Philosophy – (Page 3)

WHAT IS  EXPLOITATION ?      

You are individually responsible for the exploitation. As long as you are seeking security for yourself, there can’t be security in the world. And as long as you allow yourself to be exploited by somebody for some reason or the other, the structure will continue to be the same.  You use somebody and that is exploitation, no matter for what reason. If the other person allow this, he is also interested in using you. That is the relationship in this world. You call it mutual gratification. You gratify me and i gratify you. Or you exploit for self- fulfilment self- expression. That is what I mean by exploitation, not necessarily in the field of labour and money and other things.


You use somebody and that is exploitation, no matter for what reason.  If the other person allows this, he is also interested in using you. That is the relationship in this world. You call it mutual gratification.  You gratify me I gratify you. Or you exploit for self- fulfilment, self- expression.  That is what I mean by exploitation, not necessarily in the field of labour and money and other things.  What can you do?  join a party, start an organisation.  And it is always tomorrow.  People are hungry today and you are promising food tomorrow.  My idea, my system, my party and I’ll give food and security. The other man also says the same thing and you fight all the time to win over the other, meanwhile the poor man suffers and you let him die of starvation.   

 

                                                                                                You are accumulating wealth, as long as you hold on to what you have how would the world change ? You don’t want to let go anything.  And that is so with your neighbour and his neighbour and every other person. You think this is a marvellous progress, giving charity here and there.  Tell me, do you mind if things are taken  away from you. You try to take away a simple thing like a fountain pen from somebody, and see what happens. He’ll kill you.


Somebody says he is not attached to  things. Sorry,  I don’t believe anybody who says he is not attached to things or people or anything else. Even if you go and listen to somebody it is only to get something. You want to profit by that and that is your acquisitive nature. You want to benefit yourself, improve yourself, become somebody other than what you are. You want to be a religious man, a holy man, a good man. All that is the acquisitive structure in you.  The man who acquires knowledge is not very different from the man who acquires wealth. Both are acquisitive. Seeking happiness is acquisitiveness,  facing this fact may contribute something in the direction of solving the human problem. Not otherwise.  Ther is no collective action involved here. This is a simple and effective way to bring about a change in the structure of your consciousness,  but instead you want to start organisations to change, when basically you are no different from what you want to change out there.       

 

IS THERE NO ACTION FREE OF THAT STRUCTURE ?    

 

At no time you are free from it and that is your burden, your life. So, would you say the problem is the ego ? .   Conflict is the ego. Don’t deal with ego in terms of religious or spiritual valuation.  Ego is the conflict, the division in your consciousness, that’s all.  Everything is divided up. That division is the separateness from this mechanism.  You have created a separate entity here.  It is an abstraction.  It is not real; it is illusory and doesn’t exist at all.  It is good for you to say this is Atman, this is the Higher Self, this is Brahman and all that.  It is all invention of the mind. The moment you accept the mind the division is there. And you want to understand this division in terms of religious concepts, abstractions. This is the basic conflict. The society the culture has created this conflict, this division and you are not different from the society or culture.  The society has put the structure inside of you and you are perpetuating that structure because it is in your interest to give continuity to it. But does it exist ? Is there an ‘ I ‘, the centre? If you ask this question, the question is that one ( the self, the ego) . It is an illusion, I say; but it is a solid thing for you.  So, how do you understand this basic thing, not according to psychologists or some holy man or guru ? You can throw them all out of the window if you have the courage. Are you ready to understand for yourself what this is all about ? 
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WHERE IS THE CONTINUITY ?                                                                    

When you see a woman and recognise her as a woman and what she can give you, what is that but the continuity of your self. There is always something building up inside of you and you are constantly reaching out for something, whether it is sex or pleasure, relationship  or security,  some new idea or experience–  that is continuity.  This is not something mystical; you can see this for yourself.  There are only sensations hitting you one after another all the time and you are translating it as good, bad, pleasant, disgusting and so on and that is continuity. This is your everyday experience, is it not ?                                                                                What I am saying is that all beliefs and practices give continuity to that structure.  If you knock off this structure, what happens ?  You think  you’ll become a moron, abnormal or insane and you are afraid.  You don’t have that courage, you only talk of courage.  If you have the courage and bring this movement to an end, the structure collapses and then you become what you actually are.  That is the natural state and the life there will express itself in its own way and that will be your way, something unique, unparallelled.


 

LOVE, RELATIONSHIP AND THE ANIMAL  WITHIN …                                                                                                       What do I get out of that individual is the relationship– friendship, togetherness, sharing of common ideas, feelings, food, sex–  at every level. You establish some kind of ( unwritten )  contract that you have to live together.  Is that a living relationship ?     Yes, life is basically related. That is an expression of life.  But we are creating another kind of relationship through our desires and that is the movement of thought, of the self, which is parallel to the movement of life.  There is no duality, no division in consciousness. It is all one. But you have isolated yourself from this unitary movement of life and that is the problem and that is why you ask all these questions. And from this isolated position you are trying to establish relationships and that is bound to run you into all kinds of conflict situations. Being isolated you feel lonely and you want to be free from loneliness and you create a relationship and seek gratification. You call this relationship mutual gratification. 

 

BIOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIPS ARE NECESSARY TO SURVIVE, EVEN ANIMALS HAVE THAT KIND OF RELATIONSHIP. ……  That’s a fact as far as animals go. Man is also an animal and on that you have superimposed the idea of a perfect man. The idea of a perfect man does not exist. This is the conflict. The society has created this conflict in you by imposing the idea of a perfect human being on you. There is no such thing as a perfect human being, but you can become a human being and once you become a human being the animal qualities are not there any more.  You are three- fourths animal and one- fourth all these ideas and fantasies. So the animal remains an animal and you don’t want to accept this fact. The only difference between you and the animal is that you are more complex. They have instincts and because of which they are very intelligent in certain things;  but man has lost the animal instinct and in its place he has not developed the human instinct. 
If there is any purpose to human evolution it is to surpass the animal in you and fully become human. Such a human being is unique and unparalleled. Once you become a human flower you are free of sex and all the other things that culture has imposed on you . The continuity of all kinds has come to an end. The evolution has come to an end. It is finished, complete.  It is just a flower giving out its own fragrance. But the society is interested in creating human beings in a common mould and that is the barrier that prevents you from blossoming into a unique human flower.
From time to time it (nature) is throwing up a few individuals, pointing out that that ( society, culture) is not the way, this is it. Why and how it happens only to a few individuals nobody knows. It just happens. You can use the words luck, chance or grace or any other word, but there is no explanation. But it can happen now, to you or anybody;  you don’t have to wait.  This is nature’s law. When evolution slows down, revolution takes place. Suddenly it throws up something like this. This is the way it has gone on through centuries.


 

 

What is love ? It is said, at least according to the dictionary,  that love is  warm affection, paternal feeling, liking someone,  something, fondness and so on. And that is always in relationship with something.  Whether it is a person or a thing. Then we speak of another kind of love, divine love, which is supposed to be qualitatively different from what you feel towards others.  All right, we have feelings towards persons and things and it changes all the time.  But you want some kind of a permanent relationship, a beautiful relationship, full of harmony and never ending. That’s the reason why you are searching for what is called love.                                                             

 

Actually, if you are in a state of love, which is not any of these definitions, there is no relationship whatsoever.  Between persons and things. There is no attachment to persons or things. You cannot acquire anything.  Acquisitiveness is out, whether it is acquisitiveness of knowledge or things or persons. The absence of attachment, of acquisitiveness is love. It does not mean you are in a state of detachment, there is no such thing.  Detachment gives continuity to attachment and you are obviously tired of attachment and you want to change the nature of attachment into something else.  Love is not different from life. Life, love, truth, reality, God or whatever word you use, they are all the same.  But that’s a thing you cannot capture, contain, much less give expression to it.


 

 

CONDITIONING AND LEARNIN ING………………..                                                                                         There is already enough junk, enough garbage there. You can’t do a thing about it and can’t get rid of it.  But what is the point in adding more and more to this garbage and that’s what you are doing.  What is there is enough for you to last for the entire evolution. There isn’t anything you can do about the garbage and it is not garbage;  that is the intelligence.  What you call conditioning, what you call mechanical, is the intelligence. Why do you call that garbage ? It is not getting in the way for you; you are getting in the way. You are all the time interfering with what you call garbage. .. which is not garbage.  Let me put it this way, may be you want to get into that process of learning in order to know what it is. But how do you do that ? How do you get this know-how?  You come to me or you go to someone else, some authority or wise old man and he tells you something when actually he may or may not know a thing of what he is saying. So where are you ?   All right, if there is anything as learning, you look out there; you see something sitting there, of purple colour;  what is that extraordinary thing that is standing there on the balcony ? This is all I am concerned about learning.  Not about garbage, Conditioning, mutation and all that. What is there? I am wondering what  it is that is moving there. This is the state of learning and you have learnt and it is finished.  Then you look at something else and you are back again with the same question. This is the state of not knowing. What you mean by inquiry is a simple, innocent question: What is it that is there on the balcony ? All this is learning, not about the nature of reality, ultimate reality, Conditioning and all that,  which is nothing but dialectical thinking, thinking about thinking itself.  This is what philosophers do and write books about.  In the natural state you look at your foot and you don’t know to whom it belongs to and what it is actually.  You don’t have body consciousness. There is nobody here. A beautiful woman comes and that beautiful woman is nothing but you. There is no separation here at all . When there is a question,  when there is a demand it gets clutched and the word is thrown out.  It’s a chair and it is finished.  It’s a woman, it is finished. It is not a question of coming out of non dual state into a state of duality or going back into the state of non duality.  There is no movement in any direction either outward or inward. There is only one movement of life.  And that is acting. You cannot stop that, but you want to look at it and understand that and that is not possible.  So you want to look at the garbage there. The one who is trying to look at the garbage and wanting to do something about it is the garbage.  Why is he interested in finding out the nature of the garbage? It is because through that you are seeking continuity of the garbage, otherwise there is no garbage. SO WE GET INTO A TERRIBLE TANGLE AND NO THING COMES OUT OF IT..       Which means you have memorised these phrases very well. Like the Vedantins sitting on the banks of the river indulging in hair – splitting discussions.  They discuss everlastingly these abstractions :  the observer and the observed, the thinker and the thought–  we have been through  all this for too long. So what is the good of people discussing the same things again and again. There is no such thing as experiencing without the experience and the experienced. Even if it is there, it cannot become part of your conscious structure.  So what are you going to do about it ? You just throw in the towel. That’s it. Then there’ll be tremendous energy for you to deal with this reality.  This is the only reality and there is no other reality and you cannot run away from it. Then you’ll find out that it is utter nonsense to talk about the religious mind. So you have imposed all these abstractions, your profound  ideas of religious mind, stillness of mind, self- realised state, atman, Brahman and all  that and that is the unnatural movement of life. It is moving out in the direction of something else outside of you and that is what is creating that division in you. How long can you go on this way, chewing the cud like the cows do ? You can’t help yourself and that Is the situation. You must just let go. But as long as you accept any mystery, any miracle, any agency outside of you, you are going to be caught up in this mischief. There is no power outside of you. If there is God, you are that God, not the abstractios, absolutes and all that nonsense . There is no intelligence outside of you and you have to just let that intelligence come into operation.


 

 

CONCENTRATION and MEDITATION ….                                                                                 Concentration is a part of your education, right ? But why do you want to meditate ? If there is a mind here– I don’t know if there is– it’s nature is to move in all directions. That is your natural state.  But somebody tells you that you should meditate . So you sit there and meditate. What happens ? Thoughts begin to move in all directions, so you bring it back it back to this point, and this is what you call concentration. And then it begins to move again, you bring it back, it moves again because that is its nature.  The purpose of your meditation is to be at peace with yourself or to be full of love, or I don’t know for what else you seek.  Anyway, you sit here, cross-legged, and then what happens ? You think about things that happened yesterday or of things that are going to happen
tomorrow; this is the movement of thought that is going on.  You want to be at peace and you think this movement is disturbing your peace, so you try to control it. But this never stops. And it is  this that ie wearing you off.  So this constant attempt on your part to hold the things that you cannot hold tires you and that tiredness gives you some kind of peace.  It is an artificially created dumbness, dullness, stupidity.  This wears out the sensitivity of your senses and that you think is what you have achieved.  When that is gone you are back again.  It is like opium, you have to go back every time. If you are successful you become a chain – smoker.  Like a chain – smoker you meditate for five or six hours and you get drunk. Actually you are completely tired and that you think is what you are achieving.  Now you are able to achieve concentration for thirty minutes, next for forttyfive minutes and you succeed in the effort and can do it for one hour and that is the feeling that makes you feel that you are getting somewhere.                                                                                   

 

SO IS IT THIS CONDITIONED MACHINE ‘ YOU ‘ WHICH HAS A WILL OF ITS OWN ?                                                                                    

 

It has a will of its own . So you are using another will, you understand.  Now,  there is a table here. So I cannot push it but I must push it to the corner. So you develop this will; in other words , you are goading, pushing this body to move things it normally cannot. The will has given you the additional strength. So the will is a very important factor for you and that is your education and culture. You see, I am stupid and I do not understand mathematics or languages and I have taken long to learn languages. I use my will but I keep forgetting, but the society says you must learn and fit into  this framework. Since you give stories of politicians, businessmen, artists and even religious leaders  reaching great heights through sheer will power and hard work, I use will, my effort and the hope that tomorrow I too will succeed like the others.  But you are not always successful, so you put in more and more will and effort into it.                                                                                                             And you apply the same logic to reach this state. You believe that through relentless effort,  sadhana, through yoga , meditation you will reach this state. But that is not how it works. In fact it puts you on the wrong path and sends you in the wrong direction. What I am saying is that this natural state, this mechanical or automatic functioning of the organism or whatever you want to call it, operates when there is an absence of will and effort. So when I say absence of will is the natural state, you are frightened. What would I be without the will ?  How can I live in this world without effort and hope ? That’s how you give continuity to the question and thereby yourself, your thought structure with all its will, effort and hope. To be that it doesn’t need time, will and effort.

 


WHY SEX IS NOT PART OF THE NATURAL STATE….                                                                                                   In the natural state of a human being the sex has no place.  Why ? Because there is no continuity there in the natural state.  The sex glands function normally like in  any other  individual. It has a definite rhythm and if you don’t give expression to sex, you will understand how rhythmic it is in the case of man as well as woman.                                                                                                         During the spring the sex activity, as in the case of animals, becomes extraordinarily active. And  you think about sex and thereby  you invest what you call sex with tremendous life and give continuity to it all the time. What you call new sex experience is really not new but it is the same sex experience you experienced before and you are repeating that  expression again and again. You want to release that tension building up inside of you. But in the natural state of mind there is no continuity. No accumulation of experience. The past experiences will not impinge upon the activity of the sex glands and translating  this feeling in terms of that experience. It is like any other feeling, like any other sensation. There is no translation because the translator is not there.                                                                         Man is positive electromagnetic field and woman a negative electromagnetic field. When there is a collision caused between these two different magnetic fields there is bound to be some kind of disturbance there. Immediately you translate that disturbance inside of you (  both man and woman) in terms of your past ( sex )  experience.  Actually anything that happens in this organism ( in the natural state ) is exactly the same thing. Eating something, smelling, touching, even the movement of bowels are all sensations, feelings, and there is no difference between them at all.                                                                  But in your case the structure that gives continuity is making choices: this sensation I like and want to live with, this I don’t like– this is how you give life to  these sensations.  Here, in this state, since there is no continuity, no building up, the sensations are moving, they come and go one after another. You are always on the move. There is no such thing as sublimation. The sex activity( inside ) goes on and on like in any other human being but with a difference.  The difference is that when this kind of structural or chemical or biological change takes place, the harmones too undergo change. In the case of man the male harmone is predominant and in the case of woman female harmone; this is all the difference that is there. But when this kind of alchemy takes place there is a balance established between the two and then you are neither ( completely ) a man nor a woman. It is not in the sense you use the word ‘ eunuch .’  One half you is man and the other half is woman– there is a harmonious blending of the two. That is how the sex, in the sense you feel about it , is absent in such an individual.  There is no separateness in what you are looking at. What is there in front of you is not different from what is here. It is like a mirror reflecting the person– it does not matter whether it is a man , woman, flower or a barking dog there. There is no space, therefore, no difference between the two. So there is nothing to make love to. If you have to make love to, you have to make love to yourself if there is any such thing.                                                                                     In imitation of this state, the religious people try to practise celibacy, continence and they think that is the means to attain this state. That is the reason why monks deny themselves sex and through denial they feel very important and think that they are getting somewhere. But that is an illusion.  You become an imitator and not a mutant. This is not the foundation to create a religious mind or religious life. Denial of sex has no meaning.  It is absurd.  Through sex there is a possibility of breaking that structure.  Anything– it doesn’t matter what– even the falling of a leaf, the beautiful or ugly face of a woman or man– anything can snap the continuity and then the whole thing falls in its proper place and you begin to function naturally.


