text:
Mind is a Myth/III

'''Q: From our earlier talks with you it is evident that man has a wrong relationship with his knowledge of himself and the world. What exactly do you mean by knowledge?'''

U.G.: Knowledge is not something mysterious or abstract. I look at the table and ask myself, "What is that?" So do you. Knowledge is just naming things. It tells you that that is a "table", that I "am happy" or "miserable", that "you are an enlightened man and I am not". Is there anything to thought other than this? The knowledge you have of the world creates the objects you are experiencing. The actual existence or non-existence of something "out there" in the world is not something you can determine or experience for yourself, except through the help of your knowledge. And this knowledge is not yours; it is something which you and your ancestors have accumulated over a long time. What you call the "act of knowing" is nothing other than this accumulated memory. You have personally added to and modified that knowledge, but essentially it doesn't belong to you at all. There is nothing there inside you but the totality of this knowledge you have accumulated. That is what you are. You cannot even directly experience the reality of the world in which you are functioning, much less some world beyond. There is no world beyond space and time. It is your invention, based upon the vague promises of the holy men. Our sense of value springs from the world as it is imposed on us. We must accept the world.

'''Q: So our belief system is also based upon this memory ...? '''

U.G.: Neither is belief an abstraction. It is an extension of the survival mechanism which has operated for millions of years. Belief is like any other habit, the more you try to control and suppress it, the stronger it becomes. Your question implies that you want to be free from something: in this case it is belief. First of all, why do you want to be free from it? Whatever you are doing or hope to do to be free from this only adds momentum to it. Anything you do has no value at all. Why has this become a problem to you? You are in no position to deny or accept what I am saying. You have probably tried some kind of system to control your thoughts and beliefs, and it has failed you. Repeating mantras, doing yoga, and prayer have not helped. For whatever reasons, you have not been able to control your thoughts. That is all.

'''Q: But the repeating of mantras and other sacred techniques do seem to quiet thought ... '''

U.G.: You cannot even observe your thoughts, much less control them. How can you possibly observe your thoughts? You talk as though there is some entity in you separate from thoughts. It is an illusion; your thoughts are not separate from you. There is no thinking. Thought cannot damage you. It is your separative structure trying to control, dominate, censure and use thought that is the problem. Thought by itself can do no damage. It is only when you want to do something with thought that you create problems for yourself.

'''Q: Listening to you now seems also to create problems for me. '''

U.G.: You say you are listening. Even as I speak you are not listening to anything. You are not listening to me, but only to your own thoughts. I have no illusions about it. You cannot listen to me or anybody. It is useless trying to persuade me that you are attentive, concerned, listening. I am not a fool.

'''Q: It is not so obvious to me that I am not listening to you. I seem to be listening to you and thinking about it simultaneously. Isn't this possible?'''

U.G.: It is impossible. There is only one action possible for you: thinking. The birth of thought itself is action. The thinker who says he is looking at cause-and-effect is himself thought. Thought creates the space between the thinker and his thoughts, and then tells himself, "I am looking at my thoughts." Is it possible? Forgetting about what has happened in the past, try to look at your thoughts at this very moment. I am asking you to do something which is quite simple. If you will tell me how to look at thought, I will be your student. I will be very grateful to you. Instead of looking at thought, you focus on me. If you repeat a mantra, that is thought. The repetition of the mantra is another thought. The idea that these repetitive thoughts have not succeeded in producing the state you want is another thought. The idea that you must find a new mantra or practice some technique that does work is another thought. What is thought other than this? I want to know.

'''Q: But all religions have stressed the importance of suppressing and controlling undesirable thoughts. Otherwise we would descend to the level of animals.'''

U.G.: We have been brainwashed for centuries by holy men that we must control our thoughts. Without thinking you would become a corpse. Without thinking the holy men wouldn't have any means of telling us to control our thoughts. They would go broke. They have become rich telling others to control their thoughts.

Q: But, surely, there are qualitative differences in the way thoughts are controlled.

U.G.: You have arbitrarily made these distinctions. Thinking is part of life, and life is energy. Having a glass of beer or smoking a cigarette is exactly the same as repeating prayers, holy words, and scriptures. Going to the pub or the temple is exactly the same; it is a quick fix. You attach special significance to the prayers and temples, for no reason other than that it is your prejudice and that it makes you feel superior to those who frequent pubs and bordellos.

'''Q: So it is all an attempt to modify or change in some way my conditioning ... '''

U.G.: Conditioning is tradition. The Sanskrit word for it is samskara. Tradition is what you are—what you call you. No matter how you may modify it, it continues. In life everything is temporary, and the attempt to give continuity to conditioning—which is based upon thought—is pathological in nature. You treat the psychological and the pathological as if they were two different things. Actually there is only the pathological there. Your samskara, the conditioning that makes you feel separate from yourself and the world, is pathological. Where is this conditioning you talk of ...? Where are the thoughts located? They are not in the brain. Thoughts are not manufactured by the brain. It is, rather, that the brain is like an antenna, picking up thoughts on a common wavelength, a common thought-sphere. All your actions, whether thinking of God or beating a child, spring from the same source—thinking. The thoughts themselves cannot do any harm. It is when you attempt to use, censor, and control those thoughts to get something that your problems begin. You have no recourse but to use thought to get what you want in this world. But when you seek to get what does not exist—God, bliss, love, etc.—through thought, you only succeed in pitting one thought against another, creating misery for yourself and the world. When the thought structure, pressed into the service of fear and hope, cannot achieve what it wants, or cannot be certain, it introduces what you call "faith". Where is the need for belief, or its alter-ego faith? When your beliefs have gotten you nowhere, you are told you must cultivate faith. In other words, you must have hope. Whether you are seeking God, or bliss, peace of mind, or, more tangibly, happiness, you end up relying on hope, belief, and faith. These dependencies are the tokens of your failure to get the results you desire.

Q: What is the relationship between thought conditioning, and what we call desire?

U.G.: Your desires, like your thoughts in general, are to be suppressed and controlled at all costs. This approach only enriches the holy men. Why the hell do you want to be in what you call "a desireless state" anyhow? What for? I can assure you that when you have no desire you will be carried as a corpse to the burial ground. We have been told by the holy men that to have desires is wrong. They must be suppressed or changed into a higher order of desires, "transformed". It is hogwash. Either you fulfill those desires or you fail to fulfill those desires. That is the problem. In either case desire will arise. Attempting to do nothing is also useless. It (i.e., doing nothing) is part of your general strategy to get something. It has to burn itself out. The samskara, or conditioning, although capable of being burnt out, cannot be seen. You can never look at desire. Seeing desire will blind you. Your culture, your philosophy, your society has conditioned you, and now you think you can change or in some way modify that conditioning. It is impossible, for you are society.

'''Q: We do not want to be free of conditioning. It is too frightening to contemplate. We are too insecure. ''' U.G.: Every thought that is born has to die. It is what they call the death wish. If a thought does not die, it cannot be reborn. It has to die, and with it you die. But you don't die with each thought and breath. You hook up each thought with the next, creating a false continuity. It is that continuity that is the problem. Your insecurity springs from your refusal to face the temporary nature of thought. It is a little easier to talk to those who have attempted thought control—who have done some sadhana—because they experience the futility of it and can see where they are "hung up".

'''Q: I suppose, then, that it is the tradition and conditioning that has created the moral dilemma for us ...? '''

U.G.: Only the man who is capable of immorality can talk of morality. There is no such thing as immorality for me. I cannot sit and preach morality. That is all. I take no moral positions at all. The one who talks of morals, love, and compassion is a humbug. Your morality or the lack of it is of no importance compared to the fact that you are dead. You are always operating in and through your dead memory. Memory is nothing more than the same old nonsense repeating itself, that's all. All you know, or can ever know, is memory, and memory is thought. Your ceaseless thinking is only giving you continuity. Why do you have to do that all the time? It is not worth it. You are wearing yourself out. When there is a need for it, one can understand. Why do you have to separate yourself from your actions and tell yourself all the time, "Now I am happy," "Now I feel I belong," "Now I feel alone." Why? You are constantly monitoring and censoring your actions and feelings: "Now I feel this, Now I feel that;" "I want to be that," "I should not have done that." You are mulling over the future or the past all the time, oblivious to the present. There is no future in relation to your problem. Any solution you think of is in the future, and is, therefore, useless. If there is anything that can happen, it must happen NOW. Since you don't want anything to happen NOW, you push it away into something you have named "the future". What you have in place of the present is FEAR. Then begins the whole exhausting search for a way to be free from fear. Do you really want THIS kind of freedom? I say you do not. Anything you want to be free from, for whatever reason, is the very thing that can free you. You have to be free from the very thing you want to be free from. You are always dealing with a pair of opposites; so being free of one is to be free from the other, its opposite. Within the framework of the opposites there is no freedom. That is why I always say, "You haven't got a chance ..." Likewise, the man who is not concerned with morality will not be interested in immorality. The answer to selfishness lies in selfishness, not a fictitious opposite called selflessness. Freedom from anger lies in anger, not in non-anger. Freedom from greed lies in greed, not in non-greed. The whole religious business is nothing but moral codes of conduct: you must be generous, compassionate, loving, while all the time you remain greedy and callous. Codes of conduct are set by society in its own interests, sacred or profane. There is nothing religious about it. The religious man puts the priest, the censor, inside you. Now the policeman has been institutionalized and placed outside you. Religious codes and strictures are no longer necessary; it is all in the civil and criminal codes. You needn't bother with these religious people anymore; they are obsolete. But they don't want to lose their hold over people. It is their business; their livelihood is at stake. There is no difference between the policeman and the religious man. It is a little more difficult with the policeman, for, unlike the inner authority sponsored by the holy men, he lies outside you and must be bribed.

