
Philosophy and Society is part of the Essential Lectures Collection. This album was one of the original six albums compiled by Alan and his son, Mark, in 1973. It includes some of Alan’s most inspiring public lectures, as well as his powerful Veil of Thoughts seminar recorded aboard the SS Vallejo (Alan’s floating studio) two years prior. In the Veil seminar, he explores the limitations of thought, explaining that thought makes a good tool but a poor master, before taking a turn to touch upon love and the institution of marriage from both historic and pragmatic perspectives; speaking from “a certain amount of bitter experience.”
1.4.12. – What is Reality – Pt. 2
You, as a human being, you grow out of this physical universe in exactly the same way an apple grows off an apple tree. So let's say the tree which grows apples is a tree which apples, using 'apple' as a verb. And a world in which human beings arrive is a world...
1.4.11. – What is Reality – Pt. 1
I find it a little difficult to say what the subject matter of this seminar is going to be, because it's too fundamental to give it a title. I'm going to talk about what there is. Now, the first thing, though, that we have to do is to get our perspectives with some...
1.4.10. – Mysticism and Morality – Pt. 2
Now, you see, this has characteristically—through the ages—been the attitude of priesthoods, of the guardians of law and order—or, as they say in the Episcopal church, everything should be done decently and in order. The guardians of this kind of thing have always...
1.4.9. – Mysticism and Morality – Pt. 1
I’m referring to a kind of experience, a kind of—shall we say—state of consciousness which seems to be as prevalent among human beings as measles. It’s something that simply happens, and we don’t know why it happens. And although there are all sorts of techniques...
1.4.8. – On Being God Q&A
Let me see. Ye— Are you God all the time? I mean, are you consciousness all the time? There is no time, my dear. It’s always now. [???] and it’s during every event. [???] In every precise moment in consciousness, are you conscious of it? ...
1.4.7. – On Being God – Pt. 2
If you believe that God is a monarch, an absolute, omniscient, and omnipotent authority - shall we say a sort of cosmic ego - then to claim to be that, is to introduce democracy into the Kingdom of Heaven. To usurp divine authority and to speak in its name without...
1.4.6. – On Being God – Pt. 1
Between Western psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy and the so-called religions of Asia, there is common ground because both are interested in changing states of human consciousness. Whereas, institutional western religions - Christianity, Judaism, and even...
1.4.5. – We as Organism
I wonder if it’s ever struck you how curious a thing it is that most of the things that we experience we regard as things that happen to us, which we ourselves do not originate, which are events expressing some sort of power or activity that is external to ourselves....
1.4.4. – Divine Madness
This morning I'm going to talk to you about a particularly virulent and dangerous form of divine madness which is called falling in love. Which is, from a practical point of view, one of the most insane things you can do, or that can happen to you. Because in the eyes...
1.4.3. – Veil of Thoughts – Pt. 3
Well, now, we’ve been discussing—in two sessions—the ways in which thought can conceal truth, and so now we have to come to the other aspect of the problem, which is: how to get un-bamboozled. And I often say that, in a way, this is the wrong question because it...
1.4.2. – Veil of Thoughts – Pt. 2
Well now, in the first talk I was explaining that the theme of this seminar was the problem of how thoughts protect us from truth and what to do about it, and showing various ways in which the symbolizing process—which we call thinking; the use of signs, words,...
1.4.1. – Veil of Thoughts – Pt. 1
The subject of this seminar is The Veil of Thoughts, and following out the theme that somebody once suggested by saying that thought is a means of concealing truth, despite the fact that it’s an extraordinarily useful faculty. But in quite recent weeks we’ve had an...