The Web of Life, Part 15: An Invitation to Dance

So, what I’m saying is, I think, this: I’m trying to share with you a certain style of life, and an attitude to life, and an insight. I’ve taken you to one side and said, Listen, kids, things aren’t what they seem. Don’t be fooled. There’s a big deception going on, and you’re involved in it, but I just thought that you ought to know it—and enjoy it. See? I’m terribly puzzled about the way people go out of their way to dis-enjoy themselves. It takes so much trouble about it.

Did you ever read H. L. Mencken’s essay called The Libido for the Ugly? And it describes a Pennsylvania mining town, which isn’t exactly totally impoverished. I mean, they can build things, and they have enough money to do this, that, and the other. But they—he describes how they made a church out of yellow stone that’s so awful that it looks like Presbyterian with a grin. And all around you have only to look and you see this perfect passion for making the world look grizzly. And it isn’t only job builders and garage owners who do this kind of thing, it’s also people who profess to be painters. They’re actually using excrements for painting in Paris today, on the theory that the world is shot to pieces.

And since the artist is a representative of his times, he ought to show the times as they really are, as a social critic. And so he makes the most weird—I mean, he paints Campbell's soup can, and then he makes music that shrieks and screams, and the most—he just goes out of his way to make it sound as ugly as he possibly can manage. And the ingenuity about that is endless. Because that is the times. He’s the critic, you see? Instead of being somebody who reveals.

Now, you see, let’s take the sort of the character of the Pied Piper: the person who brings you an invitation to dance. I would say, then, you see, There is going to be a dance this evening, and I would like you all to come. You know? That’s the spirit in which I invite you to a seminar. I am not inviting you in the spirit of saying No, we’re going to have to discuss some very grave matters, and you ought to be awake to all these things and arouse your social conscience, and so on, and so forth. Because when you get through with all that, then what? When you get through with feeding the hungry and clothing the naked—and we are making great strides with automation, and technology, and abolishing poverty totally—then what are we going to do? Well, you see, if you got all these people clothed, and fed, and so on, and then they say, Well, now, what next? And if you got a kind of a Quakerish state of mind you don’t know what to do. Well, feed and clothe somebody else, you see? Get busy. But then, where is that leading?

So, you see, to spread joy you have to have it. To impart delight you have to be, more or less, delightful. And to be delightful is not some factor of trying to make yourself look delightful. It is to do things that are delightful to you. You become, thereby, delightful to others. That’s to say, people who are interesting are people who are interested. Any person, for example, who is always constantly thinking about all sorts of other things, and other people, and so on—because they are fascinating—becomes a fascinating person. But a person who doesn’t think about anybody else, and who’s got very little going on inside their skull, is boring. So, in other words, your engagement with the external world—the more you are involved, the more your personality is enriched. But if you try to enrich your personality by taking a course on how to win friends and how to influence people, or how to be a real person, you become just a washout. Because you’ll be—in a small circle—you’ll be, as it were, you’ll be like somebody trying to get a good nutrition by biting his nails. And then the fingers next, you know? And then half an arm gone, and so on, and you’re entirely nourishing yourself with yourself.

Now, of course, on a vast scale the universe does that: it eats itself up. That’s why the symbol of the snake swallowing its tail is a very fundamental, archaic symbol of life. But the way it’s done is that the snake has, in some part of the ring, a place where it’s not sensitive. It’s called the unconscious. Where it doesn’t know that what comes to it in the form of food is actually what left it in the form of excrement. That thing is—don’t mention it. After all, as the Lord said, In the beginning of the universe you must draw the line somewhere.

And so, as a result of there always being a kind of gap—that’s the gap, you know, like where the electric spark jumps—that’s the thing behind your head, behind your eyes, that you can never get to look at. It’s the gap. And because of that little gap the circle doesn’t just revolve in a dull way, just going round, and round, and round like a boring thing,. It has rhythm. See, if I say, Yoeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee; no rhythm, see? It’s just one long sound. After a while you’ll say, Oh, cut it out! Or we just become insensitive to it.

But what we want to hear is a break in it, you see? And we want to hear it go on and off, and vanish and come back again, and so on. And it sets up a rhythm; that becomes interesting. That’s putting gaps between, you see? We need those gaps. So now you see it, now you don’t, now you see it, now you don’t. Well, that’s pretty dull. So what we are going to do is this: we’re going to have you see it three times, and then with a regular not see it between them, then there are gonna be a longer not see it after that one, and then I’m going to do something very complicated after that, so that you don’t really know when it’s going to come next. So it’s going to be a surprise. You know, how we all do that?

And interesting people are those who do this in very involved ways. Dull people, sort of people who put their hats on absolutely straight, are the kind of people, for example, who have the same meal every day. Exactly the same thing, always. See? Have no inventiveness. They have the same routine, they go to the same office, they answer the same kind of letters, and that’s that. See? But then, if they want to start up a more interesting kind of business, and make more money, then they have to figure out—take the people who make clothes. They figure out fashion. There’s going to be a new thing for ladies; a new style this fall. We’re going to make them do long skirts instead of the short skirts and the middle skirts. And they skirts go wi-tchi-tchi tchi-tchi tchi-tchi, like this. Then, finally, they thought about having topless women, and they are going to play around with that and have an absolutely scandalous ball. But that’s the whole thing, you see? It’s this thing of rhythm.

And yes, you ask, Well, I see that. What is doing this rhythm? Who, after all, am I? And as you explore deeper, and deeper, and deeper into the nature of yourself, you find that you are a rhythm doing a rhythm. And behind that there is another rhythm doing a rhythm. You’re vibrations; and once again you meet our friend, the onion. And who, who is doing all this? Why, he disappeared. He came around, there it was, and we were looking for him, and he vanished. And then, just when we weren’t looking for him again, there he is. But every time we try to see, he isn’t there. Now do you see that? That that situation is what’s called life.