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The Final Stage of Awakening Few Ever Reach — When You Become the Field | Alan Watts - AI Summary, Mind Map & Transcript | Alan Watts & Wisdom | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: The Final Stage of Awakening Few Ever Reach — When You Become the Field | Alan Watts
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The core theme is that the persistent belief in a separate, solid "self" or ego is an illusion, a social construct mistaken for reality, and that true liberation comes from recognizing oneself as the undivided field of existence rather than a distinct entity within it.
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You know, there's something rather
amusing about the human condition. We
spend our entire lives convinced that we
are someone living in a world, someone
inside this body, looking out through
these eyes, managing thoughts,
controlling actions, navigating through
an existence that seems to be happening
to us. But have you ever stopped, really
stopped, and asked yourself, who is this someone?
someone?
Not as a philosophical exercise, mind
you. I mean actually looked turned your
attention around and tried to find this
person you've been assuming yourself to
be all these years when you look for the
one who is aware what you find you find
thoughts certainly memories floating by
like clouds sensations in the body the
feeling of breath the weight of sitting
the temperature of air you notice sounds
perhaps a dog barking somewhere in the
distance or the whisper of wind through
the trees. All of this is present. But
the one you're looking for, this central
observer, this constant self that
supposedly ties it all together. Where
is it exactly? It's nowhere to be found.
That belief, innocent as it seems, is
the source of virtually all human confusion.
confusion.
Now, let's be clear about something from
the start. When I talk about the ego,
I'm not suggesting it's some terrible
monster that must be slain. That's the
mistake so many spiritual seekers make.
They treat the ego as if it were the
enemy, something to be destroyed in
battle. The ego is nothing more than a
social convention,
a mask, a role you learned to play.
Think back to when you were a small child.
child.
You didn't arrive in this world with a
name tag. You didn't come equipped with
a personality, a reputation to uphold a
set of beliefs about who you are. All of
that was given to you. Your parents
named you. They told you what kind of
person you were. Oh, he's the quiet one.
She's so clever. He's got his father's
temper. And gradually, slowly, you began
to answer to these descriptions. You
learned your lines. You memorized your
character. And this is perfectly
natural. Society couldn't function
without these masks. When I introduce
myself, you have some idea of what to
expect. The mask allows us to
communicate, to organize ourselves, to
play our parts in the great social
drama. But somewhere along the way, and
this happens to almost everyone, we
forget that it's a mask. We mistake the
role for the reality. We think we
actually are this character we've been
playing. It's like an actor who becomes
so absorbed in playing Hamlet that he
goes home at night still believing he's
the prince of Denmark. He starts making
decisions based on Hamlet's story,
feeling Hamlet's emotions, defending
Hamlet's honor. Absurd, isn't it? And
yet, that's precisely what we do with
the masks we wear. The moment you
believe you are the mask, something
profound happens. Life splits in two.
Once you take this mask seriously,
once you genuinely believe you are this
separate someone called Tommy or Susan
or whatever name you've been given, the
entire universe divides itself. There's
me in here and there's everything else
out there. Subject and object, self and
world, the observer and the observed.
Suddenly, you're not part of the
universe anymore. You're a stranger in
it. A visitor, an alien consciousness
somehow dropped into this body, forced
to navigate through a world that exists
independently of you. And naturally,
once you feel separate, you feel
vulnerable. If you're separate, you must
defend yourself. You must control your
environment. You must manage your
emotions, protect your interests, make
sure you survive and thrive in this
foreign territory. Life becomes a
problem to be solved. A puzzle, a
challenge, something you must figure
out, master, overcome.
But here's what's fascinating. This
entire division, this fundamental split
between inner and outer, self and world,
exists only in thought. It's not
something you actually experience
directly. When a bird sings, do you
experience two things? Are you in here
hearing and a bird out there singing?
Or is there simply the singing, hearing,
one seamless event?
When you taste an apple, are there truly
three separate things? You, the tasting,
and the apple, or is there just tasting
happening? One undivided experience. The
division is grammatical, not experiential.
experiential.
