Alan Watts
You Have To Come Down
The Hindu life
Is related
To this cosmology
And the objective
Of life
Is of course in the end
To wake up from the dream
When you've had enough
And so, the dreaming process is called
Sometimes samsara
Samsara
Is the round
The rat race
Samsara is divided into six
Divisions
This is the world of the Deva
This is the same root which we get both divine and devil
The Deva means angel
The highest
And most successful beings in the universe
And so opposite
This is the world of Narak
Naraka
Who are the most unsuccessful
These are the purgatorial worlds
Of extreme suffering
This is the world of Ashura
They are also angels but they are angry angels
Representing
The wrath
Potential of energy
This is the world of animals
This is the world of Preta
For which we have no English equivalent
They are hungry
Or frustrated spirits
Who have enormous stomachs but mouths only the size of needles
Vast appetite and no means of fulfillment
And this is the Manu world that is to say the world of man
You don't have to take this literally
You could say
When you're extremely happy or ecstatic, you're here
When you are miserable, you're here
When you're dumb, you're here
When you're mad, you're here
When you're frustrated, you're here
But when you're more or less your normal rational self you're here
[Laughs]
The - All life through the period of the Kalpas
Goes grinding around this wheel
And if you go up
And you succeed and you get to the top
You have to come down
They don't see success in other words in the world as a method of liberation
Because it implies failure
But the idea of liberation
Which is called Moksha
Is the ideal of Hindu life
Wake up, it's a dream