Mind is a Myth. Mind is a Myth
warn you that if what you are aiming at—moksha—really happens, you will die. There will be a physical death, because there has to be a physical death to be in that state. It is like playing around with controlling your breath because you find it amusing. But if you hold the breath long enough, you choke to death.
Q: So we must become aware of death, making it an object of our meditations, and treating it in such a romantic, mystical way. Is that it?
U.G.: To describe that state as a meditative state full of awareness is romantic hogwash. Awareness! What a fantastic gimmick used to fool themselves and others. You can't be aware of every step, you only become self-conscious and awkward if you do. I once knew a man who was a harbor pilot. He had been reading about "passive awareness" and attempted to put it into practice. He, for the first time, nearly wrecked the ship he was guiding. Walking is automatic, and if you try to be aware of every step, you will go crazy. So don't invent meditative steps. Things are bad enough. The meditative state is worse.
Q: But you can't just brush aside ... everything you hold sacred?
U.G.: Of course I can; it is all just romantic stuff. Any remedy I offered you would become part of your search; that is, more romantic stuff. That is why I never tire of saying that I have no wares to sell, much less offer you new and better methods whereby you can continue your search. I deny the validity of that search entirely. You will get nothing here. Try your luck elsewhere.
Q: But surely you are human and want to be of service to mankind, even if only out of pity?
U.G.: Who elected me the redeemer? You have numerous saints, prophets and saviors who wish to serve you. Why add one more? Jesus said, "Knock and it shall open. Come all ye unto me." For some reason I am not able to do it. We have covered a lot of ground. Perhaps it is better if we continue this conversation tomorrow.
Q: Until tomorrow then.
U.G.: Thank you.
Q: From what you said yesterday, it seems obvious that one must be perfectly sane to do what you have done, that is, die. When we left off yesterday you were saying that one has to actually die if one is to discover freedom or moksha. A radical step such as this cannot be taken by a romantic, neurotic person. It is the act of a person free from self-absorption, neurotic episodes, and self-pity. Is there any way to teach this? Can people be educated to be sane?
U.G.: I don't believe in education. You can teach a technique—mathematics, auto mechanics, but not integrity. How can you teach them about non-greed and non-ambition in an insanely greedy and ambitious society? You will only succeed in making them more neurotic. Look; you are a cheat. Your religious ambitions are just like the businessman's there. If you can't cheat there is something wrong. How do you think the rich man there got his great wealth? Through lectures about non-greed and selflessness? Not at all. He got it by cheating somebody. Society, which is immoral to begin with, says that cheating is immoral, and that non-cheating is moral. I don't see the difference. If you get caught they put you in jail. So your food and shelter are provided for. Why worry? It is the guilt you have that compels you to talk of non-greed while you continue on with your greedy life. Your non-greed is invented by thought to keep you from facing the fact that greed is all that is there. But you are not satisfied with what is so. If there were nothing more than that, what would you do? That is all that is there. You just have to live with it. You can't escape. All thought can do is repeat itself over and over again. That is all it can do. And anything repetitive is senile.
Q: Meditation seems less repetitive, deeper than ordinary thought. Yet it is unsatisfying.
U.G.: If your meditations, sadhanas, methods and techniques meant anything, you wouldn't be here asking these questions. They are all means for you to bring about change. I maintain that there is nothing to change or transform. You accept that there is something to change as an article of faith. You never question the existence of the one who is to be changed. The whole mystique of enlightenment is based upon the idea of transforming yourself. I cannot convey or transmit my certainty that you and all the authorities down through the centuries are false. They and the spiritual goods they peddle are utterly false. Because I cannot communicate this certainty to you it would be useless and artificial for me to get up on a platform and hold forth. I prefer to talk informally; I just talk, "Nice meeting you."
Q: Then why do you talk at all?
U.G.: There is no particular charm in being antisocial. I don't give people what they want. When they realize they will not get what they want here, they invariably go away. As they are leaving for the last time I like to add the rider, "You won't get it anywhere." When people come to talk they find themselves confronted with silence itself. That is why everybody who comes is automatically silent thereafter. If he cannot stand the silence and insists upon talking and discussing things, he will be forced to disagree and walk out. But if you stay long, you will be silenced, not because it is over-persuasive, more rational than you are, but because it is silence itself silencing that movement there. That silence burns everything here. All experiences are burnt. That is why talking to people doesn't exhaust me. It is energy to me. That is why I can talk for the whole day without showing any fatigue. Talking with so many people over the years has had no impact upon me. All that I or they have said is burnt here, leaving no trace. This is not, unfortunately, the case with you.
Q: How does intelligence fit into all this? You seem to indicate that there is a native intelligence that has nothing to do with the accumulation of knowledge and technique.
U.G.: Accepting the limitations is intelligence. You are trying to free yourself from these natural limitations and that is the cause of your sorrow and pain. Your actions are such that one action limits the next action. Your action at this moment is limiting the next action. This action is a reaction. the question of freedom of action does not even arise. Therefore no fatalistic philosophy is needed. The word "karma" means an action without a reaction. Any action of yours limits the action that is to take place next. Any action that takes place at the conscious level of your thinking existence is a reaction. Pure, spontaneous action free of all previous actions is meaningless. The one and only action is the response of this living organism to the stimuli around it. That stimulus-response process is a unitary phenomenon. There is no division between action and reaction except when thought interferes and artificially separates them. Otherwise it is an automatic, unitary process, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. There is no need to stop it. Just as in reality there is no separation of action and reaction, so there is no room for the religious man in the natural scheme of things. The fresh movement of life threatens his source of power and prestige. Still, he does not want to retire. He must be thrown out. Religion is not a contractual arrangement, either public or private. It has nothing to do with the social structure or its management. Religious authority wants to continue its hold on the people, but religion is entirely an individual affair. The saints and saviors have only succeeded in setting you adrift in life with pain and misery and the restless feeling that there must be something more meaningful or interesting to do with one's life. Existence is all that is important, not how to live. We have created the "how" to live, which in turn has created this dilemma for us. Your thinking has created problems—what to eat, wear, how to behave—the body doesn't care. I am simply pointing out the absurdity of this conversation. Once you get the hang of it, you just go. I have no message to give mankind. We have set in motion irreversible forces. We have polluted the sky, the waters, everything. Nature's laws know no reward, only punishment. The reward is only that you are in harmony with nature. The whole problem started when man decided that the whole universe was created for his exclusive enjoyment. We have superimposed the notion of evolution and progress over nature. Our mind—and there are no individual minds, only mind—which is the accumulation of the totality of man's knowledge and experience, has created the notion of the psyche and evolution. Only technology progresses, while we as a race are moving closer to complete and total destruction of ourselves and the world. Everything in man's consciousness is pushing the whole world, which nature has so laboriously created, towards destruction. There has been no qualitative change in man's thinking; we feel about our neighbors just as the frightened cave man felt towards his.