We say, "I see the mountain as if there
were an eye separate from the seeing and
a mountain separate from both." But the
actual experience is much simpler than
just seeing, just this immediate
experiencing. Yet, we've built our
entire civilization on this grammatical
mistake. We've taken the structure of
language, subject, verb, object, and
projected it onto reality itself. We've
convinced ourselves that because we can
say I see the tree, there must actually
be three separate things, an eye, a
seeing, and a tree. And from this
innocent confusion arises all the
suffering, all the anxiety, all the
desperate struggling of the separate
self trying to control a world it
believes itself. Fundamentally divided
from. You are not in the universe. You
are what the universe is doing here. But
that understanding, that recognition
comes later. For now, let's look at what
happens when the mask becomes uncomfortable
uncomfortable
when the role starts to feel false. At
some point in their lives, many people
begin what they call a spiritual search.
The separate self, feeling incomplete,
begins looking for completion.
Feeling anxious, it seeks peace. Feeling
lost, it searches for meaning.
I must find myself, they say. I must
awaken. I must become enlightened. And
so they read books by Tibetan monks and
Indian gurus. They learn to meditate.
They attend retreats. They practice
yoga. They collect experiences like
stamps in an album, peak experiences,
mystical states, moments of profound
insight. They become spiritual seekers.
And the spiritual seeker, let me tell
you, is one of the most sophisticated
masks the ego can wear. Because what is
seeking enlightenment? The separate
self. The very illusion that causes the
suffering is now trying to find its way
out of suffering. The ego that feels
incomplete is searching for completion.
It's like a dog chasing its own tail.
The faster it runs, the faster the tail
moves away. The harder you seek, the
more you reinforce the seeker. You see
the eye who wants to be awakened is the
same eye who wanted to be successful in
business. The same eye who wanted to be
loved by mother and father. The same eye
who wanted safety, certainty, control.
It has simply changed its ambitions. Now
instead of seeking wealth, it seeks
wisdom. Instead of accumulating
possessions, it accumulates spiritual
experiences. Instead of comparing bank
accounts, it compares levels of
consciousness. I've had a deeper
meditation than you. I've studied with
more teachers. I'm further along the
path. I'm more aware, more present, more enlightened.
enlightened.
The game continues. The mask has merely
changed costumes. And the separate self,
the very root of the problem, is
reinforced with every step of the
so-called spiritual journey. This is the
seeker trap. And almost everyone falls
into it at some point because as long as
you're seeking, there's still someone
doing the seeking. As long as there's a
goal, there's someone trying to achieve
it. As long as there's a path, there's
someone walking it. And that someone,
that seeker is the illusion itself. But
then something happens. often when you
least expect it. Sometimes after years
of seeking, sometimes quite suddenly.
The effort collapses. Not because you've
achieved anything, but because you've
simply grown tired, exhausted.
The whole project of becoming someone
special, someone awakened, someone
complete. It just runs out of steam. And
in that moment of exhaustion, of giving
up, something becomes clear. Thoughts
are still happening.
That hasn't changed. Sensations are
still arising in the body. Sounds are
still occurring. The whole show of
experience continues exactly as before.
But there's no one at the center of it.
No observer standing back watching it
all unfold.
No manager in the control room making
decisions. No solid continuous self
threading it all together. That's just
the happening itself.
Seeing without a seer, thinking without
a thinker, living without anyone doing
the living. It's like when you watch a
waterfall. You don't see the water and
then see the falling as two separate
things. The water is the falling.
They're one movement. In the same way,
you're not something separate
experiencing life. You are the
experiencing. You are what life is doing
right here, right now. Let me put this
another way. When you look at an apple
tree, you don't think the tree is one
thing and the apples are something else.
It produces the tree apples. That's what
it does. Appling is the tree's nature.
Well, the universe peoples. You are a
peopleling of the cosmos.
The same process that appears as stars
and galaxies and oceans also appears as
you. It's all one movement, one
expression, one dance. You are not in
the universe as a separate object. You
are what the universe is doing at this
particular point in space and time. This
is what I mean when I say you become the
field rather than a point in the field.
You stop identifying as a separate wave
and recognize yourself as the ocean waving.
waving.
But notice, and this is crucial, this
isn't an achievement.
There's no one who becomes the field.
It's more like a seeing through, a
recognition, a falling away of an
illusion. The separate self was never
real to begin with. So nothing has
actually changed. You've simply stopped
believing in the phantom. And when that
belief falls away, what remains is
utterly simple, utterly ordinary. So
ordinary in fact that most people miss
it completely while looking for
something more impressive. Here's
something worth understanding.
