Ø There is evidence everywhere of the cruelty and irrationality of the human species, yet we seldom wonder about the extent to which the recurrence of powerful experiences of great psychological expectation, fear, frustration and alternating pleasure and pain (all generated by faulty thinking), may have damaged the brain itself. First of all, let us not forget that the brain is an organ; one with an admirably capacity to perceive, understand and solve certain types of problems, but as susceptible as any other organ to be affected negatively by misuse. Its natural sensitivity must have been greatly diminished by all the strife and suffering experienced by humanity to have arrived, after thousands of years, to the cultural bunkers and psychological trenches that define today our respective identities and from which we continue to fight and exploit one another. The equally reckless battle for status, pleasure and power endured for decades to give shape to the psychological defense and attack mechanisms characteristic of adult human beings, must also be damaging to the particular brain. Strong and sustained emotions, driving ambition and over indulgence on fantasy, are like monkey wrenches thrown into the immensely complex mechanism of the brain corrupting its delicate operation and disabling its natural capacity to perceive, understand and act intelligently and without delay. Isolated delusions of tribal superiority and psychological grandeur in all their multiple and cantankerous forms, do rig neurons to fire mechanically, and therefore inappropriately, along the fixed paths determined by exclusive memory and preset whim.
Egotism ought not to be seen through a moralistic lens because any ethical code created to judge someone else’s egotism is, in itself, just another form of egotism. Egotism is simply what emanates from the act of separation that shapes and hardens the self through identification with specific forms of psychological being and cultural becoming. This universal configuration of the conditioned brain/mind determines the narrow field and fixed operation of self-centered thought and emotion and determines, as well, the behavior of the individual riding from the past to the future along the parallel tracks of pleasure procurement and pain avoidance.
We are generally so convinced that the only possible human reality is the field of experience characterized by self-centeredness and ethnocentrism, that we fail to give ourselves permission to seriously question the validity of the most basic premises upholding who we are, what we think, want and do. Just as birds do not seem to concern themselves with the possibility of an environment not determined by the overwhelming presence of open spaces, human beings do not generally concern themselves with the possibility of a mind and a world in which the self, the family, the institutional clan and the tribe with their often petty and troublesome projections, would not be the measure of life. If the possibility of a wide open mind and an unthinkably spacious and creative life is presented, most people quickly declare it pointless or mad, without giving it even a minute of their time and attention. But those who are seriously intrigued by the prospect of a sudden unraveling of traditional identifications and foolish self-projections, instantly realize that there are no further questions that may be asked regarding the ultimate fate of the self. It is clear that once though has restricted itself to the assessment and prompt satisfaction of the needs of the physical organism and other practical challenges inherent in day to day life, the self has come to an end. (77)
Ø There is a very widespread and powerful conviction that what we see and what we know and believe is all there is, or all that matters. Thus, to question the notion that the human intellect is the measure of all things, is not a popular endeavor. But it is an essential one. Perhaps one has suffered long and hard enough. Perhaps predetermined pleasure has shown its shallowness and its reliable proclivity to turn into pain. But the fact is that one has somehow transcended the multiple taboos barring consideration of the possibility of a mode of human existence beyond the pale of psychological and tribal thought. Blind obedience to the mandates of cultural tradition and personal experience with its built-in fear and ambition, is no longer the program governing the mind. The sense that there is nothing but death beyond thought and the mechanical maneuvering of the acculturated thinker, has been drastically undermined by the realization that the universe of matter, which includes the human organism and all its mental faculties, is and will always remain beyond the self’s (and humanity’s) perceptual and cognitive reach. If the brain is only a tiny particle in a whole universe of forms in multidimensional interaction, it seems reasonable to suppose that the totality of existence is independent from, and forever beyond the reach of self-centered thought. Then, all of the sudden, the fact that the ground of human existence is in life as a whole, and not in consciousness, comes into sharp focus... With no one to see it.
There is another mind boggling realization that is intimately related to the revelation of the intrinsic limitations of experience and knowledge. This one unmasks the common illusion that every brain is inhabited by an original, autonomous and potentially unlimited thinking entity. No significant distinction or division can be made between what we call the self (the “me”) and what this self knows, thinks, believes, perceives, feels and suffers. Without the contents of consciousness there is no self; the subject/object division within the psyche is an illusion. While there are evident differences in the conditioned psychological memory granting different human beings their sense of individual identity and particular purpose, the fact remains that below these differences we all are equally conditioned by the pre-personal experience of the species and the necessarily limited past experience exclusively recorded in each particular brain. Even though well hidden behind the universal fantasy of personal and cultural uniqueness, every particular psyche carries the same fundamental limitations of a mental process isolated and predetermined by a limited body of knowledge both subjective (psychological) and objective. The fact that we are all similarly conditioned by experience and that we all suffer the mental handicaps and the tragic consequences of cultural division and self-centered thought, naturally blows away the foolish claims of discrete existence and exceptionalism that characterize the self. A universal phenomenon of fragmented, conflicted and suffering mental conditioning, is all there is.
We may go on indefinitely living and dying convinced that we are different and, perhaps, better than others because we hold a given type and amount of knowledge/belief in our heads, and have particular emotions, feelings and experiences at different times. But the fundamental truth is that, mentally, each and everyone of us is as isolated, limited, and prone to cruelty and suffering as anyone else in the world.
It is the greatest possible blessing to see that self-centered thought is a universal problem that cannot possibly reform or transcend itself, for it is only that insight into our shared impotence to free ourselves from the suffering we create, that unburdens the mind from further investment in pretentious and exclusive aspirations and false hopes. And a mind thus freed from delusion and the drain of internal and interpersonal conflict, has already turned away from the suffocating constraints of the familiar and towards the immensity of the unknown and the unknowable. The separate personal consciousness dissolves as the mind turns toward life as a whole. (78)
Ø There is thought which is the response of memory to whatever the organism may perceive of life at any point in time and space; and then there is life itself, the unthinkable totality that while including within itself all particular human beings and the species as a whole, extends infinitely beyond what we singly or collectively can ever sense, experience, know or imagine. We generally assume that life is whatever I think “my” life is, or whatever other somewhat larger vision of life we may subscribe to undeterred by the fact that any particular theory stands in total contradiction with the countless other versions of life with which others justify their own existence. We generally do not realize that in asserting what we each know and believe about life, we lock ourselves inside ourselves and out of life itself, thus becoming lifers in the splintered and conflictive imprisonment created by thought and endured by all.
To anyone who bothers to look deeply into her own psychological problems, the general limitations of self-centered thought and the not unrelated chaos of human affairs, it may become suddenly clear that all the “known” descriptive and proscriptive versions of life, are necessarily false. This, simply because life as the totality has never been and will never be reduced to the accumulated knowledge of the human species, let alone to the far more limited sensory perception and intellectual reach of any single individual. While this awareness of an extremely restricted personal and collective mental reality existing spatially within, but in paradoxical isolation from, the unfathomable mystery of life is good and necessary, it should in no way be allowed to motivate a predetermined effort designed to reach the other shore. For any such undertaking will necessarily constitutes but a further instance of humanity’s millenarian attempt (endlessly frustrated and painful) to overcome its limitations and assuage its suffering by relying on an ancient inclination to “reach for the stars”.
All we have and all we know is the isolated personal and tribal mind that continues compounding and prolonging its suffering by investing most of its energy on the particular course of action each individual believes most likely to increase his desired quota of pleasure and elevate his status from close to nothing to the merely respectable and, from there, all the way to the superhuman, if not the outright divine.
Conditioned to solve any and all problems, especially those that pose a risk to self image, the mere presentation of a serious challenge not just to the relevance, but the very existence of the self, automatically commands the mind to exert itself in whatever way it can in order to break the impasse. This command can only be disobeyed through a direct realization of its absurdity potentiated by a total disregard for the consequences of such an unprecedented act. Self-centered thought cannot improve or transcend itself. The nearly irrepressible urge to be and become what we are essentially not has throughout history spawned multiple and contradictory solutions, and self-centered thought has found the way to commit itself to all of them, with horrific consequences. And it is precisely the simple openness to this irrefutable fact that makes abundantly clear that any effort made to project and bring about the improvement of on-going tribal and personal narratives, is but a knee-jerk reiteration of the way in which self-centered thought secures its own continuity. It is precisely through the effort to change ourselves that we manage to remain very much the same.
