
The Self is part of the Extended Seminars Collection. An exploration of personal and cosmological identity. Alan discusses ways to understand our entrances and exits to our current energy through birth, death, play and survival, and the pursuit of pleasure.
3.8.14 The World as Self Part 2
This morning, I discussed the idea of the Self as the basis of the universe, and showed that this idea, which is fundamental to the central tradition of Hindu philosophy is not a logical idea. You could call it paralogical, metalogical or something like that,...
3.8.5 Pursuit of Pleasure Part 1
We can consider the pursuit of pleasure in two broad senses. One which might be called lower than the other, which might be called higher, although I'm not very happy with that classification. There is the pursuit of material pleasure and art. Very much neglected in...
3.8.6 Pursuit of Pleasure Part 2
The human being is of such a design that it perceives everything. By contrast. There is no way of knowing whether the real world is arranged the same way or not, but we are a nervous system. Composed of neurons in an extraordinarily complicated pattern, based on a...
3.8.7 Pursuit of Pleasure Part 3
Now, you must understand that yesterday I was doing a demolition job. The negative aspect of what we're talking about, the pursuit of pleasure and by approaching it from two different points of view. I was explaining the fact that there really isn't anything that you...
3.8.8 Pursuit of Pleasure Part 4
I suppose many of you are familiar with the work of Krishnamurti and you will of course recognize that there is something in common between what he says and what I have been saying to you, that probably you will also notice that the something different. Because...
3.8.9 World as Play Part 1
This seminar is going to be a fundamental course on cosmic gamesmanship. We shall discuss, first of all, the yang and the yin. Because what we are studying is the way whatever may be called the universal energy plays. And so the fundamental thing is Yang Indian, the...
3.8.10 World as Play Part 2
So lesson number two is relativity. Lesson number one, having been the opposites in this course on. Cosmological. Cosmic gamesmanship. We were discussing the fact this morning that any manifestation of energy needs an opposition. In other words, nothing happens. There...
3.8.11 World as Play Part 3
I said that one of the aspects of cosmic gamesmanship that we were going to deal with was B group theory. And of course, I don't mean exactly by that sort of mathematical meaning, but the the relationship that's tremendously important and that is not sufficiently...
3.8.12 World as Play Part 4
Well, now, following on from our discussion yesterday afternoon about relativity and about the mutual inter penetration of every individual thing or event in the universe with every other one. And having previously discussed in the morning the yang yin principle, the...
3.8.1 Birth, Death, and the Unborn Part 1
This seminar about birth, death and the unborn is going to be a discussion of the Buddhist philosophy of change. And I'm going to start out by going into the very tricky and difficult question of the Buddhist view of birth and death and the doctrine which is...
3.8.3 Play and Survival Part 1
So it is announced that the subject of the seminars play and survival. Are they in necessary contradiction? We're going to examine the subject in the context of Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, Taoist and scientific naturalism. Living, it seems to me, is a...
3.8.4 Play and Survival Part 4
Now, since we are dealing with play, our next step is there are two steps now to follow. We've got some more theoretical matter to go through. And after that, we get into nonverbal practical matter. But I want to talk about music for a while. Do you realize that music...
3.8.2 Birth, Death and the Unborn Part 2
In this seminar on birth, death and the unborn, we've been discussing the Buddhist philosophy of change. Of life as a flowing, dynamic pattern process, which is essentially immaterial. Because it isn't anything you can grasp we use the word substance we use the word...
3.8.15 The World as Self Part 3
Up to this point, I have been discussing the theme of the world as the Self from three points of view and. Number one. Discussing what the self means in Hindu philosophy. The Self which you feel yourself to be is an expression. And is in fact at root the same as the...
3.8.13 The World as Self Part 1
The basis of all Indian philosophy—particularly the teaching of those books called the Upanishads, which are really the distilled essence of Hindu thought—the basis is called the Self. And this word, in Sanskrit, is Ātman, and that means ‘Self’ in the vastest possible...