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We were talking last time about the
extraordinary conflict between man

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and nature, which exists among
almost all highly civilized peoples.

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And especially here in the Western
world, where we talk so much about our

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conquest of nature, our mastery of space,
our subjection of the physical world.

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And I think one of the main reasons
why we feel in this particular way

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is that each individual experiences
himself as a peculiarly separate being.

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In other words, every man thinks of
this world as a collection of objects.

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The world is a lot of things, and each
person considers himself as a thing.

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And I wonder if you've ever
stopped to ask yourself what a thing is,

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and why you think
you are a thing.

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Are you quite sure
that you are a thing?

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Because if we take a look at
ourselves from another point of view,

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for example like this, we shall
find that we are not one thing at all.

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We're an extraordinary
number of things.

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For what you're looking at there

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is the cell structure
of your own body.

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A whole multitude of
tiny, tiny little individuals.

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And now, we might ask again, what other
points of view could we take to ourselves?

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We could of course take the
sociologist's point of view, where

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we're not really a thing at all,
but a sub-member of a group.

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Or still more, if a man visiting us from another
planet in something like a flying saucer were

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to hover down and look at what sort of creature
is inhabiting this Earth, what would he see?

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Let's take a look and
get some idea of his view.

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This is the kind of creature he
would find inhabiting this planet.

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A sprawly, nubbly thing with
various lines connecting bits of it.

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That would be, in his view,

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the kind of thing that we are.

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For you see, how many things we are depends
upon the point of view which one takes.

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Every point of view that we've taken, the point
of view of the cells, the point of view of the

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man hovering above the earth in a flying saucer
or an airplane, is a correct point of view.

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And according to the way in which we
look, so we divide the things of the world.

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For you see,

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It's interesting, isn't it, that the
word thing is very like the word think.

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Because by breaking
down our world into

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things is the way in
which we think about it.

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We break down what we call
the material world into objects and

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assign to those objects the kind
of words we describe as nouns.

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And then the world of
action we break into events.

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And assigned to events the
kind of word we call verbs.

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But things and events are
fundamentally the ways of

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breaking up our complex world
so that we can think about it.

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I wonder if any of you have ever
been to a psychologist and taken a

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Rorach test and been asked to look
at one of these extraordinary blots.

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Now actually the block that we're looking
at here isn't a real Rorschach block because

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you're not allowed to show them in public
in case people saw them before the test.

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But they're something like this.

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And they're made by splodging
ink on paper and folding

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the paper over so that
you get a symmetrical block.

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And the psychologist says
to you when you look at

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that, now please will you
tell me a story about it?

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What do you think it looks like?

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And you might say, well I think
it looks like a great big cat face.

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Or maybe it's a woman's handbag.

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Or maybe it's a dancer waving his
arms in front of a pair of pine trees.

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With some rocks
around, all sorts of stories

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you could invent about
it, anything you like.

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And the psychologist will use the kind of information
that you've given him, the sort of things that you

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project out of your own mind into that blot, and he will
then form some diagnosis of the kind of person you are.

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But you see, he's not
interested in the information which

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you give him about the blot
as a description of the blot.

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He's interested in what you say as a
description of what is going on inside you.

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In other words, what you are
saying about that blot is a projection

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of yourself into its strange
and complicated conformations.

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Now you see, our whole
world is in many ways

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not so very much
unlike this peculiar blot.

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And you might think that there might be
some persuasive person who stands up and

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gives a story about the blot of the world,
and other people agree with what he says.

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He says, look here, that's a
mountain, that's a tree, that's a rock.

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And everybody else would agree
because he was so persuasive.

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And we would all be beginning to give the
same story about the cosmic Rorschach blot.

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Because after all, our
world is a very wiggly affair.

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Consider, for example, clouds.

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Or clouds with mountains
across them, or waters, or stars.

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All the world is
a wiggly affair.

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Not at all unlike that
block we were looking at.

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And we have to find out
ways of making sense of it.

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Perhaps one of the things that men first, one of the
strangest and most difficult to understand things that

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men first began to make sense of in this kind of Rorschach
blot interpretation way were the stars in heaven.

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And one of the ways in which
they did this was to project

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Upon the skies, figures of all kinds of mythological
monsters and beasts, such as the idea of a dipper for the

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great bear, those stars in the great bear that look, you
know, like a ladle, or some people call them the plow.