It is not enough, then, to wake up to the situation in which humanity finds itself in its conflicted atomization and suffering alienation from life. There must also be a profound awareness of the foolishness of any action that would attempt to escape or transcend the situation that self-centered thought creates and recreates with every reaction to its own plight. A complete insight into the subtle difficulty of this challenge, ushers in a state of mental passivity. Not passivity in the sense of intellectual paralysis or outright amnesia, but rather as the definitive end of the habitual reactive effort to extend the life of the self by bringing about new versions of the same pre-determined and dysfunctional psychological and social reality. (79)
Ø Self-centered thought has for thousands of years responded to whatever it allows itself to see of the suffering engendered by its own faults and limitations, by creating and implementing a huge variety of plans presumably leading to an improved version of itself and progress in its particular social environment. Our present situation, which is perhaps the most dangerous ever because of the destructive capacity of the technologies developed in the last fifty years and other reasons, is the net result of the historical succession of countless plans to improve the particular human mind and to develop its multiple tribal and ideological fortresses. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of religious and secular ideologies have attempted to get human beings to act “morally” or just rationally and, to judge by our present circumstances, they have all utterly failed. Science has for centuries now also tried to redeem the sorry state of humanity by amassing data about every conceivable aspect of matter and human behavior, and by developing all kinds of interrelated technologies. But although significant progress has been made in some areas of human life thanks to considerable scientific progress, it has also had profoundly negative and destructive effects. Beneficial application of advances in science and technology are still far from universal, and all too often these advances serve war, extreme consumerism, the manipulation and abuse of multitudes, and a reckless exploitation of natural resources. Science has also quietly failed in its insistent attempt to find in the depths of matter the ground of our existence and, therefore, the significance of our presence in the cosmos.
Amazingly, despite the dismal historical record of most of our personal and cultural efforts, most human beings continue to hope against all reason that renewed efforts within the same traditional parameters of divisive thinking and reactionary action, will eventually deliver different and better results. Why in the world do we still expect politicians, economists, scientists, religious gurus, and other such “experts” to lead us out of the darkness of our own minds and fix our conflictive relationships? Out of the same fearful hope we have felt for thousands of years we go on identifying ourselves with opposed ideologies and their misguided guides, and endlessly ignoring or fighting with one another to assert the presumed superiority of what we each happen to know, believe and hope. If we are only capable of fragmented, contradictory and ineffective thought and action, that is, if nothing we think and do is capable of solving chronic personal and social problems that are now threatening our very survival on the planet, then it is imperative to ask certain fundamental questions, regardless of how impertinent or threatening they might seem. These are some of them:
―Is the only possible mode of human existence the vast collection of separate and disparate personal and tribal entities that have so far have only known to be engaged in a permanent struggle to defend and expand themselves through exclusive alliances, reckless competition and violent conflict? ―Can thought as the mental tool that responds to emerging challenges on the basis of previously recorded experience and learned knowledge, limit itself to the areas in which its limited memory and foresight is clearly effective as well as harmless? ―What is life for a mind that being nothing in itself, and desiring nothing in terms of status and power, is no longer in conflict with itself and others? ―If such an empty, silent and timeless mind (timeless in the sense of no longer caught in mental representations of a personal and a cultural past, present and future) were to come into being, what would its relationship with life/death as a whole be? (80)
Ø There is enormous economic, political and cultural turmoil in the world today. Humanity continues to be habitually torn by military and religious conflicts of all kinds, as well as racked by endemic oppression and chronic poverty and disease. To those not directly affected by the gravest ills of the species, it is quite tempting to look away from the ugliness, the injustice and violence afflicting the rest of the world. It is so easy for those of us in relatively good circumstances to tune out and find interesting things to do to further justify and entertain ourselves. After all, it seems unfair and pointless to waste one’s life worrying about somebody else’s misery when there is so much work to do, so much fun to be had, so much wealth, luxury and beauty to be enjoyed and possessed.
And for those who do care to some extent about the pain and sorrow of others and who are relatively aware of the dangers of retribution and the psychological injury that results from indifference and complicity in crime, it is equally tempting to lose themselves in the dedicated work demanded by a professional service career path or a significant voluntary commitment to a civic cause of one type or another. But social service ―especially if all-consuming― may serve the same aversion of one’s eyes from the total suffering of humanity and the depressive barrenness of all our partial and gradual solutions to psychological and social problems.
The world’s religions generally represent massive forms of mental deception enabling millions and millions of people to establish their identity and enhance their enduring sense of righteousness and self-importance, while simultaneously avoiding responsibility for the mental problem that lies deep within everyone’s brain. It is so easy to simply accept something grand and comforting to believe in. And there is something so fulfilling in obeying some reputable authority guaranteeing that a predetermined method will eventually deliver “awareness,” goodness, or even the exclusive favor of an omnipotent god sometimes even willing to grant a most desirable eternal life after death.
For one who is willing to see the hypocrisy and futility of all these different maneuvers and escapes, there is no further secular or religious action or distraction. It is finally clear that there is no action commensurate with the fundamental problem we face: our isolated and conditioned minds; ourselves. There is only a direct and undefended confrontation with the totality of the human mess; a passive, accurate and complete perception of the division, conflict and suffering of humanity across space and time. In this act of independent awareness (not mere intellectual theorizing) of all the disorder and pain of humanity there is no reactive option possible, and because there is no option, the mind is freed of the strictures of psycho-cultural identity and the futile obligations implicit in the idealistic projections of that identity. In other words, because the mind is no longer distracted or foolishly occupied with itself as depository and launching pad of illusions and pseudo solutions, it is able to remain transparently with things as they are. And in stepping beyond the limitations of memory and the forced labors of self-projection there is an enormous gathering of energy that is then able to move far beyond the reality created by thought.
Suffering can never be eliminated by the mental framework that has created it. The dysfunctional psychological and cultural reality generated by a sick and limited mind cannot ever be healed through the implementation of contradictory plans of gradual psychological development and social reform. Only complete and immediate exposure to the truth of things as they are can eliminate investment in wrongheaded efforts and unnecessary suffering, and this undefended exposure to fact implies the end of duality; that is, the death of the self. (81)
Ø What is it to live without secret or open agendas, without options, without future? What would a life free of psychological choice be? ―Can a human being survive in the general chaos we have made of life without being anything in particular and without wanting to become somehow better or someone else altogether? ―Is the chronic disorder in human affairs not the result of far too many “unique” people fighting among themselves to improve the state of their consciousness, the height of their social position, and the size of their material loot? What could we expect if not disorder and violence from billions of us competing with one another, often viciously, to acquire the exclusive privilege of more and more wealth, power, “virtue” or knowledge? And what could we expect if not permanent confusion and immaturity from having exchanged the impersonal depth of mind for the shallow certainty that comes from adopting and obediently carrying out the commands of the “right” secular or religious orthodoxy? ―Can regular individuals like you and I survive in the world as it is living anonymously and independently; not wanting anything other than what is strictly necessary and, therefore, free of sectarianism, competitiveness and violence?
There are plenty of reasons why a mature, responsible person would feel compelled to live free of psychological and material ambitions but, still, the very posing of this possibility is generally frightening enough to provoke an instantaneous rush ―backward or forward in mental time― to grab on to the protection offered by any given ideological option or sentimental sanctuary, even if they are patently false.
To be human, as we know our humanity, is to claim a separate act of existence corresponding to a unique identity and a particular and presumably self-directed life plan. When somebody requests evidence of who you are, since you are as incapable as anyone else to come up with an unequivocal description of the intrinsic nature of your being, you will most probably respond with a biographical narrative and a list, short or long, of likes and dislikes, of associations and plans. That is, you present yourself through your attachment to particular things, groups, persons, ideas, experiences and goals which in fact you are not, but which you nevertheless believe are good enough to accurately represent your personal reality. You are not a particular gender, nation, race, age group, economic class, religious faith, political affiliation, talent, profession or trade; nor are you whatever events you may have experienced and would like to experience along the biological life of the organism. But you hope nonetheless that the particular psycho-cultural configuration that emerges from the chosen set of associations and disassociations, will provide your interlocutor with a perfectly reasonable (and hopefully, admiring) sense of who you are. In fact, the intent of creating a good personal impression may be so strong, that the person you introduce as yourself starts sounding more and more alien to the intimate and private reality of your surely much less glamorous day-to-day mental reality. The person requesting your identification reacts to the information you provide by rapidly contrasting it with his or her own narrative, claims, values, preferences, aversions and plans. If there is nothing in common between the set of images and ideas describing her identity and those describing yours, indifference, dislike, or even fear and antagonism are almost sure to emerge. There is, of course, a full range of rejection and attraction responses possible in any such event of complex comparative psychological encounter, but it is fair to say that extreme opposites tend to reject each other as extreme similarities tend to confirm familiarity and, therefore, elicit interest and comfort (at least initially). Witness if not the want ads for singles, or the history of relationships between countries with extremely similar and extremely different histories and cultural characteristics. However, and this is really the point of all this, if after a first encounter and a thorough exchange of personal information any two or more individuals were to engage in a much deeper exploration taking them well beyond their respective biographical realities and relative psychological affinity or discord, they would inevitably find how much more they have in common as fellow human beings. After all, are we not simple human organisms living and dying, at every moment, a common life and a common death lost, along with every other organism, in the undecipherable mystery of cosmic life? Sadly, this joint exploration and the extraordinary deep and intimate relationship it implies, is extremely rare. We generally fear breaking out of a sense of ourselves that being grounded in particular consciousness, makes us irrationally distant from one another and all too often fearful and ambitious enough to act with brutal antagonism.
