Ø     Honesty demands that I see myself completely and as I really am, and when this thorough honesty prevails it becomes evident that I am essentially the same as everyone else. I am a body which is nearly identical to everyone else's body and quite similar to that of other animal species. Like every other organism that has ever lived and will ever live, I cannot opt out of the central characteristics of the life cycle. Whatever and whomever is born, must labor to feed and protect itself from the elements, reproduce (perhaps), and then, age and die. I have a mind that, like everyone else's, is conditioned by the experience of the species and a limited cultural and biographical experience.

I am a sexual being, like everyone else; and like everyone else I also suffer from loneliness, insecurity, and other kinds of psychological fear. Perhaps about different things, but I am as attached to whatever I deem lovable and important as anyone else; and, like them, my identity greatly depends on these attachments. Envy, ambition, jealousy, hatred and concealed or overt violence are not foreign to me, as I suspect they are not to anyone else either. I look around and see everybody pursuing their particular pleasures and loves and doing whatever they can to avoid or stave off discomfort and pain; just like I do. I can be overly fond of my rationalizations, and I can easily see everyone else being fond of theirs.

We all suffer essentially the same psychological and cultural isolation, and we all similarly attempt to overcome this alienation by asserting ourselves over others in different ways and by adopting and cultivating fantasies of personal power, liberation, fame or transcendence.
Honesty, which is really sanity, is naturally humbling. It reveals that each one of us is like everyone else, not unique at all and, therefore, hardly a case of independent existence. Like honesty, humility is not something anyone can practice. To yield to the most fundamental truth is to die to the fantasy of the self. (92)

What would be left of us if the extremely dynamic contents of the psyche, what we each claim to think, believe, imagine and dream, were to disappear? ―Nothing much. And yet the illusion of there being an autonomous personal entity managing particular possessions, interests, knowledge and projections and, therefore, existing independently of anything within and outside the psyche, is extraordinarily powerful. In reality, we are nothing more than collections of words and images representing a series of successive biographic events selectively remembered; we are also acquired sets of particular information, proprietary skills and curious psychological attributes relatively different to those that characterize other individuals; characteristics that remain fairly constant over time, even though they may also evolve into the future. I assume that I exist as an independent entity because I remember who I was; because I see myself and the world in a particular way; because I know how to do what I do to earn a living; and because I can project and deliberately work for a future that may approximate the design intended. But who am I in myself? Who am I ― and who are you― other than a bunch of memories, associations, interpretations, comparisons and projections, words and images? Why is it that we are so afraid to go past our superficial differences and on to the very root of our presumably unique being? Is it because there is no one to do this and no one there to be found? (93)

Ø    Success is not personal. It is not the capacity to successfully compete with others to laboriously demonstrate superiority in one or more fields of human endeavor. Success is not derived by association; by looking up to some while looking down on others or indifferently away from most. It comes rather through being sensitive to all aspects of the condition we share, especially suffering and, consequently, living at every instant in quiet solidarity with everyone. Success sees and perhaps helps others see that all the honor anyone needs has already been granted by their simple partaking of a life that is common to all; a life that does not divide and rank aspects of itself; a life that being whole and unimaginably creative, is never bound to any exclusive effort to go back to an exclusive idealized past or move forward to an equally exclusive idealized future. Success lies in being nothing but life. (94)

Ø     There is no particular escape plan that has ever worked or will ever work. This, simply because the self aching for freedom from an isolated, petty and sorrowful existence, is his own prison cell. To surrender to this fundamental impotence, to see the truth of our ignorance —our ignorance of the truth— is to be turned inside out and devoured by a life that moves infinitely beyond the division, isolation, pleasure, conflict and fear we have always known as our personal lives. (95)

Ø     The human brain is conditioned by the entire experience of the species and, as in every other brain, in this particular brain this conditioning includes the dominant presence of a personal entity that thinks itself separate and unique; an entity that is overwhelmingly identified with its own biographical experience and its desires, and that calls itself “me.” The never fully satisfied and, therefore, painful and disorderly craving characteristic of a mind isolated and rigidly programmed by exclusive instances of previous pain and pleasure, seems reason enough to question if this mental setup is the only possible human reality. If whatever I (or anyone else) claim to see and know about life is hardly even related to what life as a whole might actually be, then the possibility of a direct contact with life must at least require that the psychological, cultural and trans-personal human experience lose its hold on the brain. In other words, if life as perceived by the self (“my life”) could be left aside as an extremely limited and mostly false version of reality, would the resulting mental field undivided and unconditioned by knowledge and desire, be concurrent with life itself ?