'''Q: The helplessness of the average man to solve these basic dilemmas is acknowledged by many religions. Seekers are directed, therefore, to a sage, savior or avatara. Yet you deny even this source of help and inspiration, do you not? '''

U.G.: When you are suffering greatly and are very depressed, the body falls asleep. It is nature's way of handling the situation. Or you use repetitive words as a soporific—what you call "japa"—and go into sound sleep. You invent a name like Rama, repeat it endlessly, and hope to get some benefit. First of all you have invented Rama. Rama doesn't exist except as an historical figure. Having created the monster, you worship and then say you can't get out of it. It's alright with me if you continue with your "Ram Nam" ...

Q: The repetition of holy names is a sincere effort to find something transcending the transient, something more permanent ...

U.G.: There is no permanence. The attempt to attain permanent happiness and uninterrupted pleasure is only choking the body, doing it violence. Your search for happiness only succeeds in destroying the sensitivity and intelligence of the nervous system. Wanting what does not exist—the romantic, religious, spiritual stuff—only adds momentum to that false continuity which destroys the body. It is radically disturbing the chemical balance of the body. The body, which is only interested in survival and procreation, treats both pain and pleasure alike. It is YOU who insist on stopping pain and extending pleasure. The body's response to both pleasure and pain is the same—it groans. What does the body want? It doesn't want anything except to function. All other things are the inventions of thought. The body has no separate independent existence of its own apart from pleasure and pain. The various vibrations affecting the body may differ in intensity, but it is you who divide them into good and bad. You are constantly translating vibrations that hit the body into experiences. You touch the table and it is "hard", you touch the pillow and it is "soft", you touch the woman's arm there and it is "sexy", and you touch the doorknob and it is "not-sexy". Without the constant translation of the sensory activity you have no way of knowing if something is hard, or soft, or sexy. The body's natural intelligence is correctly "processing" the sensory input without your having to do a thing. It is similar to how the body turns over many times during sleep without your being aware of it, much less trying to control it. The body is handling itself. You are all the time interfering with the natural functioning of the nervous system. When a sensation hits your nervous system the first thing you do is to name it and categorize it as pleasure or pain. The next step is that you want to continue the pleasurable sensations and stop the painful sensations. First, the recognition of a sensation as pleasure or pain is itself painful. Second, the attempt to extend the life of one kind of sensation ("pleasure"), and to stop another kind of sensation ("pain"), is also painful. Both activities are choking the body. In the very nature of things every sensation has its own intensity and duration. The attempt to extend pleasure and stop pain only succeeds in destroying the sensitivity of the body and its ability to respond to sensations. So, what you are doing is very painful for the body. If you do nothing with the sensations, you will find that they must dissolve into themselves. That is what I mean when I speak of the "ionization of thought". That is what I meant by birth and death. There is no "death" for the body, only disintegration. Thought being material, all its pursuits are material. That is why your so-called spiritual pursuits have no meaning. Don't get me wrong, I am not against using thought to get what you need; you have no other tool at your disposal. So, the body is interested only in its survival. All that are necessary for life are the survival and reproductive systems. That is nature's way. Why life wants to reproduce itself is another matter. The only way the human organism can survive and ensure its reproduction is through thought. So thought is very important and even essential to the living organism. Thought determines whether there is action or no action. All animals have these survival thoughts, but, in the case of man, the factor of recognition is introduced, complicating the whole thing enormously. We have superimposed over the natural sensory functioning a never-ending verbalization. The body is not at all interested in psychological or spiritual matters. Your highly praised spiritual experiences are of no value to the organism. In fact they are painful to the body. Love, compassion, ahimsa, understanding, bliss, all these things which religion and psychology have placed before man, are only adding to the strain of the body. All cultures, whether of the Orient or of the Occident, have created this lopsided situation for mankind and turned man into a neurotic individual. Instead of being what you are—unkind—you pursue the fictitious opposite put before you—kindness. To emphasize what we SHOULD be only causes strain, giving momentum to what we already in fact are. In nature we find the animals at one time violent and brutal, at others kind and generous. For them there is no contradiction. But man is told he must be always good, kind, loving, and never greedy or violent. We emphasize only one side of reality, thus distorting the whole picture. This trying to have one without the other is creating tremendous strain, sorrow, pain, and misery for man. Man must face the necessary violence in life; you must kill to live, one form of life thrives on another. And yet you have condemned killing.

'''Q: If you don't mind, I would like to discuss another topic with you. What is the connection between deep sleep and death? In either case the "me" is absent, and yet they seem different.'''

U.G.: Why are you talking of deep sleep? If there is any such thing as deep sleep, it's not possible for the sleeping person to know anything about it. So don't talk of deep sleep; it is something you can never know. The actual deep, natural, profound sleep natural to the body has nothing to do with poetic stuff like "dying to all your yesterdays." At the profoundest levels of rest, or deep sleep, the whole body goes through the death process, and may or may not return to vigor and normal waking states. If it comes around and is revived, it means that the body has not lost its ability to rejuvenate itself. What is left there after this death is free to carry on after its renewal. Actually, you are born and die with every breath you take. That is what is meant by death and rebirth. Your thought structure denies the reality of death. It seeks continuity at all costs. I am not informing you about deep sleep or any other theories, but only pointing out that if you go deep enough the "you" disappears, the body goes through an actual clinical death, and that, in some cases, the body can renew itself. At that point the entire history of the individual, located in the body's genetic structure, no longer separates itself from life and falls into its own rhythm. From then on it cannot separate itself from anything. What you experience in your ordinary superficial sleep is nature pushing down the thoughts so that the body and brain can rest. If the thoughts are not effectively pushed down into the subterraneous regions, there will be no sleep. But after this deep sleep, there is no more sleep for the body. The entity that was there before informing itself, "Now I am asleep" and "Now I am awake" is no longer to be found. You can no longer create this division in consciousness between waking and sleeping. So don't bother theorizing about "thoughtless states;" when thought is finished, you die. Until then all talk of thoughtless states are the silly products of thought trying to give itself continuity by believing and searching out a "thoughtless state". If you have ever fancied yourself to be in a thoughtless state, it means that thought was there.

'''Q: The yogins maintain that it is possible to extend normal waking consciousness into the realms usually guarded by sleep, that is, into the unconscious. '''

U.G.: You need not practice any yogic techniques in order to experience these things. By taking drugs you can have all these experiences. I am not at all advocating drugs any more than I am advocating yoga. I am just pointing out that all experience is born out of thought and is in all the essentials identical. If you call these yogic or drug-induced states blissful, more profound, or in any way more pleasurable than "ordinary" experiences, you are strengthening the ego and fortifying the separative structure by wasting your thoughts translating sensations into higher or lower and pleasurable or painful. Anything you experience as energy is thought-induced energy. It is not the energy of life.

Q: What you are saying is contrary to what the religions and saints have ...

U.G.: The "gurus" can say what they want. The books can say all they like. It is advantageous to them. They are in the filthy marketplace selling some shoddy goods.

Q: But they say ...

U.G.: Forget them. What are you, essentially? What do you have to say? You have nothing to say. To sit and quote another is easy, but will do no good here. Look. In this state there is no division. Our situation is that I cannot transmit and you cannot receive that fact. In addition to it, you have gone one step further and created a more complex problem for yourself by placing the undivided state outside yourself as you are; this means search. To search is to be cunning. The search for peace is dulling the natural peacefulness of the body. Your knowledge and search are meaningless because there is nothing inside the division you have created around you.

'''Q: Because you disagree with some of the great teachings in some things, is that any reason to so ruthlessly brush aside the entire spiritual heritage of mankind? '''

U.G.: It is all worthless as far as you are concerned. It is a menu without the meal. It is all a sales pitch. It has resulted in hypocrisy and commercialism. There is something radically wrong with it. If there is anything good, it cannot produce anything bad. Obviously, religions are false—religion, spirituality, society, you, your property, your motives and values, the whole thing.

'''Q: It may be that the means have been corrupted, as you say. But the goal —bliss—seems to be a fundamental urge. Is this not so? '''

U.G.: Bliss—what is that? Are you in a blissful state? You say that the atma is blissful, quoting your gurus and "Mandukya Upanishad". It is false, junk food. You don't have to indulge in all this nonsense to be free from it. You need not be a former drunkard in order to appreciate sobriety.

Q: But it is so extraordinary to read the scriptures, they are inspirational ...

U.G.: What do these words mean to you? What do all these Sanskrit words mean to you? Don't start repeating what you have read. Do you have anything to say with regard to the way you are actually functioning right now? That is what is very important, not what Samkara or someone else has said. I am not here to teach you anything. This is not a didactic or instructional exercise. The fact that you have chosen to come here and ask these questions means that all those gurus and scriptures have failed you, does it not? If you do not come here, you will go somewhere else. Words only have a vague abstract meaning for you; otherwise, they have no relevance to you at all.