There are nefarious consequences that stem from the clash of contradictory sources of identification and competing desires within the same psyche, because a mind at odds with itself cannot possibly make clear, complete and healthy decisions. And the consequences of intrapsychic division and contradiction are quite related, and similar in their destructiveness, to those that arise from the clash of different groups with conflicting cultural values and interests, or from the divisive dissension that often disrupts or even destroys exclusive groups from within, even when they have been shaped and long sustained by the most inflexible ideological and experiential consensus. And the root cause of all this psychological and social conflictual division lies, always, in out common unwillingness to see that the self is nothing in itself; that the truth of the life we all share is unrelated to the made-up reality of self and tribe. If this is true, if the self is merely an artificial and dysfunctional mental construct mistakenly designed to avoid a natural species-wide mental emptiness somehow echoing or dove-tailing with the unthinkable matrix of life as a whole, then the unity and peace without which the species may not survive for long depends squarely on the collapse of the pretentious delusion sustaining self-centered thought. Contrary to everything we believe and hold dear, the very fate of humanity is not in the hands of heroes, saints and genial intellectuals. It is, rather, in the hands of individuals who, directly aware of the irredeemable suffering created by the illusion of separate psychological existence, stop identifying with images and ideas and actually quit the general struggle to become psychologically and materially “better” in loaded comparison with others.
The fragmented and belligerent world in which we have always lived is but the out-picturing of minds conditioned by particular experience, knowledge and desire and, therefore, desensitized, not just to others with different identities and claims, but to life as a whole. Somehow, we must allow our minds to be whacked out of their rigid shape by the fact that further superficial modifications of particular individuals and particular tribes will never put an end to the social and mental disorder responsible for the suffering and the general physical insecurity experienced by nearly everyone in the planet. The only real solution to our permanent global crisis lies in minds cleansed of all psychological and all unnecessary cultural conditioning; minds that are free because they are not defined and constrained by particular identities armed with exclusive beliefs, claims and ambitions. To live free of psychological options, free of any particular past, present and future, is simply coherent with the deeper nature of mind and the only possibility of harmony with each other and with life itself. This unknowable and, therefore, impersonal emptiness is the only common ground of humanity, the only truth, the only intelligence. It is blessed participation in the infinite wholeness of life/death flowing timelessly in and out of form. (82)
Ø We live within the tight ―for some outright claustrophobic― enclosure of prehistoric, cultural and personal mental conditioning. Beyond the impersonal conditioning of the brain itself, we are what we have each experienced and learned; we are what we know, psychologically and in every other way. We are also what we chose to disregard or selectively forget at every moment. It is only by reference to the images and ideas that turn personal experience into psychological knowledge, that we imagine ourselves to be separate and radically different from others and everything else. And it is by locking ourselves within this limited knowledge that we come to see the exclusive content of its evolving limitation as accurately representing the face of reality or even of truth. The constant comparative differentiation we make along social and psychological lines also effectively and conveniently blocks from just about everyone’s sight the extent to which our animal roots are still very much alive in each and every brain and, therefore, in everyone’s thoughts and actions.
Many prefer to think otherwise, but the fact is that we all share the same brain. Just as any other organ of the human body, the brain has evolved during thousands of years. Culturally and psychologically, it has done so by accumulating knowledge derived from experience and learning and by using this ever growing accumulation to interpret and react to actual events at every point in space and time. At some early point in this process and for reasons perhaps impossible to discern, this accumulation of impersonal data acquired a sense of particular existence. One aspect or layer of the experience known split off from the rest of the psyche, to become the dominant observer, the knower, the thinker. This central subject appears to exists independently because its knowing gaze turns the whole of life, and the psyche itself, into a mere collection of equally separate and potentially knowable and manipulatable objects. And in remembering and projecting his knowledge of himself and the world the self-reflective consciousness isolates itself away from everything else largely perceived as “not-me.”
Closely identified with symbolic representations of selective aspects of the past (particular and collective, psychological and cultural), the particular knowledge personalized in every brain routinely distorts and diminishes the present by using it to mold a future (also constructed out of predetermined images and symbols) that cannot possibly be anything other than a modified version of the same personal and tribal past. Just as we can only be what we have already experienced and learned, we can only desire to achieve and become some slight variation of what we already know. Thus, regardless of what we may do to arrive in the future to an improved version of ourselves, we remain separate from mostly everyone else and still sconced within the same limited mental boundaries that previous experience determines.
This existential grounding of the thinking self in images and ideas that project themselves in an equally imaginary mental time, is the reason why after eons of “progress” we remain in so many ways separate from, and in conflict with, those who identify themselves with different and, more often than not, conflicting ideas and desires. And we live internally confused and in conflict with ourselves because self-reflective thought is itself rife with contradictory ideas and conflicting desires. Even though we are endlessly changing psychologically, the gradually evolving image and idea-based insularity of our psyches practically blinds itself to the only possibility of truly significant change. This, for the simple reason that this possibility involves unmasking the falseness of our psychological insularity and its consequent collapse. Unwilling to own up to our deepest truth, we chose instead to remain mired in the same psychological, relational and social pathologies that have afflicted humankind for thousands of years. Despite prodigious amounts of data gathered over the centuries in many different fields of learning, and despite enormous efforts made to solve our personal and social problems, nothing works conclusively because we still refuse to take in consideration that the root of everything that ails us lies in our mental alienation from one another and our ever increasing lack of harmony with life. Thus, we chose to remain fundamentally primitive; irrationally committed as individuals and as a species to ignore the all-encompassing immensity and inter-penetrating complexity of life that lies forever beyond our heavy load of experience and learning. It is the cruelest paradox that the puny cognitive capacity of an intellect grounded on the symbolic dregs of exclusive knowledge and desire, could pull the stunt of negating life as a whole. Tragically, the joke is on us. Seamless inclusion in life denied in exchange for the illusion of a privately owned existential footprint that must be forcefully defended and laboriously maintained day after day, comes at the immensely high cost of endemic alienation, confusion, conflict and suffering.
Strong and healthy skepticism about the claim of existential insularity based on subjective personal and tribal knowledge, must definitely be extended to science when it oversteps its proper realm to, in one way or another, spread the notion that life can be reduced to what scientists know—and presume likely to learn in the future—about matter and mind. As some notable scientists have already come to see (perhaps more as human beings than as mere scientists), there is infinitely more to the truth than what the human brain is able to observe, compare, measure and codify with and within the atomized and coded intellectual reality that has gradually come to substitute the ever-changing mystery of the totality. To be sure, scientific knowledge is essential to our physical well-being and our very survival, but the repeated application of a method of inquiry that takes for granted the separation between the observer and the object of its observation ―regardless of how well-intentioned and enlightened this observation might be― will never come upon the ground and meaning of human existence. Barring that, science will never prove to be a reliable source of effective solutions to psychological, relational and ecological problems. Scientists may well be instrumental in providing the rest of us with a correct reading of the damage we have done so far to the Earth’s life support system, but they will not heal the wound that compels human beings to destroy one another in war and to consume as though their very existence had to be justified through excessive ownership and extravagant experience. This criticism of false scientistic aims and claims is, certainly, no endorsement of the fraudulent and contradictory interpretations of the significance of our presence within the infinity of life put forth by organized and not-so-organized religious ideologies of any kind and of any time.