Very few people stay with this
recognition and the reason is quite
straightforward. There's nothing here
for the ego to claim. You can't say I've
got it because the eye that would make
that claim has been seen through. You
can't say I'm awakened because that
would just create a new identity. The
awakened person which is just another
mask. You can't even say I understand
without falling back into the trap of
being someone who understands something.
The recognition offers no trophy, no achievement,
achievement,
no way to feel special or superior, no
identity to wear proudly. And the ego,
the mask, the character desperately
needs identity. It needs something to
point to and say, "This is what I am.
This is what I've accomplished. This is
what makes me different from others."
But here in this seeing through, there's
nothing to show. No fireworks, no
dramatic transformation, no glowing
aura, just simplicity, ordinariness, the
everyday business of being alive without
the constant internal commentary.
Most people find this disappointing.
They expected awakening to be
spectacular. They wanted lights and
visions and cosmic experiences. They
wanted to feel important, significant,
somehow better than they were before.
But awakening, if we must use that
troublesome word, is more like taking
off tight shoes than putting on a crown.
It's a relief, not an accomplishment.
And because there's nothing dramatic
about it, nothing the ego can use.
Most people quietly slip back into
identification, back into the mask, back
into the familiar comfort of being
someone. They return to seeking because
at least seeking gives them a role, a
purpose, a story to tell. for themselves.
themselves.
But the few who don't return, the ones
who remain in this understanding,
discover something remarkable. Life, you
see, was never meant to be a problem
requiring a solution. It's not a puzzle
you're supposed to figure out, not a
test you must pass, not a journey with a
destination you must reach. Life is more
like music. When you listen to a
symphony, you don't sit impatiently
waiting for it to reach the final note
so you can say, "Finally, now I've heard
it." That would be absurd. The point of
music isn't the ending. The point is the
listening itself, the experiencing of
each note as it arises. You don't go to
a concert to get to the end. You go for
the music. In exactly the same way, you
don't dance in order to arrive at a
particular spot on the floor. You dance
for the dancing itself. The movement is
the point. Life is like that. It's
something you participate in, something
you play, something you dance, not
something you stand outside of trying to
control or perfect or complete. When the
mask loosens, when the illusion of
separation becomes transparent, life
doesn't become serious or holy or filled
with cosmic significance. If anything,
it becomes playful. You still act. You
still speak. You still wear the mask
when social situations require it. But
you no longer believe the mask is who
you are. It's like an actor who fully
inhabits their role on stage, but
doesn't go home believing they're
actually McBth or Ailia. They give
themselves completely to the
performance, but they remember it's a
performance. In the same way you can
play the role of being a person with all
the responsibilities,
relationships and requirements that
entails without the underlying anxiety
that comes from believing the role is
ultimately real. You participate fully
in the human drama, without being fooled
by it. And here's what's curious. When
you stop taking the role so seriously,
when you recognize it as play rather
than ultimate reality, you actually
become more present, more responsive,
more genuinely engaged
because you're no longer defending a
position, no longer protecting an image,
no longer trying to maintain a
consistent character.
You're free to respond appropriately to
whatever arises. Firm when firmness is
needed. Gentle when gentleness serves.
Silent or speaking still or moving.
Whatever the moment calls for. Not
because you're trying to be a certain
way, but because there's no longer a
fixed someone in the way. The situation
itself moves through you without
resistance. Let me share something that
might sound paradoxical at first, but
stay with me. The separate self you've
been defending, improving, and worrying
about all these years, that self never
existed. It was always a fiction, a
useful convention, a way of organizing
experience. But at the same time, you
are absolutely real, just not in the way
you thought. You are not real as a
separate entity, as a soul trapped in
flesh, as an observer locked inside a body.
body.
But you are real as this present
experiencing, as this awareness, as this
particular expression of the universe.
In other words, you're not a noun.
You're a verb. You're not a thing that
exists. You're an occurring, a process,
a happening. Just as we don't say it
things, we say it rains. There's no it
separate from the reigning. The reigning
is the it. In the same way, there's no
separate you having experiences. There's
just experiencing happening.
And you are that. When you see this,
really see it, not just understand it
intellectually, but recognize it as the
living truth of your experience.