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Or here, perhaps on a celestial
sphere of this kind, you can see

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quite clearly the outline of
the constellation Leo, the lion.

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A lion drawn in the sky.

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So that men could find their way
about in the stars, recognize their

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outlines by associating certain
groups of stars with familiar images.

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But you see, this is
fundamentally a projection

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of ideas out of our
own minds onto nature.

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Nature itself

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will take all kinds of
different projections,

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and no one is
necessarily the right one.

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They work for us so long
as we agree about them,

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that is, so long as we
abide by convention.

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And in Indian philosophy,
the fundamental word

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for this kind of thing is
the Sanskrit term maya.

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I'm going to write
that down for you.

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Pronounced maya.

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And this word comes from a
root in the Sanskrit language, ma.

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And the word ma is
at the basis of all kinds

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of words that we use
in our own tongue.

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It's at the basis of matter,

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of the Latin mater, or mother,
at the basis of matrix, or metric,

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because the fundamental meaning
of the root ma is to measure.

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And so it works
in this sort of way.

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I was talking about
our world being wiggly.

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You know, something like this.

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That is the typical sort of shape that
we are having to deal with all the time.

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And I think you'll see
at once that a shape like

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that is extraordinarily
difficult to talk about.

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If I were talking on the radio at the moment and not on
television, I would have the greatest difficulty in describing

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that line to you in such a way that you could write it
down on a piece of paper in front of you without seeing it.

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But here you can see it, and
you can understand it at once.

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But it isn't enough just
to be able to see things.

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We want to be able
to talk about them.

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We want to be able to
describe them exactly so

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that we can control
them and deal with them.

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I mean, supposing this were the
outline of a piece of territory on a map,

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then you might want to tell someone
an exact spot to which he should go.

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And then you would have to be
far more precise about it than you

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can be when you just get the
general idea of it by looking at it.

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And so we introduce
then the idea of Maya by

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essentially doing this.

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This might be called a matrix.

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A line crossed, lines crossed by
lines, in a very formal, simple pattern.

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And the moment we do that, it becomes
very easy indeed to talk about this

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wiggly line, because we could, for
example, number all these squares across

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1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,
8, 9, 10, and so on.

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We can also number
them downwards.

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And then in terms of numbers
across and numbers down, we can

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indicate the exact points on this
grid which cross the wiggly line.

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And by numbering those
points one after another, we can

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give an accurate description
of the way that line moves.

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And furthermore, supposing the line under our grid were not still
like this one, but supposing it was wiggling in motion, supposing

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it was a flea or something dipped in ink who was crawling across
the paper, and we wanted to know where he was going to go.

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All we would have to do would
be to plot out the positions which

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he has covered, and then we
could calculate statistically a trend.

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Which would indicate where
he would be likely to go next.

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And if he went there next, we should
say, by Jove, isn't that incredible?

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This little flea crawling across the
paper is obeying the laws of statistics.

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Well, as a matter
of fact, he isn't.

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What he is doing is... Or rather, I
should say, not what he is doing,

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but what we are doing, is we are
making a very, very abstract model

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of the way in which that line is
shaped or in which that flea is crawling.

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We are breaking
it up into little bits,

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whereas in fact it is
not a lot of little bits.

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It is a continuous sweep.

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But by treating it in this
way, as if it were broken

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up into bits, we are measuring
it, we are making a Maya

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And these cross lines are a
Maya just in the same way as the

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idea of the lion, the Leo
constellation in the stars is a Maya.

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A way of projecting.

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You see, this thing, it comes out of our
minds and we project it upon nature like

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this and break nature into bits so that it
can be easily talked about and handled.

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But you see, this

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tends to give us the impression
that our world is a lot of

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bits and that things are really
separate from each other.

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You see, how could I
demonstrate how this is?

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I have an idea.

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Mr. Cameraman, will you
focus the camera on one

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small tiny spot in the set
and come very close to it

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and travel along bit
by bit by bit by bit.

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Now you see, this is looking at the world little
bit by little bit as if we were only using the

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central vision of our eyes, the kind of vision
we use for reading and close work of that kind.

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But if this were the only
way we had of looking at

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things, it would be very
difficult to make any sense

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of life at all, because
we would see

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everything in series,
bit after bit after bit.

