I was reading This Is It by Alan Watts this morning and wanted to share a profound insight.
I apologize to Christians reading this in advance, it might not be the most satisfying read. But if you have an open mind, it might open some doors!
For context… The first chapter brilliantly explores descriptions of the direct experience of God from many cultures and traditions – both in the form of cosmic consciousness or Satori, and in the quiet recognition of stillness, feeling God’s presence within ordinary human life.
The second chapter, "Instinct, Intelligence, and Anxiety," made a point about Christianity that I found totally brilliant.
Watts argues that Christianity creates a kind of psychological trap… one that most Christians never reconcile.
First off, the stakes of Traditional Christianity are infinite – your eternal soul depends on choosing good over evil.
But here's the catch: you can never be certain you've chosen correctly…
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”
Matthew 7:21-23
So, to presume you're saved is the sin of pride... For no one will truly know if they are saved until the day of judgement. To presume you're damned is the sin of despair.
You're stuck in between, forever uncertain.
But wait… it gets worse. Because of original sin, your faculties of judgment themselves are corrupted – both your animal instincts and your rational mind. So even when you try to examine yourself honestly, you can't fully trust your own judgment to choose good or evil... The more carefully you look inward, the more you discover that your motives are, as Watts puts it, "astoundingly complex and slippery" – good masquerading as evil, evil masquerading as good. And the deeper you go, the more paralyzed you become.
So what are the escapes?
The first is blind obedience. Stop thinking so much. Just follow the rules, do what the church says, don't ask questions. The problem? This becomes empty formalism – the very Pharisaism that Christ himself condemned. This is basically going through the motions without any genuine spiritual life.
The second escape is what Watts calls the romanticism of instinct – you glorify raw impulse and ignore reason entirely. Just follow your gut, your desires, your feelings. But in the Christian framework, your instincts are fallen, corrupted by original sin. To surrender to them completely is essentially to hand yourself over to the corrupted part of your nature. Watts calls this the old practice of "selling your soul to the devil." It's trading the anxiety of moral struggle for the certainty of damnation. You've given up the fight. And he notes darkly that this at least provides relief – damnation is certain, so the agonizing uncertainty is finally over.
This resonates deeply with my own search.
It's part of why I've been drawn to Yogananda's path so much. It combines strict discipline – the yamas and niyamas, which are essentially commandments or moral observances, doing your best to live just & rightly – with something Christianity often lacks: a practice of direct communion with what we might call God, in stillness, in meditation, in daily life.
It's also a nondual framework, whereas Christianity is typically dualistic. In dualism, God is separate from man. You have God who is one with Christ, and then you have humans – inherently flawed, but capable of being saved by a God who exists outside of them.
In non-dual traditions like Hinduism and Buddhism, God is in all. Because God is omnipotent and omnipresent, God is in all things. Not merely the creator of the universe, but also the substance of it.
This makes more sense to me. And honestly, if you look without bias, you can see that the mystics of every tradition seem to be pointing at the same thing – even Christ, when you read his words closely, sounds nondual. "The Kingdom of God is within you." "I and the Father are one." “Have I not said the ye are Gods?” “At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.”
There's an old parable about blind men and an elephant.
One grabs the tail and thinks it's a rope. One touches the leg and thinks it's a tree. One feels the ear and thinks it's a fan. One runs his hand along the side and thinks it's a wall. One grasps the tusk and thinks it's a spear. One holds the trunk and thinks it's a snake.
They're all touching the same elephant. They're all sort of partially right in their description. And yet they're all missing the whole.
I think that's what's happening with the world's religions. Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism – even scientific materialism, in its own way – they're each grasping part of something too vast to hold in one pair of hands.
Yogananda's first speech in America was called "The Science of Religion." I love that framing. Because Yogananda’s view, much like Eckahrt Tolle’s and Alan Watts’ and Ram Dass and many other teachers of this nondual perspective are all about direct investigation.
In other words, you don’t have to trust anyone or believe anything in blind faith.
“Be still and know that I am God”
Right now, turn your attention away from the screen you're staring at and back toward the awareness that's doing the looking.
As you don’t this, turn off your brain a moment and recognize that no thought of a word could ever fully represent a thing itself.
Contemplate this.
So what's the solution?
Well, it’s not blind obedience of course. And it's not surrendering to impulse. It's the direct experience of what every tradition is pointing at.
Watts says the anxiety dissolves when you stop experiencing yourself as a little isolated "I" fighting against the world – and start feeling, but, moreover, knowing that you and the world are not separate things.
This is not to be confused with a concept to understand or wrap your head around.
It's a sensation – like knowing water is cold when you drink it.
Christ said the Kingdom of God is within you. Not separate from you. Within.
-Arlin
