Michael: Alright Kevin, quick-fire round. If you had to describe the average person's sense of self in one word, what would it be? Kevin: Stressed. Definitely stressed. Or maybe... 'separate'? Like a little anxious king ruling a tiny, fragile kingdom of one. Michael: Perfect. Because today's book argues that little king is a complete fraud, a ghost we all agreed to pretend is real. Kevin: Oh, I like the sound of this. We're starting with a royal takedown. What's the book? Michael: We are diving into a classic from 1966, Alan Watts' The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. Kevin: Alan Watts. He's that British philosopher who became a kind of spiritual icon for the 60s counterculture, right? The guy who made Eastern philosophy cool in California. His lectures are all over the internet, with that amazing voice. Michael: Exactly. And what most people don't know is that he was actually an ordained Episcopal priest who left the church to dedicate his life to bridging Eastern thought with Western psychology. This book is his masterpiece on the biggest taboo of all: who we really are. He argues our most basic feeling of being an individual 'I' is a collective hallucination. Kevin: A hallucination? That's a huge claim. I mean, my feeling of being 'me,' right here, talking to you... that feels like the most real thing I have. How can it be a hoax? Michael: Well, that's the first big idea we have to unpack. Watts says it's a hoax we're all tricked into from the moment we're born.

Michael: He calls it the "ego-trick." It's this deep, unspoken conspiracy to convince every child that they are a separate, independent agent, an ego locked inside a bag of skin. And this trick is played on us by our parents, our language, our entire culture. Kevin: Hold on, a conspiracy? That sounds a bit dramatic. My parents weren't trying to trick me, they were just trying to get me to eat my vegetables and not draw on the walls. Michael: Of course! They weren't being malicious. They were just passing on the same trick that was played on them. Watts uses a brilliant analogy. He talks about how in pre-modern Japan, it was customary to give young people about to be married something called a "pillow book." Kevin: A pillow book? What's that? Michael: It was a small book of prints showing all the details of sexual intercourse. Because in that society, sex was a taboo topic. It was embarrassing for parents to discuss it directly with their children. So, they developed this tool, this indirect method, to pass on the necessary information without breaking the social code. Kevin: Okay, I see. It's a workaround for a taboo. Michael: Precisely. And Watts argues that our society does the exact same thing with the ultimate taboo: the truth of who we are. The idea that we are not separate, but are one with the universe, is so radical, so mind-bending, that we've developed a "pillow book" for it. And that pillow book is the concept of the individual ego. We give every child this idea of being a separate 'I' to help them navigate the world, but we never tell them it's just a convenient fiction. Kevin: Wow. So you're saying my identity, my sense of 'Kevin-ness,' is just a tool, a set of instructions for a game I didn't know I was playing? It’s not actually me? Michael: From Watts' perspective, yes. It's a role you're playing. He says, "our normal sensation of self is a hoax, or, at best, a temporary role." The problem is, we forget we're playing a role. We start to believe we are the mask. And that belief, that hallucination of being separate, is the root cause of our anxiety, our loneliness, and our hostility towards the world around us. Kevin: That makes a strange kind of sense. When I feel stressed, it's usually because it feels like 'me' against the world. Me against my deadline, me against my bills. It's a feeling of being a very small thing fighting a very big thing. Michael: And that's the trap. The feeling of being a "skin-encapsulated ego" puts you in a perpetual state of war with everything that is 'not you.' You're defending a fortress that was never real to begin with. It's why the book was so influential in the 60s. It gave a language to that feeling of alienation that so many people were experiencing. They felt disconnected, and Watts came along and said, "That feeling is based on a lie." Kevin: Okay, I can see how we're conditioned. It's baked into everything. But it still feels like I'm fighting against the world. It's me versus my problems, good versus evil, success versus failure. That feeling of conflict is very real. Michael: And that feeling of 'me versus them' is exactly the next layer of the illusion. It's the game Watts says we're all trapped in, whether we know it or not.

Michael: He calls it the "Game of Black-and-White." The core idea is that we're trained to see the world in terms of warring opposites. Black vs. White, Good vs. Evil, Life vs. Death, Self vs. Other. We're taught that one side must win. White must triumph over black. Kevin: Yeah, that sounds like every movie, every political debate, every sports game. There's a good guy and a bad guy. A winner and a loser. Michael: Exactly. But Watts says this is a fundamental misunderstanding of reality. The universe doesn't work in opposites; it works in polarities. Like the north and south poles of a magnet. You can't have one without the other. They are different, but inseparable. They are two ends of the same stick. Kevin: It’s like trying to have a coin with only a 'heads' side. It's impossible. You're saying life and death, or success and failure, are two sides of the same coin? Michael: That's the perfect analogy. You can't have a crest without a trough. You can't have 'on' without 'off.' Our consciousness, however, is trained to be a spotlight. It focuses only on the 'on,' the positive, the 'white.' We chase pleasure and run from pain. We cling to life and fear death. We celebrate the winners and ignore the losers. But by doing so, we're fighting a battle that can never be won, because we're trying to split an inseparable whole. Kevin: And that creates constant frustration. Because the 'black' side always shows up eventually. Michael: Always. And to illustrate how this perceptual error happens, he tells this wonderful little story about a cat. Imagine you've never seen a cat before, and you're looking at the world through a very narrow slit in a high fence. Kevin: Okay, I'm with you. A very limited view. Michael: A cat walks by. Through the slit, you first see a furry head. A moment later, you see a long, slinky body. And a moment after that, you see a twitching tail. The cat turns around and walks back. Again, you see the head, then the body, then the tail. After observing this for a while, what would you conclude? Kevin: I'd probably conclude that the appearance of the head is the cause of the appearance of the tail. Head-event A causes Tail-event B. Michael: Precisely. You've created a false separation and a false causality because your perception is too narrow. You failed to see that the head and the tail are two ends of one and the same cat. They aren't separate events; they are different aspects of a single process. Kevin: Ah, so that's a perception problem! We're only seeing life through a tiny slit in the fence. We think our success causes someone else's failure, or that life is in a battle against death, but it's all one cat. That makes so much sense. It's like we're obsessed with the 'on' signal and ignore the 'off' that makes it possible. Michael: You've got it. We live in a world of social media highlight reels—all 'on,' no 'off.' We chase promotions and bonuses, the 'white' squares on the board, terrified of the 'black' squares of failure or obscurity. But Watts is saying that to be a master of the game, you have to understand that you can't have one without the other. The whole board, black and white together, is the field of play. Kevin: This is huge. Because it reframes everything from a battle to a dance. But it also raises a massive question. If I'm not this separate ego, and if life isn't this fight between good and evil... then what am I? What is this whole thing? Michael: Exactly. And once you see the whole cat, once you realize the 'on' and 'off' are one system, the next question is... who or what is the system itself? And that brings us to the big reveal.