Since we are presently limited to what we can experience and desire on the basis of what we already know, it is safe to assume that the ultimate living truth is forever beyond our limited reach, both personal and collective. However, that very perception of the impotence of the separate intellect held captive in a tawdry and cruel world of its own making, signals a huge mental change. In reality, ‘change’ is not the proper word in this context, because this is no a matter of moving from one psychological form to another. The full implication of such perception is nothing short of the ending of the process of assertive personal becoming responsible for the perdurability of the dysfunctional mental and social system in which we all live. Thus, while we cannot know what a mind free of conflict and suffering ―a mind free of self, really― might be, full awareness of the dangerous isolation and banality of such a mind is essential. Would the truth not be the only agent capable of unmasking our separate and self-projecting presence as the permanent source of its perplexing absence? (96)

Put differently, if enough individuals everywhere started to “disappear” culturally and psychologically from having received the shock of simply seeing the falseness and harm of their respective forms of self-projective secular and religious identification, would not there be a seismic shift in the character of human reality? Would fearful isolation, greed and aggression not start to really disappear from the face of the Earth? And would these ugly and cruel things not vanish right along with the impostor who had all along accepted that he had to experience and inflict on others these miseries as the natural cost of being whomever he thought he was and as the only way to comply with the psychological and social pressures brought to bear upon him to become “better” in a predetermined way and in comparison with others who for that reason would have to be proven inferior? (97)

All these layers of past experience, crudely drawn above, have the capacity to project themselves onto the future through positive and negative desire when activated by the challenges posed by actual experience. In attempting to see ourselves clearly and as a whole, it is essential to distinguish between this more objective and practical knowledge (that we cannot do without) from the images and ideas with which we subjectively “know” the self and others (both particular individuals and particular groups or societies), and that we might do a lot better without. For it is this latter type of knowledge ―psychological knowledge ―that creates the isolation, limitation, defensiveness and aggression ultimately responsible for most of our mental and physical suffering.

The body, including the brain, is clearly an actuality, but our psychological being is just as clearly a conceptual construction based on past memory and, therefore, not an actuality. Strangely, this distinction between what is mental and what is real and actual is hardly ever discussed. We are generally too deeply identified with our own mental narratives, with our thoughts and physical and psychological appetites, to even notice their origin, let alone discuss their consequences in our relationship with others and with life as a whole.

If you insult me, the sound of your voice entering the ears and reaching brain is an actuality in so far as it is a presently occurring physical phenomenon. However, what a second later might be a frightened or hostile reaction on “my” part to this event represents more than anything else the mechanical reaction of internal images describing who I think I am and who I think you are and ought to behave in regards to my self-image. If the brain/mind were free of self-referential images and ideas of this sort, your possibly harsh and humiliating words or, alternatively, your words of adulation and praise, while attentively listened to and properly understood, would have no psychological impact meriting a defensive, offensive or overly pleased reaction.

I ask myself how do I know that I exist, and the answer is full of all the stories and opinions that I hold about myself, others and the world. In fact, I am nothing but these narrative and impressionistic mental constructs that are hardly related to anything actual. Proof of this is that in those rare occasions that I am not in opposition or open conflict with myself, others, and life itself, I am hardly there. Conversely, I am most aware of my presence when feeling threatened, psychologically insecure and, therefore fearful, defensive, hostile and needy. Heightened self-consciousness clearly represents a division within the psyche between the entity that is aware, “me,” and whatever the object of “my” awareness might be. When I notice that I am angry, happy or unhappy, frightened, dissatisfied, jealous, bored, depressed or anxious, I have already split myself off from whatever the active experiencing might have been. In reality, there is no independent observer at all at the instant in which something occurs. The presence of the observer manifests as a pre-informed positive or negative response to what has just occurred extra or intrapsychically. Charged reactions to psychological experience always come after and from outside the experience, as it were, thus expressing themselves according to the ideology of previous experience and with the emotional charge linked to that experience.

The actual fact is your voice calling me an idiot. It may also be something a lot subtler. A peculiar gesture or just a certain look in your face interpreted as a reluctance to grant me the attention I crave from you, may be all the evidence I need of you branding me an idiot. Humiliation and anger erupt in whatever form, followed an instant later by an inner voice splitting off from the experience to declare, “I am angry.” Immediately after, the same voice might say, “I should experience this kind of feeling; it is not coherent with my sense of being a moral or a cool person,” or “I have all the right to be annoyed and to react this way because if I do not let him know how I feel, he will continue thinking that I am an idiot,” and on and on like that.

