Welcome to the Alan Watts Audio Experience; an Alan Watts Podcast for fans of one of the greatest philosophical geniuses of all time.  Todays Watts Wisdom Classic is titled 'Life Is Not A Journey' - one of Alan's most listened to and adored clips ever.

WATCH:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBpaUICxEhk

TRANSCRIPT:

the existence the physical universe is

basically playful there is no necessity

for it whatsoever it isn't going

anywhere that is to say it doesn't have

some destination that it ought to arrive

at but but it is best understood by

analogy with music because music as an

art form is essentially playful we say

you play the piano you don't work the

piano why music differs from say travel when you

travel you are trying to get somewhere

one doesn't make the end of a

composition the point of the company of

the composition if that was so the best

conductors would be those who played

fastest and there will be composers who

wrote only finales people go to concert

just do one crashing chord because

that's the end say when dancing you

don't aim at a particular spot in the

room that's where you should arrive the

whole point of the dancing is the

parents now but we don't see that as

something brought by our education into

our everyday conduct we've got a system

of schooling which gives a completely

different impression it's all graded and

what we do is we put the child into the

corridor of this grade system with a

kind of comma on kitty kitty kitty and

yeah I go to kindergarten you know and

that's a great thing because when you

finish that you'll get into first grade

and then come on first grade leads the

second grade and so on and then you get

out of grade school you've got high school

and it's revving up the thing is coming

then you're going to go to college and

by jove then you get into graduate

school and when you're through with

graduate school you go out to join the

world and then you get into some racket

where you're selling insurance and

they've got that quota to make and

you're going to make that and all the

time this thing is coming it's coming

it's coming that great thing the success

you're working for then when you wake up

one day about 40 years old you say my

god I've arrived I'm there and you don't

feel very different from what you always

felt by expectation look at the people

who live to retire and put those savings

away and then when they 65 they don't

have any energy left they're more or

less impotent and they go and rotten and

old people senior citizens community because we've

simply treated ourselves the whole way

down the line we thought of life by

analogy with a journey with a pilgrimage

which had a serious purpose at the end

the thing was to get to that end success

or whatever it is or maybe heaven after

you're dead but we missed the point the

whole way along it was a musical thing

and you were supposed to sing or to

dance while the music was being played