Ø     Whenever there is conflict between two human beings or between two cultural groups, it is because their respective self images have been bruised and their attendant expectations somehow denied. The greater the idealized self image, the greater the hurt; and, the greater the hurt, generally the greater the reaction of retaliation or withdrawal. Seldom does an initial attack, though perhaps unprovoked, fail to eventually engage the self-image of the attacked and, hence, elicit some sort of overt or covert violent reaction. Can these irrational and highly damaging psychological dynamics ever be halted? Can the vicious cycle of violence ever be terminally blocked? And, if it can be, who would be responsible for doing so? Evidently, we are all responsible as individuals for investigating these mechanical reactions to real or perceived injury to what we think of ourselves and to the resistance with which the push of our claims to wealth and status is often met. Beyond merely owing up to the fact that one is violent, one needs to meet the challenge of actually ending violence, and here is where the real problem lies because there really is no one there to do so.

No one can simply say: “I'm just going to stop getting overtly or covertly angry or upset with other people.” It just does not work that way. Even after years and years of therapy or the application of other methods (secular or religious) designed to diminish conflict, most people cannot control the emotions and the behavioral reactions triggered by a breach of their slowly changing self-image with its often half-hidden, inherently inadequate and excessive claims. There is no “me” outside this self-image as there is no one behind an enraged reaction, so anything “I” may do to avoid or transcend conflict will only amount to a relatively minor adjustment of self-definition and defense tactics or, perhaps, to an exchange of one self-image for another no less vulnerable to injury and humiliation than the previous one.

Anything we do to avoid conflict and violence is but a new version of the old multifaceted trick of passive-aggressive withdrawal or hostile self-assertion generally followed by external challenge and acrimony, in turn leading to withdrawal or self-assertion and on and on. If one ever comes face to face with the futility of superficial psychological modification, the only significant question that remains is whether or not self-image and its endless pursuit of respectful validation and costly fulfillment can itself disappear from the psyche.
Can a human being live in this cruel and woeful world free of self-image and, hence, free of isolation, hurt and violence? This question cannot be thought about and eventually answered, because nothing will come of it that way except the projection of yet another idealized image and the taxing effort deemed necessary to bring it to fruition. Conflicted and conflictive self-centeredness cannot ever gradually improve or transcend itself. So, is all this evident? If it truly is evident, then there is no follow-up question. This, not only because any further development of the self will ever amounts to anything of significance but, principally, because there is no self left to carry out the action and simultaneously yield to its effects. When the mind is no longer controlled by experience, when all escape and subterfuge have ceased and psychological and relational conflict is no longer its torment, life and death have a meaning utterly beyond words. But, again, this is not something to accept on faith; it must be independently and instantly seen and done. To merely talk about it is meaningless. (118)

Ø     This is the central issue put in the simplest terms: The starting point has been a serious interest in finding the truth, but in pursuing that interest one has come to the realization that the self and the truth are incompatible. This, simply because even in its most generous and knowledgeable actions regarding personal and social development, the self remains inherently separate, limited, utterly lost in conflict and egotism. There are as many versions of the truth as there are individual selves proclaiming them and that, if nothing else, attests to the absence of truth. Even in its most taxing efforts to transcend itself, the self remains separate and relative and, thus, outside truth as an unthinkable totality. There is no point then in straining oneself any further trying to reach what by definition is not within the capacity of thought; not just one's thought, but anyone's; and not just here and now, but at any point in space and time. In all our multiple and therefore separate historical attempts to find an ultimate reality, we have only sought and found exclusive refuge in adopted or self-created ideologies contradictory among themselves and, thus, inevitably leading to discord, violence, and that strange insistence with which we continue to plant the same rotten seed in order to eventually gather the same insufficient and toxic harvest.