Since the totality of which we are merely an infinitesimal part is not reducible to either knowledge or belief, in deriving our very sense of past, present and future existence from exclusive forms of knowledge and belief, we condemn ourselves to experience the alienation, conflict and inevitable sorrow of a cruel and irrational separation. Life as an indivisible and therefore unknowable totality offers no fitting place for any independent phenomenon of psychological and cultural uniqueness. Nor does it respect made-up hierarchies of being and plans for exclusive becoming no matter how clever and well intended they might be. And to see this, plain and simple, is all it takes to dispel what a self-centered memory might know, believe, imagine, fear and desire in its forlorn existential alienation. Put differently, a direct and complete revelation of one’s sense of psychological being (past, present and future) as a mere particular instance of a tragic error affecting the species as a whole, can bring that particular illusion to an end. And this insight that annihilates who one may think one is and would like to become is, in itself, the mystery of a life that is ultimately as formless, timeless and creative as the unconditioned and diffused sensitivity or awareness that seems indistinguishable from it. (83)
Ø I have a powerful, visceral, sense of being someone apart and distinct from everything and everyone else, even though I also understand, though only intellectually that nothing could possibly exist in separation from everything else. How could something as vividly felt as personal existence, be a misperception; and not just to me but to the species as whole? ―There is no easy and brief answer to this question, but let us start off our inquiry by saying that the mental constructs that describe with such intensity the past, present and future reality of “me”, are not actual. I mean by this that they have no substance, no present reality of their own. Self-referential concepts and feelings are the “stuff” of thought, but thought (and its attendant feelings and emotions) is only a very crude mirror of life and nothing much in itself, just a subtle material wave sustained in a vulnerable piece of highly differentiated but nonetheless material tissue. The self only exists as a largely subjective narrative nested within an equally subjective framework of mental time, and that framework (which holds as well the trans-personal or pre-personal and generally subconscious content of the psyche) supports in every brain the continuity of the whole system of thought. Thus, while each and every one of us is totally taken by a sense of unique self importance, at a deeper level there is only a single phenomenon of unconscious, subconscious and conscious thought that operates and sustains itself through the illusion of autonomous individuality.
Practically nothing of what anyone may affirm regarding the memory, present reality and future possibility of the self, is open to anyone else’s verification. We commonly say that we know someone else very well, but the exact opposite is true. We do not know anyone and no one knows “me,” least of all me. We only know the absurdly inadequate images and ideas we make about each other, which accounts for much of the miscommunication and disorder that permanently afflict our relationships. The basic structure and contents of thought are common to everyone, but since they exist in a private and gradually changing psychological enclave that is fairly sealed off in everyone to everyone else, our commonality and its intrinsic limitations and aberrations easily manages to sustain itself behind the illusion of evolving individuality behind which they hide.
A key piece of the puzzle lies in the fact that the rather flimsy idea and image-based contents and projections of self-centered consciousness are connected in a very real way to the central nervous system and the extraordinarily reactive instinct for defense of the physical organism. This is why we routinely react to even slight instances of perceived disrespect to our psychological self-image with the level of defensiveness or hostility that would be reasonable to expect as a response to a physical attack threatening the integrity of the physical organism. Needless to say, the power of the physical and emotional reactions both positive and negative triggered off by particular events in the experiential interface between “me” and “my” self and between self and others, serve to corroborate, strengthen and sustain our sense of ourselves as separate and autonomous entities living in a time and a mind of our own. For example, an intense memory of an incident that occurred in the distant past with someone who is now dead may be triggered by seeing someone who resembles the dead person. The disturbing memory may also come up by itself without being re-called by the self or prompted by anything in the external world. And this memory may obliterate whatever else may be actually occurring in the present moment filling one with tremendous rage, sadness or whatever, the intensity and reality of which corroborates the sense that: “I truly am the same person who had that experience so many years ago; that experience is part of me; more than anything else I am an uninterrupted series of remembered experiences.” Anticipatory fear or joy felt in relation to an imagined future experience may also strengthen the feeling that “I am the person who will experience this or that terrible or wonderful event”. In general, memories with their linked emotional charge are mechanically in operation in the process of moment to moment recognition, interpretation and evaluation of intra and extra psychic events and circumstances. They generate the powerful sense that it is really a time-based “me” who is having this experience of shame, pleasure, fear, hatred or whatever. There is, in fact, no such a thing as the self existing in and of itself, independently of all these memories and the mechanically rippling emotions and reactions they elicit.
It may be hard to see at first, but the fact is that symbols, images and ideas associated to psychological experience in the past, present or future, are nothing but insubstantial references and metaphors utterly incapable of accounting for the unimaginably complex and profound reality of every instant of life. Therefore the isolated “me” that depends on these mental figments for its identity and its very sense of on-going existence, is not actual either. What I say I am is merely a mental construction, a made-up narrative that, unsurprisingly, feels alienated from the larger cosmic order that exists on its own, largely unrelated to the minuscule and isolated intrapsychic reality of the self and the external ideological and “environmental” reality created by self-centered thought to stage its tragedies and comedies. In other words, what the conditioned human mind (any human mind) thinks and feels about the world and about itself, is hardly related to the totality of what is actually going on even in the immediate vicinity of the physical organism. In the peculiar realm created by the conflict prone juxtaposition of all our predigested personal opinions, emotions and definitions, nothing is in fact what I or anyone else may say it is. The map is not the territory, and all that jazz.
Now, (and here comes the break in continuity we are after), since I do not know what the cosmos is or what life is, and since I must ultimately be an integral part of both (even though I might not know for sure or even feel that I am), I open myself to the possibility that I really do not know who I am; or, better said, that the knowledge I hold about myself cannot be trusted to adequately represent the true meaning or significance of “this” presence in the universe. This suggests, in turn, that the mind in “here” (index finger pointing to the head) might be something totally other than a silly personal story stretching back to wherever I chose to imagine and, forwards, to the next chapters I may wish for (or fear) for myself as the story moves into a future foreseen largely by its own myopic past.
Again, the powerful presence of what I call “my” mind seems to exists in striking contrast with a cosmic totality that being forever outside my empirical and cognitive reach, feels distant and utterly indifferent to the “reality” and fate of my sense of separate existence corroborated by strong sensations and feelings. This distance justifies, in turn, a great emotional disconnection at every point in time and space between the self ―the entire human species― and the totality. Even though I am dimly aware of its presence in, through, and all around “my” physical and mental reality, the impenetrable complexity and enormity of the actual and potential, material and immaterial universe still has a tremendous power to instill fear. Sensing that it does not care a whit for me and my fate, I largely push it out of consciousness as much as I can. And yet, despite this persistent cutting off through febrile occupation and intensely absorbing entertainment, I still keep looking over my shoulder at the great mystery threatening to swallow me if I stop thinking about myself and my destiny. For some strange reason, I cannot quite believe that the provincial, reiterative, conflicted, confused, lonely and ever hungry reality of this personal mind of mine, could possible be and remain for as long as I live far more real than life itself.
Most of the people willing to discuss these matters for more than ten consecutive minutes do not seem willing to confess to the same desolate internal landscape or to this strange feelings of alienation. But it does not take much digging to see that they too are cut off from life. They are as bound and programmed by their experiences, their likes and dislikes, and their specialized knowledge, fears and desires, as I am by mine. It is clear that the intensity of time-bound inside-the-head experience and the daily pressures of personal life blocks them, as they block me, from the otherwise conspicuous presence of the totality glaring at all of us just beyond the defended fortress of our isolated consciousness. When confronted with the fact of this extraordinary division between our extremely limited personal minds and lives and the immensity of life as a whole, many confess that they have never thought much about any of this. Others simply deny that it represents a problem, or they mention some religious or scientistic belief that for them bridges the separation. However, if pressed for more intimate information, they fade or wiggle away, or become defensive, if not openly hostile. What generally comes across in these reactions is a tremendous reluctance to be disturbed by something so unrelated to personal concerns and habitual patterns of thinking.
Once a friend driven to anger by my assertion that there had to be something beyond our personal and collective small-mindedness, but that this something could not possibly be accessed, ever, through desire or any form of intellectual effort, finally shouted at me: “Why don’t you just go to a good bookstore, look in the self-help and religion aisles and find a book that will work for you!” For those in the overwhelming majority who have already found among the many available ideological recipes the one that best suits their temperament, particular cultural idiosyncrasies and life plans, the mind-crushing religious paradox of desperately needing what we cannot even desire is useless and, perhaps, bordering on the deranged. (“Religious” in the sense of binding back what has been broken apart.)
But since I happen to distrust all forms of righteous certainty inflated by consensual vapor, and am sincerely caught in the horns of this religious paradox, I have no other option than to stay with what I see even if that implies standing alone. Not isolated, but alone and for the simple reason that, while still feeling cut off from life as a whole, I realize that a deep interest in the possibility of non-duality is clearly incompatible with the mental separation intrinsic in ideological identification of any kind. Because I care deeply about seeing the world and myself as factually as possible, and not as I would like either one to be, I am no longer drawing a meager measure of questionable personal security through the psychological logo and armor conferred by membership in a particular ideological camp. No longer looking through the bias of any particular religion, political party, nationality, ethnic group, social class, race, profession or gender background, one is culturally and psychologically next to nothing. This independent and direct seeing has no predetermined standard or future projections against which to judge what is seen. It is clear that any preconception or favored outcome will inevitably further what has already been for thousands of years an extremely serious case of evolving myopia, which in this matter is equivalent to total blindness. Opting over and over for the darkness implicit in the illusion of separate and self-centered knowledge is, suddenly, no longer an option.
