Mind is a Myth. Mind is a Myth
that has changed is our ability to destroy our neighbor and his property. Violence is an integral part of the evolutionary process. That violence is essential for the survival of the living organism. You can't condemn the hydrogen bomb, for it is an extension of the policeman there and your desire to be protected. Where do you draw the line? You can't. We have no way of reversing the whole thing.
Q: Humanitarians insist that man has a capacity for love, and that love may be the only solution to mutual destruction. Is there anything to this?
U.G. Love and hate are exactly the same. They have together resulted in massacre, murder, assassination, and wars. This is a matter of history, not my opinion. Buddhism has resulted in horrors in Japan. It is the same thing everywhere. All our political systems have come out of that religious thinking, whether of the East or of the West. In the light of these facts, how can you have any faith in religion? What is the good of reviving the whole past, the useless past? It is because your living has no meaning to you that you dwell on the past. You are not even drifting. You have no direction at all; you are just floating. Obviously there is no purpose to your life, otherwise you would not live in the past. What has not helped you cannot help anybody. No matter what I am saying, you are the medium of expression. You have already captured what I am saying and making of it a new ism, ideology, and means to attain something. What I am trying to say is that you must discover something for yourself. But do not be misled into thinking that what you find will be of use to society, that it can be used to change the world. You are finished with society, that is all.
Q: That thing that has to be discovered each by himself is God or enlightenment, is it not?
U.G.: No. God is the ultimate pleasure, uninterrupted happiness. No such thing exists. Your wanting something that does not exist is the root of your problem. Transformation, moksha, liberation, and all that stuff are just variations on the same theme: permanent happiness. The body cannot take that. The pleasure of sex, for instance, is by nature temporary. The body can't take uninterrupted pleasure for long, it would be destroyed. Wanting to impose a fictitious, permanent state of happiness on the body is a serious neurological problem.
Q: But the religions warn against pleasure-seeking. Through prayer, meditation, and various practices one is encouraged to transcend mere pleasure ...
U.G.: They sell you spiritual pathedrins, spiritual morphine. You take that drug and go to sleep. Now the scientists have perfected pleasure drugs, it is much easier to take. It never strikes you that the enlightenment and God you are after is just the ultimate pleasure, a pleasure moreover, which you have invented to be free from the painful state you are always in. Your painful, neurotic state is caused by wanting two contradictory things at the same time.
Q: But somehow you are free of all these contradictions, and, although you claim not to be in any sort of perpetual bliss, you seem to be fundamentally happy. How come your life took this course and not others?
U.G.: If I narrate the story of my life, it is as if I am describing somebody else's life. There is no attachment, sentiment, or emotional content for me when I consider my life. You get the wrong impression if you think I harbor any private, precious thoughts or feelings regarding my past.
For the first time, a man has broken away from the religious background (referring to Jiddu Krishnamurti—ed.), and already his teachings are outmoded, outdated, and misleading. J.K. has chosen the psychological form of explanation, which is already passé. You cannot destroy J.K., but the framework o thought he has created is already outdated and useless. The problem is not psychological, but physiological. This body has not fundamentally changed for hundreds of thousands of years. Its propensity to follow leaders, to avoid solitude, to wage war, to join groups—all such traits are in the genetic make-up of mankind, part of his biological inheritance.
Q: Leaving aside the question of whether evil or good is possible for an organism that is already genetically programmed to be brutal and warlike, do not the religious practices—meditation, yoga, humility, etc.—attempt to help man go beyond these biological limitations?
U.G.: Meditation is itself an evil. That is why all the evil thoughts swell up when you try to meditate. Otherwise you have no reference point, no way of knowing if the thoughts are good or evil thoughts. Meditation is a battle, but you only experience more pain. I can assure you that not only is the goal of meditation and moksha put into you by our culture, but that ultimately you will get nothing but pain. You may experience some petty little mystical experiences, which are of no value to you or anyone.
Q: But we are not interested in any such petty experiences, we want freedom ...
U.G.: What is the difference whether or not you find this freedom, this enlightenment or not. You will not be there to benefit from it. What possible good can this state do you? This state takes away EVERYTHING you have. That is why they call it "jivanmukti"—living in liberation. While living, the body has died. Somehow the body, having gone through death, is kept alive. It is neither happiness nor unhappiness. There is no such thing as happiness. This you do not, cannot, want. What you want is everything, here you lose everything. You want everything, and that is not possible. The religions have promised you so much—roses, gardens—and you end up with only thorns.
Q: But other teachers, like J. Krishnamurti, describe a journey of discovery, that through awareness and free inquiry one can find out ...
U.G.: There is no transformation, radical or otherwise. That buffoon (referring to J.K.) talking in the circus tent there offers you a journey of discovery. It is a bogus charter flight. There is no such journey. The Vedic stuff is no more helpful. It was invented by some acid-heads after drinking some soma juice. J.K. is more neurotic than the people who go to listen to him.
Q: If you put no credence in the ancient religious teachings, then do you take modern psychology any the more seriously?
U.G.: The whole field of psychology has misled the whole thinking of man for a hundred years and more. Freud is the stupendous fraud of the 20th century. J. Krishnamurti talks of a revolution in the psyche. There is no psyche there. Where is this mind which is to be magically transformed? J.K.'s disciples have come to the point where all they can do is to repeat meaningless phrases. They are shallow, empty people. The fact that J.K. can draw large crowds means nothing; snake charmers also draw big crowds. Anybody can draw crowds.
Q: But you are using a similar approach as ...
U.G.: Yes, I am using 80% of his words and phrases, the very phrases he has used over the years to condemn gurus, saints, and saviors like himself. He has it coming. One thing I have never said: he is not a man of character. He has great character, but I am not in the least interested in men of character. If he sees the mess he has created in his false role as world Messiah and dissolves the whole thing, I will be the first to salute him. But he is too old and senile to do it. His followers are appalled that I am giving him a dose of his own medicine. Do not compare what I am saying with what he, or other religious authorities, have said. If you give what I am saying any spiritual overtones, any religious flavor at all, you are missing the point. All this has to be dropped.
Q: But still it seem to us that J. Krishnamurti, and perhaps a few others in history, have something to say. J. Krishnamurti appears to be what he claims he is, a free man.
U.G.: He has something. I am fond of saying that he has SEEN the sugar cube, but has not TASTED the sugar cube. Whether that man, myself, or any other person is free or not is not your problem; it is the shibboleth of escapist minds, an amusement invented to avoid the real issue, which is your unfreedom. You may be sure of one thing; he who says he is a free man is a phoney. Of this you may be sure. The thing you have to be free of is the "freedom" discussed by that man and other teachers. You must be free from "the first and last freedom", and all the freedoms that come in between.
Q: If the notion of a life of grace, peace, and freedom are just fictions invited to escape our universal shallowness, then why proceed at all? If there is no abiding, transcendent reality to