The self is essentially images and ideas engendered by previous experience and giving shape to the predetermined frame of mind that meets moment to moment experience and reacts to it also on the basis of previous knowledge. That the fact is ex-perienced means that the self is always outside and entirely other than what actually is at every instant. The incontrovertible reality of actual events is generally not allowed by the self-centered mental process that reacts them. This is why it is extraordinary to see biased personal reaction as the means whereby the self cuts off from reality in order to protect and prolong in mental time its own ideas and opinions about itself and everyone and everything else. The point being that that the self is fundamentally exclusive and ideational, it exist only in, and as, the on-going process of psychological thought. Life, on the other hand, is all-inclusive and actual and, therefore, antithetical to the self.
Let us say that I make fun at you because I think you are ugly and your clothing unfashionable. Whether I intend to hurt you feelings or not, it is clear that I cannot laugh at your appearance unless I am comparing you with some image of what I think you should look like. This means, of course, that I am not really sensitive to your appearance, to the simple fact that there is no alternative to the way you actually look when I happen to lay eyes on you and spout off some silly remark. My comparison of the way you actually appear with the way I may think you ought to look, implies that I am not looking directly at you as you are, but rather that I am seeing through a prejudice, a prior idea in my head that has a lot more to do with my petty malice and lack of attention than with the unfathomable phenomenon of your presence in my psychic field, let alone within life.
Yet it also happens that you are well aware that according to the dominant cultural standards you are indeed ugly and poorly dressed, but that since you do not in the least identify with those standards, my derisive words do not touch you in the least. Since you have no idealized self-image, nor a fixed opinion regarding other people's possible expectations and claims, your mind is impermeable to humiliation and hurt.

Psychological offense is only possible when previous personal knowledge is committed to a defensive stance and permanently engaged in a process of idealized self-projection. Thus, the blame for what torments the self should be placed, not in the affronts it may receive, but in the divided and intensely self-reflective psyche determining its rigid existence. If I think anything about myself, any word or action in anyone else's part that does not take in consideration or, worse, that actively rejects the images and ideas I have constructed about myself, will inevitably make me suffer. And if you chose instead to adulate me by praising this image, I may become infatuated and dependent on you for further praise, and the combination of my lack of attention and your possible manipulative intent, will have us both walking down a path with very bad prospects.
Psychologically, we are nothing but isolated constellations of previous experience that, in craving the pleasure of praise and fearing the pain of humiliation with the same obstinate intensity, usher in conflict and sorrow in the same measure with which they disregard reality. And what is true of our relationship with others, is also true of our relationship with ourselves, because the simultaneous presence of self-indulgent and critical images about oneself divides and conflicts the psyche, thus generating confusion, anxiety and pain. Worst of all, the opinionated division of the psyche is sustained through whatever time the self grants itself to achieve compliance with the demands issued by its idealized image; and it does this while at the same time resisting such compliance. This battle between the actual isolated and insufficient self and the idealizations of himself projected onto the future to offset its fear and insecurity, create much of the dysfunctional mental and relational reality in which we live, suffer and die. And this is why only individuals free of the influence of past, present or future versions of themselves, are immune to hurt and conflict and, therefore, capable of navigating life with moment by moment care and attention. If there is to be a future for humanity, it will be as the result of a critical mass of human beings no longer involved in being and becoming anything. (98)

Ø     There is a peculiar and profound sadness that comes when one first realizes that no action informed by memory or desire will ever eradicate or significantly alleviate the fear and sorrow inherent in separation. Basic mental programing, especially in advanced technocratic societies, has it that there must be a solution to every problem, and so it is this very habit that reacts with sadness to evidence showing that the mind is incapable of solving the problem of chronic fear, conflict and grief. Suffering from insecurity, loneliness, bad relationship, anxiety and so many other things, is still very much with us despite thousands of years of every imaginable type of reform, revolution and religious practice. Our technological progress is spotty, but obvious; while evidence of truly revolutionary psychological and social progress is impossible to come by. We really have not changed as much as we generally like to think. If we had we would have long ago solved all our most critical problems. Tellingly, our attempts to improve ourselves psychologically, are for the most part designed and executed in response to the failure or insufficiency of previous religious practices and previous reforms and revolutions.
Now, to break with the false belief of gradual psychological perfectibility, is to put a definitive end to our deeply ingrained inclination to identify and buttress ourselves with particular methods of personal development promising the avoidance, diminishment or outright escape from suffering. Naturally, if this rejection of pseudo solutions is not complete, if it leaves room for even a glimmer of hope in the imaginable future, then through that space the self continues to roll along with its chronic isolation, and its persistent determination to find a solution for its multiple psychological problems. This, sometime in the future and through the application of slightly modified versions of its old methods seeking to attain variations of previous goals.

The isolated and conditioned mind abhors a vacuum. It must be occupied at all times. If confronted with a problematic situation for which there is no solution, it start to unravel, or so it feels. As members of the human species we all face in the common and constant fear, frustration and violence created by the psychological and tribal fragmentation of the species, a common and insoluble problem. Paradoxically, we are stuck responding to this immense challenge through the multiple pseudo solutions with which separate and conditioned psyches identify themselves presumably in order to solve the problem of fear, frustration and violence. Take away the false personal and tribal solutions, and the problem of psychological isolation and cultural fragmentation disappears. In other words, since the root cause of suffering is the psychological distance we have created between us, the pursuit of exclusive solutions to personal suffering, are forever condemned to failure. The self-isolating and conditioned mind only sustains itself by struggling with others equally involved in the same illusory pursuit of exclusive security and pleasure. Suffering is then an inevitable outcome of this universal clash of personal egotism and cultural chauvinism. There is nothing that can be done about the sorrows of separation from within separation without making them worse and, most important of all, there is no one there within the mind capable of doing anything about this terminal impasse. So, who is it that is feeling lonely, sad, fearful or angry? Are not these sensations still reactions of the self-pitying mind seeking redress? (99)