There is a connection, indeed, between radical skepticism and perceptual sensitivity; between the abnegation of the self and the manifestation of life as a whole. The presence of one implies the absence of the other. The bland indifference or blinding conflict implicit in duality cannot be resolved except by the shattering of the self. Why this? Well, let us look at ourselves again. The self ―any self― is the generic (trans-personal) experiential content wired into the human brain plus whatever is thought, believed and desired on the basis of the specific biographical experience and learning that has further conditioned “my” or “your” particular brain/mind. Your self is the particular form of insensitivity affecting the particular physical brain that sits in “your” head. My self is an equally insensitive personal conceit blocking, as it does in every brain, not only most of what occurs at every moment around me, but the possible but unimaginable manifestation of life as a whole. In so far as your and my psychological reality impede sensitivity and impersonal intelligence, they are one and the same. We are what we suffer from; we are the over-inflated little that remains after we declare everything else to be “not-me.” We are the tragic essence of the human condition; simultaneously the product, the very root, and the future replica of all our psychological and social traumas and problems. In the realm created by the conflicting intersection of cultures and personalities, we think ourselves very different from one another and very distant from life and death, when in fact we are not.
So, this is our situation: We may realize that there is something terribly wrong with the way we live and relate to one another and to the world as a whole. And we may be beginning to see that the essential cause of this whole mess lies in our nearly universal conviction that we are very different from one another and aliens within the life that sustains us all. It is also clear now that, even if there is a certain awareness of the general problem of conflictive egotistical and ethnocentric separation, the physiological and psychological programming isolating and dulling our minds is incapable of finding a real and effective solution to its own tragedy. Our most intimate sensations and emotions keep corroborating the fantasy of our alienation. Whatever we do to overcome our differences seems to leave intact at a deeper level our sense of alienation, if it does not make it even worse. Our brains and nerves seem to be wired to categorize any problem that arises and to then work on finding and implementing a solution to it that will be necessarily based on previous experience. This works fine in the case of scientific, technical and practical challenges that remain relatively stable over time and exist in a space other than that of the brain grappling with them. But in this case the problem is the subjective and self-centered process of thought itself and, so, it cannot be externalized and treated remotely with the application of objective knowledge. We are not changing a tire or planning to overthrow a government.
One may begin to have a vague sense that, perhaps, all our chronic personal and interpersonal problems would be promptly resolved if we could only realize that the true ground of our existence is in life, and not in our particular and time-bound psychological memories and desires. But the immediate fact remains that the self-conscious psyche is separate and bent on prolonging its existence through epidermic modifications and, often enough, also through the objectivization and blatant or subtle control of others. How could a little person override the effect of thousands of years of conditioning. How could anyone slip away from the fractured, conflicted and suffering humanity that is the net result of an entire history made up of deceptive good deeds, heroic actions and cultural “progress”? How could anyone walk away from a species-wide rush towards self-destruction.
This if nothing else could, perhaps, be kept front and center: Since the separate self is the source of all division, confusion and hostility, anything that the self might do to resolve its mental and social problems is not only doomed to fail, but serves to further strengthen and prolong its egotistical separation and the cultural fragmentation that is its general context and only possible future. To see this as an actual fact and not just as another useless theory, instantly frees the mind from the associations, attachments and projections, that determine particular being and the falsely positive actions that articulate its process of gradual becoming. How could anything change drastically in our lives and in the world, if it did not involve the disappearance of the assertive and knowing self?
What is at issue here is not the self’s discovery of the totality or the sacred but, rather, the direct and complete unmasking of the psychological entity that feeds, grows and furthers itself on the basis of illusion. It is not that the self finally finds the truth, but rather that the truth finally destroys the self. (84)
Ø A relatively painful or uncomfortable state of consciousness seems to be typical of every man, woman and child. The constant unease within our own minds and the tension in our interaction with others, are directly related to the urge to attain a more pleasurable state of mind or at least to escape from a more painful one. To be human, as we know our humanity, is everyone allowing a given set of gradually evolving preferences and abhorrences, determine a particular agenda at every point in time and, generally, without much concern for the consequences this particular course of action might have for others or other aspects of personal life. The mind conditioned by recorded experience, both painful and pleasurable, is incapable of perceiving anything without the interference of memories from the past restricting and informing that perception and, therefore, triggering off a conditioned reaction bound to be inadequate.
Desire, especially the desire for the pleasures of privilege and influence, strongly limits and biases perception so that the individual feels compelled to side with certain individuals and certain groups with their respective ideologies, while simultaneously resisting or fighting others in order to fulfill what, seen within a larger social and ecological context, is definitely an irrational agenda. Something very similar occurs within the mind itself, because the self-centered process of thought is itself generally conflicted by different types and levels of contradictory desire. Especially disabling is the nearly universal urge to realize an idealization of oneself that is sorely contradicted by actual mental, behavioral and relational reality. All these different levels of energetic egotistical subjectivity force human life into a permanent struggle of small-minded alliances pitted against one another and endlessly fractious within themselves; a permanent mental and social battle in which isolated, contradictory and self-obssesed human beings feel almost permanently threatened by others and conflicted within.
The net outcome of a self-isolating, conflicted and conflicting human mind is the disorderly and violent world in which we all live, and where our newborn are socialized, “educated” and in some social circles, and most strangely, even expected to succeed. Those who actively disobey the dominant cultural values and mores, or who just complain about the risks and difficulties inherent in such social set-up, are regularly treated as misfits. And rebels and misfits are, of course, fairly easily conscripted into the ranks of misguided revolutions or idealistic counter-culture movements. Some of the discontent also fall through the interstices of the social/mental grid and into the nether world of religious or secular sects, severe substance addiction, or madness and crime. However, mental conditioning and social regimentation are so strong and pervasive (in just about every cultural domain), that sooner or later most rebels succumb to the enormous pressures brought to bear on them. Some end up dead or physically and mentally restrained in physical and chemical jails. But the great majority end up conforming to socially approved roles in which they too will work hard in order to “responsibly” fulfill proper dreams of personal realization in this or another life.
Rebelliousness generally trades obedience to one set of rules and authorities for obedience to a different one. Conventional radicalism never goes far enough because it never questions the self, and because it consistently sees society as an outside enemy and not as the externalization of the conditioned human mind that it really is. Most everything we ever do or leave undone seems equally inscribed within a general cultural and psychological pattern forcing the isolated and unsatisfied individual to struggle from crib to death to attain a comparatively improved state of consciousness and a better set of circumstances. This universal mental mold has held throughout the ages even though only an extremely small number of individuals manage to attain and retain these goals (while alive, it should be added in deference to the immortal ones). Regardless of the mountain of evidence attesting to the meaninglessness of our lives and the frequent failure of our striving, we doggedly keep on trying, for that is all we know. For us humans being is becoming. It seldom occurs to us that our discontent may be a clue to something entirely other than shallow contentment. We practically never stop struggling to attain a fairly exclusive source of satisfaction, and in that effort we pour all of our energy, all we have got. The culturally sanctioned urge to procure mental distraction, physical pleasure and the rapture of status and power, permanently bars most of us from considering the possibility that it is precisely from the mind’s identification with personal and cultural knowledge and its projection into the future, that our sorrow stems.
Breaking the general pattern of mental predetermination is not a gradual process, but a single act. An act that begins and ends with the collapse of the all too established conviction that consciousness is the fundamental terra firma of our existence. If the human tragedy is the result of self-centered consciousness extending itself in time through the thoughts and actions of multiple individual and collective actors simultaneously attempting to reach exclusive and preconceived fulfillment, then the only way out of this tragedy must involve the sudden emergence of a mental state entirely unrelated to the phenomenon of separate and gradually evolving personal consciousness. The problem lies, evidently, in that since conditioned consciousness is only knowledge and its operative realm stretches only as far as that knowledge can go, it cannot possibly move towards something beyond itself; something it cannot conceive. Thus, images and ideas conjured up to speculate about what may lie beyond the self, are ultimately useless and potentially dangerous when allowed to project and chase after what cannot help but be mere modifications of the same old separate and pre-programmed personal and tribal mental ethos. However, a full and immediate awakening to this very fact that self-centered thought cannot possibly transcend its own confines, constitutes the end of the mental process of experiential self-projection we all call “my” self. In other words, the whole process of self-centered being and becoming comes to an end at that very instant in which thought itself realizes that any psychological projection made onto the future is but the guaranteed continuity of the very isolation, frustration, conflict and everlasting sorrow it is attempting to overcome. All lingering hope that something will make consciousness be or feel better sometime in the future is, then, irreversibly extinguished. What, if anything, results from this collapse of the illusory mental space created by memory and self-projection, is not something that can be speculated upon beyond assuming that it cannot possibly be at all related to the same old separate, time-bound and suffering consciousness.
