author, philosopher, and self-proclaimed spiritual entertainer
Alan Watts
In the West,
we inherit the idea of law
from those ancient conceptions of God
and it is even passed down into science!
Where we discuss Laws of Nature
but one recognizes more and more in the sciences
that what we call Laws of Nature
are simply observed regularities in the way things behave
And you, in order to observe regularities
you must look at things through something regular
that is to say you must lay a ruler alongside them
or compare their behavior with the regular behavior of a clock
But clocks and rulers are human inventions!
They are regular measures
which we use for comparing
the rates of change,
say a clock is a measure of a rate of change
It's quite arbitrary!
But we very easily compare our
regulation measuring devices
with what makes things happen.
As if the sun rises because it's 6 in the morning!
And that's being completely backwards in one's thinking
And we get into the same confusion
when we imagine for example that money is wealth!
Here we have fantastic wealth
and we have the technological possibility
of making everybody on Earth
the enjoyer of an independent income.
We can't do it
because people say where is the money gonna come from?
Because they think money makes prosperity
it's the other way around!
It's physical prosperity
which has money as a way of measuring it
But people think money has to come from somewhere
like hydroelectric power or lumber or iron
and it doesn't! Money is something we invent!
Like inches
So you remember The Great Depression?
When there was a slump
and what did we have a slump of?
Money
There was no less wealth, no less energy
no less raw materials than there were before
but it's like you came to work on building a house one day,
and they said "Sorry! You can't build this house today,"
"no inches."
What you mean "no inches"?
"Ah just inches! We don't mean... We got inches of lumber, yes"
"we got inches of metal, we even got tape measures!"
"But there is a slump in inches!"
And people are that crazy!
They can have a depression
because they have no inches to go around
or no dollars
It's all a load of nonsense
But you see, because we got thinking backwards
And making the metaphysical tail wag the dog
making the law rule things
where it doesn't, it's merely a way of measuring what happens
And so, you see, when you get into Buddhistic thought
you don't get that confusion.