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But fortunately, we are
also able to enlarge the whole

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view and take in everything
at once in a single sweep.

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And you see, this shows all the
advantages and the disadvantages

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of looking at things in the way
that Indian philosophy calls maya.

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Because if maya were the only
way we had for looking at things,

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we should only be able to
understand one thing at a time.

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And our world is not just one thing
happening one after another, one at a time.

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Our world is an enormous
volume, a great vastness, in

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which everything is
happening all together at once.

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Now, being able to think of things
one at a time is extraordinarily useful.

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Because this is what enables us to have science,
to have scientific control of nature, to be

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able to count things, measure them, manage
them, and predict their behavior in the future.

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But it is inclined to run away with
us and give us the impression, if

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we think too hard about things, or
if we put too much faith in thinking,

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that the world is made up of a lot of
separate bits so that we have a kind of

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bit-by-bit approach to nature, what I might
call a putt-putt-putt-putt view of life.

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It's useful, indeed, to break things
down into things and to classify.

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But the moment it gives us the impression that
these little bits into which we have divided

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the world are really, and in nature, separate
from each other, we get into confusion.

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Now how do we know that

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divided things
aren't really separate.

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Look, for example, at me.

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How do you know I'm here?

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How can you make out
the outlines of my body?

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Isn't it because there
is a contrast between

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the background behind
me and my figure?

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You know where the background ends
and I begin, and so you are able to see me.

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But now what would happen if the
background should vanish and disappear and

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I would no longer be there, but the figure
in the ground instead would be my button.

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In order to see me, you have to
see a background along with me.

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And so, if we go back and look again at the
whole thing, then we can see once again.

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Now what does that tell us?

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Surely, the thing that
it tells us is not merely

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that the background is one
thing and the figure is another.

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Since the two must
go together, it indicates

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that there is a
connection between them.

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If you can't have the perception of
a figure without a background, if you

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simply cannot see it if there is no
background there, doesn't that mean that

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The background and the
figure are some way inseparable.

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They're different, yes, but
they're inseparable differences.

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Take, for example, a coin.

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When you have a coin, it
has two sides, heads and tails.

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And these two sides
are indeed different.

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You might say they
are separate sides.

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But what would happen
if we take a file and start

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rubbing away to get
rid of one of the sides?

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Well, we would rub and rub and rub, and
when we finally got rid of the side, the

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other side would have vanished too, because
the two sides of a coin go together.

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Yes, they are different, but
they are also inseparable.

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And this is true of almost
everything in the world,

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because we distinguish
things from their background.

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We distinguish one side from
another as we distinguish up from down.

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00:18:37,950 --> 00:18:41,370
Now imagine what would happen if we
arranged everything in the set, or tried

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to arrange everything, so that nothing
were down, everything had to be up.

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If we could really, in nature, separate the
up from the down, why we couldn't do it?

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Because up goes with down, is
unintelligible apart from down, in the

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same way that the head side of a
coin goes together with the tail side.

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00:19:05,019 --> 00:19:07,146
And so, in this way,

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We, as individuals, as separate
beings, are really inseparable

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from the whole natural
environment in which we live.

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We go together.

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00:19:20,493 --> 00:19:23,746
And you cannot have
the one without the other.

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00:19:23,871 --> 00:19:26,791
Without what we call things,
there would be no world.

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But without what we would call the
whole world, there would be no things.

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And this is not only true of

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00:19:35,800 --> 00:19:38,052
what we call things and objects.

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00:19:38,177 --> 00:19:40,721
It's also true of many
of our experiences.

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Let's take, for example,
one of the most fundamental

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00:19:44,100 --> 00:19:48,062
distinctions in experience,
what is pleasant and what is not.

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00:19:48,187 --> 00:19:51,607
Now, a great many people
are bending the whole effort

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00:19:51,732 --> 00:19:55,194
of their lives to have
pleasure and get rid of pain.

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00:20:00,116 --> 00:20:04,370
This pursuit of
pleasure is regarded as

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00:20:04,495 --> 00:20:09,625
the fundamental aim
of human existence.

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00:20:09,750 --> 00:20:13,337
And you know when you start to read old books
on Indian philosophy, Chinese philosophy, they

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00:20:13,462 --> 00:20:17,299
very often say that the first thing a man must
understand is to give up the pursuit of pleasure.

