensation of hostility and estrangement between ourselves and the so-called external world….

It should be obvious that the human being goes with the rest of the universe, even though we say in popular speech, “I came into this world.” Now it is not true that you came into this world. You came out of it, in the same way as a flower comes out of a plant or a fruit comes out of a tree. And therefore, people are an expression of its energy and of its nature.

Seeing ourselves as part of this world, rather an as alien invaders, is a transformation in our self-awareness. But that’s only possible if we first come to realize that our ego, our mind, is not our true identity, but a false self. What is our true self? This is where language fails for language is the primary tool of the ego for breaking up reality in manageable bits and pieces. But our real self is a manifestation of the one reality.

In the Bible, the true self is called spirit. In Genesis, Adam comes alive when he receives the breath/spirit of God. And all people, when they die, “give up” their spirit for it to return to God (John 19:30). In Hindu tradition, the true self, apart from body and mind, is called Atman, which is a spark of the divine, ultimate reality, Brahman. More recently, some physicists and other scientist have been saying that consciousness is actually the fundamental reality of existence.

But while fascinating and of some value, theological or scientific formulas and speculation are not the portal into this new awareness. Rather, as all the mystical traditions agree, this self-discovery is the consequence of a spiritual awakening which transcends language. A transformation of how we see ourselves and the world around us. An experience beyond mental understanding of the oneness of all reality, including ourselves.

While little appreciated then or since, this is what Jesus is pointing to when he declares that we must lose our life (false self/ego) in order to find it (true self/spirit). And Paul points to his awakening when he declares that “it is not longer I who live but Christ who lives in me,” with Christ understood as the revelation and manifestation of our true nature.

But again, this is not about religion or holy words, though they may be helpful pointers. Rather it is about seeing with new eyes and discovering a world, a universe, a reality that has been hiding in plain sight. A world that is full of endless wonder and mystery and of which we are an integral part. It is what Jesus called the Kingdom of God, which he says is within us and all around us.

So yes, we all fall apart and ultimately flutter to the ground like autumn leaves. But what amazing things happen in the process! And what amazing things follow as “the old stuff gets out of the way,” to use Watts’ words, and unimaginable new things come into being. And somehow through us, the one Self of love and life brings it about and participates in it all through all eternity.

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