What Awakened People Cannot See Anymore - Alan Watts

you've discovered your father putting presents under the tree. The innocence, once lost cannot be recovered by an act of will. Now let me say at the outset that when I speak of awakened people, I'm not referring to some special class of superhuman beings who walk around with halos and

speak in hushed, reverent tones. No, no, no. An awakened person is simply someone who has seen through the game of separation, who has recognized that the individual self, the ego, this little island of consciousness that we think we are is a magnificent hoax. Not a bad hoax, mind you, but a hoax. Nonetheless, The first thing that an awakened person cannot see anymore is the reality of problems. Now

I don't mean that difficulties ceased to exist. Rain still falls, bodies still experience pain, bills still arrive in the post. But what disappears is the psychological reality of the problem. Has a problem, you see, a problem only exists when there's a separate self who stands in opposition to what is the moment you truly realize that you are not a separate entity fighting against the universe. Problems dissolve into pure situations that require appropriate response. Let me put it

this way. When you have a stomach ache, does your stomach believe it has a problem. Of course not. It simply is what it is doing, what it's doing. The problem only arises when the ego, this phantom sense of a separate self, comes along and says, this shouldn't be happening to me. But when you see through that illusion of separation, when you recognize that you are not something inside your body looking out at the world, but rather the whole process itself, the very concept of having problems

becomes absurd. It's rather like the ocean developing a neurosis about its waves. Can you imagine the Pacific Ocean lying on a psychiatrist's couch saying doctor, I have this terrible problem with my waves. They keep rising and falling, and I just can't seem to control them. The very idea is laughable because the ocean doesn't separate itself from its waves.

The waves are what the ocean is doing, and in precisely the same way, an awakened person cannot see their experiences as problems separate from themselves because they recognize that they are not separate from the experiencing now. The second thing that becomes invisible to the awakened person is the importance of the past and future. This is a rather difficult thing for people to grasp because we've been conditioned to believe that our entire lives are about moving from

the past toward the future. We think of ourselves as creatures with a history heading toward a goal. But this is just another aspect of the great illusion. The awakened person lives in what I call the eternal now, not because they've adopted some philosophical position about time, but because they've directly perceived that the past and future are nothing but abstractions. The past is a memory occurring now, the future is an anticipation occurring now. There is literally no

time except this present moment. When you really understand this, not just intellectually but in your bones, the whole anxiety about the future and the whole burden of the past simply evaporate. This doesn't mean you become impractical or fail to plan. On the contrary, you become far more efficient because you are not wasting energy worrying about abstractions. You plan when planning is called for, You remember when remembering

is useful. But you don't confuse these mental actives. It is with some kind of reality that exists outside of this present moment. The third thing that awakened people cannot see anymore is the division between themselves and others. This is perhaps the most profound shift of all. You see. The ordinary person lives in a state of what we might call chronic paranoia. They feel fundamentally separate from the world, and therefore they experience other people as threats or as

instruments to be used for their own benefit. The world is divided into me and not me, us in them, friends and enemies. But the awakened person has seen through this division. They've recognized that the boundary between self and other is entirely imaginary, just as your right hand doesn't see your left hand as an enemy, just as your heart doesn't regard your lungs as foreign objects. The awakened person doesn't experience other people as fundamentally separate from themselves.

This doesn't mean they lose the ability to distinguish between individuals. They can still tell the difference between you and me at the level of appearance, but at a deeper level, they recognize that we are all processes within one field of existence, all waves in the same ocean, all notes in the same symphony. And once you see this, truly see it, you cannot go back to the old paranoid perspective.

It becomes as impossible as trying to see the world through the eyes of a new born infant once you've learned to speak. Now, another thing that disappears from view is the notion of control. The ego thrives on the fantasy that it's in control, that it's the author of its actions, the thinker of its thoughts, the decider of its decisions. But when you awaken, you see that this is pure mythology. Thoughts arise spontaneously, decisions happen, actions occur,

but there's no little man inside pulling the levers. This is a terrifying realization for the ego because it means the death of the illusion of personal agency. But it's also the most liberating discovery you can make, because it means you can stop trying to control what was never under your control in the first place. You can relax into the spontaneous functioning of the universe, of which you

are an inseparable part. Think about it this way. When you speak, do you consciously arrange each word, carefully planning the syntax and grammar, Of course not. The words simply flow out of you, and if you try to control them too carefully, you become tongue tied. Life is exactly like this. The awakened person has discovered that living happens by itself, just as breathing happens by itself, just as your heart beats by itself. And once you've seen this,

the illusion of the controlling ego cannot be maintained. The awakened person also cannot see the world as solid and static any more. The ordinary perception is that the universe consists of things, of objects that persist through time, of solid entities bumping against each other like billiard balls, but awakening reveals that the universe is not made of things at all. It's made of processes, of verbs rather than nouns,

of dancing patterns rather than fixed forms. You see when you look at a mountain or a tree or another human being, what you're actually seeing is an incredibly complex process, a whirlpool in the stream of existence. The mountain is mountains ing, the tree is treesing, the person is persons ing. Everything is a verb, a happening, an event, And once you see the world this way, you cannot go back

to seeing it as a collection of static objects. This is what the Buddhists mean when they speak of emptiness or void. They don't mean that nothing exists. They mean that no thing exists in the way we habitually imagine. Everything is empty of permanent, independent existence. Everything is a temporary configuration in the endless flux of existence. Another thing that becomes impossible to see is the seriousness of it all.