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00:20:24,306 --> 00:20:27,685
And people who read these
things think that these are very

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00:20:27,810 --> 00:20:31,272
gripey Puritans, people who
have a sour attitude to life,

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00:20:33,315 --> 00:20:36,569
who burnt their fingers in the
game of the pursuit of pleasure

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00:20:36,694 --> 00:20:39,655
and say, well, let's not get
mixed up with that anymore.

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00:20:39,780 --> 00:20:47,163
But as a matter of fact, this is a,
just a plain, clear, sensible statement.

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00:20:47,288 --> 00:20:53,294
It's like saying, you cannot
have up without down.

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00:20:53,419 --> 00:20:57,047
You cannot have a figure
without a background.

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00:20:57,173 --> 00:21:01,802
And in the same way exactly,
you cannot experience pleasure

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00:21:01,927 --> 00:21:06,223
unless there is something
with which you can contrast it.

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00:21:06,348 --> 00:21:09,518
You know what happens when
a person who's longed to make

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00:21:09,643 --> 00:21:12,688
a great deal of money
all his life, and he makes it.

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00:21:12,813 --> 00:21:14,773
Finally, he gets
a million dollars.

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00:21:14,899 --> 00:21:16,734
He thinks this is the answer.

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00:21:16,859 --> 00:21:20,070
Well, it's fine, just in
the moment of transition,

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00:21:20,196 --> 00:21:23,032
while he is going from
poverty to richness.

259
00:21:23,157 --> 00:21:29,079
But when he's had his million dollars for
a few months, everything adjusts itself.

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00:21:29,205 --> 00:21:33,000
And he begins to feel just the
same as he always felt before.

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00:21:33,125 --> 00:21:36,837
Conversely, if some of you have lived near a
tannery, or near a public utility place like a gas

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00:21:36,962 --> 00:21:40,883
producing factory, you get so used to the bad smell
in the background that you cease to notice it.

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00:21:46,805 --> 00:21:48,807
It becomes the normal smell.

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00:21:48,933 --> 00:21:51,268
And so you don't notice
it anymore as a bad smell.

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For both the bad and the good
need each other as contrasts.

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00:21:56,690 --> 00:21:58,275
And therefore,

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00:22:01,612 --> 00:22:04,990
When we try to get rid of one
of the pairs and possess the

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00:22:05,115 --> 00:22:08,619
other only, we do something
that is profoundly nonsensical.

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00:22:19,505 --> 00:22:26,554
We think we can do it, because in maya,
that is to say, in conventional thinking,

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00:22:26,679 --> 00:22:30,474
in terms of that kind of measurement that we call thought we can separate the one from the other
we can talk about up as different from down we can talk about one thing as different from other

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00:22:30,599 --> 00:22:34,687
things but in actual experience it can't be done just as in actual experience that wiggly line was
a continuous line and not a series of points and in another way too we can't really pursue pleasure

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00:22:56,792 --> 00:23:03,757
because pleasure is
something that has to come to us.

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00:23:06,260 --> 00:23:09,680
For example, you can pursue
a cow and you can go out

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00:23:09,805 --> 00:23:13,267
and catch it and kill it
and serve it up as steak.

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00:23:17,104 --> 00:23:19,690
That you can do.

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00:23:19,815 --> 00:23:25,654
But you can't pursue the pleasure
that you get from eating steak.

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00:23:25,779 --> 00:23:29,658
If in other words you try to get pleasure out of steak, supposing I sit here and I have a great big splendid
steak served to me, and I say this is the best steak I ever ate, why it's a Chateaubriand, and it cost

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00:23:29,783 --> 00:23:33,787
twelve dollars a plate, and therefore I must make the very maximum effort to enjoy it, and I cut the thing
up, and I put it in my mouth, and say now, I've really got to get the most out of this piece of steak.

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00:23:46,634 --> 00:23:50,012
And so I chew it with all my
might to get the very best out of it.

280
00:23:50,137 --> 00:23:50,971
And what happens?

281
00:23:51,096 --> 00:23:54,642
I'm making so much muscular strain,
I'm trying so hard to get something

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00:23:54,767 --> 00:23:58,103
out of it that I frustrate the
very pleasure that it should give.

