"When you say to somebody else, 'I love you," it's always rather disconcerting to the person you say that to if you implied you love them with a pure, disinterested, and holy love. They automatically suspect it as being a little bit phony. But if you say, "I love you so much I could eat you," that's an expression, it's a way of saying to a person, "You attract me so much that I can't help it - I'm absolutely bowled over by you - I'm gone!" And people like that. Then they feel they're really being loved, that it's absolutely genuine.
But now, "I love you so much I could eat you." Now, what the devil do I want? I certainly don't want to eat the girl in the sense of literally devouring her because then she'd disappear. But I love myself. And what is me? In what way do I know me?
But it suddenly occurs to me that I know 'me' only in terms of 'you' and the main task of the psychotherapist is to do what's called, 'to integrate the evil,' to as it were put the devil in us in its proper function because you see it's always the devil, the unacknowledged one, the outcast, the scapegoat, the bastard, the bad guy, the black sheep of the family, it's always from that point that generation comes. In other words, in the same way as in the drama, to have the play it's necessary to introduce a villain, it's necessary to introduce a certain element of trouble. So, in the whole scheme of life, there has to be the shadow because without the shadow there can't be the substance.
So, this is why there's a very strange association between crime, and all naughty things and holiness. Holiness is way beyond being good. Good people aren't necessarily holy people. A holy person is one who is whole, who as if were, reconciled his opposites. And so there's always something slightly scary about holy people and other people react to them in very strange ways. They can't make up their minds whether they're saints or devils. And so holy people have throughout history always created a great deal of trouble, along with their creative results. Take Jesus, for example. The trouble that Jesus created is absolutely incalculable. Think of the crusades, the inquisitions, heaven only knows what's gone on in the name of Jesus. Very remarkable.
Freud is a big troublemaker. Jung had a tremendous humor and he knew that nobody can be completely honest. That you'll try and you'll have a great deal of success in exploring your motivations and your dark, unconscious depths but there'll be a certain point at which you will say, "Well, I've had enough of that...!" Do you see how, in a strange way, there's a certain sanity in that?
When a person indulges in a certain kind of duplicity, in deception -- you all laughed when I said that, there's something humorous about it, and this humor, it's a very funny thing. Basically, humor is an attitude of laughter about oneself. There is malicious humor which is laughing at other people, but real deep humor is laughter at oneself. Now, why fundamentally do you laugh about yourself? What makes you laugh about yourself? Isn't it because you know that there's a big difference between what goes on the outside and what goes on the inside?
Now, I passed you around a lot of embroidery to look at before we started. And I'm perfectly sure that you got the point that there's a big difference between the front and the back. In some forms of embroidery, the back is very different from the front because people take shortcuts. In the front everything is orderly and it's supposed to be kind of messy on the backside. See, which side will you wear? You've got to be sure you get the front on the front and the back in the back - and the back has all the little tricks in it, all the little shortcuts, all the lowdown that people don't acknowledge, you see.
And it's exactly the same with the way we live. You know, like sweeping the dust under the carpet in a hurry just before the guests come. I mean, we do ever so many things just like that, and if you don't do it, if you don't think you do it, then you think really, my embroidery is the same on both sides. You see? Well, you're deceiving yourself because what you're doing is you're taking the shortcuts in another dimension which you're keeping out of consciousness.
Everybody takes the shortcuts, everybody plays tricks, everybody has in himself an element of duplicity, deception. Because, you see, from this point of view which I'm discussing, where the web is the trap, to be is to deceive. Think of camouflage. The chameleon who changes its color. Think of the butterfly pretending it has eyes...now, in the same way I've often said life is a drama and a drama is a deception, a big act.
When you peel an onion and you don't really understand the nature of an onion, you might look for the pit in the center, like any ordinary fruit has, but the onion doesn't have a center, it's all skins, so when you get right down there's nothing but a bunch of skins. And you say, well, that was kind of disappointing. But rather in the same way, you see, you find when you explore yourself in your motivations and you go through and through and you try to find that thing which is really genuine. So you explore the onion and you go in and in and in and you find, well, it's all a deception.
Now then the question arises, who's deceiving who, who's fooling who? I'm fooling me?! What is 'fooling'? Fooling is playing like you're there when you not. You know, getting somebody else to answer your name in the roll call. So, this is the metaphysical basis of it. This is what the Hindus mean by 'Maya' the 'world of illusion.' The world is playing it's there when it isn't. And it's a trap and it sucks you in and you can't get out of it. And it's a thorough big trap too.
But always when you get an idea like this, or a feeling like this, follow it to its extreme. Don't back out from it. If you find you're selfish, go to the extreme of what selfishness means. Confusion largely results from not following feelings or ideas to their death. You know, people think they want to be immortal, they'd like to live forever. Do you really want to do that? Think about it, really go into it, what it would be like. People say they want this, that, and the other...it's always a good idea to think it right through, what it would involve to be in that situation, to have those desires fulfilled. Also when you form a relationship to another person, think it through too...always turn the embroidery around and look at the underside but don't get caught doing it. That's something one does on the side, in secret, because otherwise you play the game that everything is as it's supposed to be on the front. But that makes you humorous, and that makes you human."
-Alan Watts
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