'''Q: All this has been a bit disillusioning. May I go and continue this conversation tomorrow?'''

U.G.: Of course.

'''Q: Thank you. '''

U.G.: Where is space? Is there space without the four walls? What tells you that there is something called space? Don't repeat what others have said on this question? Without thought is there space at all? There is not. Thought creates time as well as space. The moment thought is there, there is time and space. Thought has created tomorrow. You feel hopeless because you have created tomorrow's hope. Your only chance is now—no hope is necessary. Neither is the idea of self or atma valid. I tried so hard to find one. It was wrongly put together by the philosophers. Thought is body, thought is life, thought is sex. You are the thought. Thought is you. If there is no thought, you are not there. There is no world, if thought is not there.

'''Q: My God, what a mess! How can I save myself from all this? It is a sad destiny to contemplate.'''

U.G.: You have to be saved from the very idea that you have to be saved. You must be saved from the saviors, redeemed from the redeemers. If it is to happen, it must happen now. My words cannot penetrate the lunacy there. It is the madness of the spiritual search that makes you unmoved and impervious to my words. The line between the madman and the mystic is a very, very thin one. The madman is regarded as a clinical case, while the other, the mystic, is equally pathological. Forget the rosaries, the scriptures, the ashes on your forehead. When you see for yourself the absurdity of your search, the whole culture is reduced to ashes inside you. Then you are out of that. Tradition is finished for you. No more games. Vedanta means the end of knowledge. So why write more holy books, open more schools, preserve more teachings? The burning up inside you of everything you want is the meaning of ashes. When you know nothing, you say a lot. When you know something, there is nothing to say.

'''Q: The state of not knowing you describe is related to another level of consciousness. What has it got to do with me, an ordinary neurotic person? '''

U.G.: What levels of consciousness? There are no levels of consciousness. Awareness is no different in the waking state than in the sleeping state. Even while you are sitting here you are dreaming. There cannot be dreaming without images. When you are lying in bed you call it dreaming, when sitting with the eyes open you call it something else, that is all. For me these images are absent, whether I am in a "waking" or a "sleeping" state. I cannot form any image at any time. It does not matter here whether the eyes are open or closed. The only thing that is there in that individualized consciousness is the sure reflection of what is presented to it. You do not name it. The movement or desire to know what it is simply is not there. I have no way of knowing or experiencing this so-called wakeful state. I can mechanically explain the wakeful state, but this does NOT imply that there is someone there who KNOWS THAT HE IS AWAKE. The explanations don't mean a thing. That is why I maintain that your natural state is one of "not knowing".

'''Q: Most schools of religion and psychology recommend the expansion or intensification of awareness as a means to a more fulfilled life, as, for example, through therapy. Is this what you are talking about—some kind of awareness therapy?'''

U.G.: No. Awareness is a simple activity of the brain. It cannot be used to bring about any change, including a therapeutic one. We have superimposed a naming process over this natural physiological awareness, an awareness we share, incidentally, with the other animals. Awareness and the movement or tendency in you to bring about change in you are two different things entirely. That difference cannot be perceived by you, for there is no perception without the perceiver. Can you become conscious of anything except through the medium of memory and thought? Memory is knowledge. Even your feelings are memory. The stimulus and the response form one unitary movement—they cannot be neatly separated. In other words, you cannot even differentiate the stimulus from the response; there is no dividing line, except when thought steps in and creates one. Thought, as memory and knowledge, has created this mechanism. The only way it can perpetuate itself is to gather knowledge, to know more and more, to ask more and more questions. As long as you are seeking you will be asking questions, and the questioning mechanism only adds more momentum to the naming process.

'''Q: But let us not sell thought short. It can capture many wonderful things ...'''

U.G.: Thought can never capture the movement of life, it is much too slow. It is like lightning and thunder. They occur simultaneously, but sound, traveling slower than light, reaches you later, creating the illusion of two separate events. It is only the natural physiological sensations and perceptions that can move with the flow of life. There is no question of capturing or containing that movement. We like to use the word consciousness glibly, as if we are intimately familiar with it. Actually, consciousness is something we will never know.

Q: So attempts to suspend thought somehow hoping to be purely aware is bogus?

U.G.: As far as I am concerned we become conscious of something only through memory, knowledge. Otherwise space, and the separative consciousness it creates, are not there. There is no such thing as looking at something without the interference of knowledge. To look you need space, and thought creates that space. So space itself, as a dimension, exists only as a creation of thought. Thought has also tried to theorize about the space it has created, inventing the "time-space-continuum". Time is an independent reference or frame. There is no necessary continuity between it and space. Thought has also invented the opposite of time, the "now", the "eternal now". The present exists only as an idea. The moment you attempt to look at the present, it has already been brought into the framework of the past. Thought will use any trick under the sun to give momentum to its own continuity. Its essential technique is to repeat the same thing over and over again; this gives it an illusion of permanency. This permanency is shattered the moment the falseness of the past-present-future continuum is seen. The future can be nothing but the modified continuity of the past.

'''Q: These philosophical endeavors only seem to complicate things. Is it not possible to live simply with nature, to look at the clouds and trees ...?'''

U.G.: The tree you are talking about cannot be captured by thought. If your thought structure cannot stop and frame its reflection of the tree, you have no way of looking at the tree at all. In other words, the tree is actually looking at you, not vice versa. I am not trying to mystify it. The important thing to see is the false separation between you and the tree, not who is looking at whom. Approaching the reality of the "positively" or "negatively", as the philosophers try to do, has no meaning. The gap, created by thought, remains, no matter what approach you take. Thought has created all these divisions, making what you call experience possible. The man who has freed himself from all divisions in consciousness has no experiences; he does not have "loving" relationships, does not question anything, has no notions about being a self-realized man, and is not stuck on wanting to help somebody else. What I am maintaining is that the whole problem has been created by culture. It is that that has created this neurotic division in man. Somewhere along the line man separated himself and experienced self-consciousness—which the other animals don't have—for the first time. This has created misery for man. That is the beginning of the end of man. The individual who is able, through luck, to be free from this self-consciousness, is no longer experiencing an independent existence. He is, even to himself, like any other thing out there. What happens in the environment repeats itself within such an individual, without the knowledge. Once thought has burnt itself out, nothing that creates division can remain there. While thought is taking birth, the disintegration or death of thought is taking place also. That is why it is not natural for thought to take root. Only by maintaining a divisive consciousness in man is thought capable of denying the harmonious functioning of the body. To cast man in religious or psychological terms is to deny the extraordinary intelligence of this wondrous body. It is the movement of thought that is constantly taking you away from your natural state and creating this division. Is there any way for us to experience, much less share, reality? Forget about "ultimate reality"'; you have no way of experiencing the reality of anything. Experiencing reality "from moment to moment" is also a thought-induced state of mind.

Q: Listening to you is difficult for us, for what you are saying undermines the very basis of communication ...

U.G.: You cannot listen to anybody without interpretation. There is no such thing as "the art of pure listening." You can sit here talking for the rest of your life without getting anywhere. Without a common reference point—which is another invention of thought—how can you communicate and share? It is just not possible. There is nothing TO communicate anyhow. You want to use communication to help you out of the mess you are in. That is your only interest. Getting out of your situation is your only aim. Why? Why do you want to get out of your situation? Wanting to get out of situations is what has created the problem in the first place. Wanting to free yourself from the burden is really the problem. I am not recommending anything; doing or not doing lead to the same end: misery. So doing nothing is no different from doing something. As long as you have knowledge about that burden—which I deny exists—you will have to struggle to be free of it. It cannot but do otherwise. Anything you do is part of the mechanism of thought. Your search for happiness is prolonging your unhappiness.

'''Q: There is a ring of certainty and authority in what you say. We want to know ...'''

U.G.: From whom do you want to know? Not from me. I don't know. If you assume that I know, you are sadly mistaken. I have no way of knowing. What is there inside you is only the movement of knowledge wanting to know more and more. The "you", the separative structure can continue only as long as there is a demand to know. That is the reason why you are asking these questions, not to find out anything for yourself. Nothing you can tell yourself can change your unfortunate situation. Why should something, or nothing, happen? The demand for freedom, whether outwardly or inwardly, has been with us for a long while. We have been told that this demand is a sacred, noble thing. Have we again been misled? The demand to be free is the cause of your problems. You want to see yourself as free. The one that is saying, "You are not free," is the same one that is telling you that there is a state of "freedom" to be pursued. But the pursuit is slavery, the very denial of freedom. I do not know anything about freedom, because I do not know anything about myself, free, enslaved, or otherwise. Freedom and self-knowledge are linked. Since I do not know myself and have no way of seeing myself, except by the knowledge given me by my culture, the question of wanting to be free does not arise at all. The knowledge you have about freedom denies the very possibility of freedom. When you stop looking at yourself with the knowledge you have, the demand to be free from that self drops away.

'''Q: Our ordinary minds are too cluttered to appreciate what you are saying. Only a profoundly still mind can begin to understand you. Is this not so?'''