 

WHY DO WE BLINK ?                                                                      

If you blink your eyes it means you are not looking. You don’t look at a person with unblinking eyes. The fact that you are blinking your eyes all the time means that you are frightened to look at a person or anything for that matter.  It is not a nervous action or reaction, or even a reflex action. Throw out all those doctors and psychologists who say that it is a nervous action. There is reflex action only when there is physical danger. But when you are blinking it is not due to physical danger. You just don’t want to or can’t look at anything totally. You are frightened, that is why you blink or close your eyes now and then.  In India, it is considered as one of the signs of spirutuality.  Not blinking eyes is supposed to be the quality of a divine man , so the yogis try to keep their eyes open for days together, and then nothing happens.


 

 

 

WHAT IS RIGHT FOOD ?                                                           

Body needs food. The moment you introduce the question of ‘ right’ food you have introduced control there. Stomach can digest anything, but we put ideas into the stomach, and the capacity, the micro- function of the stomach, is destroyed by the mind. You eat things for pleasure and not for your body. We develop a habit.  If you watch yourself you’ll know.  If you deny some food you like you will see how the mind is working.  Sitting at the dining table is the thing. The recognition of food, its taste– all of them are interrelated.  When you are eating you are thinking and you are destroying the full possibility of what the food can give you.  This thinking process needs blood in the brain which actually is needed in the stomach. That is why there is a traditional saying that you should not talk nor think while eating.
The bliss is not the result of meditation or something; it is there because the blood has gone where it is necessary.  This is the natural functioning of the body.  The body has intelligence of its own.  Give it a chance.  The human intellect we have cultivated over millions of years is no match to this intelligence of the body.  It’ll take care of itself.  So you can’t eat wrong food. This natural system has its own rejecting mechanism and so immediately there is a reaction and the wrong food is rejected.
By denying yourself the food you like most you can’t learn anything about functioning of your mind. In India when you go on a pilgrimage to Banares, you are supposed to give up things you like most. Some people have given up eating a particular fruit or sweet or something like that. But it doesn’t work that way. I have known a monk who said he has taken a vow that he will not eat and not possess or touch certain things and he gave up all those things which he didn’t like. He was quite popular and used to give lectures on the Bhagavat Geeta.
You see, we imitate and that is not going to help. You doing good, being kind, giving up something, behaving in a certain way are all attempts to imitate the lives of  the sages. That is not going to help and that is not the way to consider the sages, whether the Buddha or Jesus or other sages. If they are there, it is to enable you to understand that there is a possibility of being there, of that state of being. But what you are doing is to imitate their lives and to create this imitation all over the world. You create Buddhists and you create Christians and there is a conflict between the two. The belief is the one that separates you and me.But, if both of us have no beliefs what is it that separates us or brings us together ?  Belonging together means to have a common interest. You go to a bar and have been sitting among beer drinkers; likewise, you go to a church or temple. Drinking liquor may be antisocial or seen as harmful to society, but that is a different matter.  Anyway, belonging to a group and beliefs divide us.  Do you believe in God ? I put this question to myself.  There is no answer. Because the idea of God you have created for yourself is born out of fear, so whether God exists or not is actually of no importance to you, but to accept such an image of God is convenient to live.  That is why they say there are 330 million Gods in India; 330 million people have created Gods of their own imagination.  So, all these theories or concepts or arguments about the proofs of existence of God have no meaning when you are face to face with this question.  Why do you believe, Why have you created this for yourself? The most important thing you have to understand for yourself is fear. But the idea of God  has no relation whatsoever with the natural state.
What you want doesn’t exist and THIS you don’t want you see, if you don’t seek a thing which does not exist, if you cut that out completely, then there is a possibility of this happening.  But you want to amuse yourself with things that don’t exist.  But you can’t amuse yourself totally either and that is what is destroying the energy for nothing. You are losing that energy by thinking that somehow that energy will be transformed.  How can it be possible ? You have illusions about that state of mind and that thought is the mischief maker. Not thought, but the thinker is the mischief- maker. There is a thinking – and feeling subject inside of you.  Whether you call it a self or ego or whatever, he is creating this mischief.  Thought cannot, by itself, create any problem. It is just a vibration and when you translate that vibration in terms of your background it becomes a mischievous element. You can’t do a thing about thought; just leave it alone.  But the problem is that you want to manipulate, control and channel it in a particular direction and that is what creates this parallel movement and mischief.
In the natural state you have become one, the movement of thought and the movement of life. It is a unitary movement. In you there is a parallel movement because the thinker is  always there. This is reincarnation.  In the sense the  ‘ I ‘, the ‘ self ‘ is re incarnating all the time.  This is the common pool, what you call social consciousness. Every time you think you are adding to that pool. So how can you be at peace with yourself ? This whole human consciousness is at war with itself.  So,  when the explosion takes place and the individual steps out of the thought structure, this explosion affects the whole of the pool of consciousness.  When separateness has gone, whatever is happening here affects the whole thing. This you can’t measure , it is immeasurable.
You are trying to empty the ocean in the small cup of yours which is your individual consciousness. When this cup or vessel breaks there is tremendous explosion and from there on what is happening there is also happening here. I am affected by everything.  I use the word  ‘ affection’ , but this affection is different.  This is vulnerable and is affected by everything around. If there is misery there, there is misery here;  that is the meaning of compassion, to be affected by everything that is not around you. It is the thinker that keeps the movement of life separate from what is happening around.

If you do not translate all this into mystical terms, what you are left with are these various ( sixty- four )  points in the body where the pulse beats. The doctors felt it only on the wrist but if you do breathing exercises, you will find out that all these pulses are beating here, and when there is too much of energy coming in , the hands automatically come together here. You see the meaning of these things not in symbolic terms but in physiological terms. For instance take the ‘ OM ‘ that Hindus talk of . When you chant ‘ OM’ the whole breathing pattern changes. By repeating this hundreds and thousands of times you think that somehow the breathing pattern snaps and will become one with the movement of life. That may be the idea and that is why they repeat it thousands of time . Its meaning is lost. The man who talked of this  may have experienced this for himself.                                                    

So what I am insisting is that through pranayama and hathayoga you are not going to reach this state.  But when this happens, you will have everything without asking for anything and without doing anything and without doing any damage to your body. And you see, when you go into this state the jaws become very tight — there are two nerve points here, the exact point where the dentist gives injection to deaden this part. All these things you discover for yourself  without reading any books and imagining these things. They come in their own way and you’ll know.    They say there are sixty- four points in the body; may be they ( yogis ) are right, I haven’t counted them but I know I feel them when the pulse beats at these various points. That is why I say you that you can never understand life. Whatever meaning you put on life has no validity, it’s only the creation of the thought structure.  When the mind becomes quite there is a possibility of feeling these points. When you do pranayama the ten points start beating under the fingers.  There is nothing to accomplish here. This is the unity of life.                                                                                     

When you walk with a woman you put your hand and hold it here ( on the hip ) . In Kama sutra they describe these two points as enabling extraordinary ecstacy.  Any sound vibrates inside the whole of your body and all these points beat. After doing yogasana, the pulse beats goes down, whereas when you do physical exercises it goes up; It’s the opposite.  That means it must go down, lower and lower, which puts the body in a restful, peaceful state. This is the peace,  not the peace of mind.  To know about all these points doesn’t mean anything.  The yogis knew all about them and they could reduce the heart beat to the minimum and do such things, but all that has no value.  What for? . The pulse, the beat and the power of life is set by itself– not that there is somebody who is aware of life, but life is aware of its own incredible depths.  It is a tremendous magnetic field. Since there are no frontiers, no Borders, this energy, which is not separate or distinct from life, is bound to express itself in its limitless and boundless way.               Does yoga help one to master emotions ?   No, it is only to kick your body into a perfect condition. Why eat ? It is like that.  It is necessary because it’s the only thing you have( body). When the spirit, the atman and all that business is cut off, what is there is only the body.  Yoga doesn’t help one to understand things better at all. Why only yoga, no system can help you there. Yogasana and meditation, which is a part of yoga, is not the way to understand this.

After the body is in perfect condition, you begin. Firstly self- control, self discipline and then  physical discipline, then Pranayama, and then comes questioning and finally comes meditation. It is the last thing to do, not first.  Sometimes meditation produces disorder.  But according to some theory, all of them have to be done simultaneously. I don’t know and it doesn’t interest me. BUT meditation does give results may you say.. Yes, meditation gives immediate results and that is what you want. But, basically, meditation is in the opposite direction, although it produces the result you want. It is not in the direction of liquidating what you want to liquidate. And you might say that meditation also makes one feel free. But feeling free is not good enough. Even a drunkard feels free and something extraordinary.  He gets strength to do something which he cannot do normally.  Meditation produces exactly the same thing. Feeling important, peaceful, free, doesn’t mean anything. It comes. and then it’s gone.  Since it is moving, you want to find a permanent thing. You want permanent peace, but there is no such thing. Everything is a movement of thought. Feeling free, happy,  blissful are all thoughts and they have to move, they cannot stay.  When you understand that, there is nothing you can do about the movement of thought, and your approach to the whole subject changes. See,  what is the purpose of meditating again and again? You have felt something good and you want that back again and again. After that feeling is gone you are back again in the same rut. But when you let that move in its own way what comes next is also a peaceful thing. Anything that happens is what it is.  But here meditation is a way of life.  Every thing you look at is a mystery to you. This is the movement of life which you don’t manipulate according to your wishes. In fact, there are no wishes. But the problem with you is that you read thoughts, some as desirable and some as not desirable, bad, evil and so on.

I hear somebody saying that while meditating thoughts are not censored and let them come and go. In such case why do you have to meditate ? It is an endless process, thoughts keep coming and going.  You can’t empty the ocean.  But you hope that one day you will, and that will never happen.  Now you might say that thoughts reduce, they become less and less.  That means you are trying to control and may succeed to some extent, and then what next ? Thoughts will never stop. You see, even in yoga, when you over do it  there is an opposite effect.  You are trying to contain a thing which you cannot.   But then that’s what everybody is doing in schools, colleges, homes– at every level!  To sharpen it, shape it and use it as a powerful weapon to achieve something.  That is not the way.  You have to understand the nature of thought and not control or shape it. All this is a movement away from yourself and that must stop.

WHAT IS THOUGHT ?                        The translation of sensations ( sense experiences )  in terms of meaningful words is thought.  As long as you do this there is somebody who is doing it. The thought by itself cannot do anything.  It is the thinker who is manipulating senses to have more and more, but ends up having less and less. He has reduced the capacity of the senses to almost zero point. That’s the tragedy.  But you don’t know what an extraordinary thing it is. This state  is quite the opposite of what you think of the senses. Here they function at the peak of their capacity because the thinker, the interpreter of the senses, is not there.                                                                                           

The unconscious !  We have difficulty to understand the conscious even. You see, these words, the unconscious, the conscious and the subconscious mind are all inventions of a clever mind.  Like the longitudes and latitudes which are actually not there but are drawn for the purposes of locating particular spots where you want to go or do something, these categories may be necessary to understand the mind at different levels, but actually it is all one.  So by understanding one bit of this you are not going to understand the totality.  Physchiatrists and psychologists are only interested in  studying one part of the whole thing because the whole thing is much too much for them to understand.                                                              

Now from where do these things come, the unconscious?  what is unconscious? It is the whole thing, it is there, what man has thought and said before you  is part of the unconscious.  It may not be ready for your use, but it’s there still. Every thought carries the whole structure with it.

WHAT IS EMOTION ?

It is a disturbance in the metabolism of this system. It is something alien to the body and so it is producing a discordant and disturbing thing inside. The word cannot do anything by itself. The thinker calls it anger, joy, anxiety or whatever for his own survival.  It is unbearable for the body and so it rejects it. But if you don’t  call it ( emotion )  by anything, it is absorbed in the body and is gone. In any case  it can’t stay there for long.   The meaning you attach to the word or the meaning you abstract from the word is the one that is producing this disturbance inside of you. Since you can’t stand this disturbance you separate yourself and try to control it,  so it has never done its purpose. It is true of every emotion.

Now you would question that if you unleash passions that may harm the social life.  That is what you are taught and so you want to control it. Actually, you do this not because society tells you, but because your relationship with the society is disturbed and you are frightened of the consequences in terms of your own future. So it is all ideas of selfishness and non- selfishness that have no meaning at all.  As long as  the self is there selfishness is there.  So the practice of selflessness is hypocrisy.  It is putting things off to some future day. You are not acting now. What this particular emotion is doing to you is the action.  It is not a mystical thing. What it is doing to  your body is the action  and it is its own action which has nothing to do with the so-called right action or spontaneous action and all that.  This is the action . The feeling is acting on you. What you are doing is you are manipulating, destroying the possibility of it acting on you and producing it’s own results. If you let it operate in its own way, it will not repeat itself and it is finished, because you are not giving it life.

THE BODY CAN’T BEAR EMOTIONS and SO IT REJECTS THEM ALL…..

The body can’t stand it. In any case it is going to move; the feeling is bound to go away because there is something else that is there. For instance, say I become impatient when my wife does something. It comes  and then it’s gone already, the impatience is something that he has done its purpose and moved away. But, if I say to myself that I shouldn’t have been impatient, and all that, it means giving life, continuity to it. And by keeping it there you create more and more tension and problem. BUT WHY DO WE GIVE CONTINUITY ?  Because you want to continue, because once you let that happen, it’ll destroy the thought structure.  You see, you are looking at the sea, the whole of your being is filled with that immensity, but the moment the thinker comes in and says it is beautiful and all that, the immensity is gone. This is physical reaction, producing it’s own activity.  Every sensory movement keeps this momentem going, which means you are living. This is a living being and it is not mystical. This life is felt every moment by itself.  This is happening inside of everybody; that’s the way it is. It is distorted because you are thinking, translating the sensory movement.  It is the thinker who creates another ( parallel ) movement and so you cannot be aware of this life movement inside of you. You may say I am talking of senses only.  But, what else is there . There is only the body. Suppose you are in a dark room what happens then is the question ?  There is only the heart beat, the pulse beat, awareness of the points of contact and there is no translation because there is nothing here.
You have desire and that pushes you towards the object of fulfilling that desire, and that is animal energy. Desire, drive, ambition- all that is animal energy.  Here, without any fulfilment, without any achievements, this desire generates energy of a different kind. That is pure desire without wanting to do anything about it. That is all the difference.  You may say you don’t have the energy needed sometimes .  It is just the lack of drive. If you want to become president of your country you will find that drive. When you were courting your wife years ago, you had tremendous energy, now you don’t need because you don’t have the same thing you had years ago.                          