And so, we ask again, what is the state of a mind that is no longer becoming, no longer seeking the truth? What is the state of a mind that, though passionate about the possibility of truth, is not foolishly chasing, defending or trying to invent a mere simulacrum of it? Consequently, what is the state of a mind that is, not grounded in either past experience or the promise of future psychological possibility founded on that same previous knowledge? What is the state of a mind that while still living in the splintered social and cultural world created by thought, no longer belongs to that world either through conformity or resistance? (119)

Ø     If one is not afraid of seeing oneself as one actually is in relationship to others and to ideas, then it is possible not to continue projecting onto the future false, idealized images of oneself. After all, how much and how deeply could one rationally expect to change propelled by one's own (or others') ideas of what is sufficient and relevant change? Despite clearly sensing the futility of superficial psychological change, one may still be well aware that beyond the limitation of the structure, content, and projections of the human mind, lies the immensity of the cosmos with its unthinkable order and its mysterious source in an infinity of formlessness. Only a fool believes that what he knows and experiences is all that exists and matters thus, if one is not that much of a dimwit, there is much more interest in what one does not know and cannot ever learn, than in what may actually be known. This interest is then free to ask and probe about what might there be beyond what anyone thinks, believes and feels. In other words, this interest begins by sincerely doubting the validity of the most subjective aspects of culture, that is, the sum total of all our conflicting thoughts, beliefs, emotions and ambitions generated and sustained within the mental and behavioral normative grid of different social and cultural environments existing within the general mental context of humanity itself. This healthy and measured skepticism (essential forms of practical knowledge must be kept) takes one away from oneself, as it were, and certainly not in the direction of new but equally sterile realms of strong identity anchored in fear and illusion. All that remains is a state of heightened attention in which there is no self-reflective center bound in imagined time.

It is only when the set precedence and febrile agendas of personalized thought are drained out through the direct perception of their mental toxicity and social inadequacy, that a quiet mental space opens up; and it is only this impersonal space that listens and sees with care and accuracy. Attention is the absence of personal thought with its endless and quarrelsome back and forth in mental time. Attention is freedom from the particular past, the pre-programmed present and the pre-imagined future that characterizes the self-centered mind. Personalized thought has disappeared and only functional, impersonal thought remains to carry out practical tasks when such are in order. Thought is merely a functional tool now; definitely not the locus of an imaginary separate existence endlessly reinventing itself while just as tirelessly resisting others and their own aggressive and futile process of becoming. (120)

The free and responsible human being is not Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Zoroastrian or anything of that nature. Minds that asserts and tirelessly work to expand a separate identity based on allegiance to a particular faith or tradition, are inevitably caught in separation, conflict and suffering. Consequently, they cannot be counted on to bring about the caring, intelligent and harmonious unity without which the species will not endure for long. Clearly, such unity, depends on the emergence of individuals who do not subscribe to the norms and traditions of any gender, nation, ethnicity, religion, race, cultural organization or group; individuals who are not from the political right, left, center or anything else in between; individuals who are not beholden to the high levels of defensiveness and hidden or overt hostility that characterize specific economic or educational classes in any particular society and in the species as a whole.
The survival of humanity depends entirely on a level and quality of personal freedom, intelligence and responsibility that cannot exist without an irrevocable renunciation to all past, present and possible future tribal traditions and authorities. This general abnegation of the self includes, at a more intimate level, abandoning the habits and internalized authorities that keep, with their dispensation of false certainty and security, similarly confining and quarreling practices alive within the personal psyche itself.

In a nutshell, the multiple challenges to the well-being of the species that are now beginning to converge and threaten the physical integrity of just about everyone on the planet, can only be properly seen, met and neutralized by individuals capable of standing alone. Alone, not in the sense of being isolated and anti-social, but rather in the sense of being free from the demands of any particular social consensus; free from the excessive obligations that come from wanting to earn, and then from having to defend and improve, a respectable place in any sector or level of the social hierarchy.
No longer claiming an exclusive past and future, and no longer using the present as if it were merely a convenient bridge between the two, the free and responsible human being is no longer grounded in self-serving consciousness, but in the mystery of life as a whole cradling everyone's quotidian life and death.

