NOTE: This text was transcribed from an audio lecture produced by Alan W. Watts and found on YouTube. I accept responsibilities where they are due i.e. for any unintentional mistakes in the presentation of the text and take no credit for anything anywhere. The subject matter is in relation to a response given by Alan Watts to a woman who sought an answer to the problem of wanting to regain a particular state of consciousness, one which had occurred by means of an experience she had had whilst under the influence of anesthetic.
"The Smell of Burnt Almonds"
As spoken by Alan Watts:
“I received a visit from a woman who, as a result of listening to these talks, was wondering if I could help her to regain an experience which she had had while undergoing a surgical operation. As is generally known anesthetics sometimes induce peculiarly vivid and unusual states of consciousness. And every now and then a person under anesthesia will undergo a specific and particular experience which is of the utmost fascination. It’s the kind of experience which I suppose we would ordinarily call mystical or spiritual. And which while it lasts, carries the most powerful sensation of understanding with complete clarity and certainty; what is the mystery and meaning of the world.
This occurs sufficiently often to have been made a subject of experimentation. And perhaps you know the story of the investigator, who took doses of anesthetic for this purpose and equipped himself with pencil and paper to record at the moment of awakening whatever revelation might have been given to him. Fortunately, the expected experience took place, and for a brief period the investigator had the vivid conviction of complete comprehension of this universe of life and death. He regained waking consciousness with the tail end of the sensation still upon him, grabbed the pencil and swiftly recorded the essential content of the experience just before it faded. After several minutes during which his mind returned to its normal state, he looked at what he had written. And there upon the paper was the following immensely profound observation. Everything in this universe is the smell of burnt almonds.
I suppose that all sensible and hardheaded people would agree that this is just the sort of inanity to which all these mystical revelations ultimately boil down. In the clear cold light of rational consciousness, the seemingly inspired and utter convincing knowledge of dreams, of drug delusions, and of mystical experiences, comes down to just this sort of idiotic anticlimax, masked in the poetic or exotic obscurantism of such phrases as; all is Brahma. Or the divine unity beneath the multiplicity of the world. It may sound for a moment as if it meant something. But the essential nonsense of these feelings and the purely subjective character of the sense of insight which they involve at once becomes obvious when Brahma or the Divine Unity is replaced by the smell of burnt almonds.
We might settle for this conclusion if some of us had not had the same sensation not under drugs or hypnosis but when very wide awake. And I for one will not quarrel with the smell of burnt almonds as the key to the mystery. I like it much better and feel it makes much more sense than Brahma or the Divine Unity. For its very banality, its very consequential silliness brings out the real significance of the experience in question. For the importance of the mystical revelation does not lie in the precise nature of what everything in this universe is, it can be God or Brahma or burnt almonds or apple sauce, it can be anything you like. Its importance lies rather in the simple sensation of wholeness in the part of the sentence which runs, everything in this universe is—no matter what.
For the conviction which has come to the experiencer is that his habitual sensation of isolation from the environment, from the rest of the world is an illusion. And that as a corollary his own deeds and misdeeds, fortunes and misfortunes are the same process as the changing seasons, and the circling stars. And unreasonable as it may seem this gives him the sensation that his whole life, past, present, and future, is somehow perfectly natural and in order. And that he himself is not just the mind enclosed in the skull, but the total process of the world.
The significance of this experience does not I think, lie in any consequences or conclusions which might be drawn from it. It is not an important experience in the sense that it is useful for some other purpose. It’s simply like playing or listening to music, which is obviously phony in the very moment that we do it for some ulterior motive such as to appear cultured or to convey an ideological message. Its significance for human beings is not like that of say, the second law of thermodynamics but like that of the Mozart’s sonatas, or the arabesques on a Persian rug. The significance of useful knowledge like the second law of thermodynamics is precisely that by applying it, human beings may be enabled to go on experiencing such things as music, or love, or mystical insight.