Now this is often misunderstood. People think that awakened persons must be grim and solemn, that they've seen through the illusion and now walk around in a state of detached melancholy. But it's exactly the opposite. The awakened person is the one who finally gets the cosmic joke, who realizes that the whole drama of existence is a kind of divine play what the Hindus call leela. You cannot take yourself seriously when you've realized that you're not a separate self

at all. You cannot take your problem seriously when you've seen that they're just ripples on the surface of consciousness. You cannot take the world seriously when you've recognized that it's all a spontaneous happening with no purpose beyond itself. This doesn't mean the awakened person becomes irresponsible or callous. Quite the contrary. When you stop taking yourself seriously, you can finally take life seriously in the right way. You can play the game with full intensity while knowing that

it's a game. You can care deeply about things without the burden of believing that your separate self is going to be enhanced or diminished by the outcome. The awakened person also loses the ability to see meaning as something separate from the experience itself. The ordinary person is always asking what does this mean? What is the purpose of my life? Why is this happening. They're looking for some

significance that exists apart from the immediate experience. But the awakened person has discovered that meaning is not something that can be found or extracted from life. Life itself is the meaning. When you watch a dance, you don't ask what it means. The dance is not about something else. It is what it is, and its meaning is inseparable from its form, in the same way life doesn't mean something.

Life is Meaning is significance, is value. And when you realize this, you stop searching for some hidden purpose behind existence, and you start celebrating the sheer, thearness of it all. Here's another fascinating thing. The awakened person cannot see their thoughts as personal property any more. In the ordinary state of consciousness, we are absolutely convinced that thoughts are ours. We say my thoughts, my opinions, my beliefs, as if we own them, as if we generated them from some

inner factory. But awakening reveals that thoughts are just events that arise in consciousness, like clouds appearing in the sky. You don't create your thoughts any more than you create the weather. They simply appear, stay for a while, and dissolve back into silence. And once you've seen this clearly, you can no longer identify with your thoughts in the old way. You might still have thoughts, indeed, you may have more interesting and creative thoughts than ever before, but

you don't confuse yourself with them. You recognize yourself as the space in which thoughts appear, not as the thoughts themselves. This brings to another point. The awakened person cannot see suffering as something that should not be Now, this is a very subtle and easily misunderstood point. I'm not saying that the awakened person enjoys suffering or seeks it out. What I'm saying is that they don't add to suffering the additional layer of resistance that says this should not

be happening. You see, pain is inevitable. If you have a body, you will experience pain, But suffering is optional. Suffering is pain plus resistance, pain plus the egos protest against what is. When you fully accept the present moment as it is without demanding that it be different, pain

may still be there, but the psychological suffering dissolves. It's rather like the difference between a tensed muscle and a relaxed one both can experience sensation, but the tensed muscle adds an extra layer of discomfort through its very resistance. The awakened person has learned to relax into life, even into its painful aspects, and this relaxation transforms the whole quality of experience. The awakened person also loses the capacity

to see death as the opposite of life. In the ordinary view, life and death are enemies, opposing forces in an eternal battle. We cling to life and fear death, imagining that when death comes we will cease to exist. But awakening reveals that this whole framework is mistaken. Death is not the opposite of life. Birth is the opposite of death. Life has no opposite. Life is the ground, the field, the eternal now, in which birth and death

appear as waves appear in the ocean. You are not born into life and then at some point ejected from it. You are life itself, expressing itself through this particular form for a time, and then withdrawing back into itself, only to express itself again in countless other form. When you realize this, death becomes no more frightening than going to sleep at night, you don't fear sleep because you know you'll wake up even if you don't remember who you

are while you're sleeping. And in the same way, the awakened person knows that death is simply a return to the source, a dropping of the particular form, but not an annihilation of the essence. Another thing that becomes invisible is the idea of spiritual progress. This may seem paradoxical, but the awakened person realizes that there is nowhere to go, nothing to achieve, no better state to arrive at. Awakening is not a destination at the end of a spiritual path.

