We can say the body is the I, but the body comes out of the rest of the universe, comes out of all its energy. So it’s the universe that’s I-ing. The universe I-s in the same way that a tree apples or that a star shines. And the center of the apple-ing is the tree, the center of the shining is the star, and so the basic center—or Self—of the I-ing—which is called in this case Alan Watts, which is only a name for this particular physical organism; flowering from, shining out of this particular environment—makes the center of all this I-ing the eternal universe.
If that universal energy is the real me—the real Self which I-s as all these different organisms spread out in different spaces, or places, and happening again, and again, and again at different times—we’ve got a marvelous system going in which you can be eternally surprised. The universe is really a system which keeps on surprising itself. The ambition that many of us have (especially in an age of technological competence) to have everything under our control is a false ambition because you’ve only got to think for one moment: what would it be like if you did really know and control everything? Supposing we had a supercolossal technology which could go to our wildest dreams of technological competence so that everything that is going to happen would be foreknown, predicted, and everything would be under our control?
If, therefore, you get this sense—just like you’ve got the sense of nothing behind your eyes—get the sense of nothingness (very powerful, frisky nothingness) underlying your whole being, and there’s nothing in that nothing to be afraid of, then—with that sense—you can come on like a person for whom the rest of life is gravy because you’re already dead. You know you’re going to die. We say there’s one thing certain, which is death and taxes. And the death of each one of us, now, is as certain as it would be if we were going to die five minutes from now. So where’s your anxiety, where’s your hangup? Regard yourself as dead already so that you have nothing to lose.
The more you know you’re nothing, the more you’ll amount to something.