Everything relaxes
because there's nothing to protect
anymore, nothing to improve, nothing to
achieve, nothing personal that requires defending.
defending.
There's just this vast happening, this
cosmic dance, this play of consciousness
appearing as all things. And you are it,
not a part of it. it the whole thing
appearing in this particular form. I
remember once sitting by the ocean
watching the waves. Each wave seemed to
have its own character, its own personality.
personality.
This one tall and powerful, crashing
dramatically. That one gentle and
subtle, barely a ripple. But of course,
there were no separate waves.
There was only ocean, only water moving,
rising and falling, expressing itself in
countless forms. The ocean was waving.
That's all. And each wave was completely
totally ocean. Not a part of the ocean,
but the ocean itself in the form of a
wave. Now, does the wave need to try to
become ocean? Does it need to achieve
oceanness or realize its ocean nature?
Of course not. It already is ocean. It
has always been ocean.
It could never be anything but ocean.
The only thing preventing the wave from
recognizing itself as ocean is the
belief that it's a separate wave. And
when that belief dissolves, not through
effort, but through seeing, the wave
doesn't become the ocean. It recognizes
that it always was the ocean. Nothing
changes except the misunderstanding. You
are like that wave.
You've spent your whole life believing
you're a separate someone navigating
through existence.
But in reality, you are existence itself
temporarily expressing in this form. The
universe is not something you're in.
It's something you are. The same process
that manifests as stars and mountains
and rivers also manifests as you. It's
all one movement. When you recognize
this, and I mean really recognize it,
not just think about it. Does it make
you holy? Does it give you special
powers? Does it make you better than
others? Not at all. You simply continue
being what you are, this particular
expression of the whole, but without the
anxiety of thinking you're separate from
it. That's the quiet freedom we're discussing.
discussing.
Not a dramatic transformation, not a
special attainment, just the end of a misunderstanding,
misunderstanding,
the end of believing you're a separate
wave trying to survive in a hostile
ocean. The beginning of recognizing I am
the ocean waving. Now, you might wonder,
if this is so simple, so obvious, why
doesn't everyone see it? The answer is
straightforward. because there's nothing
in it for the ego. Nothing to gain,
nothing to claim, nothing to display or
show off or use to establish superiority.
superiority.
In fact, seeing this means the end of
the ego's entire game. And naturally,
the ego resists its own dissolution with
every trick it knows. It will create
elaborate spiritual journeys. It will
pursue the most sophisticated
philosophies. It will accumulate
impressive experiences. anything to
avoid the simple recognition that it was
never real to begin with. The ego would
rather seek forever than disappear
because seeking at least gives it a
role, a purpose, a reason to exist.
I am a seeker. I am on the path. I am
working toward awakening. At least then
there's still a someone with a story to
tell. But awakening, this recognition of
what you actually are is the collapse of
the seeker. the end of the story, the
dissolution of the character. It's not
that you become awakened. It's that the
you disappears and what remains is
simply awakeness itself with no one
claiming ownership of it. And that's
where words fail completely because
there's no way to describe this without
seeming to describe something that
happens to someone. But there is no
someone. There's only the happening. Let
me tell you something important.
This recognition doesn't make life
easier in the way most people hope it
will. You still experience pain when
pain arises. You still feel emotions,
joy, sorrow, anger, fear.
You still face difficulties and losses.
The body still ages, still gets tired,
still eventually dies. In that sense,
nothing changes at all. But your
relationship to experience transforms
completely. Instead of feeling like
someone to whom life is happening,
instead of being the victim or the hero
or the struggler, you recognize yourself
as the field in which all experience
arises and falls. Joy arises, sorrow
arises, fear arises. But you're not
identified as any of these things. You
are the space, the openness, the
awareness in which they appear and
disappear. Like the sky,
the sky isn't disturbed by weather. It
doesn't resist the storms or cling to
the sunshine. It simply allows it all.
Remains open to it all. Provides the
space for it all to happen. In the same
way, when you recognize yourself as the
field rather than a point in the field,
experience becomes lighter.
Not because difficult things stop
happening, but because there's no longer
a separate someone trying to manage it
all, control it all, figure it all out.
There's just life living itself and you
are that life. This is what all the
ancient teachings were pointing toward
when they spoke of liberation, of
enlightenment, of union with the divine.