U.G.: Stillness of mind is ridiculous. There is no such thing as stillness of mind. This is another trick created by the demand to be free. What is there is the constant demand to be free. Nothing else is there. How can you, and why should you, be free from memory? Memory is absolutely essential. The problem is not having a memory, but your tendency to use memory to further your "spiritual" interests, or as a means to find happiness. To attempt to be free from memory is withdrawal, and withdrawal is death. There is nothing to know. The statement that there is nothing to know is an abstraction to you, because you know. To you not knowing is a myth. What is there is not not-knowing but knowing projecting the state of freeing yourself from the known. Your demand to be free from the known is the one that is creating the problem. As long as the notion of "I ought to be this" is there, so long will that which I actually am be there.

'''Q: So it is the fantasizing about a non-existent ideal person, society, or state that dooms and fixes me where I am. My belief in what I am not determines what I in fact am. Is that it? ''' That's it. And the greatest ideal, the most imposing, perfect and powerful, is, of course, God. It is an invention of frightened minds. The human mind has many destructive inventions to its credit. The most destructive one, and the one that has corrupted you, is the invention of God. The history of human thinking has produced saints, teachers, gurus, Bhagavans, but God is the most corrupt of them all. Man has already messed up his life, and religion has made it worse. It is religion that really made a mess of man's life.

'''Q: One parallel I have noticed between your message and other teachings, especially that of J. Krishnamurti, is the stress on the thought structure and its ability to blind us. Why is thought so important?'''

U.G.: It is important that although thought controls and determines your every action, it, at the same time, cannot itself be seen by consciousness. You can think and theorize about thought but cannot perceive or appreciate thought itself. Are you and thought two separate things? You know about thought, not thought itself. Does thought exist apart from the knowledge you have about thought? About all you can say is, "I know, I have knowledge about my thoughts, about my experiences, about this or that," that is all you can do. Independent of that, is there thought? Your knowing about thought is the only thing there is. So all that is there is the knowledge you have accumulated about thought. Nothing else is there. All the things observed, as well as the observer himself, is part of this knowledge about thought. They are thoughts, and the "I" is another thought. But there is no individual value in thought; it is not yours, it belongs to everyone, like the atmosphere. Knowledge is common property. What I am trying to say is that there is no individual there at all. There is only a certain gathering of knowledge—which is thought—but no individuality there. The knowledge you have of things is all that you are capable of experiencing. Without knowledge no experience of any kind is possible. You cannot separate experience and knowledge. The "I" is nothing sacred; it is the totality of your knowledge, and you are, unfortunately, stuck with it. Why are you interested in separating the knowledge you have about yourself—whatever you call yourself? Knowledge is all that is there. Where is the "I"? You have separated the "I" from the knowledge it has of the things about you. It is an illusion. Similarly, enlightenment has no independent existence of its own apart from your knowledge about it. There is no enlightenment at all. The idea of illumination is tied up with change, but there is nothing TO change. Change admits of time; change ALWAYS takes time. To change, to eliminate one thing and replace it with another, takes time. What you are now and what you ought to be are linked together by time. You are going to be enlightened TOMORROW ... Let us take this as an example. You want to be enlightened, you want to be "selfless"; you are this, you want to be that. The gap between the two is filled with time, put there to ask the repetitive question, "How?" Your enlightenment or selflessness is always tomorrow, not now. So time is essential, and time is thought. Thinking is not action, not taking, but merely wanting. You are not ready to do a thing, only meditate, which is just thinking about it. Your thought structure, which is you, can't conceive of the possibility of anything happening except in time. This escapist logic is also applied by everyone to spiritual matters, only the time frame is larger. It happens in a future life or perhaps in heaven; at any rate, tomorrow. And just as there is no tomorrow in these matters, so its reference point, the present, does not exist. Where does it not exist? In thought, which is the past. There is no question of enlightenment and selfless "now", because there is no "now", only the projection of the present into the past. You have never seen a tree, only your knowledge you have about trees. You see the knowledge, not the tree. Your whole interest in selflessness is motivated by the past. As long as there is motivation, it is a self-centered activity. The more you do, the more selfish you become. Your wanting to be enlightened or selfless is a very selfish thing. You don't want freedom, nor do you want everyone to be free, you want "freedom" for you. With an approach like that, how the hell are you going to be free? You are not going to be free.

title: Mind is a Myth/III


text:
Mind is a Myth/IV

U.G.: You will never be free from selfishness.

'''Q: But all the saints, saviors and religions of all times have encouraged us to be unselfish, to be self-effacing, to be meek. It must therefore be possible. How can you be so certain of such a thing? '''

U.G.: Because it is crystal clear to me that you have invented this idea of selflessness to protect yourself from the actual—your selfishness. In any case, whether you believe in selflessness or not, you remain at all times selfish. Your so-called selflessness exists only in the future, tomorrow. And when tomorrow comes, it is put off until the next day, or perhaps next life. Look at it this way; it is like the horizon. Actually, there is no horizon. The more you move towards the horizon, the more it moves away. It is only the limitations of the eyes that creates the horizon. But there is no such thing as the horizon. Likewise, there is no such thing as selflessness at all. Man has tortured himself for generations with this idea of selflessness, and it has only afforded a living for those who sell the idea of selflessness for a living, like the priests and moralists. I am not condemning you or anyone else, just pointing out the absurdity of what you are doing. When the energy that is spent in the pursuit of something that does not exist, like selflessness, is released, your problem becomes very simple, no matter what it is. You will cease to create problems on the material plane, and that's the only plane there is.

'''Q: Yes, but what about those who are not searching for some illusory abstraction, but simply happiness? '''

U.G.: Their search for happiness is no different from the spiritual pursuit. It is the pursuit of pleasure, spirituality being the greatest, ultimate pleasure.

'''Q: So this pursuit has to go? '''

U.G.: Don't say it should go. Wanting selfishness to go is part and parcel of the selfish pursuit of a more pleasurable state—selflessness. Both do not exist. That is why you are eternally unhappy. Your search for happiness is making you unhappy. Both the spiritual goal and the search for happiness are the same. Both are essentially selfish, pleasurable pursuits. If that understanding is somehow there in you, then you will not use the energy in that direction at all. You know, I've been everywhere in the world, and have found that people are exactly the same. There is no difference at all. Becoming is the most important thing in the world for everybody—to become something. They all want to become rich, whether materially or spiritually, it is exactly the same. Don't divide it; the so-called spiritual is the materialistic. You may think you are superior because you go to temple and do puja, but the woman there is doing puja in the hope of having a child. She wants something, so she goes to the temple. So do you; it is exactly the same. For sentimental reasons you go, but in time it will become routine and become abhorrent to you. What I am trying to point out is simply this: your spiritual and religious activities are basically selfish. That is all I am pointing out. You go to the temple for the same reason you go other places—you want some result. If you don't want anything there is no reason to go to the temple.

Q: But the great majority of people go to the temple ...

U.G.: Why are you so concerned about what the majority does? This is your problem, and you must solve it for yourself. Don't bother about mankind and all the billions of people in the world.

'''Q: You are ruthlessly condemning whatever people have said so far. You may, in time, also be condemned and blasted for what you are saying.'''

U.G.: If you have the guts, I will be the very first to salute you. But you must not rely on your holy books—the Bhagavad Gita or Upanishads. You must challenge what I am saying without the help of your so-called authorities. You just don't have the guts to do that because you are relying upon the Gita, not upon yourself. That is why you will never be able to do it. If you have that courage, you are the only person who can falsify what I am saying. A great sage like Gowdapada can do it, but he is not here. You are merely repeating what Gowdapada and others have said. It is a worthless statement as far as you are concerned. If there were a living Gowdapada sitting here, he would be able to blast what I am saying, but not you. So don't escape into meaningless generalizations. You must have the guts to disprove what I am saying on your own. What I am saying must be false for you. You can only agree or disagree with what I am saying according to what some joker has told you. That is not the way to go about it. I am just pointing out that there are no solutions at all, only problems. If others have said the same thing I am saying, why are you asking questions and searching for solutions here? Forget about the masses; I am talking about you. You are merely looking for new, better methods. I am not going to help you. I am saying, "Don't bother about solutions; try to find out what the problem is." The problem is the solution; solutions just don't solve your problem. Why in the hell are you looking for another solution? Don't come to me for solutions. That is all I am saying. You will make out of what I am saying another solution, to be added to your list of solutions, which are all useless when it comes to actually solving your problems. What I am saying is valid and true for me, that is all. If I suggest anything, directly or indirectly, you will turn it into another method or technique. I would be falsifying myself if I were to make any such suggestion. If anyone says there is a way out, he is not an honest fellow. He is doing it for his own self-aggrandizement, you may be sure. He simply wants to market a product and hopes to convince you that it is superior to other products on the market. If another man comes along and says that there is no way out, you make of that another method. It is all a fruitless attempt to overtake your own shadow. And yet you can't remain where you are. That is the problem. From all this you inevitably draw the conclusion that the situation is hopeless. In reality you are creating that hopelessness because you don't really want to be free from fear, envy, jealousy, and selfishness. That is why you feel your situation to be hopeless. The only hope lies in selfishness, greed, and anger, not in its fictitious opposite, i.e., the practice of selflessness, generosity, and kindness. The problem, say selfishness, is only strengthened by the cultivation of its fictitious opposite, the so-called selflessness. Sitting here discussing these things is meaningless, useless. That is why I am always saying to my listeners, "Get lost, please!" What you want you can get elsewhere, but not here. Go to the temple, do puja, repeat mantras, put on ashes. Eventually some joker comes along and says, "Give me a week's wages and I will give you a better mantra to repeat." Then another fellow comes along and tells you not to do any of that, that it is useless, and that what he is saying is much more revolutionary. He prescribes "choiceless awareness," takes your money and builds schools, organizations, and tantric centers.