Ø     Another year is coming to an end and it would be nice to reach out to family, friends and whoever else happens to cross my path, with a general message of hope for the new year. There is everywhere the din of celebration as families, friends and co-workers gather to express, in earnest or not, their common expectation that things might be better in the future than they have been in the past; so why not join the chorus of well-wishers? There are several weighty reasons not only to restrain oneself from celebration, but to reject the very notion of hope on which the celebration rests. I do not celebrate, first, out of the most basic sense of solidarity with the countless victims of war, injustice and poverty, illness and loss; all the many people who have nothing, or little, to celebrate. But even more fundamentally, I reject the hope underpinning the celebration out of the simple realization that the multiplicity of projected desire ―the fact that different individuals and groups have different and contradictory hopes― necessarily implies conflict and violence and, therefore, the endless suffering that, in turn, habitually pleads for further and equally contradictory hope.

Any person aware of the interconnected problems facing humanity has plenty of reasons to shun the deceptive rose-tinted glasses of personal or tribal hope. And to be free of any hopeful point of view loaded with a particular bias, is to be able to look at the world and oneself completely and with independence and objectivity. To insist on seeing things as they are (and not as anyone would want them to be) is not indication of a morose and uncharitable spirit. Nor does it in any way imply an incapacity to feel joy and be at peace. It is rather the natural response of a serious person who, aware of the general crisis in the world and of the disorder in his own being, moves instantly away from personal and provincial insularity. The instantaneous perception of the actual and chronic absence of unity, peace, love and truth is, simultaneously, the negation of the false hopes and false efforts that sustain all that being the most narrowly familiar and traditional, is the most divisive. A mind free of false hope is not a despairing but a truly free, timeless and, therefore, selfless mind. Just as the presence of exclusive hope is the hallmark of a separate entity operating in the world in order to fulfill his particular fantasies and desires, the absence of exclusive hope may just indicate the emergence of an unconditioned and clear mind, capable of instant action. (100)

Ø     Even though most of us may be totally unaware of it, the ground of our existence is in life as a whole and not in self-centric and tribal consciousness. We will continue to suffer and make others suffer for as long as we hold on to the common conviction that we exist in separation from one another and that life is just the stage where our conflicting personal narratives play themselves out. Have we not had enough of the tragicomedy of a fragmented and conflicted humanity drunk on false conjecture and selfish expectation? (101)

Ø     The substitution of the unthinkable by what we each know and would like to know and experience, is the source of our sense of existing in isolation from one another. While separate and either in sorrow or glee, the larger truth does not matter in the least; what does matter is the self-projective narratives sustaining our particular identities and endlessly seeking less personal pain and greater pleasure. Security in money, belief and status then matters immensely, while the possibility of anonymous participation in life as a totality and, therefore, total psychological insecurity, hardly registers. Our particular ethnocentric and egocentric version of reality determines who we are, and that reality is so dense and dominant that it obscures every other form of life and, beyond that, life itself as a mystery beyond form.

If we feel strongly that there must be something more to life than what little we know, experience and covet, then we must acknowledge that the larger and deeper reality that may be somehow beckoning us, cannot be approached with the reductive and ever fragmenting categorization by word and symbol that characterizes our perennially insecure and avaricious intellects. Because this unthinkable reality could not possibly partition itself just in order to fit into the abstract functional divisions and hierarchical distinctions characteristic of human thought, there is in undivided life absolutely no psychological protection, let alone status, for anyone.
We are not isolated instances of existence standing inside or outside of life. In the reality that lies beyond the insular and self-projective reality of thought, no-thing and no-body exists. Now, if this is just another theoretical affirmation and not an actuality, then we are back to questioning if our trivial biographies encased within the equally petty histories and traditions of our respective tribes with their own historical claims and disputes, are all there is and will ever be to life. (102)

Ø     I cannot find myself, I cannot tell myself apart from the geyser of images, ideas and emotions spurting almost randomly from the inscrutable depths of pre-personal, cultural and personal memory; depths that, amazingly, I must share with everyone else. There are almost seven billion highly subjective narratives with which the very recent (biographical) past of the self-centered human organism distinguishes itself from others and from the rest of existence actual and potential, and I am just one of them. Who am I and why do I suffer? Why do I suffer, for example, when other human organisms identified with their own peculiar life stories and absurd ambitions so consistently treat me, not according to who I think I am and who I am planning to become, but rather following their own confounded notions about my person and how I deserve to be disregarded, attacked, neutralized or improved? (103)

Ø     Despite all our claims to personal uniqueness, we are without exception the outcome of a cumulative process of experiential data collection that has over millennia given general shape and a common orientation to the human psyche. An essential aspect of this mental programming is the rather vehement way in which each and everyone of us seeks specific forms of fulfillment. Thus, the experience of loss, frustration and sorrow for any one person or group is almost invariably related to the resistance offered by others to being made mere instruments of someone else’s exclusive “right” to the pursuit of happiness and self-realization. An irrational right that more often than not justifies inducing or forcing others to behave in ways that propitiate the achievement of our particular personal and tribal goals, at the expense of theirs. Needless to say, no one is innocent in this game. Even fairly young children can be seen, alone or in groups, cheating, hurting and humiliating each other. In one way or another, most of us are engaged in the socially sanctioned practice of objectifying others at the behest of a superior world view and, surly, the most respectable ambitions.

