"How do you know that you are a higher order of being than a potato?" - Alan Watts

"How do you know that you are of a higher order of being than a potato?

What do you know about potatoes anyway? You never studied potatoes, not really. I mean you know how to seed them and cultivate them and dig them up, and cook them and eat them, and that's about it. But have you ever thought about how a potato feels? Well, you say, it doesn't feel it's only a potato, its got nothing to feel with...Wait a minute! When you put a electroencephalograph instrument on a potato, or a lie detector, it sure registers on it. And it will change when you do certain things, if you prick the potato the thing will go 'yonyonyon!' If you shout at it, it will do something! As a matter of fact, if you know how to turn on your alpha waves and you have a plant besides you which is linked up, it will pick your alpha waves up. Maybe this thing isn't so stupid.

'Well,' you say, 'how can it be? It has no civilization. It has no house. It has no automobiles. It has no pianos. No art galleries. No religion.' But the potato would say, 'I dont need them. It's you poor uncivilized human beings who have all this crap around you to tell you who you are and what it's all about. Your'e messy, your'e cluttering up the planet with all your culture. But I, the potato, have it all built into me.'

'Well,' they'll say, 'thats impossible, because you're stuck in one place all the time. Now how can you know anything about the world?'

'I don't need to go running around because my sensitivity extends all over the place. And I want to introduce you to a few things, here is my neighbor over here, who's a thistle. And have you ever seen how my thistle neighbor gets around? It has seeds, when the wind comes, these little, tiny seeds have down sticky out all around, and those seeds float up on the wind. And then my neighbor, the maple tree, has little helicopters it sends off, and they spin in the air, and they go up. And then I have a friend, the apple, and that has fruit that is so delicious that the birds like it. But this is only the beginning,' the potato would go on to explain, 'this is only the beginning of the extraordinary things they do. We have vibrations going on inside our fibers that are quite as good as anything invented by your Bach and Mozart. We dig this, and you may think we are not doing anything because we just sit here, but all the time we are vibrating, we are in ecstasy. We are humming to the great hum that is going on everywhere!'

So you see, they may be in such an advanced state of consciousness, that all unknown to you angels are growing in a flowerpot at your door. It may have a great deal to do with the way you think, all unbeknownst to you."

--- Alan Watts (1915 – 1973)

[VIDEO SOURCE CREDIT: "We Are Happy Plants"]
[image: Wikipedia]