'''Q: Why shouldn't we brush aside what you are saying, just as you brush aside the teachings and efforts of others? '''

U.G.: You will never blast me; the attachment you have to religious authority prohibits you from questioning anything, much less a man like me. I am certain you will never challenge me. For that reason what I am saying will inevitably create an unstable, neurotic situation for you. You cannot accept what I am saying, and neither are you in any position to reject it. If it wasn't for your very thick skin, you would certainly end up in the loony bin. You simply cannot and will not question what I am saying; it is too much of a threat. Absolutely nothing is going to penetrate your defenses; Gowdapada provides the gloves, the Bhagavad Gita a snug coat jacket, and the Brahmasutra a bullet-proof vest. So you are safe, and that is all you are really interested in. You can't blast what I am saying as long as you are relying upon what someone has said before. Please don't say that there are thousands of seers and sages; there are only a very few. You can count them all on your fingers. The rest are merely technocrats. The saint is a technocrat. That is what most people are. But now with the development of drugs and other techniques, the saint is dispensable. You don't any longer need a priest or saint to instruct you in meditation. If you want to control your thoughts, simply take a drug and forget them, if that is what you want. If you can't sleep, take a sleeping pill. Sleep for a while, then wake up. It is the same. Don't listen to me. It will create an unnecessary disturbance in you. It will only intensify the neurotic situation you are already caught in. Having taken for granted the validity of all this holy stuff, having never questioned, much less broken away from it, you not only have learned how to live with it, but also how to capitalize on it. It is a matter of profiteering, nothing more.

Q: If all this is so, then why do you go on talking?

U.G.: There is no use asking me why I talk. Am I selling or promising you anything? I am not offering you peace of mind, am I? You counter by saying that I am taking away your precious peace of mind. On the contrary, I am singing my own song, just going my own way, and you come along and attempt to disturb my peace.

'''Q: I feel that if anybody can help us it is you. '''

U.G.: No sir! Anything I do to help would only add to your misery—that is all. By continuing to listen to me you merely heap one more misery upon those you already have. In that sense this discussion we are having is doing you no good whatever. You don't seem to realize that you are playing with fire here. If you really want moksha here and now, you can have it. You see, you ARE anger, selfishness, and all these things; if they go, you go. There is a physical going—not in the abstract, but actual physical death.

'''Q:You are saying that that can happen now? Others have said ...'''

U.G.: I don't give a hoot what others have said. It can happen now. You simply don't want it. You would not touch it with a ten-foot barge pole. If anger and selfishness, which is YOU go, moksha is now, not tomorrow. Your own anger will burn you, not the electric heater. So the religious man has invented selflessness. If that selflessness goes, you go, that is all. So, freeing yourself from any one of these things (i.e., greed, selfishness, etc.,) implies that you, as you know and experience yourself, are coming to an end NOW. Please, in your interest and out of compassion I am telling you, this is not what you want. This is not a thing you can make happen. It is not in your hands at all. It hits whomsoever it chooses. You are out of the picture altogether. All that poetry and romanticism about "dying to all your yesterdays" is not going to help you, or anybody. Nothing can come out of it. They may hold forth on platforms, but they themselves don't want it. It is just words. Eventually people settle for that (viz., temples, mantras, scriptures). It is all too absurd and childish.

Q: Then how can we find out for ourselves and not just repeat the words of the so-called experts?

U.G.: You have to actually touch life at a point where nobody has touched it before. Nobody can teach you that. As long as you continue to repeat what others have said before, you are lost, and nothing good can come of it. Listening to and believing what others have said is not the way to find out for yourself, and there is no other way.

'''Q: So you are saying that we must get rid of our belief that.... '''

U.G.: Don't bother. You will replace one belief with another. You are nothing but belief, and when it dies, you are dead. What I am trying to tell you is this: don't try to be free from selfishness, greed, anger, envy, desire, and fear. You will only create its opposites, which are, unfortunately, fictitious. If desire dies, you die. The black van comes and carts you away, that's it! Even if you should somehow miraculously survive such a shock, it will be of no use to you, or to others. You prefer to toy with things, asking absurd questions like, "What happens to my body after death? Will the body be strong enough to take it?" What the hell are you talking about? You are asking me what will happen to you if you touch that live electrical wire there. That is the kind of pointless question you are asking. You are not really interested at all. Perhaps after touching this you will be completely burnt and have to be thrown away. Perhaps others will get a shock themselves upon touching you, and you will become an untouchable! Look at what is implied by what I am saying. If you have the courage to touch life for the first time, you will never know what hit you. Everything man has taught, felt, and experienced is gone, and nothing is put in its place. Such a person becomes the living authority by virtue of his freedom from the past, culture, and he will remain so until someone else who has discovered this for himself blasts it. Until you have the courage to blast me, all that I am saying, and all the gurus, you will remain a cultist with photographs, rituals, birthday celebrations, and the like. I am sorry. I sing my song and go.

Q: But we are lost, and so we need gurus, sadhana, and scriptures or guidance.

U.G.: You can go back to your gurus. Do what you like. The thing I am talking about happens to the lucky; if you are lucky, you are lucky. That is all. I have nothing to do with it. It is in no one's hands.

Q: Lucky or unlucky, our tradition tells us that life is transient, that all is in flux, that....

U.G.: That is the tradition of India I am talking about—change, not the tradition you talk about, which is no change. Your whole life is a denial of the reality of change. You only wish to continue, somehow, then revive, only to continue. That is not the great tradition of India I am talking of. You think you are asking a profound question when you ask, "What is death?" You presume to ask Gowdapada's question before you have asked the more fundamental question, "Am I born?" Instead of tackling this basic question on your own, you quote and write commentaries upon Gowdapada, then take the easy way out, and simply equate what I am saying with what he said. That is your cop out. In any event, all you can do is to speculate about death and reincarnation. Only dead people ask about death. Those who are really living would never ask such a question. That memory in you—which is dead—wants to know if it will continue even after what it imagines to be death. That is why it is asking such silly questions. Death is finality; you are dead only once. When once the questions and ideas you have have died, then you will never ask about death again.

Q: You are ripping everything away, and suddenly I see that I have to strike out on my own, that no one can help me.

U.G.: Are you sure that no one can help you? You are not so sure. So your statement doesn't mean anything. You will harbor hope. Even assuming for a moment that an outside force can help you, you are still convinced that you can help yourself. This gives you tremendous hope, and hope is always oriented towards achieving something. So, rather than waste your time asking if there is or is not anyone who can help you achieve what you want, you should rather be asking, "Is there anything to be attained?" Whether you yourself, or someone else, helps you to attain it is not the issue at all. It is, rather, that you are searching. That is obvious. But for what are you searching? You are undoubtedly searching for what you already know. It is impossible to search for something you do not know. You search for, and find, what you know. It is difficult for you to face this simple fact. Please don't get me wrong. I am not asking questions, playing some kind of Socratic guessing game. I am not here to offer you any new methods, new techniques, or suggest any gimmicks to attain your goal. If other systems, techniques, and gimmicks have failed to help you reach your goal, and if you are looking or shopping around for some newer, better methods here, I am afraid I cannot be of any help to you. If you feel that someone else can help you, good luck to you. But I am compelled, through the lessons of my own experience, to add the rider, "You will get nowhere, you will see." The uselessness of turning to inner or outer sources to help you is something of which I am certain. It is clear to me that to find out for yourself you must be absolutely helpless with nowhere to turn. That is all. Unfortunately, this certainty cannot be transmitted to someone else. The certainty I have is simply that the goal, which you have invented, is responsible for your search. As long as the goal is there, so long will the search for it continue. If you say, "I really don't know what I am searching for," that is not true. So, what is it that you are searching for? That is by far the most important question to ask yourself. If you look at it you will see that, aside from your natural physical needs, what you want has arisen from what you have been told, what you have read, and what you yourself have experienced. The physical wants are self-evident and easily understandable. But this particular want—the object of your search—is something born out of your thinking, which in turn is based upon the knowledge you have gathered from various sources.

'''Q: If all you say is true, we are in a bad way indeed. We are not in a position to accept or reject what you are saying. Why, then, do you go on talking to us? What meaning can it have?'''