It's the realization that you never left home in the first place. The spiritual seeker is like a person who has lost their glasses and searches everywhere for them, not realizing their sitting on top of their head. The moment you find them, you realize that the search itself was based on a false premise. You were never separate from what you were seeking. You are it, You always have been it, and you always will be it. This doesn't

mean that life becomes static or boring after awakening. On the contrary, it becomes far more interesting because you're no longer trapped in the narrow perspective of the ego. But there's no more sense of trying to get somewhere spiritually, no more feeling that you're not quite there yet. You're already here. You've always been here, and here is all there, ever is. The awakened person also cannot see enemies anymore. Oh. They may recognize that certain actions are harmful and need

to be opposed. They may work to prevent cruelty and injustice, but they don't see evildoers as fundamentally other, as alien beings that need to be destroyed. They recognize that ignorance and unconsciousness are the only real enemies, and these cannot be destroyed. They can only be illuminated. When you truly understand that you are not a separate self, you recognize that the person causing harm is also not a separate self.

They are the universe expressing itself through a particularly deluded configuration. But the essence is the same. This doesn't mean you condone harmful actions. It means you respond to them with wisdom rather than hatred, with understanding rather than condemnation. Here's something else that disappears, the notion of ownership. The ordinary person goes through life accumulating things and claiming them as mine, my house, my car, my family, my country, my opinions,

my life. But the awakened person has seen through this game of possession, you don't really own anything. You're the temporary custodian of certain objects and experiences. But you came into this world with nothing, and you'll leave it with nothing. Even your body isn't yours in any ultimate sense. It's a pattern that the universe is forming for a while, and then it will dissolve back into other patterns. And once you've realized this, you stop clutching at things, stop

trying to possess and control. This doesn't mean you become a pauper or refuse to use objects. It means you relate to things differently. You enjoy them while they're here, you take care of them, but you don't confuse them with yourself. You travel light through life. The awakened person also loses the ability to see events as random or meaningless, not because they've adopted some philosophy that says everything happens for a reason, but because they've directly perceived that the

universe is a unified whole, a single event unfolding. In a unified system, nothing is random. Every event is intimately connected to every other event, not through a chain of mechanical causation, but through a kind of cosmic resonance. It's not that everything happens for a specific purpose that can be deciphered, but rather that everything belongs, everything fits, everything is necessary for the pattern to be what it is.

When you see this, even the most apparently absurd or tragic events reveal themselves as part of the grand choreography of existence. This doesn't make painful events less painful, but it removes the additional suffering that comes from feeling that life is chaotic and meaningless. Now. Another thing the awakened person cannot see anymore is the need for comparison. The ego constantly measures itself against others, asking am I as good as? Am I better than? How do I rank?

But awakening reveals that this whole game of comparison is based on the illusion of separation. When you realize that you are not a separate individual competing against other separate individuals, the whole basis for comparison collapses. You're not better or worse than anyone else, because there is no separate you to be better or worse. You're simply a unique expression of the one life, just as every wave in the

ocean is unique, but not separate from the ocean. This brings tremendous freedom because you can finally stop competing, stop measuring, stop judging yourself against imaginary standards. You can simply be what you are, fully and completely, without apology or pride. The awakened person also cannot see the future as a place where happiness will finally be found. The ego is always postponing contentment, always saying I'll be happy when when I get the job, when I find the relationship, when

I retire, when I achieve enlightenment. But the awakened person is discovered that happiness is not a future state to be attained. It's the natural condition that emerges when you stop resisting the present moment. You see, happiness is not something that happens to you. It's what you are when you remove all the obstacles to recognizing what you are. And those obstacles are all variations on the theme of

wanting things to be other than they are. When that wanting ceases, not through suppression, but through understanding what remains is a natural state of well being, of contentment, of peace. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the awakened person cannot see themselves as a victim anymore. The victim mentality is based on the belief that you are a separate self at the

mercy of forces beyond your control. And while it's certainly true that you can't control external events, awakening reveals that you are not actually a separate entity to whom things happen. You are the happening itself. When a wave crashes on the shore, we don't say the ocean is being victimized by the shore. The ocean is the wave and the shore and the crashing. In the same way, you are not separate from the events of your life. You are the life, living itself, and nothing is happening to you.

It's all happening as you. This is the ultimate liberation, not the liberation from difficult circumstances, but liberation from the illusion that you are a separate self who is at the mercy of those circumstances. When that illusion dissolves, what remains is the recognition that you are the entire process, both the waves and the ocean, both the dancer and the dance. And this, my friends, is what the awakened person cannot see any more, all the elaborate structures that

the ego creates to maintain the illusion of separation. Once those structures have been seen through, once the game has been recognized as a game, you can't go back to the old way of seeing. You can pretend, you can play along, but the innocence is gone forever and yet,

and this is the final paradox. In losing that innocence, you gain a far more profound innocence, the innocence of simply being what you are, without pretense, without defense, without the need to be anything other than this present moment, eternally unfolding. Thank you,