To see the falseness of our respective disguises and alibis and to own up to the deviousness or outright cruelty of our neurotic claims, is to end our participation in the tragic crib to crypt battle we have made of life. And this ending is the only door that may lead to common participation in the ever unknowable and uncontrollable mystery of life as a whole.
If free of the absurd claim to a separate existence and no longer wastefully invested in the cruel struggle to satisfy bottomless psychological desires, would the mind not make use of impersonal thought to intelligently satisfy the fundamental needs of everyone so that human beings everywhere may live and die happily in the wondrous life we already are? (104)

Ø     We remain enslaved by what we think, believe, feel and want until a point is reached in which thought itself realizes the enormous harm implicit in creating mental representations (images and ideas) that more than anything obscure the actual realities they were originally intended to merely point to or re/present. How would our psyches and societies change as the result of seeing this crucial difference? What would be the consequences of having the brain's natural capacity to make and utilize accurate representations of things and phenomena naturally restrict itself to the realm of practical problem solving, where it belongs? Would such a radical depersonalization and de-tribalization of the psyche not open directly to the all-inclusive immensity of life for the simple reason that it is beyond the reach of any form of conceptual representation or predetermined manipulation? What is anyone of us to be and become if we suddenly come to see that our sense of particular psychological existence is but the representational security blanket with which we have all along covered up the inconceivable and all-encompassing mystery of life to which we belong? (105)

Ø      It is largely irrelevant how one thinks of oneself, the world or life itself. Only how life might see itself is of critical interest. However, this interest comes with the caveat that such vision is irrevocably outside the human psychic field as it is presently conditioned by personal and cultural experience which is, by definition, limited, divisive and conflictive.
There is a type of knowledge that is essential for survival because it is relatively objective and operates only within the restricted and impersonal realm of science, technology and logistics. But knowledge that is self-referential and that informs personal and social behavior with its prejudice and limitation, is a bottomless source of social problems and psychological trauma and, perhaps, ultimately lethal to the entire species.

Not to know culturally and psychologically; not to be identified with anything preexisting within the psyche and in culture (as it relates to and serves the self), is a form of death. But this psychological death, is also the only real freedom: Freedom from the sense of isolation created by exclusive mental constructs that include an insane craving for psychological security where there is none to be had. A mind that has stopped being anything in particular and that, consequently, is no longer struggling to become better, is a mind that in the silence of its wise psychological ignorance is already fully open to life. (106)

Ø     Not to live under the influence of cultural forces, seems like a tall order, but so does staying with the dull slavery they impose. Can an ordinary human being disregard and remain soberly untouched by all the myriad cultural influences permanently trying to penetrate and control her mind? And, perhaps more importantly, can we be cleansed of the countless cultural notions and imperatives already lodged deep within the psyche, many outside the purview of the conscious self?
Paradoxically, one of the greatest impediments to freedom is the fairly common and deeply held desire to play a role in the liberation or betterment of society and of oneself. This, because such seemingly noble impulse generally does not go deep enough, and in its superficiality merely manages to extend in time the self-centered mental process that being the root of the problem can only be fixed through extermination. If the self is, fundamentally, memory conditioned by previous collective and personal experience projecting onto the future slight modifications of itself, how can anyone do anything to make it significantly better?
Keen awareness that the self is both cause and consequence of psycho/cultural determinism, must then include the realization that any action stemming from one's conditioning (and cultural circumstances) and intending to improve self and/or society, will only manage to add and to extend in time that same conditioning. In other words, full insight into the inalterability of thought's conditioning determines the end of all ameliorative action coming from the inside, as it were. And when the self's false role as healer of his own mind and reformer of his dysfunctional culture comes to an end, the psychic field is instantly made whole and silenced. No longer trying to protect what it actually is while simultaneously trying to become what it is not, the mind is no longer divided and at war with itself and with its social environment. It is the dynamic projection of self-centered thought that maintains the overall mental program going. The moment the self stops becoming, it stops being, and vise-versa.
And when thought is no longer invested in the wasteful toil of psycho-cultural defense and development, the mind is for the most part empty and quiet, and yet extraordinarily alive and alert; able to use thought as a useful practical tool, but not controlled and subsumed to it and, therefore, free. Free of the bind of psychological and historical time, the particular mind yields to the universal mind and, thus, naturally open to the unfathomable depths of life and death. (107)

