Ex Nihilo

Clips of audio recordings of lectures by Alan Watts are presented in this work in the following order:

Opening audio:

Where do the sounds come from according to your ears, you hear, you hear them coming out of silence. The sounds come. And then they fade off. They go like echoes or echoes in the labyrinths of your brain, which we call memories. The sounds don't come from the past. They come out of now and trail off. You can do that later with your eyes. You can see like when you're watching television, there's a vibration coming out from the screen to your eyes. And it starts from there somehow. Because we see in the hands and then they move, we think that the movement is caused by the hands and that the hands were there before, and so can move later. We don't see that our memory of the hands is an echo of their always being now. They never were. They never will be. They're always now. So is the motion. And that, that is  recollected is the trailing off echo, like the wake of a ship. And so just as the wake doesn't move the ship, the past does not move the present unless you insist that it does. And if you say, well, naturally I'm always moved by the past, that's an alibi.

Before duet 1:

So, what I want you, first of all, to understand is that these two sensations, one of being the lonely central sensitive, vulnerable self living in the midst of a world that feels other, that is not under control. I want to try and show you that these two sensations are really one sensation, or rather two aspects of one sensation. You couldn't have the one experience without the other experience. It is wherever you notice a difference has two sides, what it is and what it's not. And these two sides, uh, since you can't have the one side without the other side, they're really one because they go together inseparably. So when you get this extreme sense of your own existence, as a rather painful fact in the middle of everything else, the everything else feeling and the you feeling are two poles of one and the same process. So that the real you is what lies in between these poles and includes both of them. Just like, uh, if I want to see the back of my head, I can go round and round and I can chase it, but I never quite catch up with it. But that's what makes everything work. Uh, it is said in the Vedic Sutras that, uh, the Lord, the Supreme knower of all things, who is the knower in all of us doesn't know itself in the same way that fire doesn't burn itself and a knife doesn't cut itself. So nothing to God, even you see, would be more mysterious than God.

Before Solo 2:

You are not a captive in a trap. You're not just some mere little measly being that somehow or other was brought into an insane universe, but you are what the thing is. You are not the victim. You are the system - only, you have identified yourself with a one wave in it and have forgotten that you are one with the whole energy that's going on. But what you're doing is you have got a particular way, that is to say a particular accumulation of memories, of associations, of skills, of things that you've learned, and you don't want to let go of them. Cause you've found in that accumulation of memories, which you call yourself, an identity. So you know where you are or think you do, but actually you don't need to be anywhere. Where is the universe? You know, think up an answer to that one. And so the question, where is the universe is really ultimate to the same question as where are you.

During Solo 3:

The different points of view you get when you change your level of magnification, that is to say, you can look at something with a microscope and see it a certain way. You can look at it with a naked eye and see it in a certain way. You look at it with a telescope and you see it in another way. Now, which level of magnification is the correct one? Well, obviously, uh, they're all correct, but they're just different points of view. You can, for example, look at a newspaper photograph under a magnifying glass and where with a naked eye, you will see a human face…

During Duet 2:

And that's a funny thing, then we can experience ourselves through and through as something that just happens. Look, look at it this way. If you feel your body, your skin, the solidity of you, and regard what marvelous eyes you have, which are the power which generate light and color out of all these electrical quanta in the external world. And these ears, these beautiful shells that you wear on the side of your head with their little spiral bones, the cochlear inside, you know, all that. It's marvelous, but you real though, you don't feel responsible for this. You dunno how it's made if it is made, but it's you, that's what you are. That extraordinary pattern, beautiful, gorgeous, wonderful arabesque of tubes and bones and cartilage and myriads of interconnecting, electronics, and nervous systems and everything. Wonderful. See, but, but the point is, most people don't own this. They don't say this is me. They say, well, it's some kind of very clever machine, which the Lord God made out of his infinite wisdom and put me in it. And this is a very limited view. Cause the, the extraordinary thing is you see that this is you, this extraordinary marvelous going on. See, but you can feel it all of it as if it was just happening to you. But if you wanna feel it that way, then you've gotta go the whole way. And you've got to feel that your decisions just happen to you. And that the thing that you call yourself to which things happen is just something that happens. See you go, you don't know how you managed to be an ego, how you happen to be conscious. That just happened too. So happenings happen to a happening so you can feel yourself, completely irresponsible like that. See there's nowhere. Or, uh, when you get that way, that's a very interesting road to run, but you can try the other way. You can extend it and say, now look here. If, if, if, if I really am my eyes and I, although I don't understand them, I mean, that'll say I can't describe it in lines, in words, uh, this is me. It's an extraordinary thing, but it is, well, I don't understand how it happens, but then you see that's the whole point as I made a little while ago that the very Lord God himself doesn't understand how he happens. Cause if he did what would be the point, there'd be no mystery. There'd be no possibility of surprises.

During Final Section:

It's a curious thing that in the world's poetry, this is a very common theme. The earthly hope men set their hearts upon turns ashes, or it prospers, and anon like snow upon the deserts. Dusty face lighting a little hour or two is gone. All kinds of poetry emphasizes the theme of transience. And there's a kind of nostalgic beauty to it. A banquet hall deserted after the revelry, all the guests have left and gone their ways and the table with overturned glasses, crumpled, napkins, bread crumbs, and dirty knives and forks lies empty. And the laughter echoes only affirmative in one's mind. And then the echo goes, the memory, the traces are all gone. That's the end. You see, do you see in a way how that is saying the most real state is the state of nothing. That's what it's gonna all come to… these physicists who think of the energy of the universe running down dissipating in radiation gradually, gradually, gradually, gradually until there's nothing at all left. And for some reason or other, we are supposed to find this depressing. But if somebody is going to argue that the basic reality is nothingness, where does all this come from? Obviously from nothingness. Once again, you get how it looks behind your eyes. See, so cheer up.