Who among us has what it takes to crash through the wall of fear defending the culturally sanctioned value and untrammeled continuity of self-centered consciousness? Again, this question is invalid because it presumes that there is someone within consciousness; someone who is feeling fear but who would, nevertheless, like to break out. If the process of self-centered thought realizes that any projection of itself is but a new version of its chronic dysfunction, and if as a result of that insight it actually comes to an end, then fear ―which is but a projection of self-centered thought mechanically looking for a known and preferred outcome― can no longer exert its power. Beyond ambition and the words that construct future scenarios, there can be no one to feel fear. As we have seen many times already, consciousness only exists as symbols, images and ideas representing the psychological past and traveling through an equally mental interpretation of the present in hot pursuit, or avoidance, of a desired or feared future. Therefore, the ending of self-conscious psychological time implies the advent of a mental state in which action is not determined by personal experience or the particular desires and fears engendered by that experience and powerfully affecting the central nervous system of the organism. When it comes to the end of psychological time, there is no room to fret, procrastinate and wobble. Either the self dies to this timeless mental state or it does not. If it does not, it merely continues struggling to achieve the improved state of consciousness that it fears might not be able to achieve; the very state of consciousness that might be lost as soon as it is achieved.
No one can transmit to another what a mental state not based on separate and conscious self-awareness might be, because whatever words or images could be used to express the nature and quality of this state would, not only be ruefully inadequate, but would also become to the one still mired in separate consciousness yet another preconceived goal to be achieved and, therefore, one more installment of its permanent state of self-contradiction and barren effort. (85)
Ø Please, first hold your breath and then read the following paragraph. ―What is radically different between us is that, while you are a particular instance of human experience desperately reaching out for personal fulfillment within the parameters determined by your specific cultural environment and without much caring for what happens to me and just about anyone else, I am a particular instance of human experience desperately reaching out for personal fulfillment within the parameters determined by my specific cultural environment and without much caring for what happens to you and just about anyone else.
Incidentally, is this difference between us the reason why we can hardly talk to one another about anything of relevance? (86)
Ø Exclusive knowledge and particular meaning is all we have and all we are, and that is why what is not personal and tribal is generally meaningless. “My” particular life, says every woman and every man, is meaningful beyond words; life as a whole, the flowing context of contexts, is far too unfamiliar and abstract to even approximate the same level of importance. What “I” know, what I like and desire, is meaningful; what others know, like and desire, is not. “My” suffering is hugely significant; other people’s, not so much. And if “my” pain and sorrow have such relevance, just imagine that of “my” sense of psychological security and status. Along with my pleasures, they have absolute value; value clearly worth defending at just about any cost. (87)
Ø We are generally quite identified with the body, at least with our particular perception, feeling and knowledge of it. And it is common to believe that while the physical reality of the organism ends where the skin meets “not-me,” the personal mind extends far beyond the body, not only because of its perceptual and cognitive extension into the world, but also because the soul (or some other similarly magical mental construct) connects them to an invisible ultimate reality that exists beyond time and that, at least for some, will become fully manifest after death or a full cycle of multiple deaths and reincarnations. It may sound tragic or heretical to some, but the truth is that there is no need for these self projections into an imaginary after life. The body (including the brain) does not end at the edge of the physical epidermis or at the outermost limit of the cognitive reach of the organism. This, simply because the whole physical entity is so critically dependent for its existence on the larger ecological context of the Earth as to be inseparable from it. Besides, the biosphere is nested within the planetary environment which is, in turn, inconceivable outside the multi-dimensional matrix of the cosmos. Thus, in so far as one is the body and the body is matter, it is absurd to conceive of the physical organism as separate from the rest of the physical world.
There is a whole lot more to matter than what is subject to be noticed by our limited perceptual capacity. This, even when amplified by powerful instruments and then translated into symbols and theories by our intellective capacity which, even if aided by the most rigorous methods and the most powerful computers imaginable, remains extremely limited. Our perceptual and intellectual capacity cannot ever get to the heart of matter (let alone the heart of the diffused cosmic mind that seems to underpin its perfect order), not only because it cannot ever see and know the totality of the flowing levels or layers of inter-penetrating reality, but also because the smallest elementary particles we can detect emerge from and fall back unpredictably into a timeless ground that has no perceivable form. All this to say that what we know and what we might be capable of learning in the future may continue to generate the mental reality in which we customarily live, struggle and die, without ever bringing us even an inch closer to a truly good life, let alone to the truth. And by the truth we mean here not just the capacity to discern fact from illusion, but the infinite totality that is intrinsically beyond our reach, even though we have been somehow (and surely for some reason) dimly aware of its invisible presence for thousands of years.
The knowledge, both scientific and psychological (but especially the latter), that creates our disparate sense of the world and of ourselves, will never be commensurate with the ultimate truth not only because representation is never what it represents, but also because the entity that would presumably and eventually come to “know” the whole, does not exist outside of it. In other words, knowledge implies duality, an object-subject relationship mediated by symbolic languages that is inconsistent with life as an actual and all-encompassing totality. Overly tight identification with what we (each) perceive, experience and know is then the fundamental problem of human existence because in tearing us all apart from what is unknowable but nonetheless present as the real ground of our existence, it creates and maintains the division, confusion and conflict we have always suffered from. Trapped in the reality created by a fragmented and inherently limited human consciousness, it is extremely difficult for anyone to see that the cruelly divided and sorrowful world we are all continuously creating and re-creating with our thoughts and actions, is a tragic error of the species that has to be confronted if we are to survive, let alone come to the plenitude of life.
Relatively well educated people have a sense that what is known ought to be an accurate representation of what actually is or, at least, of what has actually happened or is most likely to happen. Were it otherwise, the scientific method of inquiry would never yield any operative results, and no judicial system could ever function with any significant degree of fairness and success. But if good scientists and conscientious witnesses and judicial professionals operating within their respective contexts realize that inaccurate, incomplete or biased versions of the truth will come back to haunt them, why is it that most individuals (probably including these decent scientists, witnesses, lawyers and judges) still assume that they are existentially separate from everyone and everything else? Why is it that we do not see that our sense of separate personal existence based on self-projecting psycho-cultural experience requires blinding ourselves to our undifferentiated amalgamation within matter and, beyond that, our inclusion within the infinite totality of which the dense and more subtle material phenomena (actual and potential) seem to be only a very small part? Why is it that we continue to base our existence largely on biographical memory, its peculiar sense of manifest destiny and what little sense we can make out of the workings of the cosmos, when it is clearly unwise to treat what we do not know and what is beyond knowledge as though it did not exist or matter? Is our exclusive and largely subjective identification with experience and knowledge not responsible for the enormous suffering resulting from conflict with ourselves and estrangement from others and the world at large?
Again, the short answer to all these questions is that we cling to what is known and knowable simply because we are conditioned to assume that what we personally learn, believe and desire is all that matters and, perhaps, all there is. Despite the chaos and violence in the world, we continue to think that nothing whatsoever warrants losing the sense of security and status granted by our identification with exclusive tribal and personal recollections and ambitions. In fact, even when our very physical existence is placed in jeopardy by what we do to uphold, expand and extend the always iffy coverage of our psychological and cultural identity, we generally continue to cling to the false security blanket of the known.
Serious talk of actually losing ourselves to unknowing and, therefore, undifferentiated participation in a life that seems largely imperceptible and absolutely undecipherable, sounds like sheer madness to most. And yet, anyone weary of further banality, conflict, fear and grief and, therefore, unwilling to continue indefinitely testing different pseudo solutions to the general problem of being human, can see the wisdom of instantly moving away from anything that proves to be illusory and false. And this means abandoning the familiar confines of self-centered thought and yielding to the uncertainty, insecurity and timelessness that constitute the only possible entrance to what is our actual common ground.
Let us quickly run through this again. Awareness of the unreality, suffering and danger characterizing our present condition, points to the urgent need of abandoning divisive and harmful sources of psychological and cultural identification, even though this implies the end of the self. The very mention of this possibility of a life not mediated by the self, immediately trigger strong feelings of fear and apprehension. But to acquiesce to these feelings (and they may be just that, passing feelings) is to continue conforming to a state of mind so chronically absurd and cruel that its very sight cries out for its overturn. For obvious reasons, it is impossible to know whether there is anything at all beyond the half-truths and fantasies created and projected by the conditioned human mind endeavoring to sustain the self at any price. Therefore, there can be no motivation for the hallowing out of the self, other than the realization that its continued existence is a permanent source of pain and growing danger.
