Okay, welcome to part two of Alan Watts Podcast, Spiritual Authority.

There are four parts to this podcast to listen to the rest of this speech and also to listen to more from Alan Watts go to

Alan Watts dot com

that's a L a n w a n w a L A N W A T T S dot com.

Alan Watts dot com.

There are many speeches from Alan Watts and all of his podcast very very interesting.

Okay I hope you enjoy part two and remember you can read the text on my blog Effortless English

Club dot blog spot.com. Club. mind there is something awkward about all this and this awkwardness can be expressed in many different ways.

One of them is this, how on earth are you to get at yourself, to do something about yourself?

Because it's a project not unlike trying to pierce the point of a pin with the point of the same pin. In other words if you feel that

you could do with some sort of psychological or spiritual improvement, obviously you are the character who's going to have to bring

this about. But if you are the one who needs to be improved, how are you going to accomplish the improvement?

You're in the predicament of trying to lift yourself up off the floor by pulling at your own book straps.

And as you all know, that cannot be done. And if you attempt to do so, you are likely to land with a bang on your fanny. And be lower down than you were in the first place.

So that problem continually arises and it has arisen historically

in all the great religious traditions. We find it in Christianity in the debate

between Saint Augustine and Pelagius. And Pelagius said that if God had given us

a commandment to love him and to love our neighbours,

he would not have done so unless we could obey it.

St. Augustine encountered and said yes, but the commandment was not given in order for it to be obeyed. God never expected

that it would be obeyed because we were incapable of loving anyone but ourselves. The commandment was therefore given to convince us of our

sinfulness from which we could be rescued only by divine grace, that is to say by the infusion of our souls with the power beyond them.

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