Though they often wrapped it in so much
religious symbolism and complex
philosophy that the simple truth got
buried. The truth is wonderfully simple.
You are not a separate entity in the
universe. You are what the universe is
doing here and now.
Just as the sun lights and the wind
blows, you are consciousnessing,
awarening, experiencing. When you see a
tree, there's seeing happening. Not a
you seeing a tree, just seeing. When you
think, there's thinking happening. Not a
thinker having thoughts, just thinking.
When you live, there's living happening.
Not a liver living a life, just living.
And you are that process, that
happening, that movement of life itself.
This is what it means to become the
field. Not to achieve something new, but
to recognize what has always been the
case. The recognition was always
available. You were simply looking in
the wrong direction outward at experiences
experiences
rather than recognizing yourself as the
experiencing itself. You know, I
sometimes think the whole spiritual
search is rather like someone who spends
years frantically searching for their
glasses, turning the house upside down,
asking everyone for help, becoming
increasingly desperate and frustrated
when all along they're wearing them.
They're looking through the very thing
they're looking for. The separate self
is searching for enlightenment. For the
separate self is the only thing
preventing the recognition that
everything is already enlightened,
already whole, already complete. Once
the illusion of separation is seen
through, there's no one left to be
enlightened. And yet everything is
enlightened because everything is simply
what it is without the confusion of
thinking it's something separate. The
search ends not when you find what
you're looking for, but when you realize
you are what you've been looking for all
along. The seeker and the sought are the
same. The wave and the ocean are the
same. The self and the universe are the
same. There's only one thing happening
appearing as all things. And you are
that. So where does this leave us? Where
does this leave you? Right here, right
now. Well, if you've heard what I've
been saying, really heard it, felt it in
your bones rather than just thought
about it, perhaps something has shifted.
Not dramatically, not spectacularly,
just a subtle easing, a gentle
relaxation of the tension that comes
from trying so hard to be someone. You
might still play your role tomorrow. You
might still answer to your name, fulfill
your obligations, engage with the world.
The mask doesn't disappear. It's still
useful for navigating social reality.
But perhaps now there's a lightness to
it, a playfulness, a recognition that
you're performing rather than
desperately maintaining reality. You're
like an actor who remembers their
acting, even while giving themselves
fully to the role. And in that
remembering, that recognition, there's a
kind of freedom that's impossible to
describe, but utterly obvious once it's
seen. No certificate of achievement,
no special status,
no way to prove you have it or measure
your progress. Just the simple ordinary
everyday experience of being alive
without the constant interference of
someone who thinks they're supposed to
be managing it all. Life continues.
The sun rises and sets just as it always
has. The seasons turn. Birds sing their
morning songs. Rain falls on the just
and the unjust alike. The whole
magnificent dance goes on. And you are
not separate from it. Not separate from
the rain or the sun or the turning of
seasons. Not separate from the joy or
the sorrow or the great mystery of it
all. You are the dance itself. The music
playing the whole thing expressing
itself as this particular pattern we
call a human life. And when you see that
clearly, not as a belief or a philosophy
or a comforting idea, but as the living
truth of your immediate experience, then
the search ends. Not because you found
what you were looking for, but because
you realized you were never lost to
begin with. You were always home, always
whole, always the field itself,
temporarily forgetting and now
remembering. The separation was a dream.
The struggle was a story. The seeker was
a shadow cast by seeking itself. And
now, not in some future moment of final
attainment, but right now you can simply
be what you are. Not trying to become
something. Not trying to achieve
anything. Not trying to understand or
grasp or hold on to any of this. Just
being. Just this. Just here. And that's
enough. More than enough. It's
everything because it is everything. And
you are it. Not a part of it, not a
witness to it, not someone experiencing
it. But the very happening itself
appearing as this moment, this breath,
this aliveness, the wave recognizes
itself as ocean. And the ocean continues
waving. And all of it, every bit of it
is perfectly, completely, utterly what
it is. Nothing more needed, nothing less
possible. Just this, just now, just you
being what you've always been. The
universe appearing as a person for just
a little while until the wave subsides
back into the ocean and rises again as
another wave in the eternal play of form
and emptiness, appearance and
disappearance, the great game that never
begins and never ends. And somewhere in
all of that, in the middle of this
cosmic dance, here you are. Right where
you've always been, right where you
could never not be. The field itself
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