Michael: After deconstructing the ego and the game of duality, Watts offers the punchline. The great secret. The "inside information" on life. And he puts it very simply. He says, "You are IT." Kevin: You are... IT? Like the clown from the horror movie? Michael: (laughing) No, not that IT. 'IT' with a capital I, capital T. 'IT' is his term for the ultimate reality, the ground of all being, the whole cosmic show. The universe. God. Whatever word you want to use for the whole shebang. He's saying your fundamental identity isn't the little ego in your head. Your real Self is the entire process. Kevin: Okay, 'I am the universe.' That sounds great, but it also sounds like a bumper sticker I'd see on a van in 1969. What does that actually feel like? How does that change how you deal with, say, paying taxes or a terrible boss? Michael: That's the key question. It's not an intellectual idea; it's a shift in feeling. And the most beautiful way he explains this is with a myth, a story he suggests telling children. The story is that in the beginning, there was only God, or IT. And IT was everything. But being everything, IT was also kind of bored. There was no one to play with. Kevin: A lonely deity. I can sympathize. Michael: So, to have an adventure, IT decided to play a game of hide-and-seek with itself. IT pretended to not be IT. IT dreamed it was all the different things in the universe. IT dreamed it was a star, a rock, a fish. And then, for the most exciting and terrifying part of the game, IT dreamed it was people. IT dreamed it was you, Kevin, and me, Michael. And IT got so good at pretending, so lost in the dream, that IT forgot it was just a game. Kevin: Wow. So the 'lowdown' on life is that we're all God in disguise, playing a game and pretending to forget? That's both incredibly profound and... kind of hilarious. Michael: It is! And the game goes on for eons, through all these strange and wonderful adventures. But eventually, every part of the dream, every one of us, will have a moment where we wake up. We'll remember who we really are. We'll realize we were IT all along. And at that moment, the whole universe will laugh with the joy of rediscovery, and then, just for fun, start a new game. Kevin: So my life, with all its stress and joy and absurdity, is just one of God's little adventures in forgetting? That's a much better story than 'anxious king ruling a fragile kingdom.' But I have to go back to my earlier question. What do you do with that? Does it mean I can just stop worrying about my mortgage because I'm secretly the universe? Michael: It's not about ignoring your mortgage. It's about changing the feeling behind it. The anxiety comes from the illusion that 'you,' this tiny, separate king, are solely responsible for fighting the universe to pay that mortgage. The liberation comes from realizing you are the universe, which includes the mortgage, the boss, the joy, the struggle. It's all part of the same dance. You're not a victim of it; you are it. Kevin: You stop seeing it as an attack from an outside force, and start seeing it as just part of the pattern you're currently weaving. Michael: Exactly. You can play the game of life with more skill, more humor, and less desperation, because you know it's a game. You know that the 'black' squares aren't a threat to your existence, they're just part of the board that makes the 'white' squares possible.

Michael: Ultimately, the book is a call to wake up from what he calls the "ego-trick." It's an invitation to stop identifying with the mask and to recognize yourself as the whole show. It's a profound shift from feeling like a lonely noun in a world of other nouns, to feeling like a verb—an action, a process, a happening. The universe "peopling." Kevin: That's a beautiful way to put it. You're not a thing that the universe is happening to. You are the universe happening, in the form of a person. So the real taboo isn't just knowing who you are, it's accepting that 'who you are' is so much bigger, messier, and more playful than we're taught to believe. Michael: That's the heart of it. The book is controversial because it pulls the rug out from under the Western ego. But what it offers in return is a sense of profound connection, a release from the chronic anxiety of separateness, and a deep, cosmic sense of humor about the whole thing. Kevin: It feels like the ultimate permission slip. Permission to stop taking your isolated self so seriously. Michael: It is. And it leaves us with a really powerful question to reflect on. So the question for everyone listening is: what 'game of black-and-white' are you caught in right now? Where in your life are you fighting a battle against an 'other' that might secretly be the other side of your own coin? Kevin: I'd love to hear what people think. That's a question I'll be chewing on for a while. Let us know what game you're playing. Find us on our socials and share your thoughts. It's a conversation worth having. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.