283
00:24:02,816 --> 00:24:04,568
Why is that?

284
00:24:04,693 --> 00:24:07,780
Surely it is because
pleasure is a function of

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00:24:07,905 --> 00:24:11,659
nerves, and you can't make
an effort with your nerves.

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00:24:13,702 --> 00:24:17,081
Catching a cow is a
function of muscles, and

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00:24:17,206 --> 00:24:20,417
you can make an
effort with your muscles.

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00:24:20,542 --> 00:24:22,836
To give another
illustration of the same thing,

289
00:24:22,961 --> 00:24:25,714
supposing I want to see
an object in the far distance.

290
00:24:25,839 --> 00:24:28,592
I want to make out the
time on a distant clock.

291
00:24:28,717 --> 00:24:31,679
Now my eyes are nervous
rather than muscular.

292
00:24:31,804 --> 00:24:34,890
And if I strain my eyes
very hard to make out what is

293
00:24:35,015 --> 00:24:38,018
way off on the clock in the
distance, what happens?

294
00:24:38,143 --> 00:24:42,606
All the images of the
figures on the clock go fuzzy.

295
00:24:42,731 --> 00:24:48,696
But if I relax my
eyes and let the image

296
00:24:48,821 --> 00:24:55,828
come to it, as light does in fact come to
the eyes, then I can see the image clearly.

297
00:24:59,498 --> 00:25:02,918
So, when we think of the world as consisting
primarily of a lot of disconnected

298
00:25:03,043 --> 00:25:06,463
things, and ourselves as one of them,
so that we go out and get those things,

299
00:25:16,807 --> 00:25:21,103
or we can push those things
around to suit ourselves.

300
00:25:21,228 --> 00:25:24,314
We forget so easily that
the entire system of nature,

301
00:25:24,440 --> 00:25:28,235
ourselves included, is interconnected
in every conceivable way.

302
00:25:32,948 --> 00:25:35,576
You know what happens when
you think, well, we've got a lot of

303
00:25:35,701 --> 00:25:38,829
mosquitoes around here, all kinds
of insects that bite us and bother us.

304
00:25:38,954 --> 00:25:39,872
Let's get rid of them.

305
00:25:39,997 --> 00:25:43,083
So we bring in the DDT
and we send an airplane over

306
00:25:43,208 --> 00:25:46,336
and spray the whole
surrounding territory with DDT.

307
00:25:46,462 --> 00:25:48,255
And what happens?

308
00:25:48,380 --> 00:25:51,800
Suddenly we find that other
insects or other pests, which those

309
00:25:51,925 --> 00:25:55,387
insects we destroyed were
feeding upon, multiply and increase.

310
00:25:58,891 --> 00:26:01,477
And we have a new problem.

311
00:26:01,602 --> 00:26:02,644
We have to get rid of those.

312
00:26:02,770 --> 00:26:04,938
It's like when they brought
rabbits into Australia because

313
00:26:05,063 --> 00:26:07,399
they thought they'd be useful
there for some reason or other.

314
00:26:07,524 --> 00:26:10,277
The rabbits multiplied because
there was nothing that fed on rabbits.

315
00:26:10,402 --> 00:26:12,821
Then they had a
plague of rabbits.

316
00:26:12,946 --> 00:26:16,742
You see, you cannot
just push nature around.

317
00:26:16,867 --> 00:26:20,412
You cannot regard it as something to be attacked
so that you can grab bits from it and shove

318
00:26:20,537 --> 00:26:24,124
it around any old way as if it were a machine
that you could bang around like a mechanic.

319
00:26:28,212 --> 00:26:36,053
Indeed, even machines, as any good mechanic
knows, are not that simple to play with.

320
00:26:36,178 --> 00:26:39,556
But if we do not see that our view
of the separateness of the world

321
00:26:39,681 --> 00:26:43,185
is based on a convention of
thinking, it exists as it were in here,

322
00:26:47,022 --> 00:26:52,236
It doesn't exist out here
in actual concrete reality.

323
00:26:52,361 --> 00:26:55,656
And if we are confused,
then we jump to follow our

324
00:26:55,781 --> 00:26:59,368
thoughts instead of our
senses, and this is no sense.

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00:27:00,305 --> 00:28:00,591
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