Ø     If there is such a thing as the sacred, it must not have anything outside of it. No one can adore the sacred, because duality is illusion and the sacred must be, of necessity, the absence of illusion. If there is such a thing as the sacred, it must be the imperceptible and unthinkable ground and destiny, life and death, of all that is and all that can potentially be. (108)

Ø     What is actually and physically within, around, underneath and in front and back of us at any given moment is unrelated to our opinions about it, and seems to care nothing about who is issuing these opinions. What we know and what we want is always superseded by the unthinkable mystery of what simply is just for an instant at every instant, never to return again, at least not in the same exact form. What you and I have personally experienced in the past, what we know and what we may think we want to acquire or to experience or to learn in the future, tends to overwhelm, diminish or disregard what's right there just this instant, fresh, unknown and unknowable, about to die. The doors of perception open only when the mind can distinguish between mental representation and the evanescent actuality of life itself and, therefore, uses knowledge and thought only when needed and appropriate.

If we were to live and relate outside mental time in the sense of never letting memories or an imagined and desired (or feared) future impinge on what is actually there at every instant, ours would be lives free of conflict, fear, ambition and all the other harmful consequences of self-centered isolation craving for and straining after preordained fulfillment.
Fantasy never goes as far as it claims, but for just a moment imagine those with whom you have the closest relationships, as if you were seeing them for the first time. Be fully aware that they remain, at every instant, utterly unknowable, forever unpredictable, free ―especially free of what may be your most neurotic claims and demands. Imagine also not knowing yourself and, so, an extraordinarily sensitive psychic field free of the burdens of the past and the pre-masticated and abusive obligations of an idealized (of feared) future. The intensity of attention is the only real freedom ―the impersonal freedom of life itself. (109)

Ø     There is a moment in which the evidence demonstrating one's insignificance becomes overwhelming. It comes cascading down with the revelation that all human beings have received fundamentally the same psychological form, by-product of all-inclusive evolutionary and historical processes. This is the moment in which one is finally lost in humanity; made one with its millenarian struggle and sorrow.
Although we have an overwhelming sense of individuality, what is psychologically particular about each one of us is but an insignificant wave in an ocean of mental commonality, as our physical bodies are but highly unstable particles or membranes vibrating in the infinity of the cosmos. The general illusion of discrete being is an integral part of the entire process of memorization that has conditioned the brain through time. As pointed out before, we may each call it “my” brain, but the organ the cranium cradles has evolved in time, just like the heart, the liver or the sexual organs. It may be annoying for some to admit, but the truth is that there is no particular or personal brain, and few could reasonably argue that there could be such a thing as an “I” without a brain.

There are essential psychic traits (such as memory, anger, fear, pain and pleasure) that are present in everyone and that, contrary to popular opinion, are not separate from the entity that presumes autonomy and control over them. In fact, the “I” itself is one of these common attributes of the human psyche. Thus, just as “I” am the brain of humanity, I am also the rest of the mental traits that make up the generic human psyche. And since the psychological observer is no different from what it pretends to observe and control intra and extra psychically, nothing of what this presumed observer may do to remedy or transcend other aspects or attributes of the psyche and its social order, will ever amount to truly relevant change. Freedom and goodness, in the best sense of those words, are inconceivable if the mind remains programmed by the experience of a particular past and wanting nothing but the modified extension of this same past into a preordained future. (110)

Ø     The desire to reform society carries the implication that the critic with his ideas and methodological projections actually has the potential of changing that society in a relevant way. Every social reformer profits from the widespread belief that all you have to do in order to improve the behavior of individuals, is change social structures. But institutional change, modifications in judicial, political, educational and economic practices, while having recognizable influence over the shape of the societies in which they occur, never attain lasting and profound changes in thought and behavior. Again, we would not be who we are and we would not have made the mess we have made of things, if all the social modification carried out over the long centuries of our history had been at all effective. The problem is, of course, that the root of human irrationality is not primarily in the social institutions and traditions of our tribes, but in the self-isolating individual psyche conditioned by experience and guided by limited knowledge and exclusive desire. Societies are nothing if not the general result or out-picturing of the thoughts, behaviors and relationships of their members. And humanity itself is nothing if not the sum total of what we humans are.

Now, if society cannot be significantly changed without first deeply affecting the individual human beings that constitute it, then whoever takes on the mantle of reformer must by implication have the capacity to radically improve the mental health of the particular individuals which is what determines, at every point in time, the general state of any particular society and, ultimately, that of humanity as a whole. The problem is, however, that who attempt to reform but also live in the human psychiatric ward, are also patients. Not even the best social critics and most ardent reformers can claim to be significantly healthier, psychologically than the individuals and the collectives whose thinking and behavior they presume to have the ability to improve. The point being that there is no solution to the level of disorder at which we have arrived after millennia of successive partial and contradictory fixes, that may ever emerge from the same dysfunctional process of self-centered thought that is its root cause. In fact, the programs and projects of psychological development and social reform that so consume our time and energy, merely give continuity to a mental pathology that is practically universal and generally too deeply ingrained to be even noticed, let alone questioned and disposed of. There may be amongst us individuals whose brains are no longer controlled by previous experience and cultural tradition but, while they may do their best to help the rest of us, it is always, always, left to the individual to find what may take (her) mind from the small place of memorized personal slavery and out to the infinite space of impersonal, unconditioned, freedom. Teachers abound, and most of them do nothing but make matters worse with their devotion to contradictory dogmas and methods and to power over others, but the fact remains: Insight is not a transferable gift; it cannot be reduced to knowledge; it has nothing to do with the conditioned fears and desires of thought.