U.G.: This dialogue with you has no meaning at all. You may very well ask why the hell I am talking. I emphatically assure you that, in my case, it is not at all in the nature of self-fulfillment. My motive for talking is quite different from what you think it is. It is not that I am eager to help you understand, or that I feel that I must help you. Not at all. My motive is direct and temporary: you arrive seeking understanding, while I am only interested in making it crystal clear that there is nothing to understand. As long as you want to understand, so long there will be this awkward relationship between two individuals. I am always emphasizing that somehow the truth has to dawn upon you that there is nothing to understand. As long as you think, accept, and believe that there is something to understand, and make that understanding a goal to be placed before you, demanding search and struggle, you are lost and will live in misery. I have only a few things to say and I go on repeating them again and again and again. There are no questions for me, other than the practical questions for everyday functioning in this world. You, however, have many, many questions. These questions all have the same source: your knowledge. It is simply not in the nature of things that you can have a question without knowing the answer already. So meaningful dialogue is simply not possible when you are asking questions to yourself and to me, because you have already made up your mind, you already possess the answers. So communication between us is impossible; what is the point of carrying on any dialogue? There is the actual need to be free from answers themselves. The search is invalid because it is based upon questions which in turn are based upon false knowledge. Your knowledge has not freed you from your problems. Your dilemma is that you are searching for answers to questions you already know the answer to. This is making you neurotic. If the questions you have were actually solvable, it, the question, would blow itself up. Because all questions are merely variations on the same question, the annihilation of one means the annihilation of all. So freedom exists not in finding answers, but in the dissolution of all questions. This sort of problem-solving you are not, unfortunately, the least interested in. What others and you yourself think are the answers cannot help you at all. It is really very simple: if the answer is correct, the question disappears. I have no questions of any kind. They never enter my head. All my questions, which resolved themselves into one great question, have disappeared entirely. The questioner simply realized that it was meaningless to go on asking questions, the answers to which I already knew. You have foolishly created this search as an answer to your questions, which in turn have been invented out of the knowledge you have gathered. The questions you are formulating are born out of answers you already have. So what is your goal? You must be very clear about it; otherwise there is no point in proceeding. It becomes a game, a meaningless ritual. What do you want to get? There is always somebody to help you get what you want, for a price. You have foolishly divided life into higher and lower goals, into material and spiritual paths. In either case great struggle, pain, and effort is involved. I say, on the other hand, that there are no spiritual goals at all; they are simply the extension of material goals into what you imagine to be a higher, loftier plane. You mistakenly believe that by pursuing the spiritual goal you will somehow miraculously make your material goals simple and manageable. Such pursuits are in actuality not possible. You may think that only inferior persons pursue material goals, that material achievements are boring. But in fact the so-called spiritual goals you have put before yourself are exactly the same. You are your search, and it will not help to think that you have understood and are free of this. If you don't come here, you will go elsewhere in search of answers.

Q: Discovering the reality you are talking about demands real relationship and open communication with others, does it not?

U.G.: Forget it, sir! Dialogue has no meaning. Neither has conversation any meaning. What the hell are we doing? Do you think that I talk with people as an excuse of some kind? Do you think that I harbor any illusions about communicating with you? I have no such illusions. The very fact that you have returned here again to talk and discuss shows that you have not heard a thing I am saying. Once that understanding is there, the whole thing is finished for you once and for all. You will not visit any gurus, read any books on this, or listen to anybody. You will not stupidly repeat what others have said, especially what the holy men, saints, and saviors have said. All that is washed out of the system and you are left incapable of following or listening to anyone, not even a God walking the face of the earth, or even a million gods rolled into one. What good is it, after all, when somebody has a billion dollars and you are wondering where your next meal will come from? Anyway, that's not the point. The important thing is: what do you want? Please let us forget about your bhagavans. Don't sit here and repeat what you have heard from your gurus, it is useless. When once you place your hope, belief, and confidence in your guru, you are stuck with him.

Q: Virtually all the gurus, at least the Eastern ones, have stressed the necessity of being free from one's conditioning, one's past.

U.G.: The past will always be there as long as you want something. Even if you attempt to suppress your wants, the past has to come to your help and tell you HOW to suppress your wants. There is no such differentiation of wants; they are all exactly the same. In the Indian culture the spiritual wants are extolled and sought after, while in the West the material wants prevail. When wanting ceases, even for a moment, thought is absent and you are left with the simple matter of taking care of the bodily wants—food, clothes and shelter. To practice some sort of twisted self-denial in which you fail to see to the body's actual physical needs is a silly, perverted way of living.

Q: But the key question remains: how is one not to want?

U.G.: Again you ask "how", thus avoiding the issue. There is no "how" at all. "How" is the trickiest question, for in asking it you are doomed. "How to live?" That is one question that has been bothering people for centuries. Religions claim to give a satisfactory answer to this question. Every teacher claims he knows how. He will be pleased to show you how, for a fee of course. "How to live one's life?" That is the one question which has transformed itself into millions of questions. That is all.

'''Q: Brushing aside the question of how to be free from constant wanting, it seems obvious from what you have said that one must be free first from the influence of the past, or one's memory. Is this not so?'''

U.G.: If you go on trying to suppress the past, trying to live in what you call "the present", you will drive yourself crazy. You are trying to control something over which you have no control. It is just not possible to control thought without becoming neurotic, for it is not just your personal, petty little past that is in the way, but the entire past of mankind, the entire memory of every human being, every form of life, and every form of existence. It is not such a simple, easy thing to do. If you try to control the natural flow of the river through all these artificial means—building a dam so to speak—you will inundate and destroy the whole thing. That is why you find thoughts welling up inside you despite your efforts to control, observe, and be aware of them. Once this is understood, then you are never concerned whether thoughts are there or not. When there is an actual need for thought to function, it is there; when there is no need for thought to function, it is not there. You don't even know, and have no way of finding out, whether you are thinking or not. Your constant utilization of thought to give continuity to your separative self is you. There is nothing there inside you other than that. What you call the "you" is nothing other than the continuity of thought. If that artificial continuity is not there, neither are you. The "you" wants only to function on a different, "higher" level, and not to come to an end. You want to be transformed, to become something else, while continuing. The only way the self can do that is to add more and more experiences to those it has already accumulated.

'''Q: How does this process of accumulation work? '''

U.G.: The only way the self can add more and more knowledge and experience is to endlessly ask itself the meaningless question "How? How am I to live?" If someone tells you that the continuity of knowledge and experience must come to an end, you ask, "How?", and are right back in the same trap. You are merely asking for the same kind of knowledge.

'''Q: But we just want to know about enlightenment, if is possible ... '''

U.G.: You want to know whether there is enlightenment or not, who has it, and how to get it. You are curious about how a supposedly enlightened man would behave, what is the nature of his behavior patterns, and so on. Apparently you know a great deal about enlightenment You must, for you are searching for it.

'''Q: Not all of us are so naive as to think we can directly search for God, enlightenment, or nirvana. So we can accept the illusory nature of such goals. But we are searching for more practical, tangible things like.... '''

U.G.: People are looking for enlightenment. You say you are not, but it is the same. Whether you want a new car or simple peace of mind, it is still a painful search. The secular leaders tell you one way, the holy men another way. It makes no difference: as long as you are searching for peace of mind, you will have a tormented mind. If you try not to search, or if you continue to search, you will remain the same. You have to stop. You don't stop searching because such an act would be the end of you.

You are lost in a jungle, and you have no way of finding your way out. Night is fast approaching, the wild animals are there, including the cobras, and still you are lost. What do you do in such a situation? You just stop. You don't move....

Q: But we can never be absolutely sure that there is not some way out, no matter how fantastic or improbable it may be ...

U.G.: As long as there is that hope that you can somehow or the other get out of the jungle, so long will you continue what you are doing—searching—and so long you feel lost. You are lost only because you are searching. You have no way of finding your way out of the jungle.

Q: So if one could just stop....

U.G.: No, that's not it at all. You still expect something to happen. That expectation is part of the problem. That is why you are pursuing these questions. Your expectations are part of your desire to change everything. Nothing needs changing; you must accept life as it is. Through "change" you hope and expect to be born again. What the hell for? This life is enough. There is no peace in this life, no lack of unhappiness, so you wait until your next life to be happy. It's not worth it. You may very well not be born again. After all, it is only a hopeful theory to you. You may as well find out for yourself if it is possible to be at peace with yourself now.

'''Q: But all our aspirations, whether material or spiritual, seem to be defined and cast in the mold of our societies, which are, like each of us, corrupt. Yet I must live and struggle within the limits my society has erected around me. My life is not determined solely by my personal aims and attributes, but by what my society allows me to do, that is, by what actual opportunities are made available. '''

U.G.: You want so many things, and I am not in a position to help you get any of them. You are not clear what you really want. When that which you want is fully recognized, then you must find out how to get what you want. And either you get it or you don't, that's all. So don't bother separating your goals into the low and the lofty. You have been doing that all your life and have not succeeded.

'''Q: Not just I, but everyone I know seems caught in this trap of endless searching and struggle. We need, do we not, to sit down together and communicate with each other on this ...? '''

U.G.: As I said, I have no illusions about communication. You cannot share or communicate your experiences with anybody, because, the way you are now functioning, each individual lives in separate and different worlds without any common reference point, and only imagines that you ever communicate with another. It is just not possible. I cannot communicate and you cannot understand because you have no reference point in regard to what I am saying. When once you have understood that there is nothing to understand, what is there to communicate? Communication is just not necessary. So there is no point in discussing the possibility of communication. Your desire to communicate is part of your general strategy of achievement. Veiled behind that desire for communication is the dependency upon some outside power to solve your problems for you. Except for the quite natural need for practical communication necessary to function in this world, your interest in communication is really an expression of your feelings of helplessness and your hope for the support of some outside agency. Your helplessness persists because of your dependency upon some outside agency. When that dependency upon some outside agency, fictitious or not, is not there, then the feelings of helplessness and the desire to communicate in the abstract, are not there. If the one goes, the other must go also. Your situation and prospects only seem hopeless because you have ideas of hope. Knock off that hope and the crippling feelings of helplessness go with it. There is bound to be helplessness and overwhelming frustration as long as you exist in relationship with the hope for fulfillment, because there is no fulfillment at all. This is the source of your dilemma.