But what could I say to the woman who under anesthetic had once had this experience and wanted it again more than anything else in the world? Go and have another operation? Get yourself some ether or mescaline, or Lysergic Acid (LSD) or take up Yoga? Or get thee to a nunnery? There are still other and much too pat answers to this question as that she is failing to revive the experience by the very act of seeking for it. As well tell the starving man that his very hunger is what prevents him from finding food. For once a person has had an experience of this kind, he is gone. It is easier to get rid of an addiction to heroin, or to choose something more natural; to get rid of the love of the opposite sex.
No, I could better say something like this. The answer is in the very experience you have had. Didn’t you know then, for certain with utter clarity, that your whole life past, present, and future, was somehow as you yourself put it, part and parcel of that universal harmony, which the Chinese call the Dao. I feel sometimes that phrases like universal harmony are so hackneyed, so almost slushy and sentimental, that it’s terribly difficult to begin to find the right word for this kind of thing without sounding like Voltaire’s Mr. Pangloss. Without sort of jumping on this best of all possible worlds business. Because the thing isn’t like that at all. It’s very very much stronger than the feeling that this is the best of all possible worlds. And the curious thing about it, it isn’t that it glosses over anything, but it makes the most awful things seem that way too. Without at the same time making them cease to seem terrible—it’s very peculiar.
Well, she had seen then for certain, at the time of that experience seen with total clarity that our whole past, present, and future life was in some way part and parcel of what we are perforce driven to call the universal harmony of the Dao. But what one doesn’t seem to understand then is that this still remains true of what one is today. You are in the stream when seeking for what you have lost and when feeling perfectly ordinary, no less than when you were in ecstasy. Your not feeling the experience and your striving to regain it is as a matter of fact, the very future which you saw to be in such perfect accord with the process.
Let me remind you of a celebrated tale that was told by Sri Rama Krishna: The story is of one of his disciples who had learned from the master that all the multiplicity of this world is the illusory outward form of the one eternal divine Brahma underlying the entire process. And having sat and listened to this exposition the disciple got up and went his way. And in passing down a rather narrow street he saw an elephant coming towards him, and a mahout riding on top of the elephant. Well, the mahout saw the disciple wandering down the center of the road and shouted at him, ‘Hey you! Get out of the way! This elephant isn’t very nice!’ But the disciple thought, ‘Now, the master Rama Krishna has told me that I am Brahma, and that everything is Brahma, and therefore the elephant is Brahma. And therefore, it will be perfectly alright if I walk straight along, the elephant will do me no harm since I realize this to be true.’
So, he ignored the warning of the mahout and approached the elephant, and the elephant swung his trunk and swatted that disciple hard and threw him into the ditch where he was scratched with the brambles. Well, he was very upset, and he came crawling back to Sri Rama Krishna and said, ‘Master, you have deceived me. I understood that everything is Brahma, that I am Brahma, and all other creatures, is that not so master?’ And the master said, ‘Yes, it is so.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I was walking out on the road, and I saw this elephant coming towards me and it didn’t seem to me to be necessary to get out of the way when the mahout riding the elephant warned me to do so. Because I figured I was Brahma, and the elephant was Brahma, and I could come to no harm.’ ‘You stupid man,’ said Sri Rama Krishna, ‘You didn’t realize that the voice of the mahout was also Brahma, and you should have heeded that too.’
So also in this case: The one who is trying to regain the vision is the disciple. And the vision they are trying to regain is the elephant. But the way you are actually feeling now, and which you are ignoring because of your eagerness to feel some other way, that is the voice of the mahout. And that too is Brahma. Nine times out of ten an observation of this kind will mean nothing. And will fall as flat as being told that everything in this universe is the smell of burnt almonds. But the tenth time, it will dawn upon you as a statement of total and luminous clarity.
I do not think we need to have any fear that this tenth time will never come, for in other circumstances it has come again and again. Think back to school days, when with the utmost care your teacher explained over and over the mysteries of percentage, or sentence structure, or daylight-saving time. And you consistently failed to see the point. And then suddenly, something clicked in your mind and the principle became clear. There is a Chinese poem which says; ‘Words do not make a man understand, it takes the man to understand the words.’”
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