You are all the time wasting it in the thinking process which is leading you nowhere. There are two sides now. You want to walk out of the whole business and yet you are afraid of losing it and afraid of the consequences. This is the one that is taking away the energy. You don’t know if there is another kind of energy. You don’t know because this energy, which is not animal energy ,  is locked up inside of you.  It’ll come into being only when everything else comes to a stop. It has nothing to do with problems at all.                                                        

The world would change if you changed. You are frightened, the world is frightened. You feel you don’t have security and it is same with the world. You are the world.  You are feeling and doing things exactly the way as the world does. It is an extension of the same thing. Since you have not seen the absurdity of what you are doing the world is not going to se  the absurdity.

 All thinking is sound,  vibration, a movement away from your state of being. This is a mental activity.  This movement takes you away from silence.

He sees a rattle snake and sees some boys playing there. Instead of doing what is necessary at that moment, whether to kill it or not to kill it depending on the situation, he started thinking about this problem.  Is it right to kill, why should I kill, this snake may not go into the field where the boys are playing, so why kill it– he is lost in the whole moral problem whether to kill or not to kill . If all that is not there, perhaps he’ll do whatever has to be done. He’ll kill the snake  and he is finished, not a thought more.                         

 Once, unknowingly,  Ramana Maharishi stepped on a lizard and killed it. All his disciples wondered what he would do. He just looked at it and walked away. What could he do?  It was finished. The disciples didn’t see any compassion on his face or see him feel sorry. He didn’t say a word. What could he say ? There was nothing . That was the end.

 


 

 

YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO A THING. WHAT IS FRICTIONLESS STATE ? 

Not being in conflict with the society.  This is the only reality I have, the world as it is today. The ultimate reality that man has invented has absolutely no relationship whatsoever with the reality of this world.  As long as you are  seeking, searching, and wanting to understand that reality ( which you call ” ultimate reality) , it will not be possible for you to come to terms with the reality of the world exactly the way it is.  So, anything you do to escape from the reality of this world will make it difficult for you to live in harmony with the things around you.

We have an idea of harmony.  How to live at peace with yourself– that’s an idea. There is an extraordinary peace that is there already.  What makes it difficult for you to live at peace with yourself is the creation ( of the idea )  of what you call ” peace ”  which is totally unrelated to the harmonious functioning of this body. When you free yourself from the burden of reaching out there to grasp, to experience, and to be in that reality, then you will find that you have no way of experiencing the reality of anything, but atleast you will not be living in a world of illusions. You will accept that there is nothing, nothing that you can do to experience the reality of anything, except the reality that is imposed on us by society.  We have to accept the reality as it is imposed on us by society because it is very essential for us to function in this world intelligently and  sanely.  If we don’t accept that reality, we are lost. We will end up in the loony bin.  So we have to accept the reality as it is imposed on us by the culture, by society or whatever you want to call it, and at the same time understand that there is nothing that we can do to experience the reality of anything. Then you will not be in conflict with the society, and the demand to be  something other than what you are also will come to an end.

The goal that you have placed before yourself, the goal which you have accepted as the ideal goal to be reached, and the demand to be something other than what you are, are no longer there. It is not a question of accepting anything, but the pursuit of those goals which the culture has placed before us, and which we have accepted as desirable, is not there anymore.  The demand to  reach that goal also is not there anymore.  So,  you are what you are.  When the movement in the direction of becoming something other than what you are isn’t there any more, you are not in  conflict with yourself. If you are not in conflict with yourself, you cannot be in conflict with the society around you. As long as you are not at peace with yourself, it is not possible for you to be at peace with others. Even then there is no guarantee that your neighbors will be peaceful.  But you see, you will not be concerned with that.  When you are not at peace with yourself, then you are a threat to society as it functions today.  You will be a threat to your neighbors because they have accepted the reality of the world as real, and they are also pursuing some funny thing called ” peace ” .  You will become a threat to their existence as they know it  and as they experience it. So you are all alone– not the aloneness that people want to avoid–  you are alone.

 

It is not ultimate reality that one is really interested in, not the teachings of the gurus, not the teachings of holy men, not the umpteen number of techniques you have, which will give you the energy which you are seeking.  Once that movement  ( of thought ) is not there, that will set in motion and release the energy that is there. It doesn’t have to be the holy man’s teaching.  It doesn’t have to be any techniques that man has invented–  because there is no friction there. You really don’t know what it is. The  movement there and the movement here is one and the same.  The human machine is no different from the machine out there. Both of them are in unison. Whatever energy is there, the same energy is in operation here. So, any energy you experience through the practice of any techniques is a frictional energy. That energy is created by the friction  of thought-  the demand to experience that energy is responsible for the energy you experience.  But this energy is something which cannot be experienced at all. This is just an expression of life, a manifestation of life.  You don’t have to do a thing.  Anything you do to experience that (energy ) is preventing the energy which is already there, which is expression of life, which is the manifestation of life, from functioning. It has no value in terms of the values we give to  whatever we are doing — the techniques, meditation, Yoga and all that.  I am not against any one of those things. But they are not the means to achieve the goal that you have placed before yourself—  the goal itself is false. If the suppleness of the body is the goal you have before you, probably the techniques of yoga will help you to keep the body supple. But that is not the instrument to reach the goal of enlightenment or transformation or whatever you want to call it. Even the techniques of meditation are self centered activities. They are self perpetuating mechanisms which you use. So the object of your search for the ultimate reality is defeated by all  these techniques because these techniques are self-perpetuating instruments.  You will suddenly realise, or it wii dawn on you,  that the very search for the ultimate reality is also a self-perpetuating mechanism.  There is nothing to reach, nothing to gain, nothing to attain.

As long as you are doing something to attain your goal, it is a self-perpetuating mechanism.  I use the words ” self-perpetuating mechanism, ”  but I don’t mean that there is a self or an entity. I have to use the word ” self ” because there is no other word. It’s like the self – starter you have in the car. It perpetuates itself.  That is all that it is interested in . Anything you want to achieve is a self – centred activity.  When I use the term ” self- centred activity, ”  you always translate it in terms of something that should be avoided , because  selflessness is your goal. As long as you are doing something to be self less, you will be a self- centred individual. With this movement in the direction of wanting to be a selfless man is not there, then there is no self and there is no self – centred activity. So it is the very techniques, the system and methods which you are using to reach your goal of selflessness, which are self – centred activities. Unfortunately, the society has placed  that goal ( selflessness) before us the ideal goal, because a selfless man will be a great asset to the society and society is interested only in continuity– the status quo.  So all those values, which we have accepted as values that one should cultivate, are invented by the human mind to keep itself going.

The goal is what is making it possible for you to continue in  this way, but you are not getting anywhere. The hope is that one day, through some miracle or through the help of somebody, you will be able to reach the goal. It is the hope that keeps you going, but actually and factually you are not getting anywhere. You will realise somewhere along the line that whatever you are doing  to reach your goal is not leading you anywhere. Then  you will want to try this, that and the other. But if you try one and you see that it doesn’t work, you will see that all the other systems are exactly the same . This has to be very very clear, you see. Whatever pursuit you are indulging in, somewhere along the line it has to dawn on you that it is not leading you anywhere. As long as you want something, you will do that. That want has to be very very clear. What do you want? All the time, I ask you the question, “what do you want “. You say ” I want to be at peace with myself” That is an impossible goal for you to reach  because everything you are doing to be at peace with yourself is what  destroying the peace that is already there. You have set in motion the movement of thought which is destroying the peace that is there.  It is very difficult to understand that all that you are doing is the one thing that is disturbing the harmony, the peace that is already there.  Any movement( of thought )  in any direction, on any level, is a very destructive factor for the smooth and peaceful functioning of this living organism which is not at all interested in your spiritual experiences. It has no interest in any one of those spiritual experiences, however extraordinary they may be.

When once you have one spiritual experience there is bound to be a demand for more and more of the same,  and ultimately you want to be in that state permanently. There is no such thing as permanent happiness or permanent bliss at all.  You think that there is, because all those books talk of eternal bliss, permanent bliss or permanent happiness. Yet you know jolly well that the pursuit is not leading you anywhere . So,   the mechanism that is involved, the instrument that you are using, is the one thing that keeps you going  because it does not know anything else. It has come into being through  so many years of hard work, effort and will. You wanting to be in a state of effortlessness through the use of effort is not going to succeed. So forget about the effortless state– it doesn’t exist at all. You want to achieve an effortless state through effort — how the hell are you going to achieve that goal ? You forget that every thing that you are doing, any movement that is there, any want that is there, for whatever reason, is effort.

Effortlessness is something which cannot be achieved through effort.  Anything that you do stop the effort, is itself an effort. It’s really a maddening thing !  You have really not pushed yourself into that corner. If you do , then you will really go crazy;  but you are frightened of that. You have to see that  everything that you are doing to be in that effortless state, for whatever reason you want to be there, is effort.  Even wanting not to use effort also is effort. The total absence of will and the total absence of effort, all and every kind, may be called an effortless state–  but that effortless state is not something that you can achieve through effort.
If you could understand the meaninglessness of what you are doing– you can change the techniques, you can change the teachers, but basically and essentially, the very teaching that you are using to reach your goal is the obstacle. It doesn’t matter what teacher you fallow. If you question the teaching, unfortunately, you have to question the teacher himself– but then comes the sentiment: ” something is wrong with me, one day I am going to understand ” . If it is not possible for you to understand today, you are not going to understand at all. So the understanding is the absence of the demand for understanding– now or tomorrow. Now there is no understanding necessary.  The understanding is only for the purpose of understanding something tomorrow- not today.  Today you don’t have to understand a thing at all.

It may sound funny to you, but that’s the way it is. So what do you want to understand? You can’t understand me at all in spite of the about 250 pages read by you so far. It’s not that it is so difficult.  It is so simple. The complex structure that is involved is the very thing that does not accept the simplicity of it. That is really the problem.  ” It can’t be that simple “, you think, because that structure is so complex that it doesn’t want even to consider the possibility that it could be so simple.  So you are going to understand tomorrow, not today.  Tomorrow is the same story. So what do you do about this situation ? We all have been through that. Either you flip or fly. The chances of flipping are really good if you push yourself into a corner. You are not going to do that.

What do you want to understand?  I am not saying anything profound. I have been repeating the same thing  every time. Basically, it sounds very contradictory to you. What I am doing– you don’t understand what I am doing – I make a statement, and the second statement negates the first statement.  Sometimes you see contradictions in what I am saying. Actually there are not contradictions. This statement does not express what I am trying to express, so the second statement is negating the first statement; and the third statement is negating the first two statements;  the fourth statement is negating the previous three statements. Not with the idea of arriving at any goal. Not with the idea of  communicating anything to you. There is nothing to be communicated.  Only this series of negations. Not with the idea of arriving at any goal. Your goal is understanding.  You want to understand, you see. There is nothing to understand here. Every time you make some sense out of it, I try to point out that is not it. It is not the doctrine of  neti–neti.
You know in India they have evolved this negative approach. But the so-called negative approach is a positive approach, because they are still interested in reaching a goal.  They have failed through the positive approaches, so they have invented what is called the negative approach.  ” Not this, not this, not this “.  The unknown cannot be reached, you see, nor can it be experienced through the positive approach.  The so-called negative approach is not really a negative approach because there is still the positive goal of knowing the unknown, or wanting to experience something– which cannot be experienced.  It’s only a trick.  That’s all it is — playing with itself.  As long as the goal is a positive goal, no matter what the goal is — whether it is called positive or negative– it is not a negative approach, it is a positive approach.

It is all right to play games, it is interesting, but there is no such thing as ” the beyond ” , no such thing as ” the unknown “.  If you accept that there is such a thing as the unknown, you will do something or the other to know the unknown. Your interest is to know.  So this  movement is not going to stop as long as it is  interested in experiencing something that cannot be experienced. There is no such thing as the unknown at all. How can I say that there is no such thing as the unknown ? How can I make such dogmatic assertion –  you will find out. As long as you are pursuing the unknown, this movement is in operation. There is something that you can do  that gives you the hope that maybe one day you will stumble into this experience of the unknown.  HOW CAN THE

UNKNOWN EVER BECOME THE KNOWN . Not a chance.  Even assuming for a moment that this movement which is demanding to know the unknown is not there, what is there you will never know.  You have to way of knowing  it at all, no way of capturing that and experiencing that or giving expression to it.

So to talk of that bliss, the eternal bliss, love — all of that is romantic poetry.  Because you have no way of capturing that and containing it  and giving expression to it. So it may dawn on you that this is not the instrument that can help you to understand anything, and there is no other instrument. Then there is nothing to understand.

If you translate what I am saying in terms of your values, in terms of particular codes of conduct, you are really missing the point.  It is not that I am against the moral codes of conduct. They have a social value. They are essential for the smooth functioning of society.  You have to have some code of conduct to function in this world intelligently.  Otherwise there will be utter chaos in this world.  That is a social problem.  It is not an ethical problem, nor  a religious problem. You see, you have to separate the two things because we are living in a different world today. We have to find another way of keeping ourselves in harmony with the world around us.  As long as you are in conflict within yourself, it will not be possible for you to be in harmony with the society around you. You are yourself responsible for that. I am afraid if you translate the statements that I am making within the framework of your religious thinking, you are really missing the point.  It has nothing to do with religion at all. I am not suggesting that you should change yourself into something other than what you are. It is just not possible. I am not trying to free you from anything. I don’t think there is any purpose in this conveying. You can brush aside my description and say it is nonsense,  that’s your privilege. But may be it will occur to you that the image you have of your goal, or image of what you are going to do one day through all the effort and will which you are using, has absolutely no relationship whatsoever with what I am describing.  What I am describing is not really what you are interested in.

I wish I could give you just a glimpse of it. Not glimpse in the sense in which you use the word ” glimpse “. A touch of it. You wouldn’t want to touch this at all. And what you want, what you are interested in, doesn’t exist. You can have lot of petty experiences, if that is what you are interested in. Do all the meditations, do everything you want, you will have lots of them ( experiences ) . It is a lot easier to experience those things by taking drugs. I am not recommending drugs, but they are the same, exactly the same. The doctors say that drugs will damage the brain, but meditation will also damage the brain if it is done very seriously.  They have gone crazy,  jumped into the river and killed themselves.  They did all kinds of things– locked themselves up in caves– because they couldn’t face it.  You see , it is not possible for you to watch your thoughts, it is not possible for you to watch every step you take. It will drive you crazy. You can’t walk. That’s not what is meant by this idea that you should be aware of everything– watch every thought –  how is it possible for you to watch every thought of yours– and for what do you want to watch your thoughts ?  what for ?  control? It’s not possible for you to control.  It is a tremendous momentem.                                                                                 

When you succeed in your imagination, that you have controlled your thoughts and experienced some space between those thoughts or some state of thoughtlessness, you feel that you are getting somewhere.  That is a thought- induced state of thoughtlessness, a space between two thoughts.  The fact that you experience the space between two thoughts and the thoughtless state means that the thought was very, very much there. It surfaces afterwards like the river Rhone which flows through France, disappears and then comes up again.  It has gone underground.  The river is still there. You can’t use it for purpose of navigation, but ultimately it comes up again. In exactly the same way, all these things which you are pushing down into the subterranean regions ( feeling that you are experiencing something extraordinary ) , surface again– and then you find that those thoughts are welling up inside of you.

