Alan Watts – Is the Bible Used to Manipulate Self Worth? (Video)

Alan Watts provides a philosophical analysis of the bible.

Alan Watts – Notable Excerpts

The Gospel of Jesus, which of course was hushed up since its inception, was that, wake up everybody and find out who you are.

Is it not written in your law,  “I have said ye are gods.” And if that is what the scripture says it can’t be denied. So why do you tell me I blaspheme because I say, “I am a son of god.”

“Son of” in Hebrew and in Arabic means of the nature of. When we call someone a son of a bitch, we mean bitchy. And so if you call someone a son of god, you mean divine.

What happened was, that this being blasphemous for the Jews. It became blasphemy for the Christians for anyone else than Jesus to say it.

They said, “Ok baby it was so with you, but there it stops. No more of this business.” And as a result of that Jesus was made irrelevant by pedestalization, by being kicked up stairs! In spite of the fact that he’s said greater works than these, that I do, shall you do; oh no, upstairs with you baby…because we just can’t have that sorta thing going on in a monarchical universe. We are not gonna have democracy in the kingdom of heaven.

This is why the gospel is impossible, because we’re suppose to follow the example of Christ…where he says for example, “Be not anxious for the morrow. Do not worry about what you shall eat, what you shall drink and what you shall wear. God will take care of you! Doesn’t he take care of the birds? Don’t the flowers grow? And they’re wonderful, they’re crazy, they’re great. What are you worrying about? I’ve never heard a sermon preached on that…never. Because it’s totally subversive the economy would crash! So they say, “That’s all very well, but that was the boss’s son!” See he had that colossal advantage… 

He had an unfair advantage. So how can you ask us to follow the example of Christ. But supposing he didn’t have an unfair advantage. Supposing that was true about Jesus as a son of god is true of us.

Why talk about this? Is it interesting? Is it important for the human being to realize that in some sense of the word, whatever it means, he is god or one with god?

The importance of it is this. To know that you are god is another way of saying that you feel completely with this universe. You feel profoundly rooted in it and connected with it. 

If you don’t know that. If you don’t feel that. Well naturally you feel alien. You feel a stranger in the world and if you feel a stranger you feel hostile. And therefore you start to bulldoze things about to beat it up and to try and make the world submit to your will.

You obviously can blame someone and say, “I didn’t ask for this! Take it away!” And yet very few people are all too ready to take it away. Camus said that the only serious philosophical problem is whether or not to commit suicide. And if you don’t, if you don’t say take it away. What are you gonna do? You really gotta assume responsibility for it, you have to say yes to what happens.

The real meaning of Karma, the word in Sanskrit means simply: doing. And if I say of an event, “it is your karma”, it is saying, “it is your doing.”

So the exposition, a book which would expound karma, would be not so much a who done it? But, a you done it. But that seems, fantastic.