'''Q: All this is just too much to comprehend and act upon immediately. Perhaps at some time in the future, when I am more able.... '''

U.G.: The future is created by hope, that is the only future that exists. The hope of achieving your goal, the hope of attaining enlightenment, the hope of somehow getting off the merry-go-round—that is the future. The point from which you project yourself into the future appears to you to be the present, the now. But this is mistaken. There is only the past in operation, and that movement creates the illusion of present and future. You may find what I am saying here logical, or illogical, and you may accept or reject it. But it will in any case be the past that is doing so, for that is all that is in operation within you. It is the past that has projected these goals—God, enlightenment, peace of mind, whatever—and has placed them in the future, out of reach. So happiness is always in the future, tomorrow. A happy man wouldn't be interested in seeking happiness. A well-fed man is not in search of food.

'''Q: Surely real understanding, of which we are all more or less capable, takes place not in the future, but now, in the present. '''

U.G.: There is only the past. You have been told by holy men who talk of enlightenment and such nonsense that the past has got to come to a stop before you are free to operate in the "present" and so realize your potential or future possibilities. This I deny. First of all, why should you be interested in attempting to stop the past from interfering with the present? Be very clear that this idea that the past must die, that time must have an end, has been put into you by those self-appointed guardians of your so-called soul—the priests, holy men, and saviors of mankind. It is not yours at all. You need to be very clear also about the implications of ending the influence of the past. It is really a dangerous, calamitous thing. In your search to find the end of time, the past, you must use the past. So you only succeed in perpetuating the past. This is a fact, like it or not. Anything you do—having kinder thoughts, behaving selflessly, approaching life negatively rather than positively, listening to holy men, listening to me—is only adding momentum to the past. All the techniques and methods of achievement at your disposal are from the past, and, therefore, useless. Luckily, there is absolutely nothing to be achieved.

'''Q: Yes, but I think most of us realize that real happiness is a by-product of something else, and cannot be achieved in and of itself. '''

U.G.: Your actual approach to happiness is grounded in self-interest and naivete. You are a pleasure seeker at all times, and therefore your ideal of the greatest happiness is simply one of endless pleasure without any pain. When you perceive, if you do at all, the absurdity of such an approach, you then say, "If I could find God and enlightenment I would be free from the contradictory desire to have the one (pleasure) without the other (pain)." So this then becomes your goal, which will take more time to achieve. You are back where you started. To demand the cessation of the continuity of the movement of the past is ridiculous and unfounded. We have been brainwashed by all these people that if we free ourselves from the past in this life, everything will be hunky-dory, full of lightness and sweetness. It is all romantic hogwash, sheer unadulterated fantasy, and nothing more. You have fallen for this stuff, unfortunately. After all, what is it that you can do? All your actions are from the past. And anything you do only strengthens the hold of pleasure and pain upon you. Ultimately it is all pain and no pleasure. I can say that with certainty, but you are still cock-sure that there is a timeless state, a way out. It is therefore impossible for us to communicate. What I am saying will, if really listened to, put an end to you as you know and experience yourself. You are not listening to me at all. Your so-called listening is all in the past. The constant interpretation by the past of what is being said prevents you from listening to what is being said. All I can guarantee you is that as long as you are searching for happiness, you will remain unhappy. This is a fact. Society is so organized and complex that you have no other way of surviving except to accept the way of life around you as organized, along with the limitations it places upon all of us. We must all accept the reality of society, whether we like it or not. But this is not what we are talking about. What we are talking about is altogether different. All your relationships, knowledge, and experiences, all your emotions and feelings, all that romantic stuff, belongs entirely to society, not to you. You are not an individual at all; you are secondhand people. Only when you are free from what every man and woman has thought and felt before you will you become an individual. Such an individual will not go around attempting to destroy everything that belongs to society. He is not in conflict with society at all. He would never tear down the temples and institutions or burn books that men have made with great care. He would not be a rebel. All the accumulated knowledge, experience, and suffering of mankind is inside of you. You must build a huge bonfire within you. Then you will become an individual. There is no other way. Society is built on a foundation of conflict, and you are society. Therefore you must always be in conflict with society. The real individual, one who is free of the accumulated tradition and knowledge of mankind, is necessarily a threat to that society. Society, of which you are a part, cannot be other than it is. So stop trying to save it or change it. You cannot even change your mother-in-law.

'''Q: Not all of us are so obsessed with our own personal happiness and salvation. Many of us are socially, politically aware, and merely wish to create a new world, a differently organized society, so that poverty, injustice, and other social wrongs are corrected. You talk as if we all were fixated on only our own personal problems and goals, while in fact most of us want to be of service to the world and seek not selfish ends, but simply a better, more humane society.'''

U.G.: You want to change yourself into something and at the same time find you cannot change at all. This "change" you talk of is really just more romantic fancy stuff for you. You never change, only think about changing. As long as you want to change, for some reason or the other, so long will you insist upon changing the whole world. You want a different world so that you can be happy in it. That is your only interest. You can talk of mankind, concern for mankind, compassion for mankind, but it is all bullshit, horseshit ... Since you are determined to bring about change—a notion put into you by your culture—you remain discontent and want the world to be different. When your inner demand to be something different from what in fact you are comes to an end, then the neurotic demand to change your society ceases. Then you cannot be in conflict with society. You are in perfect harmony with society, including its brutalities and miseries. All your attempts to change this brutal society only add momentum to it. This is not to say that the free individual is indifferent to society. On the contrary. In any case, it is you who are indifferent right now. You only talk and whine, meanwhile doing nothing. Sorry....

Q: But it is very urgent that we have peace in the world ...

U.G.: Unless you are at peace with yourself, there cannot be peace around the world. When are you going to be at peace yourself? Next life? No chance. Wait, you will see. Even then there is no guarantee that your society will be peaceful. They will not be at peace. When you are at peace with yourself, that is the end of the story.

'''Q: It seems that we have only this idea of a peaceful society, while actually our relationship to others is quite violent. How do we bridge this gap between the ideal and the actual? '''

U.G.: You are trying to establish relationships with people around you, with society, with the whole world. For some reason or other the actual relationships are very ugly and horrible. Have you noticed that as long as our relationships satisfy the question, "What can I get out of this relationship?", as long as they can be directed to serve my personal happiness, there is no conflict? Every person is in the same situation: his relationships are harmonious as long as they serve his own ideas of happiness. And we also demand that our happiness be permanent. In the very nature of things this is impossible. There is no such thing as permanence at all. Everything is constantly changing. Everything is in flux. Because you cannot face the impermanence of all relationships, you invent sentiments, romance, and dramatic emotions to give them continuity. Therefore you are always in conflict.

'''Q: So perhaps we should abandon the search for perfect, harmonious relationships and concentrate on understanding ourselves—is that it? '''

U.G.: Understanding yourself is one of the greatest jokes, perpetrated on the gullible and credulous people everywhere, not only by the purveyors of ancient wisdom—the holy men—but also by the modern scientists. The psychologists love to talk about self-knowledge, self-actualization, living from moment to moment, and such rot. These absurd ideas are thrown at us as if they are something new.

Q: This must be boring for you, responding to the same old questions wherever you go.

U.G.: I have been everywhere in the world, meeting and talking with people. People are exactly the same the world over. The questions never vary. But I am never bored with it. How can I be bored? If I were some sort of fool getting some sort of kick out of this, looking for new, better and different questions, then there would be a possibility of getting bored. But I am not looking for anything So boredom is impossible. Are you bored? You have no way of finding out for yourself.

'''Q: I am bored because I am average, like everyone else. It is my mediocrity that makes life seem so empty and boring ...'''

U.G.: It is very difficult to be like the other fellow, to be ordinary. Mediocrity takes a great deal of energy. But to be ourselves is very easy. You don't have to do a thing. No effort is necessary. You don't have to exercise your will. You need not do a thing to be yourself. But to be something other than what you are, you have to do a lot of things. The boredom and restlessness you feel inside you is there only because you think you must be doing something more interesting, more meaningful, and more valuable than what you are already doing. You think that the way you are carrying on is terrible boring, and that there must be something more valuable, powerful, and exciting to do. So all this becomes part of the complex knowledge you have about yourself. The more you know about yourself the more impossible it becomes to be humble and sensitive. How can there be humility as long as you know something?

'''Q: There is something in me that finds it difficult to be simple about all this. There seems to be a fear of....'''

U.G.: All fears lead eventually to the fear of death, physical death. You are attempting to push the fear of death way into the background so you can continue, that is all. As long as you are fear-ridden, there can be no sense in discussing the meaning of life. Why ask questions and mystify life? You are alive because your parents had sex, period. Don't look for a meaning to life. There may not be any meaning at all. It may have its own meaning that you can never know. Obviously life has no meaning for you. Otherwise you would not be here asking these questions. Everything you do seems absolutely meaningless, that is the fact, Don't bother about others. The whole world is an extension of you. The way you are thinking, feeling, and experiencing is exactly the same way everyone else in this world is thinking, feeling, and experiencing. The goal may be different, but the mechanism and instrument you are using to achieve your particular goal is not a whit different from that used by others to achieve theirs. Why should there be any meaning in living? The moment a baby arrives in the world it is interested in one thing: survival. The instinct in the baby to feed itself, to survive, and to reproduce itself seems to be the way of life. It is life expressing itself. That is all. You needn't impose a meaning upon it.