 

 

Something that determines that all is not right. That’s why you want to bring about a change.  And who is responsible for that demand to change ? That is what I am saying;  culture, society, has placed the demand before you that should be like that ,  you ought to be like that. So you have accepted that  as a model for yourself.  There is no inner and outer. There is a feeling, there is a demand,  that there is something more interesting that you can do with yourself, more meaningful, more purposeful than your existence is today.  That is the demand.  That’s why there is this restlessness.  You become restless because of this drive in you, which is put in there by the society or culture that makes you feel that there is something more interesting, more meaningful, more purposeful, that your life can be than what it is today.  Your naturalness is destroyed by that demand which is put in there by the culture. So, then your   life looks meaningless to you if that is all that you can do. You have tried to fill in that boredom with everything possible…… now you have all these gimmicks–  yoga, meditation,  and all the psychology.  Reading books, religious books– this is something new added on to the already existing things there, but you have not succeeded in freeing yourself from the boredom. That is the demand.  You are bored with your life, with your existence , because it is very repeteitive. First of all, your physical needs are very well taken care of, you see, here in this part of the world at least. So, there is no need for you to spend anymore energy to survive. That part is taken care of.  When that is taken care of, the natural question that arises is very simple; ” Is that all that there is?”  Going to the office every morning, or just being a housewife doing all the chores in the house, or sleeping, having sex, everything, you see– is that all ?  It is that demand on your part that is being exploited by these holy men. Is that all ? So, those are some of the gimmicks that you are trying to fill the boredom here. It’s an empty, bottomless cup. It’s not even a bottomless cup, it is a bottomless pit.  You can fill that all the time with every conceivable thing that you can imagine or that others can come up with , but yet the boredom is a reality; It’s a fact. Sure,  Otherwise you wouldn’t do anything. You are just bored . simply bored with doing the same thing again and again. And you don’t see any meaning in this. The problem is not really the boredom. You are not conscious of the existence of boredom either on the conscious level of your thinking or on the conscious level of your existence.

The attractiveness of those things, which you use to free yourself from the non-existing boredom, has created the boredom. And  those things really cannot fill this boredom which is created by that. So it goes on and on and on — the newer,  and newer and newer techniques and methods. Every year we have a new  guru  in India with a new gimmick, with a new technique or some new therapy, and all kinds of things.   Your naturalness is something that you don’t have to know. You just let that function in its own way.  Your wanting to know that demands some know-how,  which you want from somebody.  The functioning of the heart is a natural thing; the functioning of all the organs in your body is very natural. They are not for one moment asking themselves the question ” How am I functioning” ? The whole living organism has this tremendous intelligence which makes it function in a very natural way. You have separated what you call life from that. What you call life is living, which is in no way related to the functioning of this living organism.  So, naturally, you are asking the question ” How to live “? ,  it is how to live that has destroyed the natural  way the whole thing is going on. That is where the culture steps in and tells you,  ” This is the way you should act and live  . This is the one and the only thing that is good for you and good for the society ” . You want to change that , you see. What is it that you want to change ? That’s all that I am asking. You will never know. So, what is it that you are trying now?  Don’t you see the absurdity of what you are doing ?  All this search is like trying to chase something that does not exist at all.

We all take it for granted that there is such a thing as a horizon there. So, if you look at that and you say that is a horizon, it sounds very simple to you.  But you forget that the physical limitation, the limitation of your physical eye fixes that point there and it calls it  ” horizon”. If you move in the direction of the horizon, the faster you move in the direction, even in a supersonic plane, the further it moves– farther and farther and farther away. What you are stuck with is only the limitation.  I also give the example of trying to overtake your shadow.  As children we played this game of trying to overtake our shadows– all the other boys running with you, everybody trying to overtake his own shadow.  It never occurred to us then that it is this body that is casting  this shadow there, and your wanting to overtake that shadow is an absurd game that you are playing.  You can run for miles and miles and miles.  You know the story of Alice in Wonderland.  The red queen has to run faster and faster in order to keep still where she is. You see that’s exactly what you are all doing.  Running faster and faster and faster. But you are not moving anywhere. All that you are doing  to find exactly where you are is not moving at all. That gives you the feeling that you are working on something, you are doing something to achieve your goal, not knowing that what you are doing is totally unrelated to the natural  functioning of this body.  You are not acting in a natural way. becaus the ideal  that has been placed before you by the culture  has falsified the natural actions here. You are frightened of acting in a natural way because you have been told the way you should act.

                                                                               Physical perfection is another one of the means. I am not saying anything against yoga. I am not saying anything against meditation–  do meditation, do yoga–  they are palliative. If you want to keep your body supple, do it. A supple body  is better than stiff body. If, instead of creating tensions all the time, meditation gives you relief from your tensions,  do it. But I am suggesting , that it is the meditation that is creating all the tensions. You first create the problem, and then you try to solve the problem.  It’s  all right, but thank god you are not doing it seriously.

                                                                             That’s the only hope you have. If you seriously meditate, you are in trouble. You will go crazy. Or, if you try to practise this awareness all the time–  in your conscious as well as unconscious levels– you will really be in trouble. You will end up in the loony bin, singing loony tunes and merry melodies. You can learn the new songs from India, and sing and enjoy.  That’s all right, but don’t do that ( practice awareness)  because it’s something like trying to walk  and watch every step you take. You will be in trouble, you will not be able to walk at all. So don’t do that. It’s a mechanical thing;  the things that are there are running very smoothly and mechanically.  You don’t have to do a thing about it. The more you try to do about it,  the more resistance you create.

The boredom is really the problem for you. The non-existing boredom has been created by the demand to free yourself from boredom. Since that ( the demand ) is not in any way helping you to be free from you boredom, but is making it more and more and more difficult to be free from this, you have to shop around. You have to search for all and every kind of gimmick to free yourself from that non-existing boredom.  It is that which is keeping this going on forever and ever.  I am not giving you or suggesting another gimmick.  I just want you to look at this, what you are doing to yourself . I am not trying to free you from something and take you away from that because I have some new product to sell. Not at all. I have no new products to sell, nor I am interested in selling anything.                                                                                 

God be with you and stay with God . That’s the Spanish– stay with God– your God , your gurus, stay with them. Don’t disturb yourself unnecessarily.  Live in hope  and die in hope.  And hope that you will be born again, if you accept the theories of reincarnation.  One birth is bad enough. Why would  we want to be born again ? We might as well handle this problem once and for all, now, and begin to live– what little is left for us. Don’t bother about the world and the peace of the world. If the question of how to be happy is dropped, then you begin to live, you see, not bothering about happiness at all. That doesn’t exist, happiness doesn’t exist at all. The more you want it , the more you search for it, the more unhappy you remain. They ( the search and unhappiness) go together.  All the positive approaches that man has invented and used for centuries–  they have not resulted in anything useful. They have not produced the results you have been promised.  And yet you go on and on and on, hoping that somehow,  through some miracle, you will be able to achieve your positive goals, or the goals which are placed before us through the positive approach. You keep doing it only because you have hope, and it is that hope that keeps you going.                                                      

Don’t be caught up in this structure of thought which always suggests the positive and negative. Your goals are always positive. Since your goals have failed to give you the desired results, you have begun to look at these things and approach them in a negative way. The positive and negative approaches function only in the field of thought.  YOU LEAVE THE GOALS…  Yes it has no meaning at all. The goal has no meaning.  The goal which you have placed before yourself has no meaning at all, because it has resulted only in struggle, pain and sarrow.  You are using will, as I said a while ago, and the will has a certain limitation.  You can’t use it  beyond a certain limit.  The use of your will and the use of your effort gives you a sort of additional energy to tackle these problems and to face these problems, but actually  it is limited in its scope.  The energy that you produce is only a frictional energy.  The  WILL  creates friction, and that friction gives you some sort of energy. But that energy cannot last long, and so you are back again in square one. The whole western Christian civilization along with all other civilisations in the world and it’s culture place before you a goal. Whether it is a material goal or a spiritual goal. There are ways and means of achieving your material goals, but even in this respect there is a lot of pain, there is a lot of suffering. And you have superimposed on that what is called a spiritual goal.  Whereas in the material world the goal is something tangible. The instrument which you are using to achieve your material goal does produce certain results.  By using that more and more you can achieve the desired results.  But there is no guarantee.  The instrument which you are using is limited in its scope.  It is applicable only in this ( material) area.

So, the instrument which you are using to achieve your so-called spirutual goals is the same instrument. You do not realise that all the spiritual goals that are superimposed on your so-called material goals are born out of your fantasy, because you have divided life into material and spiritual.  It doesn’t matter what instrument you use to achieve your goal, whether it is material or spiritual, it is exactly the same.

YOU MIGHT SAY THAT  we as human beings are active,  even plants are active, living beings that we are not passive, that we must have some sort of a goal, that in such case what is it you are saying against any such goals ?    My answer to that is you have to be very clear about the goal. What do you want ?  What do you want ?  It is not the want that is wrong. But the only way you can achieve your material or spiritual goals is through the instrument which you use to achieve your material goals. What I am suggesting is , that the only instrument you have is thinking.  See, I want to be a millionaire.  A millionaire wants to be a billionaire, and a billionaire wants to be a trillionaire. So, that is the goal. A happy man never want to be happy. You want to be more and more happy. Or,  you want to be permanently happy.  Sure. You are happy sometimes and you are unhappy  some other times. So, you want pleasures and you want those pleasures  to be permanent. And at the same time, you also know that the so-called demand for pleasure, temporary or otherwise, is giving you pain as well . The goal of every person in this world, whether he is   in the west or in the east or even in communist countries–  is exactly the same.  So, what he wants is  to have pleasure without pain at all. And to be happy always, without even a moment of  unhappiness. What he is struggling and striving hard for , is to achieve this impossible goal of having one ( happiness) without the other ( unhappiness) PARADISE.                     

If you achieve all the goals you have placed before yourself, success, money, name and fame, position or power, you are happy. In this process you are struggling hard. But you are putting lot of will and effort into that. As long as you succeed you have no problems at all, but you cannot always  succeed– you know all that.  But there is somehow  hope that it will be possible for you  to always succeed. You are frustrated because you find that  you cannot always succeed. Yet there is still hope. Whether it is for material goals  or spiritual goals , the demand is to succeed in your efforts to reach, attain or accomplish whatever goals you have placed before yourself.   You must be very clear as to what you want. ” I want this” or  ” I don’t want that “. It’s alright. When once you know exactly what you want, you will be able to find out the ways and means of fulfilling your wants. Unfortunately, people want too many things at the same time.

So, you crystalise all your wants into one basic want, because all the other wants are variations of the same want. You reject my suggestion that man always wants to be  happy without  ever rare moments of  unhappiness or permanent pleasure   without pain, which as I said earlier, is a physical impossibility.  The body cannot take any sensation , be it pleasurable or painful, for long . If it does, it will destroy the sensitivity of the sensory perceptions, and the sensitivity of the nervous system. The moment you recognise a particular sensation as a pleasurable sensation, naturally there is a demand to make  that pleasurable sensation last longer. So, every sensation, depending up on the intensity of that sensation, which is plagued by you to invest it with more intensity or less intensity ( depending up on what you are after) , has a limited life of its own.  The demand comes only when you separate yourself from that pleasurable sensation and begin to think of how you can extend  the limits of the pleasurable sensation or the moments of happiness.  Your thinking has turned that particular demand to make this pleasurable sensation last longer than its natural duration into a problem.  It has turned that into a problem  for the functioning of this body, and by so doing, it has created a neurological problem. It ( the body) is doing everything possible to absorb that , whereas your thinking makes it impossible for this body to handle that  in its own way , for the simple reason that you are trying to solve those problems within the field of your religious or psychological approaches.  Actually, those problems are neurological problems, and if the body is left alone to handle them in its own way, it will do a better job than your trying to solve them on psychological or religious levels.  All the solutions that we have been offered, and the solutions which we have been adopting for centuries, have not done any good except to give us a  little bit of comfort, a palliative to help you bear the pain. Yet we are not free from that pain at all because of the hope that somehow the instrument which is turning all these things into problems can be solved through the same instrument. The only thing that this mechanism of thinking can do is to create a problem.  But it can never, never , never, solve the problem.

If thought is not the instrument to solve the problems, is there any other instrument ? I say no. It can only create the problems.  It cannot solve the problems.  When this understanding dawns on you, then you will realise that the energy that is there in the body, which is the manifestation of life or expression of life, handles everything in a tremendously easier way than the frictional thinking which you are generating through your ideas of how to handle these problems.

SO, When you feel that you have a problem you just leave it alone? …………..  ?     You see when you put it that way, then there is a demand from the person who is suggesting that to ask  how you can leave that alone. You know that you cannot leave it alone. You just say that you would it leave it alone. Naturally the next question will be, how to leave that alone without the interference of this thought. There is no how. If anybody suggests how, you are caught up in the same vicious circle.  That is why all these therapies we have in our midst today and all those gurus we have in the market place, who are suggesting umpteen numbers of techniques, are creating this tremendous burden which does not in any way lighten the load, but on the other hand, is adding more and more burden to this situation in which you find yourself today.  All those systems and techniques cannot be of any help except that they will act as a palliative for a while so you can bear the pain for a little longer. On the other hand, they are disturbing the whole chemistry of the body, instead of being  of any help for you to solve the problems for yourself.

THEY ARE DISTURBING THE CHEMISTRY. ?         They are disturbing the chemistry and in this process it ( body ) is throwing up all kinds of aberrations which you consider to be spiritual experiences. So, your breathing exercises, your yoga exercises, your meditations, are disturbing the chemistry of the body, and the natural rythm of the body in exactly the same way that all these drugs which people take disturb the chemistry of the body. So, you say that they ( drugs )  are damaging, but actually these ( spiritual techniques)  are far more damaging than those things (drugs) . I am not suggesting that you should take drugs, but they serve the same purpose as all these therapies, spiritual or psychological therapies, that are being dished out day after day after day . The fact is that they give you some relief, like An a cinema —  you have a headache and you don’t even give the body an opportunity to  handle it for a little while. You rush to the market and buy an a cinema or aspirin or something and you drug yourself.  In exactly the same way, it makes it difficult for the body to manufacture the natural things that are there in your body to help relieve you of the pain. The body has all the hallucinogens you are talking about as parts of its system.  It wants to control the pain and to relieve itself of the pain. It knows only the physical pain, and it is not interested in your psychological pain at all. The  solutions  they are offering  are only in the area of the psychological field, but in the physical field.  If you take aspirin for example, it destroys the capacity of  this body to handle that pain in a natural way. I am not suggesting that you should take the natural way and switch over to macrobiotics or any other funny health food stuff. That is a mischievous as any other medicine.

You don’t question the solutions because the sentiment creeps in there.  ” That fellow who is selling this in the market place cannot be a fraud, cannot be a fake ” You take him to be an enlightened man or a god walking on the face of the earth. That God may be fooling and killing himself, may be indulging in self – deception all the time and then selling that stuff, that shoddy piece of goods, to you: You don’t question the solutions because then you will be questioning  the man who is selling this . ( you think) he cannot be dishonest, a holy man cannot be dishonest. Yet you have to question the solutions because solutions are not saving your problems.  Why don’t you question those solutions and put them to the test– test the validity of those  solutions? When you realise that they don’t work, you have to throw them out, down the drain, out of the window. But you don’t do it because of the hope that somehow those solutions will give you the relief that you are after. The instrument ( thought) which you are using  is what has created this problem. So that instrument will never, never accept the possibility that those solutions are fake solutions. They are not the solutions at all.                                                        

The hope keeps you going . That makes it difficult for you to look at the problems. If one solution fails , you go somewhere else and pick up another solution. If that  solution fails you go find another. You are shopping around for all these solutions but never once will you ask for yourself,  ” what is the problem “.

What I am suggesting is  if that is the solution you should be free from problem.  If that is not the solution, then there is nothing you can do about it; and then the problem is not even there. So, you are not interested in solving the problem, because that will put an end to you. You want the problems to remain . You want the hunger to remain because if you are not hungry you will not seek this food from all these holy men . What they are giving you are  some scraps , bits of food, and you are satisfied.  Even assuming for a moment that he ( the spiritual leader or therapist ) can give you the  whole loaf of bread,  which he cannot do, he will only promise to keep it here, hidden somewhere.  Promises– bit by bit by bit — he gives you. And thereby you are not dealing with the problem of hunger, but you are more interested in getting a bit more from that fellow who is promising you a solution rather than dealing with your problems of hunger. You are not dealing with the problem of  hunger, but you are more interested in getting more crumbs from that fellow, than dealing with your problem of hunger.