One turns naturally but with caution away from thought moving within the realm of psychological time when one’s sense of personal responsibility is, paradoxically, blocked and muted by a powerful sense of its own impotence. The caution is, of course, related to the fact that the possibility of an unimaginably different way of being human cannot, by definition, be accessed through any action prescribed by desire or fear. So, it is not just that others cannot save us, but also that we cannot save ourselves because in this matter the true solution implies ending the life of the one seeking it. A correct perception of the general problem of being human, not as an abstraction but as it actually exists in one's own mind, leaves one alone and facing the inescapable and seemingly impossible demand that the process of isolated existential becoming come to an end, along with the central agent at its core.

The fact that the conditioned mental process that has created all the problems we suffer from is utterly incapable of finding a definitive solution to them does not come, though, with a total conviction of necessary and total doom, for that too would represent a thought-based projection. If deep and thorough enough, this perception cannot but instantly cleanse the mind of particular identity, ideology and method and, in so doing put an end to the sense of time and the demand for constant effort that sustains the self. All that can be said is that a mind in which thought has been constrained to the realm of practical problem-solving is already a radically different a mind; a mind free of cultural impositions and psychological choice and, therefore, free of conflict and extremely alert.

For as long as we remain convinced of the gradual perfectibility of the human being, our only option will continue to be permanent mental and interpersonal conflict. The source of confusion and disorder is not out there in someone else or in society as a whole, it is rather in every one of us in so far as we embody divisive and, therefore, ineffective and conflictive pseudo solutions to personal and social problems. Only a profound and complete insight into the full reality of the human plight may break the compulsion of the brain/psyche to isolate itself psychologically and culturally and from that isolation attempt to change itself and others. A mind no longer at odds with itself and others stands alone, unconditioned and as free of self projection as it is of particular memories. And that is as much change as is necessary and possible.

Needless to say, none of this is said to foster a wanton embrace of the basest instincts of the organism, amnesia, or some form of fatalistic predetermination. The only aim of this book is to present the possibility of a psyche that is not identified with and ruled by memory and, therefore, no longer propelled forward by an irrational desire to protect, expand and exalt itself through actions of conformity, reform, revolution or transcendence. When critically assessed, all worldly and otherworldly plans of exclusive evasion from objective human reality, collapse from the weight of their own irrationality. As do the man-made gods following discovery of their clay feet firmly planted in our own fearful and greedy minds. At the end, only a passive and utterly impersonal observation remains. Neither tradition nor ambition filter or direct its gaze. (111)

Ø    Anything projected by self-centered thought is still thought and bears all its divisiveness, limitations and dangers. What memory wants for today or for tomorrow is still yesterday. Only freedom from the strictures and modified reiterations of psychological time is significant; the rest is just more of the same old, largely useless and always sorrowful story. (112)

Ø     A flight of imagination is the only recourse of a bird that has shun air currents, cut its own wings and caged itself in the vagaries of desire. Even if we know that the pain of disillusion is the only possible fruit of all the pleasures of illusion, we generally remain addicted to whim and go on suffering its inevitable hangovers, for that is all we know, that is all we are.
What would occur if all that is false and chimerical were to be put aside, and if the simple satisfaction of the fundamental needs and obligations of the organism no longer imposed such a heavy burden on the mind? Would it then lose itself in the infinite realm of the unknown and the unknowable; life dying at every instant, death reviving at every instant? (113)

Ø     How does someone who is free of patriotic, religious, professional and any other possible form of fervor address someone still trapped in the mental ghetto of particular dogmatism? How does a person who is highly skeptical of the relevance of knowledge in certain areas of life, speak to someone who is beholden to a particular body of information, both subjective and objective, and entirely committed to the expansion and expression of that knowledge? How does someone who knows there is nothing he can do to alleviate the immense sorrow of humanity simply because its source lies in each and every egocentric and ethnocentric psyche, speak of this horror and this impotence to others; people still fully invested in the particular professions, hobbies, entertainments, reforms and revolutions that give shape and substance, not just to their action, but to their own sense of separate and unique identity? (114)

Ø     What is it that continues, psychologically? Why does self-centeredness persist in time if all it manages to do with its thought and action is experience a few accomplishments and ephemeral pleasures in exchange for a lifetime of alienation, antagonism and sorrow? Why is it that we are so extraordinarily active, at all times invested in multiple projects, efforts and chores if they seem to have, at best, little significance and be, at worst, nothing but the multiple expression of a single phenomenon of self-serving isolation? Is it that we are just trying to fill up every available moment with reactive activity to avoid being alone and confronted with ourselves? Are we running away from something deep within that is ultimately as unavoidable as it is common; something that is, perhaps, the very essence of our presence within life, the truth,?