'''Q: Living itself does not seem to be enough. We have aspirations and goals, and we feel that there must be a more sane and meaningful way of living. '''

U.G.: Instead of living, you are obsessed with the question, "How am I to live?" That dilemma is put into us by our culture, and is the one responsible for many of our problems. Because you are dead, not living what we call life, you are concerned with HOW to live. If you succeed in getting rid of the idea of somehow living a better, nobler, and more meaningful life, you will replace that belief with another. You must face the fact that you know nothing about life or the living of it.

Q: In spite of the fact that we are not living, we are terrified of death.

U.G.: The body responds to life around it: the pulse of the heart, the various physiological processes, the throb of life all indicate the presence of life. When these processes stop, then what you call clinical death takes place. Next we observe the body breaking down into its constituent elements, in turn assuming new and different life forms. But this continuity of life in new forms is little consolation to you, for you want to continue in your present form, warts and all. If you bury the body, the worms have a field day. If you throw it into the water, the fish will have a feast. That life will continue no matter what. But you will not be there to experience death. There is only death in the clinical sense.

Q: If I am not really living, if I cannot know death, if I really don't give a damn about society, if my life is actually meaningless, if my hard-won self-knowledge is just an expression of ignorance, then what I take to be reality is a projection of my own mind ...

U.G.: Where is this mind you talk of? Can you show it to me? There is no such thing as your mind and my mind. Mind is everywhere, sort of like the air we breathe. There is a thought sphere. It is not ours and not mine. It is always there. Your brain acts like an antenna, picking and choosing what signals it wants to use. That is all. You use the signals for purposes of communication. First of all, we have to communicate with ourselves. We begin as children naming everything over and over again. Communicating with others is a little more complex and comes next. The problem, or the pathology if you will, arises when you constantly communicate with yourself, irrespective of any outside demand for thought. You are all the time communicating with yourself: "I am happy....I am not happy....What is the meaning of life?..." and so on. If that incessant communication within yourself is not there, you are not there as you now know and experience yourself. When that inner monologue is no longer there, the need to communicate with others is absent. So you communicate with others only to maintain that communication you are having with yourself, your inner monologue. This kind of communication is possible only when you rely and draw upon the vast totality of thoughts passed on by man from generation to generation. Man has through the process of evolution learned to draw from this storehouse quicker, subtler, and more refined thoughts than the rest of the animals. They have powerful instincts. Through thinking man has enabled himself to survive more efficiently than the other species. This ability of thought to adapt is the curse of man.

'''Q: Whether you lay it at the door of society, the genes, evolution or the influence of the stars, it comes down to the same thing: we are all deeply conditioned and need to be free of that conditioning in order to function naturally and freely. This is obvious, isn't it? '''

U.G.: It is not at all obvious to me. It is just not possible for you to be without conditioning. No matter what you do, you are conditioned. The "unconditioning" that the spiritual gurus are talking about is a bogus affair. The notion of being unconditioned, of unconditioning oneself, is just another item for sale in the marketplace of the holy business. It has no validity. You will find out. Anything you do is conditioned. Unconditioning yourself has no meaning. What you have to be free from is the very desire to be free from conditioning. Conditioning is intelligence, the ability to respond adequately to the environment. This is entirely unrelated to your fantasies, ideations, and mentations, what you take to be the heights of intelligence.

Q: If inquiry, self-knowledge, and unconditioning don't help to solve my basic dilemma, then perhaps science can help through life-extension techniques or genetic engineering ...  U.G.: Even genetic engineering that the scientists are indulging in is not for the benefit of mankind. If they succeed, it will be handed over to the state. The state will use it to control everything and everyone. Brainwashing, which takes centuries, would be obsolete. Through a simple injection of genetically engineered substances into the body, the state can turn its citizens into bloodthirsty soldiers, mindless bureaucrats, or whatever type it wants.

'''Q: Perhaps we are complicating it. Could it be that we are all just too shallow in thought, that we only lack sufficient vision and mental scope? '''

U.G.: Forget it. In any event your actions must be destructive of man's ultimate interests, for they are born out of thought, which is a dead thing. Forcing life to fit your dead ideas and assumptions is your basic difficulty. Everything you stand for, believe in, experience, and aspire to is the result of thought. And thought is destructive because it is nothing more than a protective mechanism, programmed to protect its own interests at all costs. Anyhow, are there really thoughts? Are you thinking now? You have no way of knowing.

'''Q: But it is a superhuman task to fully understand though, is it not? All religions and important philosophies have put before us a more or less superhuman figure who has somehow transcended the relative world—the world of thought if you will—and attained great heights. But we are ordinary men not capable of colossal, fearless, or intrepid actions. '''

U.G.: If you are freed from the goal of the `perfect', `godly', or `truly religious' supermen, then that which is natural in man begins to express itself. Your religious and secular culture has placed before you the ideal man or woman, the perfect human being, and then tries to fit everybody into that mold. It is impossible. Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals, whereas culture has invented a single mould to which all must conform. It is grotesque.

'''Q: So you are not a perfect man as some claim? '''

U.G.: I wish I knew, but I don't want to bother. Who cares? I have no way of finding out, and if I did, it would be a tragedy for the world. They would make of me a model and attempt to live a certain way, creating a disaster for mankind. We have enough gurus, why add one more?

'''Q: If you are not a teacher, a guru of some sort, then why do you talk to us? It appears to us that you are giving some kind of instruction, that you are expressing a teaching that can be of use to mankind. '''

U.G.: I am just singing my song, then I go. If someone listens to me or not, it is not my concern. I don't consider any hypothetical situation. If nobody comes and talks, it is all right with me. Believe me, my talking is only incidental, it is not aimed at liberating anyone. I've been coming to this area for thirty years. If you are not here, maybe I'll watch the TV, or read crime fiction—it's all the same for me. I am not selling anything. This is so. I am simply pointing out that at the rate at which we are going the whole genetic engineering technology will end up in the hands of the political system to be used for the complete control and subjugation of man.

'''Q: If this danger is really so imminent, then it is urgent that others "stumble" into their natural state, as you indicate happened to you, if for no other reason than to prove the existence of an alternative to genetic totalitarianism. Would you go along with this?'''

U.G.: No. This natural state cannot be used to further anyone's crusade. Nor am I interested in setting myself up as an archetype or prophet for mankind. I am not interested in satisfying the curiosity of anybody. The scientists are making tremendous progress in the fields of microbiology and glandular and brain physiology. They will soon have enough sophistication in these areas to understand the physiological mutation that took place within me. I personally cannot make any definite statement except to say that the whole mechanism is an automatic thing. The interference of thought is not there anymore. Thought is functional in value, nothing more. It operates temporarily here when there is a demand from the environment, but cannot act with regard to becoming something or to changing things there. This is all. That is energy, an energy that can make functioning in this world sanely and intelligently an easy affair. Now you are wasting that energy by attempting to be something other than what you in fact are. Then you will have a certainty which cannot be transmitted by me or by anybody. I have discovered for myself and by myself, that what we have been told about freedom, enlightenment, and God is false. No power in the world can touch this. This does not make me superior. Nothing of the sort. To feel superior or inferior you must separate yourself from the world. I do not look upon the world as a separate thing as you do. The knowledge I have bout the world—whether within or without—comes into operation only when there is a demand for it. Otherwise I simply don't know. Your natural state is one of not knowing.

'''Q: You make no special claims for yourself. Yet your listeners, including myself, sense a certainty and authority in what you say. Does not this indicate that you are in fact a free man? '''

U.G.: The knowledge that you are this, that you are that, that you are happy, that you are unhappy, that you are a realized man, that you are not a realized man, is completely absent here. You, or I, have no way of knowing if we are free men. Nothing tells me that I am a free man. In your case the naming process, the wanting something, the questioning goes on and on no matter what. Here thought functions only from a stimulus from the outside. Even then the response of knowledge is instantaneous, and I am back again like a big question mark. Your constant demand to experience the same thing over and over again results in compulsive, repetitive thinking. I don't see any need or reason for the repetitive process to go on and on. In my case there is no one separate from this functioning, no one who can step back and say, "This is reality." There is no such thing as reality at all. Reality is imposed upon us by culture, society, and education. Don't get me wrong. Thought has a functional value. If we don't accept the world as it is imposed on us, we will end up in the loony bin. I have to accept it as a relative fact. Otherwise there is no way of experiencing the reality of anything. It is thought that has created the reality of your body, of your living, of your sleep, and of all your perceptions. You experience this reality through knowledge. Otherwise there is no way of your knowing for yourself that you have a body, that you are alive, that you are awake. All that is knowledge. The reality of anything is something which cannot be experienced by anybody.

'''Q: We have found this talk most interesting. Thank you very much.'''

U.G.: Thank you.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Mind is a Myth/IV