IS IT NOT GOING TO A MOVIE ,  RUNNING AWAY FROM REALITY ?                                                                            

You never look at the problem.  What is the problem with anger, for example. Let us not go into all that crappie and silly things which these people have been discussing for centuries.  Anger. What is the anger ? Can you separate the anger from the functioning of this body ?  It is like a wave in the ocean . Can you separate  the waves from the ocean. You can sit there  and wait until the waves subside, so that you can have a swim in the ocean ( like King Canute who sat there for years and years hoping that the waves in the ocean would disappear so that he could have a swim in a calm ocean ) . That will never happen . You can sit there  and learn all about the waves, the high tide and the low tide ( the scientists have given us all kinds of explanations) ,  but the knowledge about that is not  going to be of any help to you.   You are really not dealing with anger at all. Where do you feel the anger, first of all ? Where do you feel  all these so – called problems you want to be free from ? …. The desires ? The burning desires.  The desire burns you . Hunger burns you . So , the solutions  you have  or the means  of fulfilling them  ( desire and hunger) are very simple and make it impossible for that  to burn itself out in your system.  Where do you feel the fear?  You feel it here in the pit of your stomach. It is part of the body. The body cannot take those high and low tides of energy, so you want to suppress it for some spiritual or social reasons. You are not going to succeed.                                                                                  

Anger is energy, a tremendous outburst of energy. And by destroying  that energy through any means , you are destroying the  very expression of life  itself.  It becomes a problem only  when you try to do something with that energy. When it is absorbed by the system , you will not do things that you think you will do if the anger is left alone. You are actually not dealing with  the anger, but the frustration.  Or to avoid such a situation which has resulted in  clumsiness in your relationships or in your understanding of yourself.  You want to be prepared to meet such situations as and when  they arise in the future.  The instrument which you are using has been used by you every time  there is an outburst of anger . Yet you have not succeeded in freeing yourself from the anger. You won’t come into the position of anything extraordinary, other than this instrument which you have been using all these years, and at the same time you hope  that somehow this very thing  will help you  to be free from anger tomorrow.  It is the same hope. When somebody is very angry, may become violent  but this violence is absorbed by the body.

KILLING SOMEBODY. .. ?                                                                       

YES,  Why are you killing people, thousands of people, for no fault of theirs. Why you are limiting something  which is natural, but you are not condemning the nation’s that are dropping bombs on helpless people ? Do you call them sane ? Both of them have sprung from the same source. As long as you do anything to control your anger here, you will indulge in such atrocious things and justify them, because that is the only way to protect your way of life and your way of thinking.  These two things go together. Why do you justify that ? That is insane .  He is not hurting you, but he is threatening your way of life. There is a danger of that man taking away what you consider to be your precious things. This idea of stopping this man from acting when there is an outburst of anger is exactly the same.  The religious man has found that an angry man will be an anti social man. As long as he practices virtues, so long he will remain an anti – social man, and he will act out of anger. When the goal that the society has placed before you, when that same goal which you adopted for yourself as an ideal goal to be practiced, is finished for you, you will not harm anybody, either individually or collectively as a nation. You have to deal with the anger. But you are dealing with something totally unrelated to the anger, not even once do you let that anger burn itself out within the framework where it originates and functions. Having some therapy of hitting your pillows, hitting this , that,  and the other, is just a joke. That does not free the man from the anger once and for all.                                                        

It ( anger) will appear again.  So what do you do ? You are not dealing with anger.  You will never deal with this anger at all as long as you are interested in finding out a way of not hitting the person who is coming at you  with a knife. You have to protect yourself, that is essential.  I am not saying for a moment that your anger makes it impossible for you to deal with that situation.  Don’t say it’s nonviolence or you should not hurt somebody else.  You never practice that . Of course, they practice it on a larger scale, but in daily life they say it is something terrible to do . I don’t see any problem with that at all. What is the problem ?                             

There is no point in discussing those hypothetical situations for the simple reason that the person who is hopping mad with anger, burning with anger, will not seek to discuss the question of anger. That is amazing.  That’s the time to deal with those things, when you are really burning with anger, burning with desire, burning with all those things that you want to be free from.  Otherwise, it becomes a classroom discussion.  Somebody talking on the anatomy of anger, the anatomy of how the anger arises, or the anatomy of love.  It’s too ridiculous.  They offer solutions which don’t work when there is a real situation.  That’s the reason why I don’t discuss all these things.  No problem.  There’s no problem for the individual.  When he is mad with anger–  that’s the time for him to deal with it.  It stops the thinking. There is no possibility of looking at the problem, because you are yourself the problem.  There is no way of separating yourself from the problem.  That’s what you are trying to do. That’s what I mean by saying that you are putting anger out there  and trying to look at it and deal with it as if it is an object outside of you. When you separate yourself, the only result is exactly what you fear would happen. That is inevitable. So you have no way of controlling that at all. Is there anything that you can do to prevent this separation from what you are? It is a horrible thing to realise that you are yourself anger and whatever you do to stop that, prevent it, or do something about it, is false.  That( preventing etc)  will be tomorrow or in your next life– not now. So that is what you are.

You are not a spiritual man or a religious man.  You can imagine  you are a religious man, because you are trying to control your anger, or trying to be free from anger, or trying to be less and less angry as the years go by. All that makes you feel that you are not that vicious man whom you avoid.  You are no different. You are not any more spiritual than the people whom you condemn.  Tomorrow you are going to be a marvellous person, you will be free from anger. What do you want me to do in the meantime? Admire you ? Because you have put on the label that you are a spiritual man or that you have put on fancy robes ? What do you want me to do ? For that you want me to admire you? There is nothing there to be admired because you are as vicious as anybody else in this world.  Condemning that has no meaning. Adopting a posture which is totally unrelated to what is happening there has no meaning either.                       

So, how can you put on this postureor or adopt some kind of an attitude and feel superior to the animals.  The animals are better than the humans.  If there is a threat, the animal acts and that  is only for the purpose of survival. If you kill your fellowman to feed yourself that is a moral act– only for that purpose, because if you look around, one form of life lives on another form of life.  And if you talk of vegetarianism and kill millions of people, that is the most immoral, unpardonable act that a civilised culture of human beings can ever do.  Do you see the absurdity of the two ? You condemn this ( killing ) . You love the animals . What for ?
What about the human beings you are murdering and massacring simply because they are a threat to you? They are one day going to take away everything you have. So, in anticipation of those people coming and robbing  everything, you think you have a right to massacre them in the name of your beliefs, in the name of God  knows what . That is what religions have done right from the beginning.  So, what is the point in reviving all those religions ? What is the point in all those hosts of gurus coming and going into all those countries preaching something that does not operate in their own lives or in the countries they come from.  They can talk of oneness of life, and unity of life, all the time . But it doesn’t operate in their own lives. What does it mean ? You condemn this simple thing  that is necessary for your survival.  That’s a very moral action. Not to survive, not to feed yourself is an act of perversion.                                                                               

So you suffer in the hope of getting a permanent seat there in heaven– non – existing heaven.  You are going through hell now in the hope of reaching heaven after your death.  What for ?  So suffer.                                                                                   

All religions emphasise that . Bear the pain, the endurance of pain is the means.  You go through hell in the hope of having paradise at the end of your life, or the end of series of lives if you want to believe that.  I am just pointing out the absurdity of talking about these things.  The religious ( teaching) has no meaning when you are pushed into a corner.  Then you will behave exactly like anybody else. So this culture, your values, religious or otherwise,  haven’t touched a bit there.

                                                                                  If a man is freed from this moral dilemma, which has been the basis of the whole thinking of man , then he will live like a human being. Not a spiritual man, not a religious man.  A  religious man is no good for the society.  A kind man is a menace to the society ( one who is practising kindness as a fine art )   Yes. He is a menace of the society because all the destruction has come from them ( religious teachers ) . One who talks of love, one who talks of  ” Love thy neighbour as thyself ”  one who talks of  nonviolence– all the destructive forces originated in the thinking of that man . So, we are all inheritors of that culture. We cannot do anything but that.  ( if you reject those teachers )  you a are freed from the burden  and the falseness of the whole culture. That’s all that I am saying.  Individually you are freed from the totality of the absurdities that have been imposed upon us.  That’s all that I am saying.  You may say  ‘ I can’t accept that there are not some who are real people (  for instance Jesus , not Christianity, not the church) .  You can’t accept it . I know. Why did they put him on the cross and nail him to death ?  They made a god  out of man . Not even an ordinary man, because he made statements out of which the whole dogmatic teaching of Christianity originated. Certainly.  That applies to every teacher. All the teachers whom we consider to be the great religious teachers of mankind, let alone those people who are doing holy business in the market place today. We are not concerned about this.  There is no use blaming them anyway.   So, we are here. We are the inheritors of all that violent culture. Your culture is nothing but to teach man how to kill and how to be killed, whether it is in the name of religion, or in the name of political ideology, or in the name of patriotism, or  anything you want. It can’t be any different.  That’s why I say that the whole thing is moving in the direction of the total annihilation of man . Such things have set in motion forces of destruction which no power can stop.

Yes. No power. No power, no God can stop it because those gods themselves have set in motion these forces of destruction.  You see that now happening.  When the caveman  used the jawbone of an ass to kill his neighbour, there were chances of survival for others. The same cavemen today who lives there in the Kreme in and in the White house, and in the parliament house  in India–  they are the ones who will set in motion, who will let loose forces of destruction that will completely wipe out every form of life on this planet. And man will take with him every species that exists today on this planet.  It has all  come out of that thinking of the man who taught religion to men, who wanted to establish love on the face of this earth. And see what he has made out of it.

 


 

 

To be an individual and to be yourself, you do not have to do a thing.  Culture demands that you should be something other than what you are. What a tremendous amount of energy we waste trying to become that ! But if that energy is released, living becomes very simple. Then what is it that you cannot do ?                                                                                         

The brain  science tells us that the brain records every experience in our life.

IS IT ALL THERE SOME WHERE IN THE BASEMENT OF THE BRAIN  ?                                                               

What I am putting across is that there is no such thing as the totality of experiences. Memory is in frames. In order to explain what I mean when I say that it is all in frames and that the whole human body is functioning from moment to moment,  it is necessary for us to understand one basic thing, that is, how the senses are operating.  What is there is only a response to a stimulus. The response is not translated by anything that is there, except that it registers the stimuli in the same way as information is registered when transferring images from one floppy disc to another. There is no linking up of all these responses .Each one is an independent frame.  A lot of imagination is involved in our trying to understand what actually is happening there.  We place ourselves in a situation where we think that it is possible for us to live from moment to moment.  But it is the body that is functioning from moment to moment.  The one that is interested in living from moment to moment, which is the mind ( quote and unquote) , cannot live that way because its survival depends upon repeated experiences. The continuity of the knowledge that it is ‘me’ is not something else.  You have to maintain that centre all the time, and the only way you can maintain that centre is through the repetitive process, repeating the same old experiences over and over again, and yet imagining that one day you are going to function from moment to moment.  It is this hope that gives you the feeling and also some sort of experience that you are living from moment to moment.  But the possibility of actually living from moment to moment is never there because the mind’s interest is only to continue.  Therefore, it has invented the idea of living from moment to moment, no – mind, and all that kind of stuff. Through these gimmicks it knows it can maintain its own continuity.  Sometimes you are so involved with your activity that you lose yourself in it and in that sense are you living in the moment?  No, it is not correct to say that, because your involvement in whatever you are doing is a sort of ‘ high’. It is an experience you want to place on a higher level and then think that you are absorbed in it. Thought is very much there. But you have made that into an extraordinary experience, and your wanting to be like that always is one thing that is not possible.  A musician thinks he is absorbed in what he is doing.  It is demanding your total attention to express whatever you are doing, and when two things are not there it is a lot easier for you to express it effectively than when you are thinking about it.  You thinking about experiences after they happen is not correct, because we have been made to believe, and you probably accept that statement, that while you are experiencing a thing you are not aware of it. The fact that you recall, whatever is seen by you and named it implies that you were very much there. I know a lot of people who tell me that they were in a thoughtless state, that there were moments when the ‘ I’  was not there. But when once such a thing really happens, it is finished once and for all, and there is no way you can link those moments up together and create a continuity there. So, the statement that when you are experiencing a thing you are not aware of the experience and you become aware or conscious only after the experience is gone is highly questionable. If that were so, it would have shattered the experiencing structure once and for all. It would be something like an earthquake hitting this place, and what happens then nobody knows. A shifting of things would have taken place, and thereafter the organism functions in a very normal and natural way. It would have found a new sort of equilibrium.                                                                              

WHY ARE WE HERE AS HUMAN BEINGS, LIVING RIGHT NOW ?                                                                      

Why do we ask the question, ”  Why are we here” What is it that tells you that you are here ?  Are you there now ? It is the knowledge that tells you that you are here, that I am here. You may say you have some awareness of being here,  a feeling of being here .  Feeling is also thought.  We want to feel that feelings are more important than thoughts, but there is no way you can experience a feeling without translating that within the framework of the knowledge that you have.  Take for example that you tell yourself that you are happy. You don’t even know that the sensation that is there is happiness. But you capture that sensation within the framework of the knowledge you have of what you call a state of happiness, and the other state, that of unhappiness.  What I am trying to say that it is the knowledge that you have about yourself which has created the self and helps you to experiance yourself as an entity there. I am not particularly fond of the word ‘ awareness’ . It is misused. It is a rubbed coin, and ever body uses it to justify some of his actions, instead of admitting that he did something wrong.  Sometimes you say,  ‘ I was not aware of what was going on there” . But awareness is an integral part of the activity of this human organism. This activity is not only specifically in the human organism but also in all form of life–  the pig and the dog. The cat just looks at you, and is in a state of choiceless awareness.  To turn that awareness into an instrument which you can use to bring about a change is to falsify that. Awareness is an integral part of the activity of the living organism.  And so, ‘awareness’ is not just the right kind of word to use.                                                                                                                    

It is impossible for us to separate ourselves from the rest of the things that are out there. You are not different from the chair that you are sitting on. But what separates you from the chair is the knowledge you have of that– ‘ This is a chair ‘ , ‘ You are sitting on the chair ‘. But the fact is that the sensation that is involved in this relationship between you and the chair is the sense of touch . The sense of touch does not , however, tell you that you are separate from this chair on which you are sitting.  I am not trying to say that you are the chair. That is too absurd. Actually what makes you feel that the body is there is the gravitational pull of the body, the heaviness of the body. You feel the existence of the body because of the gravitational pull. I said somewhere in the beginning that you are affecting everything there and everything that is there is affecting you. The fact of this statement cannot be experienced by you because it is one unitary movement. The moment you separate the two and say that this is the response to that, you have already brought the knowledge you have of the things into operation and told yourself that this is the response to that stimulus.


WHEN MAN IS SAME EVERYWHERE WHY IS THERE SO MUCH DIFFERENCE AMONG MEN  ? 

Drugs, sex, crime and pleasure are the issues in America and West European countries, but poverty, lack of education, and death due to malnutrition are the issues in the underdeveloped countries — WHY  ? …….                                                                                   

The difference is artificially created by the western nations. They had the advantage of the technical know-how, which was born out of the industrial revolution. When the revolution went to America, with the help of the technical know-how they exploited the resources of  God’s plenty there. You know there was a time when anybody could go  to the United States without a passport. But in 1911 they introduced the necessity to have a  passport to enter the United States.  In 1923 they introduced the immigration laws . Once you are there in a particular place and establish yourself and your rights, it is finished.  ( I am giving this as example, but this applies to every country) . If anybody lands and colonies any place on any planet, they will establish their rights there and prevent all other nations from landing there. The Americans established these  same rights. It was God’s plenty that helped to develop and hold on to what they have. But they continue to exploit the resources of the rest of the world’s as well as their own resources. Even today they are doing that. They don’t want to give up.