Does life/death have continuity? Is life an interactive collection of separate entities permanently involved in the process of becoming something else, planned or unplanned? Or is the separate existence of “things” and relational events and their continuity, mere illusions created and observed by the prominent center of an alienated and extremely unstable process of thought madly overstepping its functional boundaries? Why is the self the only “thing” that presumes to exist in and by itself? Is it imperative that the self exist? Must the human mind maintain a constant memory bank through the projection of selective and renewed versions of its historical contents? Why should the mind be so intent on keeping and improving upon an exclusive experiential record, if it does so at the expense of alienating itself from the undivided immensity that lies forever beyond the reach of its knowledge and the weak and inconstant affective grasp that conditions its operation?

What is this self of ours? Why do we think one's self is different from that of others when they all seem to be, fundamentally, the same phenomenon of trans-personal, cultural and personal memory endlessly adding to itself in the irrational hope of exclusive improvement or transcendence? And, who is it that is saying and listening to all of this? (115)

Ø     An infinite ocean is pouring on, through and all-around us at every instant. And at every instant, each one of us is trying to fit this undecipherable deluge of liveliness within the diminutive receptacle of our particular memories to then channel its ever renewed flow through the two inch pipe of self-serving thoughts and desires. No wonder we so often end up dashed against the rocks both created and hidden by this common hubris of ours. No wonder we are physically desensitized and mentally destroyed so early by the enforced perversity of its willful blindness.

To see is to take in at a glance, not the infinite ocean of life, but the falseness of the self as a separate act of existence blocking it from sight. Thus, to see is to allow the ending of separation without any prior notion of what, if anything, may lie beyond. In this matter of what to do about the terminal opaqueness of the self, to move away from what is false motivated by a previous notion of what might be true and right, is but another attempt to know and control what is and will remain beyond the reach and will of self-centered thought. (116)

Ø     It might be difficult to survive its impact, but if one is intent on seeing, the truth of our sense of individuality as a historical and collective sham is there unavoidable and overwhelming as a light fast incoming uppercut. Not far underneath the superficiality of our tribal and psychological differences, lies the astonishing fact that since we are all the result of a common evolutionary process, we cannot possibly be all that different from one another.
The human brain is not personal, as the heart or the spleen are not personal. There are no good brains and bad brains; nor saintly and evil brains. There are no French, Kenyan and Argentinian brains. Nor are there Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Zoroastrian brains. For better or worse, every body has the same physiological/mental crown and, psychologically, everybody is but a slightly different manifestation of the recorded experience conditioning this common brain; experience that only at certain conscious levels is somewhat different in everyone. The thick psycho-cultural blindfold created by each person's biographical experience, blocks this underlying unity from sight. We are generally so taken by our particular memories and ambitions, by our achievements, fears and frustrations, that the otherwise obvious fact that we are all fundamentally the same is largely disregarded.

Every person alive (and everyone who has ever lived) fleshes out his or her sense of identity and private life through the defense and cultivation of certain memories, habits and pleasures and the concomitant avoidance of certain intimately related sorrows and fears. And, beyond the thin but often insurmountable partition of particular psychological characteristics, lies the immensity of the prehistorical and historical suffering of humanity. The suffering that results from the violent clash of countless separate forms of the same personal egotism organized, sustained and potentiated by their inclusion within equally separate and antagonistic tribes. Despite the insanity it represents, much of this suffering has to remain invisible if our very sense of existence depends on each and everyone of us continuing to think himself unique, special and somehow destined to eventually increase pleasures and minimize pains to a desirable level that for many borders on divinity.

And this is why basic sanity demands a leap beyond the cultural and personal memories that with their particular likes and dislikes, self-pitying sorrows, pleasures and fears, determine the outline, content and myopic projection of the individual psyche. Put the other way around: it is only the perception of the immense and self-sustaining suffering of humanity throughout space and time that shocks the isolated mind out of its programmed isolation. You cannot take time to think about this leap in order to assess its possible advantages and disadvantages. This, simply because, regardless how learned, abstract and elegant it may be, thought invariably establishes a false separation between the thinker and the image of suffering that is thought about, to then perform an action that is always more related to the self's craving for identity and status, than the crying need to actually bring suffering to an end. It is our sense of personal and tribal separation that through its multiple, contradictory and insufficient actions in time creates, sustains, and hides the reality of human sorrow.

We are what we suffer from. No conditioned self stands outside this collective illusion and its devastating outcome. To be and become is to suffer, and that is why to see this extraordinary fact brings a sudden end to the illusion of a separate self. (117)