The World as Self, Part 5: The Rhythmic Dance

So you must remember, of course, that the word ‘play’ and the word ‘game’ have many levels of meaning. We are accustomed to use the word ‘play’ in opposition to ‘work’ and to regard play as trivial and work as serious. Very largely, a game or a play is something associated in our minds with triviality. You’re only playing with me, says a girl to a suitor, you’re not serious. How serious do you have to be? When does one get serious in a flirtation? When do we say this is getting serious? When you’re holding hands? Playing footsies under the table? Do you see? Petting? Sleeping together? Married and babies? Maybe that’s serious.

But we also use the word ‘play’ in a non-trivial sense. I went to hear Heifetz play the violin. Was that a trivial matter? On the contrary—the very highest kind of artform. Still: ‘play.’ I say, too—when I do philosophy, like I’m doing with you—this is entertainment, but in the sense—perhaps, I hope—of your listening to someone play a musical classic. I’m not being serious, but I am being sincere.

The difference, you see, between seriousness and sincerity is that seriousness is someone speaking in the context of the possibility of tragedy; that there is a situation where things might go absolutely wrong, and then I put on the expression which is serious. That’s why soldiers on parade are always serious. They don’t laugh. And when they salute the flag they put on a stern expression. That’s why, in courts of law and in churches, people normally don’t laugh—because all that we deal with here is very important, a matter of life and death.

But the fundamental question [that] must be brought forth: is God serious? And obviously the answer is no, because there’s nothing to be serious about. I said, also, that the Self—as conceived, the supreme Self—was quite useless, that it was immaterial. Doesn’t matter. Because it transcends all values of what is better or worse, what is upwards or downwards, what is good and bad. It so weaves the world that the good or the bad play together like the black and white pieces in the game of chess.

So play is—deeply—the sort of thing children like to do with deep absorption and fascination. To drop pebbles into the water and watch the concentric circles of waves. Or mathematicians. Mathematicians, you know—especially what we call higher mathematicians—are entirely lacking in seriousness. They couldn’t give a hoot in hell as to whether what they’re doing has any practical application. They are working entirely on interesting puzzles and working out what they call elegant and beautiful solutions to these puzzles. And they can go on and on like that in absorbed meditation, spend their whole lives doing it. Or consider the musician: practicing, working out interpretations; what is he doing? He’s making series of interesting noises on instruments.

Now, what do people like to do when they don’t have to do anything? Well, as far as I can make out as you look all over the world, they like to get together and do something rhythmic. They may dance, they may sing, they may even play games—because, say, in playing dice there’s a certain wonderful rhythm to shaking the cup and rolling the dice out on the table. Or dealing cards: Tsu-tsu-tsu-tsu-tsu-tsu-tsu Wwrrrrrrtt! Crrrck! You know? All the things that people like to do and think about: these rhythms. Or some people like to knit, and this is a rhythmic thing, you see? Others just like to breathe. There are all sorts of ways in which we love to do this.

Now you see, our very existence is a rhythm of waking and sleeping, eating, and moving—and that’s all we’re doing. Just consider what we do every day. What’s it all about? Does it really mean anything? Does it go anywhere? It’s just because we want to keep on doing this kind of a hoop-de-dah. So you can get a certain vision of life where everything is seen to be a complex pattern of rhythm. Dances. The human dance, the flower dance, the bee dance, the giraffe dance. And these are also comparable to various games: poker, bridge, backgammon, chess, checkers, et cetera, or to various musical forms: sonata, fugue, partita, concerto, symphony, or whatever.

And that’s what this all is: it’s jazz, you see? This is a big jazz, this world. And what it’s trying to do is to see how jazzed up it can get, how far out this play of rhythm can go. Because that what we all come down to, you see? We’re going this di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-DI-di-di-di-di in every conceivable way. So then that is why, you see, this fundamental view that the world is play.

Now, let’s examine the rules of this game.