We never know for sure if any of the many available representations of “the truth” are anything but speculative decoys deployed by different traditions and authority figures to attract our attention and shoot us down to the particular level and type of insanity they advocate. If there actually is an ultimate truth beyond the mental realm created by attachment, fear and greed, it could not possibly be a goal to the ever pining self. Rational interest in the possibility of a truth beyond the personal and collective reach of thought is, then, not based on or motivated by any positive and alluring description of the nature of this truth and the advantages it might offer. All to the contrary, we move only on the basis of an extremely honest, serious and exacting assessment of the limitations and dangers of exclusive psychological knowledge and its projections.
The only correct approach to the possibility of truth is, therefore, strictly negative. We do not know or care to know what the truth may be; again, we are simply interested in seeing and instantly moving away from knowledge that proves to be limited, false or illusory. If you happen to give some credence to what is being said here, it is crucial that you bother to check and see if you are doing so from the outside as it were and, therefore, merely taking in this critical view of tribe and self as a bunch of verbal assertions leading, perhaps, to a theoretical goal. The point being that it makes absolutely no sense to be just reading words, even if they are well intended and properly understood, if there is no profound connection to the actualities towards which they merely intend to draw your attention.
The fundamental fact that needs to be directly seen is that there is no way out of the painful impasse created by the very existence of an alienated and egotistical psyche through wishful projections of reformed versions of the same beast. Whether or not this perception ushers a mental state that is in itself the ultimate truth, is clearly not something that can be known beforehand. Any possible psychological projection or expectation constitutes but a new version of the same state of duality and conflicted illusion that is in question here. It is not a matter then of how the egocentric self can gradually improve or transcend itself in order to find the truth, but whether having come into full view, this self has collapsed from the dead weight of its own irrelevance and deceit. Only a lucid, complete and immediate perception of the limitations and dangers of self-centered thought may ends its domination of the mental field; everything else is just fantasy and a waste of time and energy. (88)
Ø The greatest difficulty in approaching our psychological and social reality lies in that we attempt to do so through already acquired concepts, or by learning new ideas and methodologies in the hope that they will help us “know” ourselves better and, perhaps, also fix what might be wrong. Implicit in this approach is the notion that the entity that will acquire information about the self and its social context is separate and distinct from both. This is false. There are not two of each one of us. The one that needs to be known and changed and the one that is going to gather this knowledge and affect the desired change, are both the same. Nor is it true that the individual psyche is entirely separate from its cultural environment and the all-encompassing biological and mental context created by the entire history of the species.
How is then the age-old dictum of knowing oneself to be carried out? Traditionally, it has been assumed that self knowledge is a gradual process whereby a central and dominant subject (the “I”) gradually learns what needs to be changed and then acts to implements the change over a presumably passive psyche and over time. But this type of change is so superficial and ineffective that after thousands of years of implementation it has only managed to produce the terrible psychological, social and ecological circumstances in which we find ourselves today. An entirely different understanding of the need to know ourselves, comes with the realization that there really is no division between the layer of thought that is supposed to know and effect change, and other layers supposedly there merely to be known and acted upon. The psyche is one and it does not exist apart from a species-wide phenomenon of conditioned, self-centered and utterly dysfunctional thought that cannot possibly heal or transcend itself. Awareness of this reality destroys the illusion of an autonomous self capable of reforming self.
Taking for granted the rather obvious consideration that no organism exists in isolation from a permanently evolving biological and ecological context, we can also safely affirm that no psyche exists outside a given cultural environment and no cultural environment outside the general matrix of human experience with its history and its prehistory. What one calls “my” brain may be part of a particular organism existing at an specific point of space and time, but the human brain itself is an impersonal organ massively programmed by the entire experience of the species. Therefore, to identify exclusively with selective parts of the recorded biographical experience of a particular physical organism, is equivalent to fixating on the visible tip of the mental iceberg while ignoring the immensity of its only partially submerged base. One may consider, for example, one’s sexual experience as extremely personal and therefore of defining significance, but sexuality itself is clearly impersonal or trans-personal. Every human being is a sexual being and everyone knows something of the pleasures and torments of personalized sexuality. In a more general sense, everyone may chose to think of him or herself as unique, but the truth is that fear, ambition, jealousy, hatred, pleasure, hostility, confusion and insecurity are experienced by all, albeit in slightly different ways, and are therefore common to all across space and time. In other words, we are not significantly different from each other or from the social and cultural world we share and co-create. And if this is true, how can anyone claim a separate psychological existence? Who would you and I be without language? If you think it would be extremely difficult to function or even survive in a different culture in which an undecipherable language is spoken and where strange customs and rituals are routinely carried out, just imagine what would happen to your presumably unique existence and identity if the particular cultural mores and values that serve to buttress it, were to suddenly give away and disappear? The point being that the self cannot possibly survive complete and accurate awareness for the simple reason that it does not exist in and of itself. Self awareness is not therapy; it is not a gradual process of accumulating information about the psyche and then acting on the basis of that information with self-enhancement in mind. It is rather a sudden and global perception that dispels whatever form the illusion of self-projective psychological being may have taken in a particular mind/brain.
Now, if you feel you do not quite understand or strongly object to this line of reasoning, it might be because you feel that although seemingly logical, you still strongly sense your existence as an independent entity, and do so precisely because you know everyone else and the world itself as not-you. In other words, your psychological existence is this very sense of others and the world as substantially different from you, and of you as substantially different from them. Starting again from this very point, you could then ask if there is still someone, some essence there in your head, that is free to own and utilize this knowledge, or if all the psyche is is particular information accumulated during however many years the physical organism has been in existence. If the later is the case, then the self as an actual, concrete and discrete entity is an illusion; a common and extremely defended and reactive illusion responsible for the human mind’s persistent disorder and its notable incapacity to change itself enough to eliminate suffering.
Again, it is true enough that anyone can gain new knowledge about the psyche or dispose of some old knowledge ―let us say a particular grudge or a habit― but these minor additions or subtractions to the contents of consciousness are like attempting to change the weather by waving a feather around; the weather in this instance being the human brain/mind imprinted by the experience of the species as a whole and by biographical experience over and above that. Once the truth of this fact comes into sharp focus, it is inescapable that since each one of us is fundamentally the same as everyone else, thought itself can no longer hang onto any claim of unique and separate existence based on subjective superficialities.
Given the high degree of intelligence we demonstrate in practical and scientific matters, if psychological divisiveness were to disappear along with the mental disorder and social violence it generates, that same intelligence would promptly act to wipe out human misery from the face of the Earth. The very fact that our conflict and sorrow endures makes clear that we are the division, disorder and violence we suffer from; they are not mere circumstances or attributes external to our intrinsic self and thus liable to be acted upon at will. Is it clear now why the self cannot survive full and instantaneous awareness of itself? (89)
Ø Most of us spend our lives asserting ourselves in the attempt to find some measure of internal security and fulfillment. And yet, more often than not, self assertion brings about conflict with others who, in doing exactly the same, resist our efforts as we resist theirs. Self-assertion also implies conflict with society which is generally perceived as resisting particular ambitions. But society clearly does not exist in and by itself, it is only the out-picturing of all its constituent members simultaneously attempting to realize their contradictory desires for enduring self-realization.
The physical world that for ages patiently yielded to extreme forms of domination and exploitation to produce, not just the goods we demanded from it, but those we coveted (and over the control of which we interminably fought), is now bluntly letting us know that our personal and tribal ambitions and their attendant conflicts have so disrupted its ecological equilibrium, that our own physical survival is now back in jeopardy. We may be still trying to ignore this message, but it is increasingly evident that our species is presently in as much risk as it was at the beginning of our long “ascent” into today’s high levels of mental disorder and nearly impossible social, geopolitical and environmental circumstances. At the most intimate level, life events have never stopped attempting to make everyone aware, not only that we are not going to extract from the world, others and ourselves whatever we wanted and felt we deserved, but that there’s no way to dodge the ravages of old age and death’s fast approaching final blow to all the memories, ideas and plans that once articulated and animated our very existence.
And yet, countless human beings seem quite willing to indefinitely avoid looking at their own personal and interpersonal reality, and remain fairly indifferent to the horrors going on in the world. And those who are more alert to what it means to be a human being caught in the dire circumstances of humanity as a whole, more often than not lose themselves in the demands of particular social reforms and functions largely unrelated to the fundamental problems of self-centered thought and cultural fragmentation. In general, we spend our lives trying to defend and expand what we are, have and claim, with most also hoping to serve society by achieving whatever our understanding of personal excellence and success might be. And this nearly universal tendency of ours to not pay attention to the uninterrupted tragedy of the human species and to the disconnected small-mindedness of our own lives, is what maintains the illusion of the permanence and perfectibility of the isolated self. We basically refuse to see that all that exists psychologically is a general phenomenon of thought anchored in the illusion of a separate and endlessly evolving self, existing within equally separate cultural enclaves defined by their own on-going fantasy of historical progress. Now, to awaken from this nightmare and its consequences is psychological death. Death as the collapse of the exclusive personal and tribal memory traditionally and habitually sustained by the permanent struggle to avoid pain and achieve successive idealizations of itself.