Basically, human nature is exactly the same whether in India or in Russia or in America or in Africa.  Human problems are exactly the same.  All the problems are artificially created by the various structures created by human thinking. As I said, there is some sort of neurological problem in the human body. Human thinking is born out of this neurological defect in the human species. Anything that is born out of human thinking is destructive.  Thought is destructive.  Thought is a protective mechanism. It draws frontiers around itself, and it wants to protect itself. It is for the same reason that we also draw lines on this planet and extend them as far as we can . Do you think these frontiers are going to disappear ? They are not. Those who have entrenched themselves, those who have had the monopoly of all the world’s resources so far and for so long, if they are threatened to be dislodged, what they would do  is anybody’s guess. All the destructive weapons that we have today are here only to protect that monopoly.  But I am sure that the day has come for people to realise that all the weapons that we have built so far are redundant and that they cannot be used anymore.  We have arrived at a point where you cannot destroy your adversary without destroying yourself.  So it is the kind of terror, and not the love and brotherhood that has been preached for centuries, that will help us to live together. But this had to percolate to the level of human consciousness. ( I don’t want to use the word ‘ consciousness’  or ‘ human consciousness’ because there is no such thing as consciousness at all.  I use the word only for purpose of communication. ) Until this percolates to the level of human consciousness, in the sense that man sees that he cannot destroy  his neighbour without destroying himself.  I don’t think it will help. I am sure that we have come to  that point. Whenever and wherever you have an edge over your adversary or your neighbour, you will still continue to exercise what you have been holding on to  for centuries.  So, how are you going to solve the problem ?  All utopias have failed.  The whole mischief originated in the religious thinking of man. Now there is no use in blaming the religious thinking of man, because all the political ideologies, even your legal structures, are the warty outgrowth of the religious thinking of man. It is not so easy to flush out the whole series of experiences which have been accumulated through centuries, and which are based upon the religious thinking of man. There is a tendency to replace one belief  with another belief, one illusion with another illusion . That is all we can do.

THE DEVELOPMENT NATIONS KNOW FULLY WELL THAT IF THERE IS A WAR

today they will face total annihilation. There will be no victor left anywhere. But still there are these skirmishes here and there, and there is so much violence everywhere.  WHY IS IT SO ?  Is it because that human nature, as some people say, is basically violent ? Yes it is.  Because thought is violent, anything that is born out of thought is destructive. You may cover it up with all wonderful and romantic phrases: ” Love thy neighbour as thyself” . Don’t forget that in the name of ” Love thy neighbour as thyself” millions and millions of people have died, more than in all the recent wars put together. But we now have come to a point where we can realise that violence is  not the answer, that it is not the way to solve human problems.  So, terror seems to be the only way.  I am not talking of terrorists blowing up  churches, temples, and all that kind of thing, but the terror that if you try to destroy your neighbour you will possibly destroy yourself. That realisation has to come down to the level of the common man.                                                                                                                    

This is the way the human organism is functioning too. Every cell is interested in its own survival.  It knows in some way that it’s survival depends upon the survival of the cell that is next to it . It is for this reason that there is a sort of cooperation between the cells. That is how the whole organism can survive.  It is not interested in utopia.  It is not interested in your wonderful religious ideas. It is not interested in peace, bliss, beatitude, or anything.  It’s only interest is to survive. That is all it is interested in. The survival of a cell depends upon the survival of the cell next to it. And your survival and my survival depends upon the survival of our neighbour.                                                                                                              

WHATEVER YOU SAY,  I FEEL THAT THE ONLY WAY FOR HUMANITY TO SURVIVE IS TO BRING ABOUT A CHANGE IN THE HEART  AND THAT IS LOVE. ……….   

No, not at all, because love implies division, separation.  As long as there is division, as long as there is separation within you, so long do you maintain that separation around you. When everything fails, you use the last card, the trump in the pack of cards, and call it Love. But it is not going to help us, and it has not helped us at all.  Even religion has failed to free man from violence and from ten other different things that is trying to free us from. You see it is not a question of trying to find new concepts, new ideas, new thoughts, and new beliefs.  As I said before, what kind of human being do you want on this globe ?  The human being modelled after the perfect being has totally failed. The model has not touched anything there. Your value system is the one that is responsible for the human malady, the human tragedy, forcing everybody to fit into that model. So, what do we do ? You cannot do anything by destroying the value system because you replace one value system with another. Even those who rebelled against religion, like those in the communist countries, have themselves created another kind of value system.  So,  revolution does not mean the end of anything.  It is only a revolution of our value system. So, that needs another revolution, and so on and so on. There is no way.                                                                                      

The basic question we all have to ask for ourselves is,  what kind of human being you want ? The only answer to this human problem , if there is any answer, is not to be found through new ideas, new concepts, or new ideologies, but through bringing about a change in the chemistry of the human body.  But there is a danger even there . When once we perfect genetic engineering and change the human being, there will be a tendency to hand this technology over to the state. It will then be a lot easier for them to push all the people into war and see that can kill without a second thought. You don’t have to brainwash them. You don’t have to teach them love or patriotism.  Brainwashing takes a century, as brainwashing  to believe in God took centuries. The communists took decades to brainwash their people not to believe in God.  But  with genetic engineering, there is no need for that kind of brainwashing process. It is a lot easier to change human beings by giving just one injection.

WHAT IS BEING SAID IN THE WESTERN WORLD IS THAT  PEOPLE 

there are very happy and perfectly satisfied with the changes taking place : there is the rule of law, respect for human rights, free market economy, freedom of speech and expression etc. ,  ………                                                                                    Do you really think that there is freedom in the United States  ?  What does that mean to a starving  man– freedom of speech , freedom of worship and freedom of the press ? He does not know how to read the newspapers and is not interested in them. At least in the Communist systems they fed, clothed, and sheltered people, though that is now being denied to them in those nations. There is more unemployment than ever before in the Western countries.  I don’t think this is the model for the whole of mankind.                                                                                  

The whole system depends upon the exploitation of the resources of the world for the benefit of the western nations. These laws you are talking about are always backed by force. You know as a lawyer that the decision handed over by a judge is always backed by force. Ultimately, it is the force that counts. We all agree to submit ourselves to the decision of the judge. If you don’t want to submit to them,  the only recourse you have is to use violence.  So all the gangsters get together and create a legal structure that is favourable to them. That they enforce on others through the help of violence, through the help of force.                                                                                    

What right right do you have to create the blockade around  Iraq ?. What is the international law, which these people are talking about ?  What happened when America attacked and occupied Granada, a small nation ?  No body ever objected to it; nobody ever created a blockade there. I am not impressed by the international law and its legal structure.  As long as it is advantageous to you, you talk of law. When the law fails you use force. Don’t you ?                                                                                      BUT THERE ARE DIFFERENT SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT IN THE LEGAL FIELD ?                                                                                         

That is only a theological discussion.  You know what all the theologians indulge in– God is this, God is that, the Ontological, the teleological and the Cosmological arguments for the existence of God.  All these different schools of law you are referring to are no different from the discussions of the theologians.                                                                              

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE institution of MARRIAGE AND FAMILY ?                                                                                                                       

The institution of marriage is not going to disappear.  As long as we demand relationships, it will continue in some form or other.  Basically, it is a question of possessiveness.  There was a time when I believed that economic independence for women would solve the problems in India.  But I was surprised to learn that those women in America  who are economically independent wanted to possess their drunkard husbands. The husband was beating her everyday and twice in Sundays. I know many cases. I am not generalising, but possessiveness is the most important element.  The basis of relationship is  ” what do I get out of the relationship? ” .  That is the basis of all human relationships.  As long as I can get what I want the relationships last.                                                                                     

The marriage institution will somehow continue because it is  just not the relationship between the two, but children and property are involved. So it is not going to disappear  overnight at all. And we use property and children as a pre text to give continuity to the institution of marriage. The problem is so complex and so complicated.  It is not easy for anybody to come up with answers to the age old institution of marriage.  I can tell you one thing.  A lot of couples come to see me with their problems.  Unmarried, unwed couples, if you listen to their stories, you cannot imagine their miseries. And yet they cannot part company.                                                                                  

Unmarried couples are moreo miserable than married couples.  The answer is not easy. As long as we want to establish a relationship, so long this institution will remain. Maybe it will be modified, changed to suit the changing condition.
A leader of the feminist movement came to see me. ( I am a crude and brutal man ).  She asked me, ” What do you think of the feminist movement?”  I said,  ” I am on your side; by all means fight for your rights. But remember that as long as you depend on a man for your sexual needs, so long you are not free. The other way round is also true: If you can satisfy your sexual needs through other means –  that is a different matter.  But if you want a man to satisfy your sexual needs, you are not free.                       YOU SAY THAT THE FAMILY IS NOT A SOLUTION,  UNWED RELATIONS ARE NOT A SOLUTION.  WHAT OTHER  institutions do you have in mind.  ?………….   It is these institutions, which are responsible for the misery of mankind.  There is no way you can change or modify these institutions. It is a lot easier for people in India now to go for a divorce than it was in earlier times. There was no question  of me divorcing my wife or my wife divorcing me at that time. Now it is a lot easier. The changing conditions are responsible for a change in our ideas. But that does not mean that the problem has an easy and simple solution.                     

WILL THERE NOT BE ANY ANARCHY if you do not support the  male and female relationship and the family ?

If they are ready to accept the misery, it is well and good. But it is a miserable situation. They are not happy with that. Total anarchy is a state of being rather than a state of doing. There is no action in total anarchy. It is a state of being. So why are we frightened of anarchy ?  The anarchy that you are talking about is the destruction of the institutions, which we have built with tremendous care, and of our belief that those institutions should continue forever.  So, it is that we are fighting for — to preserve them in their  pristine purity.

ARE YOU NOT WORRIED THAT ABOUT THE PROBLEMS OF OLD AGE and the future of children when there is no family ?                                                                                         

It is society that has to take care if that problem. Why are all paying taxes to the government if they don’t do what they are supposed to do ? It is the responsibility of each individual that he should do what he has promised to do. The problem is that once you put these individuals in the seat of power, then there is less chance of their sharing  their power with others. And you provide them with tremendous weapons of destruction. A man like me who expresses this view will become the enemy of the state. They will not hesitate to destroy me. I don’t care if I am destroyed. If they say ” Don’t talk” ,  I will stop talking. I don’t believe in freedom of speech at all. If they say, ” Don’t talk ”  ” , what you are saying is a threat to mankind and to its institutions ”  ” Good bye”  I don’t want to talk. I am not interested in changing the world. But they have promised to do certain things. You have elected them to the office; you have put them there in the seat of power and have unfortunately provided them with the most destructive of weapons.  They will not hesitate to use them against you and me

But these days there is no way you can use  your nuclear weapons. I often say that if Bhutan invades India, India has no way of protecting itself.  Bhutan is not going to invade India, unless it has the backing of some powerful nations. So, we are puppets of these people. We are spending so much money on defence. Defence against what ? We talk of freedom of speech.  If they say, ” Don’t talk”, I am not interested in talking. I am not interested in saving individuals. And I am not interested in saving mankind.                                                                                  

I don’t see any reason why anybody should starve on this planet. What are you doing to solve these problems? You may very well throw the same question at me. But I have not set myself up in the business of running this world. They have set themselves up in the business of ruling this or that country. What justification do you have for the fact that forty percent of the people are allowed to starve in India today? It is not spiritual; it is not human either. It is inhuman to let your fellow beings starve. Religion has invented that wonderful thing called charity.  Not only that; you don’t stop there, but you give the Nobel prize to somebody because of the charitable work that particular individual is doing. That is the most vicious and vulgar thing that the religion man has come up with today.                                                                                    

Every One has a right to be fed. Nature has provided us with a bounty. But we are individually responsible for the inequities of this world. Don’t ask me. ” What are you doing about that ” . I am not here running a crusade against these people.  You have set yourself up to solve these problems.  If you don’t solve them,  something is wrong not with the leaders but with the people who have put them there in the seat of power. If they don’t do what they are expected to do ,  change those rogues. I have no business to tell someone how to run these governments.  I am not running these governments at all. It is the responsibility of everybody to contribute his mite, his share. But the world remains exactly the way it has been forever.  Nobody wants any change.

The state should do number of things for the people.  First thing, the state has to feed, clothe, and shelter everybody.

ARE WE HEADING TOWARDS DISASTER ?

If those who have had the monopoly of all the world’s resources so far and for so long are threatened to be dislodged, what they would do is anybody’s guess.  All the destructive weapons that we have today are only to protect them.                                                                                     

WHAT IS YOUR VIEW REGARDING THOSE WHO WANT TO UNDERSTAND WHAT This Life is ALL ABOUT ?

The demand to understand and bring about the change in you is the one that is responsible for the demand to understand the world and then bring about a change in the world.  They are one and the same.  That is why you are interested in listening to others. Through that listening you think you will be able to bring about a change in you and then also a  change in the world around you.  Basically there is no difference between what is here ( pointing to self ) and what is out there in the world. There is no way you can draw a line of demarcation. One thing that I always emphasise is that it is culture that has created us all for the sole purpose of maintaining its status quo and its continuity.  So in that sense I do not see that there are any individuals at all. At the same time, the same culture has given us the hope there is something that you can do to  become an individual and that there is such a thing as free will. Actually there is no free will at all.                       The most important thing for us to realise is that thought is a very destructive weapon, and that is our enemy.  However, we are not ready to accept the fact that thought can only create problems, but cannot help us to solve them.                         

PEOPLE GO TO GURUS and read religious texts to bring about a change in their lives. But you completely brush aside all that .

WHY?…..

My point is that there is nothing there  to be changed . What these Gurus in the market place are doing is to sell you some ice packs and provide you with some comforters . But when you come to me, you find it very difficult for the simple reason that I do not offer you any solution to your problems.  My interest is to point out that there are actually no problems, and what we are saddled with are only solutions.  Also, we are not ready to accept the fact that the solutions that these people have been offering us for centuries are not really the solutions.  If they were really the solutions, the problems would have solved long ago. If they are not the solutions, and if there are no other solutions, then there are no problems to be solved.
SWEEPING CHANGES ARE TAKING PLACE ALL OVER EUROPE AND THE SOVIET UNION.       What part can India play in the new scenario that is emerging all over the world?  The gurus who have been going to the west preaching yoga and a number of  other attractive new concepts can perhaps take advantage of the situation. ? ….          .                                                                                         

The changes that are taking place in Russia are actually no good for Russia and no good for the world. What happened in Russia is that they have found suddenly, or at least the leaders of the Soviet Union have , that their communist system of government has failed. But instead of finding solutions for their problems within the framework, they are looking for them somewhere else. I do not think India has any answers for these problems, nor do the western nations for that matter. The total failure of the communist philosophy or ideology or system of government there in the Soviet Union has unfortunately created a void.  I am afraid that the Russian Orthodox church will take advantage of the situation and step in. If it stops there, there is not much of a danger.  But all these cults that have thrived on the gullibility and credulity of the people in the western nations will make a beeline to Russia and exploit people there. That is one thing that the Russians should try to avoid.  But there seems to be no way that this ex ploitation or the other things that foreign countries are exporting to that country can be avoided.  I do not see an adequate reason why America should export organically grown potato chips to Russia.  Let me say one thing very clearly: it is not your democracy, freedom of speech,  or freedom of a hundred and ten different things that these nations proclaim, that won Russia over to this side.  It is the Coca Cola in China and PepsiCol a in Russia and then also Mcdonald hamburgers.  That is all that the western nations can do there: they have created a market for people to step in and exploit.

Even the scientists and psychologists have come to the end of their tether.  They are not able to tackle the problems that they are confronted with today- both in the field of psychology and in modern science.  They have to find solutions only within the framework.  Unfortunately they look towards Vedanta from India, to the religious answers that come from Japan or China.  But actually those don’t have any answers.  If the greatest heritage of India cannot help India how in the name of God do you think it will help other nations ?  I don’t think India has any contribution to make to the world. This is what I strongly feel.

At least you see the West has high- tech  and technology to offer to those countries.  Through the help of this technology the West will probably do something to enrich those countries.  Russia has tremendous natural resources still untapped- oil, gold, diamonds, and other things. High – tech and technology can help there. What can India offer to those nations ? I do not see that India can offer anything.  It is a total mess there. We can pat on our backs and feel that the great heritage of India has kept us going through the centuries.  But we are in a sorry mess in India. If you say that this is only my opinion, it doesn’t matter. I am not trying to win anybody over to my point of view. And nobody can win me over to his point of view. And there it stops.  IN SPITE OF THE RADICAL CHANGES TAKING PLACE IN THE WORLD ESPECIALLY IN EUROPE AND RUSSIA,  I find that there is a revival of the old religion.                                                                                                               

The religious revivalism that you are talking about is there in the Western countries.  There is this whole talk of  ” Back to Jesus ”  ” Back to the heritage of India ”  ” Back to Islam ”  back to this , that and the other.  I am afraid that the rise of Islam not only in the Muslim world but also in Russia and China is going to be formidable force. Once this cry of holy war,  ‘ Jihad’, spreads around, we will not know how to tackle that problem.  I am not singing a doomsday song. That is what you are going to face very soon. Islam is going to be formidable force in the world.                                                      

There is one thing that I want to say and emphasise and over emphasise that there is no way we can reverse the whole thing.  We are heading towards disaster. Man must realise ( and there seems to be no hope of his coming to terms with the reality of the situation)  that thought, and all that is born out of thinking, are the enemy of the mankind, and there is nothing to replace that. Religious revivalism is not  really the answer.  I personally feel that the basic question which we should all  ask ourselves is , what kind of human beings we want on this planet?  Unfortunately, culture, whether it is Oriental or Occidental, has placed before us the model of a perfect being.  That model is patterned after the behaviour of the religious thinkers of mankind  who have done more harm than good Everything that we are confronting today is a product of the religious thinking of man. But that thinking has no answers for the future of mankind. So if you want you have to find answers within the framework of the systems that have failed to deliver the goods. I don’t think religious thinking has any answers for our problems  today.   The two things we have to bear in our mind are  high-tech and technology. They will help us to solve the problems of this planet. Genetic engineering and the understanding of microbiology will take care of what kind of human beings you want. ( They now say that we are genetically defficient and that the brain is neurologically deficient in many areas.) .

WHAT ABOUT THE PROBLEMS OF THE UNDERDEVELOPED COUNTRIES, Like poverty and lack of education ?

                                                                 Do you mean to say that literacy is the solution or answer for the problems of India ? We want to educate the people so that they can read our newspapers, and through the media you are going to brainwash these people.  In India there are still peasants who are touched by the modern man. They are something unique.  I don’t know.  But I really don’t think educating  people in the sense that we are talking about, the literacy we are talking about, is the way really to educate people.  Let me give you the example of my grandmother. My grandmother was not a literate person, although she knew how to read and sign papers. I learned more  from her about Advaita  than I did from the professors of the subject. She was not an educated woman. She knew all about the great culture of India.  So, educating the masses to be literate is really not the answer.  We have tremendous power of media at our disposal. If this power is in the hands of the government,  there is nothing that you can do to avoid its influence.  Also, if you take the example of the United States, their so-called free media are in no way better than the media that are under the grip of the government.  Both are the same. I don’t know.  I am expressing lot of opinions.                                                                                 

SO YOU SAY THAT THE PRESENT TECHNOLOGICAL AND SCIENTIFIC CHANGES ARE THE ONLY ANSWERS FOR thisbworld?

                                                                                                          YES, but I must say one thing.  Whatever achievements we have had so far through the help of high-tech and technology have benefited only a limited number of people on this planet. If what they say is true, it is possible to feed twelve billion people with the resources at our command, the resources that nature has provided us, without the aid of  high-tech and technology. But then why amongst five billion people is there poverty and misery ? The answer is very simple. We are individually responsible , for them, and it is not some curse of the high gods.                                                                                     

The rich nations are not going to give up their riches unless they are forced to give them up. You see, the nine rich nations, the nine industrial nations, sit here and dictate their terms. Are they going to give up the whole of the natural resources of the world?  I don’t think so, unless they are forced to . If they are forced to give them up, what they would do is anybody’s guess.  Even if they have everything to lose, I don’t think they are going to give up anything.  Even this man sitting here who is a pacifist will fight to the end to protect his way of life and his way of thinking. I don’t believe him at all. He will fight. He may be pacifist today, but tomorrow, if everything he has were to be taken away from him, I wouldn’t be surprised if he were to kill me also, his best friend.                                                     

YOU DO NOT SOUND MUCH OF AN OPTIMIST.                     

What does it mean– the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? It is just a very clever way of putting things- that optimist does not give up and he still, somehow, has faith that he can maintain his own way of life and his own way of thinking.  That is all. He would resort to any kind of force to maintain that way of life and that way of thinking.

 


THE END OF ILLUSION IS DEATH.

                      There is no such thing as death at all for this body. The only death is the end of the illusion, the end of the knowledge, which we have about ourselves, and the world around us.                                                                                 The whole of life lives in a physical form as experienced by the senses. Not separate from or independent of life around us. It is one single unit. I cannot make any definitive statement, but somewhere along the line self- consciousness occurred in man which separated us from the totality of life around us.  ( We do not know for sure if there is any such thing as evolution;  it is an assumption on our part. We accept what those who are in the know of things say. Those people have observed certain things and have established what they call a theory of evolution.)                                                                                           

What exactly do you mean by ” Life” ? Nobody knows anything about life, and there is no point in defining it. Anything that we say of life is a speculation on our part. What we are trying to understand or experience, life or whatever, is through the help of the knowledge we have of it. But thought is something dead. It is something that can never touch anything living.  The moment it tries to touch life and capture it , contain it and give expression to it, it is destroyed by the living quality of life. What we mean by life, however, is not actually life but  living. Living is our relationship with the people around us , the life around us, with the whole world around us. And that is all we know. That relationship is actually not a basic relationship, but one that is born out of our demand to become one with life. So anything we.do,  any attempt we make to become one with it, is fruitless because there is no way we can establish any relationship with the life around us.    WHY

DO YOU SAY WE ARE NOT PART OF IT ?

I am not for a moment assuming  or emphasising  that we are not part of it. We are  part of it. But the most important question  that we should ask ourselves is , ” what is it that separates us from the life around us, and what is it that maintains the separateness, or division, if I may use the word , all the time? ” . Actually what divides is thought. Thought is Matter. But that matter cannot stay there for long.  The moment the matter is born it has to become part of the energy again. But this demand on our part, or on the part of thought, to maintain continuity, is the demand that drives us  to experience the same thing over  and over and over again. And thus we are maintaining this superficial, artificial, non-existing duality, division  there between our life and the life around us.

THOUGHT IS CONSIDERED TO BE PART OF THE BRAIN.  WHAT COULD BE THE PURPOSE OF THE BRAIN? THERE SEEM TO BE A CONFLICT BETWEEN THE BODY AND THE MIND.                                                                                            
It is an assumption on our part, and I would say it is a false assumption, that thoughts are spontaneous and self generated. They are not. Thought is only a response to stimuli. The brain is not a creator, it is just a container. The function of the brain in this body is only to take care of the needs of the physical organism and to maintain its sensitivity, whereas thought? through its constant interference with sensory activity, is destroying the sensitivity of the body. That is where the conflict is . The conflict is between the need of the body to maintain its sensitivity and the demand of thought to translate every sensation within the framework of the sensual activity. I am not condemning sensual activity. Mind, or whatever word you want to call it, is born out of this sensuality. So all activities of the mind are sensual in their nature, whereas the activity of the body is  to respond to the stimuli around it. That is really the basic conflict between what you call the mind and the body.

Therfore, I don’t think there is any such thing as mind separate from the activity of the brain.                                                      

WOULD YOU SAY THAT THE BRAIN HAS NO NONPHYSICAL FUNCTION  ?

It is not interested in sensual activity . It is not interested in any experiences that the mind is interested in and is demanding.  It is not even interested in the so-called spirutual experiences, the religious experiences like bliss, beatitude, immensity, and happiness. Happiness is something that the body is not interested in.  It cannot take it for long. Pleasure is one of the things that it is always rejecting . The body does not know, and does not even want to know, anything about happiness.                                                  

HAPPINESS IS A THINKING QUALITY, A SENSUAL EXPERIENCE  ?

Happiness is a cultural input there. Is there any such thing as happiness? I would say, no. So, the quest for happiness is a cultural input, and that is the common desire that we know exists everywhere, in every part of the world.  That is what we all want, and that WANT is the most important Want in human beings everywhere. Happiness,  if you want to use the word, is like any other sensation.  The moment thought separates itself from what is called the sensation of happiness, the demand to keep that sensation going longer than its natural  duration also occurs with it. So, the body rejects any sensation, however extraordinary, however pleasant it may be. Keeping  that sensation going longer than its duration of life is destroying the sensitivity of this living organism. That is the battle that is going on there. If you do not know what happiness is , you will never be unhappy.                                                                                 IF YOU STRIP THE BODY OF ALL THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS AND ATTRIBUTES, WOULD YOU SAY THAT THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A HUMAN BEING AND AN ANIMAL?    Not at all. We are like the animals. We are not different,  nor we are created for any grander purpose than the mosquito that is sucking your blood.  It is thinking that has separated us from the other species on this planet. It is that thinking that we want to maintain.  So it is that that is responsible for all the problems that the human mind has created. It is thought that has seperated us from the rest of the species.  Through the help of thinking, it has become possible for us to  create better conditions and survive longer than the other species. WHY DO YOU THINK WE LIVE IN THIS ILLUSION, AND WHY DOES IT PERSIST ?  The illusion persists because if the illusion comes to an end, what can be called clinical death will take place. So, if we give up one illusion, we will always replace it with another.                                                    

WHY  ? ……………………………      ..                                                          

That is the thing that gives us the feeling of conquering the inevitable  end called death. That is the death that is there. Otherwise there is no such thing as death at all. And death is the end of the illusion, end of the fear, end of the knowledge that we have of ourselves and of the world around us.

NOW THIS RAISES THE QUESTION AS TO WHAT INTELLIGENCE  IS . THERE IS THIS NATURAL INTELLIGENCE OF THE BODY, WITH  THE HELP OF WHICH THE HARMONIOUS AND INTERRELATED  FUNCTIONS OF THE BODY ARE CARRIED OUT. BUT IS THERE AN AREA WHEREIN INTELLIGENCE HAS A FUNCTION OTHER THAN THE PHYSICAL. ?

No, you see the body does not want to know anything.  The body does not want to learn anything.  The intelligence that is necessary for its survival is already there.  We have, fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be,  acquired what is called the intellect.  Through the constant use and reshaping of thought we have acquired this intellect.  Through the help of that intellect it has become possible for us to live longer than the other species.  This in its own way is the cause of the destruction of the whole structure that we have created for our survival.  There is no way of escaping from this fact that the acquired intellect , which is the product of our thinking, has helped us to survive longer than the other species.
YOU MEAN TO SAY THAT THE INTELLIGENCE THAT WE HAVE IS IN NO WAY DIFFERENT OR DISTINGUISHABLE FROM THE ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE.  ?               Probably in us  the functioning of the body and of the brain  is more evolved than in the case of animals.  It does not mean that we are any better than the other species. If what they say is true, the human body, when broken into its constituent elements, is no different from the tree out there or the mosquito that is sucking your blood. Basically, it is exactly the same.  The proportion of the elements may be higher in one case and lesser in the case of the other.  You have eighty percent of water in the body, and there is eighty percent of water in the trees and eighty percent on this planet. So that is the reason why I maintain that we are nothing but a fortuitous concourse of atoms. If and when death takes place, the body is reshuffled, and then these atoms are used to maintain the energy levels  in the universe. Other than that there is no such thing as death to this body.                         

IS THE HUMAN BRAIN MORE SENSITIVE THAN, SAY, THE TREE ?

If what they say is true, then probably the dog is far more intelligent than most of the human beings in our midst today, including me. The animals don’t try to change anything.  That is the most important thing that we have to understand. The demand to bring about a change in us the cultural input. What is there to be changed ? That is my basic question.  Is there any thing to be changed, radically or otherwise ? I don’t know.  So we have to find out, for ourselves and by ourselves, ” What is there” ? Is there an entity there? Is there a self there?  Is there an ‘I’ there ?  My answer is ” No “.  What is seen or felt there is created by the knowledge we have of that, the knowledge of the self,  the knowledge of the ‘ I ‘,  the knowledge  of the entity there  that is passed on to us from generation to generation.  All that is the cultural.                                                              

Do you think that there is any communication between us ? Are we trying to establish any communication here ?  No as long as you and I use the instrument that we are using to communicate with each other, no understanding is possible.  You are always translating every statement of mine within the framework of knowledge that you have – that is what I call your reference point.                        

THE FACT THAT WE ARE TALKIING, DON’T YOU THINK SHOWS THAT THERE IS A PHYSICAL OR PHYSIOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIP  ?

That relationship is already there.  So what separates you from me and me from you  is the knowledge  we have.  But now we are trying to establish a sort of relationship on a different level. But knowledge is not the instrument for doing it, and there is no other instrument.  If that is not the instrument and there is no other instrument, no understanding is necessary.  That is the understanding, which somehow dawned on me — that there is nothing to understand.  How it occurred I don’t know, and I have no way of knowing it . I have no way of helping somebody to understand that  that is not the instrument and there is no other  instrument. No instrument is necessary for us to create the realisation that there is nothing to understand .

 


 

THERE ARE VARIOUS GURUS WHO SAY THAT THERE IS A SOUL OR SELF ……………………..

                                                          I know that. That is why even a saint like Ramana Maharishi, when people pestered him with all kinds of questions like ” what would you suggest for us to do ? ”  threw back the question , ” Who am I ” . Even this question is not an intelligent question because we assume  that there is some ‘ I ‘  there,  the nature of which we do not know,  and that we have to enquire into its nature. As far as I am concerned, the only ‘I ‘ that I know of is the first person  singular pronoun. I did not succeed and I don’t think I will ever succeed in finding out for myself that there is any other ‘ I ‘  than the ‘ I ‘ ,  which  is used for the simple purpose of communication to separate you from me. I say , “I”, and “You”.                                                      

THE CONCIOUSNESS OF THE BODY ………..                                                                               

The consciousness of the body does not exist. There is no such thing as consciousness at all. The one thing that helps us  to become conscious of the non existent body for all practical purposes is the knowledge that is given to us. Without that knowledge you have no way of creating your body and experiencing it.  I am questioning the very idea of consciousness, let alone the subconscious, the unconscious, the different levels of consciousness and higher states of consciousness.  I don’t see that there is any such thing as consciousness.  I become conscious of this ( touching the arm of chair) only through the knowledge that I have of it. The touch does not tell me anything
except when I translate it within the framework of knowledge.  Otherwise, I have no way of experiencing that touch at all. The way these senses are operating here is quite different from the way we are made to believe. The eye is looking at the movement of your hand, and is not saying anything about that activity, except observing what is going on there.

BUT YOU CAN FEEL. …… No. Feeling is also a translation. This touch does not say anything about the touch per se except through the help of the knowledge that we have.  You have no way of experiencing the fact that this is ‘ soft’ or ‘ hard’ except through the knowledge that you have of it. I don’t know if it makes any sense to you.   But IT SEEMS TO ME THAT WHEN YOU TOUCH THERE IS A SENSATION IN THE BODY ALSO.  No. That sensation is through the sense of touch.  It is translated by the activity of memory, the neurons, or whatever you like to call them, and only then you say that it is soft and not hard.  So, you can kid yourself by telling yourself that this touch is one with feeling and not just a simple touch.  But all that is superimposed on that.

.If it  is left purely on the physiological level there is no reaction on your part.