There are those rare moments, I am sure you have had them, when you are so free of conflict and worry that you are hardly present. There is no overwrought awareness of a separate existence and, thus, no fear, no resistance, no sad or angry memory, no anxious future expectation, no mental agitation of any sort. A mind free of conflict and fear is a mind free of self. (90)
Ø The self-renewing effervescence of hope is so integral a part of our identity, that to lose it is perceived as a fate tantamount to death; or perhaps even worse since for many hope is nothing less than the essence of the self as well as the portal to eternal life. And yet hope hardly makes up for a decent life, at least not one that would be lived from moment to moment and from day to day. It is not only that hope is constantly frustrated by the not unwarranted indifference of the gods and one’s own incompetence, as well as by others’ more competent efforts to realize their own hopes, but also that what we hope to become is more often than not in dire contradiction with what we actually are. The person who wants to change is the same person who wants to remain what she actually is and who, therefore, resists change. And in seducing ourselves over and over with different versions of the same illusion of psychological transformation represented and energized by an idealized self image projected onto the future, we only manage to live permanently in conflict with ourselves and a odds with different sectors and levels of the larger social reality.
The craving for psychological security and ever more satisfying experience and status, never seems to abate. This, not only because physically and psychologically we operate on the alternate current of pain and pleasure (reward and punishment), but also because our neediness flows from a sense of personal poverty and vulnerability that is very real and very deep and, even more importantly, common to all of us. Being nothing in ourselves, we are enthralled by the illusion of becoming something, someone important enough; someone who’s permanently becoming better, someone that others will admire, love, envy or fear. Our sense of a separate and evolving existence is strictly based on the images and ideas we each have of the personal past, present and future. Thus, the shape of a personal tomorrow, either dreaded or ardently desired, only exists as the projection onto the future of a modified mental construct that is already present in memory. On the other hand, life ―actual life― has nothing to do with images and symbols, and it is a tragic mistake to circumscribe its unthinkable reality with our feeble concepts of space and time. The mental linearity of a self-centered life remembered, interpreted and projected in conceptual time, constitutes the illusion of personal existence, and this illusion blocks perception of the mysteriously interacting wholeness of life. In other words, the unending loneliness, insecurity, conflict and sorrow experienced in “our” particular lives, is the result of our common alienation from the totality.
There is an important clarification that must be made here. The possibility of a radical negation of the self made in reference to its alienation from life as a whole, is not meant to deny the existence of chronological time and the countless different forms of change in the realm of matter. So, please allow for the fact that the appearance of madness does not always or necessarily indicate total ignorance or outright stupidity, let alone madness itself. What the life/self opposition drawn above is meant to suggest is simply that the whole cannot be reduced to just those characteristics of matter and mind we are capable of perceiving and conceptualizing, now or ever. Thus, for example, while it is clear that co-evolution occurs in aspects of organismic reality fairly perceptible to the human mind, it is not a phenomenon that can be predicated as well of levels of reality not fully open to our perceptual inspection and cognitive understanding. It is then only reasonable to assume that what we may want to call “the actual wholeness of life,” is intrinsically beyond anything that we can sense and think about. By the same token, it may be totally inadequate to establish our personal existence on the basis of the knowledge we each identify with and, by extension, assume, among other things, that our being occurs and evolves outside of life, as it where. Put differently, it would be simply incorrect to presume that our present knowledge and what is potentially within the reach of human learning exhausts all there is in actual and potential existence. It was this type of assessment of the limitations of human knowledge, that lead Gregory Bateson to declare, wisely, that science does not prove anything, that it merely probes.
If we care about being free of illusion, it is essential not just to prevent ourselves from extrapolating the characteristics of what we know to what is beyond our perceptual and cognitive reach, but also to disrupt our proclivity to deny the existence of what we do not know and what may be altogether unknowable. Only awareness of the disastrous consequences of self delusion, enables us to seriously question the definition of our existence along the lines of what we remember, know and want. It eventually dawns on one that it is only honorable to say, “I do not know,” regarding certain matters because, while experience and knowledge are essential in certain practical areas, they are not, nor will they ever be, the way to heal the separation amongst us. Nor are they the way to allow the full breath and depth of life nest in the human mind. We use the notion of life here interchangeably with that of truth. Not the truth with which we are familiar, that finds itself easily coexisting with falsehood, illusion and hatred, but rather truth as the infinite totality that may well be the ground of our existence even though it is obviously not within the grasp of our knowledge or mundane aspiration. Our minds are so conditioned by the mental record of experience and the imperious prodding of desire, that they can hardly see and stay with things as they actually are from moment to moment, let alone be open to the possible irruption of the totality.
Understandably, some would counter this argument by pointing out that it does not make sense to make reference to a theoretical totality that cannot ever be experienced and known so as to, on that basis, assert that the experience and knowledge-based foundations of the self are intrinsically limited and ultimately false. While this challenge is essentially correct, it only serves to send us back to the question of why is it that the human being who is so intelligent and capable in certain areas, has been chronically incapable of a level of psychological and social change commensurate with the persistent challenge posed by our disorder, violence and suffering. That is, if there is practically no limit to our intelligence and what we can learn and do (as exemplified by our extraordinary advances in science and technology), why then have we not evolved where it matters most and become able to relate rationally and, therefore, lovingly to one another and be better adapted to our cosmic nest? Why is it that we are so consistently indifferent and incompetent when it comes to eliminating division, conflict and unnecessary sorrow from our lives? Why do we continue to trust that our permanent struggle to turn particular experience, knowledge and faith into peace and happiness will eventually reach its goal when it is patently clear that it has never done so before? If our antagonistic division and the suffering they create reflect the way our particular experience and knowledge condition our thought and action, why do we insist in believing that further and “better” knowing and thinking along the same lines will eventually bring about the solution to our problems? Is this hope not the essence of illusion? And, if it is, does not dispelling it imply the ending of the dominant process of psychological becoming that feeds thought and maintains the “thinker” at its core?
Let us try approaching this same crucial issue in a different way. Even though we may have a fairly clear sense of an infinite totality which is, as such, beyond our empirical and cognitive reach, we cannot on such shaky ground affirm its existence to then, on that basis, execute the self. This, for two intimately related reasons. The first is that there is no one there to shoot the bastard but the bastard himself and he cannot bear to do it. And, the second, that whatever may be asserted of a possible communion with an unknowable reality as an alternative mode of human existence, constitutes only a convenient fabrication of the same self-centered mental process that is forever struggling to defend, expand and prolong itself. In other words, the self that may find it interesting or convenient to morph into whatever idea it may have of the whole, is not different from this illusory construct and is, therefore, merely projecting a superficially modified version of itself into the future.
However, once this much has been admitted, it is only fair to state that it is not reasonable either to assume that there is absolutely no alternative to the dead end of self-centered being and becoming. A fairly impersonal take on the fixed limitation of the mind conditioned by particular known and knowable experiences of pain and pleasure, implies that any self definition largely unrelated to the rest of existence is wrongheaded, to say the least. The self that locks himself out of life simply because the whole is not susceptible to the knowledge and desire on which it bases its existential conceit, is necessarily a tragic entity condemned to a life of alienation, conflict and pain. For what is any particular self if not one of many manifestations of a single desperate and ever futile attempt to escape from the general mental chaos and suffering of the species? Now, if actually shocked by this realization, the mind is instantly free from the conditioned sense of separate being and, therefore, no longer involved in a process of egotistical becoming that inevitably generates conflict with others and pits the mind against itself in the struggle between what the self actually is and what it thinks it ought to become. And that is already a radically different mind; a mind no longer bound by the habitual efforts, struggles and fears characteristic of the self and, therefore, completely aware of the impossibly broken and sorrowful condition of the species and the threat its untrammeled continuity represents to the fate of humanity and the rest of the biosphere.
No one can say whether or not the mind free of the illusions and delusions of self-centered thought is in itself life as a whole, unknowable truth. Freedom at this level is not a matter of labor intensive becoming; it is rather the natural outcome of simply seeing that any step taken in the direction of a premeditated psychological outcome remains necessarily within the limited and familiar realm of separate and self-centered thought which is, by definition, not life as a whole. (91)