WHICH PART OF IT ?  That is the physical response.  It is not translated.  Probably that is a kind of pleasure for the body. I don’t know.  I have no way of finding out, whether that is the response of pleasure or a purely physical response to the touch.  When people ask me, ” Why do you smile “?  I say it is just a response like any other response to a stimulus.  “Why do you move your hand ” ?  ” Why do you make many gestures” ?  You may call all these mere gestures, but they may be there because you feel that you are not expressing yourself adequately.  You are backing your statements with these gestures. That is only a mode of communication.  We all started that way and slowly developed language. But still you feel that you are not able to communicate things, convey to your fellow beings, whatever you are trying to say.  That is why you have these different gestures to back up and strengthen what you are trying to communicate to others. In India they have one kind of gestures, and Americans have different kind of gestures. probably even these gestures or movements of hands are  transmitted through the genes.     Are you a materialist ?  I don’t know.  People call me a materialist.   When once the demand to bring about a change and to be different from what actually is there is absent, what you are left with is something, which you can never experience.  That is the reason why I said that I am just an ordinary man .But people for their own reasons want to fit me into a framework of this, that, and a hundred different things. I say that I am just an ordinary person.  Everybody thinks  I am not an ordinary man.


The demand to be prepared for all future actions and all situations is the cause of our problems.  Every situation is so different; and our attempt to be prepared for all those situations is the one that is responsible for our not being able to deal with situations as they arise.
HUMANKIND IS NO MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE GARDEN SLUG ? …. … It is useless to speculate about it, but for some reason we are made to believe, or we have accepted the belief that has been passed on to us from generation to generation, that we are here for some grander purpose, for a nobler purpose than the other species on this planet.  I maintain that we are here for no grander purpose than that of the garden slug out there or the mosquito that is sucking your blood.  I don’t know whether there is anything such as evolution. Those who talk about evolution have made us believe that there is such a thing.  We are told that if we look at the animal species that we have in this planet, there is only one and half percent of what existed before. If you take the plants into consideration, what we have on this planet is only  half percent of what existed before. What, therefore,  makes you think that the human species is more important than the other species that have become extinct ? What has made it possible for us to survive, go on, and maintain the human species on this planet longer than others,  is thought. It is thought that has made it possible for us to live longer than the other species.  But that is our enemy.  Thought is our enemy.  In the long run, our belief, or faith that thought will help us by freeing us from the problems that it has created is just wishful thinking.

                                                            

HOW HAS IT HELPED US TO LIVE LONGER THAN THE OTHER SPECIES ?  HOW CAN IT BE AN IMPEDIMENT ?                                                                                         

Thought is a protective mechanism.  It is interested in protecting something.  We use thought for the purpose of maintaining the continuity of thought.  Anything that has come out of  thought is protective in its nature.  It is not interested in protecting the life around us.  It has isolated us from the rest of the species on this planet.  It has given us the idea that we are something different, that the whole thing is created for our purpose, and that we have a right to take advantage of this superiority over others, to do whatever we want to do on this planet.

Would it be possible to have thought without these ideas and still take advantage of nature ?    I maintain and very often say that thought in its  birth, in its content, in its expression, and in its action is fascist.  It is very aggressive.  I use the word fascist not really in the sense that the politicians use, but to mean that thought is very aggressive.  Our very demand to  understand nature’s laws  is to use them for the purpose of  maintaining the continuity of thought.  All the talk that thought is altruistic and that we are curious to know the laws of nature just for the sake of knowing them is bluff. The very motivation, the drive behind our demand to understand the laws of nature is to use them for the purpose of continuing the human species at the expense of every other form of life on this planet.

WHAT WOULD THIS HUMAN SPECIES HAVE BEEN IF WE DID NOT HAVE THIS KIND OF THOUGHT  ?                                                                                         

Probably we would have become extinct and nature would have created a better form of human species on this planet.  We would do anything that the animals would not do. The survival of one form of life at the expense of another form of life is a fact in nature.  But we kill other species for an idea. We also kill ourselves for an idea. Certainly, and we kilothers too. But that kind of thing you don’t see happening in other forms of life, other species on this planet.  We kill for an idea. The whole foundation of our culture and civilization is built on the idea of killing and being killed, first in the name of God as symbolised by all the religious institutions., and in the name of political ideologies as symbolised by the state.  The whole foundation of culture is built on the idea of killing and being killed.


WE DON’T ADMIT THAT.  WE SAY OUR CULTURES ARE BASED  ON OUR IDEAS OF HARMONY.

                                              I don’t think so. We are moving progressively in the direction of destroying everything.  We somehow have tremendous faith that the thought, which has helped us to create everything that you see and are very proud of , will help us to change the course of events. This faith, I maintain , is misplaced.  Somehow we have a faith that this instrument, thought, which has helped us to be what we are today, will somehow help us to create a better, happier life on this planet.  Everything you discover is adding to the momentum of destruction.  Everything because, the drive behind that discovery is to use it for purposes of maintaining the continuity, the status quo.     IS THERE ANY POSSIBILITY THAT THE HUMAN SPECIES WILL KNOW AND CHANGE COURSE ?                                                           

I say the chances are slim to none. We are doomed. As I said in the beginning  we are lost in the jungle. We have tried every possible means of escape.  But still, somehow, there is a faint hope that may be there is some way we can get out of this jungle. But we just have to stand still and let things happen.

BUT HOW CAN WE STAND STILL ?   You cannot stand still. You cannot stand still because of the fear that we will be lost and lost forever.  But we don’t seem to have the feeling that there is not a damn thing that we can do to get out of this jungle.

DO YOU STAND STILL IN THIS WAY  ?

Yes, certainly.  Then what is there takes over and probably enables you to live in the midst of all these brutalities.  That life has a charm of its own.  It will not bring you in conflict with society at all. You don’t even want to change anything.  The demand to change is born out of your isolation.  When once you think that you can bring about a change in yourself, the demand to change the world is also there. But this human body is not interested in learning or knowing anything . All that is necessary for the survival of this living organism is already there.  There is a tremendous intelligence there, and all that we have gathered and acquired through our intellect is no match for that.  Yes, the intelligence of the body.  It knows.  One of the things I always emphasise and try to put across to those who are interested is that the human brain is not interested in anything that we are interested in,  what the culture has imposed on us, in any of its ideation and mentations.  The brain is so dull; you will be surprised.  It is not interested in any experiences of any kind.  What it is interested in is to help the body function intelligently and sanely.  YOU MEAN THE BRAIN  ?   Yes, the brain. But unfortunately, we have put that brain to a use for which nature has not intended it.  The brain is not a creator . It is only a reactor; it reacts to  stimuli.  The mechanism that we have implanted in it as it were, through our education and culture, has made us believe that it is a creator.  All the thoughts that we are thinking are not self generated. They are not spontaneous.  They always come from outside, and the brain is there only to translate this sensation– the translation that is necessary for the survival of this living organism. It is not interested in any of the spiritual experiences or anything that the mind is interested in.  In fact, I don’t see any mind there at all. The mind is interested only in sensuality.  It is born out of sensuality.  It maintains its continuity in the field of sensuality.  So all religions experiences of any kind are sensual in their nature.  It is only the mind that is interested in spiritual experiences- bliss, compassion, truth, reality, and all those kinds of things.  But the body,  the living organism, is not interested in any of those things but only to respond to stimuli.


WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF CREATIVITY,  AND IS THERE ANY CREATIVITY IN NATURE ?                                                           

The creativity that you are talking about is totally unrelated to the creativity of life.  There is no creativity in the sense in which we are using the word ‘ creativity’ — language, the creativity of thought, the creativity of this, that, or the other. Life is creative in the sense that it does not use any model. Anything we call creative is an imitation , copy of something that is already there.  It is second hand. You cannot say that something which nature has created is not up to the point. I don’t even see any blue print there. Whatever blue print is there is already there in the cell. Everything that is there now was there in that single cell. Everything is genetically controlled.
The idea that there is something that we can do to bring about a change within us and change in the world has placed us in a situation where we are left with a hope that somehow this may happen. You live in that hope and die in that hope.

IS CHANGE POSSIBLE. ?                                                                                         

What kind of change are you interested in ? Change is possible  in the physical world.  For example, if you are not interested in the shape of a stubbed nose, you can go to plastic surgeon and change it into an   aquinine nose. If you feel that it is fashionable to have that then there is a possibility of availing the help of a plastic surgeon.Or, through genetic engineering it will be possible for us to bring about a change in behaviour patterns. I do not claim to have a special insight into the nature of things or an understanding of the workings of  nature more than anybody else, but this is what I have discovered about myself. I don’t care whether you accept what I am saying or not. It stands or falls by itself. I don’t care for even the biologists, the psychologists or scientists in general. If they brush this aside and say this is all rubbish, it is fine with me. One of these days they are going to discover these things anyway.

HOW DOES ONE DISCOVER THAT ?

The discovery is not within the framework of thinking.  In other words, there is no such thing as discovery, Discovery is a wrong word.  You experience what you already know. Otherwise, there is no experience at all.  There is no such thing as a new experience. The so-called epoch – making discoveries in the field of science are not really epoch – making discoveries.  Take, for example, Newtonian physics. It works very well for some countries. But that very Newtonian physics proved to be a stumbling block for making  a quantum jump, if I may use the word, quote and unquote.  Somehow, somebody like Einstein was lucky to take the lead and  discover something different.  But did he really discover something different ? Actually, it is not different.  Unless you link uo these two things — what was there before, and what you think you have discovered– there is no point in talking  about that at all. The scientist is interested in linking up these things and producing some results. Otherwise the discovery has no value at all. Newtonian  physics is valid, functional  and true  within its own  framework. But this same Newtonian physics is not so tue, not so valid, compared to what we have ( or rather, Einstein has )  since discovered, namely,  the theory of relativity. Of course,

Newtonian physics is still valid within the framework of the scientific thinking of man.  After all, we admire all these people and regard them with prestigious honour–the Nobel Prize, this, that and the other. Do you know the reason why?  It is because of the technology that had  become possible through discoveries of these people. Otherwise, there is no such thing as true discovery. There is no such thing as pure science at all. I may be making lot of dogmatic statements, but my statements stand or fall by themselves.  But there must be …….. Why do say there must be? There may not be. Then where do we go from ‘ There may not be ‘ ?

YOU HAVE APPARENTLY HAD SOME EXPERIENCES ……..?

Somehow, somewhere along my journey of discovery, it occurred to me that this instrument which we have been using, what we call the intellect, is not really the instrument to understand anything.  But I was very clear that the only instrument we have to understand anything is  the intellect, and that there is no other instrument.  So, the whole of our discovery is nothing but improving …. Sharpening the intellect.  That is all that is there.  So, this ( the intellect) has not helped me to understand the living problems of my life, nor understand myself and the world around me. The understanding that this is not the instrument and that there is no other instrument somehow
dawned on me.

There is no instrument to understand anything other than this instrument.  That knocks off the whole foundation of intuition or any other way of understanding the reality surrounding us. There is nothing to understand.  That is why I maintain that there is no such thing as reality at all, let alone the ultimate reality. You have no way of experiencing the reality of anything– the reality that we have taken so much for granted. We don’t experience anything other than what we know.
SO WE ARE JUST EXPERIENCING THE PAST. IT IS REPEATING.   It is a  repetitive process experiencing the same thing over and over again.  That is why we are born hoping that one day we will find something extraordinary, some new experience.  The moment you say that it is something, which you have not experienced before, that it is a new experience, it means that it has already become part of the past experiencing mechanism.


WE ALL FACE BOREDOM AND HOW DID YOU GET OUT OF THIS  ?        I wish I knew. That’s  why I use the phrase ‘ stumbled into’. There is no way I can communicate this to anybody.  Anybody who comes and listens to me and tries to understand what I am trying to put across is wasting his time, because there is no way you can listen to anything without interpretation.  The interpreter is the reference point, which is you. You are the product of the totality of all the thoughts, experiences, and feelings of every form of life that existed before you. Thought is only interested in maintaining its continuity and status quo.  It does not want any change. It says it wants to change but the change that it is interested in is only to maintain its continuity, its status quo.  Although things are changing constantly, it does not want to accept anything that will disturb its status quo.  Also the reference point is strengthened and fortified by interpreting what I am saying to you.

DO WE HAVE TO HAVE A PURPOSE IN LIFE ?
Why do we look for a purpose or meaning ? Why ? You tell me why do we ? Why should there be any meaning? The question ‘ How to live ‘ ?  is totally unrelated to the functioning of this living organism.  It is living all the time.  It doesn’t have to ask the question ‘ How to live ‘ ? . ‘ How to live ‘?  is superimposed on the living organism.  The search for meaning is absurd.  Obviously you don’t see any meaning.  You do not see any purpose in life. Obviously you don’t see. To me to ask that question is so silly, so meaningless, so absurd- ” What is the meaning of life ” ?  It is not life that we are interested in but living.  The problem of living has become a very tiring business- to live with somebody else, to live with our feelings, to live with our ideas. In other words,  it is the value system that we have been thrown into. You see, the value system is false. We are trying to fit ourselves into that value system which is totally false.  It is falsifying you.  But you are not ready to accept that it is falsifying you.  You throw a lot of energy into this business of fitting yourself into that framework or value system.

HOW DOES ONE GET TO THAT POINT WHEREIN THEY ARE WILLING TO ACCEPT THAT THIS IS FALSE ?                                                                                                                       

‘ How’  implies that you want to know from somebody.  That is adding momentem to that– to know, to know and to know.  That is why we always ask the question, ‘ how’ ?.  ‘ How ‘?  means you want to  know.  What is this ‘ you ‘ ,  as you experience yourself ? The  ‘ you ‘ as you know yourself is a product of the momentum of that knowledge that is passed on to us.  It has this question that you think is a very intelligent question.  Through your demand for an answer to that question it wants to know how to add momentem to that knowledge.  So, it is a trick. It is falsifying us. It knows that
by asking the question  it can add  momentem to itself.  It is not ‘ you ‘,  because ‘ you ‘ don’t exist.  There is no individual at all.  Culture, society, or whatever you want to call it, has created ‘ you’ and ‘ me ‘ for the sole purpose of maintaining its own continuity.  But at the same time we are made to believe that you have to become an individual.  These two things have created this neurotic situation for us. There is no such thing as an individual, and there is no such thing as freedom of action

I am not talking of fatalistic philosophy or any such thing.  It is this fact that is frustrating us. The demand to fit ourselves into that value system is using a tremendous amount of energy, and there is nothing we can do to deal with the living problems here.  All the energy is being consumed by the demands of the culture or society, or whatever you want to call it, to fit you into the framework of that value system.  In the process, we are not left with any energy to deal with the other problems. But these problems, that is , the living problems, are very simple. To survive in this world is not a difficult problem, you see. But what is demanding is the value system. Our efforts to fit ourselves into that value system are consuming a tremendous amount of energy.

BUT WHAT HAPPENS if you don’t fit yourself into the value system ?   I am not in conflict with this society.  You seem to be in conflict with this society, but I am not, because it cannot be any different, since I have found out there is no way I can bring about a change in it. You want to bring about a change in the world.  You see, the problem is a problem of  relationship.  It is just not possible to establish any relationship with anything around you, including your near and dear ones, except on the level of what you can get out of the relationship.  You see, the whole thing springs from this separation or isolation that human beings live in today.  We are isolated from the rest of the creation, the rest of life around us.  We all live in individual frames. We try to establish a relationship at the level of  ”  what do I get out of that relationship ” ?  We use others to try and fill this void that is created as a result of our isolation.                                                                                                                                                                          

We always want to fill this emptiness, this void , with all kinds of  relationships with people around us. That is really the problem. We have to use everything, an idea, a person, anything we can get hold of, to establish relationships with others. Without relationships we are lost, and we don’t see any meaning; we don’t see any purpose.  Because your only interest is to create a purposeful and meaningful relationship with the individuals and the world around you.  Therefore, you want to understand the reality of the world.    But there is nothing to understand.  There is no such thing as reality at all.  I have to accept the reality of the world as it is imposed on me  by the society.  Say, I call you a ‘ woman ‘ , I call this a ‘ bench ‘ I call this a ‘ tray ‘. Otherwise, we will not be able to function in this world sanely and intelligently.  This kind of knowledge can be used only for the purposes of functioning in this world sanely and intelligently.  Anything you do to understand the reality of the world is not going to  be useful, helpful, or meaningful.