Do we have, you and I, the sensitivity, vitality and independence necessary for a life free of cultural and psychological precedence and projection? Or should we just continue to be the reliable serfs others and even ourselves expect us to be? Does life demand that we be radically free so as to adequately confront the general crisis threatening the world, or is it complicit with our blind obedience to the orders issued by fixed memories, irrational ambitions, absurd cultural patterns and the power hungry experts, leaders, ministers and gurus who so eagerly “sacrifice” themselves to better serve our false sense of security and self importance? (121)

Ø      Most everybody who lives even a bit beyond the basic battle for survival, seems beholden to a life-long struggle for personal fulfillment understood as the acquisition of material and non-material symbols of status. Why? —Why restrict the meaning and value of our presence in life to these ultimately always barren deployments of desire? Are not the goals of self-realization mere escapes from our deepest common reality? And if, deep down, we are equally insignificant, are our contradictory and outlandish attempts to fulfill ourselves not also the source of all the loneliness, frustration, conflict and fear we suffer from? (122)

Ø     Where are you once you have shaken off cultural security blankets; once you are no longer dependent on the scarce mercy of delusional hopes? —Who are you when no longer expecting that someone else, human or divine, will solve your personal issues or the ever more pressing problems of the world at large? Do you still exist if no longer a member of a self-deluding social and cultural consensus? Does the pain and the sense of radical independence that come from seeing things as they are—and as bad as they are—kill you? Or does the very act of closing the little spigot of illusory cultural identity and deluded motivation, integrate the mind into a body that, clearly, is already submerged deep within the impersonal stream of the totality? No longer caught in the absurd sense of manifest or not-so-manifest destiny of some particular tribe or group, and no longer afraid that some silly hope in personal success might go unrealized, an impersonally intelligent and caring mind is already indistinguishable from life. Now, how would such a mind act in the world is an impertinent question if it comes from someone still caught in the narrows of time and, hence, in separation, greed and fear. (123)

Ø    What characterizes human beings is exclusive identification with a personal narrative inscribed within a larger cultural narrative. Enduring meaning suffuses both interrelated story lines underpinning their exclusive character; this, notwithstanding the presence of contradictory elements in both. Relatively few individuals seem willing and able to defy and then abandon at least some of their cultural habits and norms, and this is generally done not in order to live free of unnecessary obligations and complications, but rather so as to create or adopt new forms of social and psychological meaning, full of their own restrictions, but perhaps presenting a better chance regarding salient status and overall mental comfort.

What we know as social progress could be described as the massive influence of “successful” individuals and their particular groups of reference on the lives of other individuals and theirs over a given period of time. The value of this progress depends, of course, on whose point of view is used to assess particular historical events and processes and the realities they produce. For example, the triumphs commonly attained by powerful countries and outright empires in the military or economic colonization of other peoples, is not necessarily experienced as such by the vanquished and colonized. For slaves living in nation states where they were deprived of basic freedoms and brutally exploited, the idea and progress of democracy meant very little. The great success of a corporation dedicated to the extraction of natural resources, would not be equally predicated of the species that may go extinct or the people that may lose their health, livelihood and homes as a result.
In general, it seems fair to say that, although there has always been and continues to be a significant amount of both progressive and regressive social and geopolitical change, this type of change has never been, nor will it ever be, a solution to the great human problems which remain constant, permanently unsolved. The basic issue is that even our best-intentioned and generous efforts do not really address the source of all our problems: ourselves. In fact, the self-serving isolation of the individual psyche and the conflictive cultural fragmentation of the species protect and prolong themselves in time through these very efforts to change things around. (124)

Ø     It is essential to ask in all seriousness what is the relationship between the self and life as a whole. The self is an integral part of a narrative selectively known and furthered along by the restrictions and frictions of its own projective movement occurring among countless others. On the other hand, life cannot ever be reduced to a known narrative, and much less can it be manipulated to constant gain by a wayward aspect of itself that grounds its sense of a separate existence on a little knowledge and an over-sized appetite. (125)

Ø     What is beyond words and the ideas, beliefs and desires that words knit together? And who would ask that question, and how would it be answered? (126)

Ø     Life is unthinkable, whereas “your” life is precisely what you think; that is, what you remember, opine, fear and want. We are, psychologically, whatever we each hold so close and dear in terms of experience, conviction and possibility, that it takes precedence over life as a whole. In every conditioned brain, the self has unwittingly concluded that “my” life has total importance and, therefore, that life itself is of little importance. Self-centered thinking, which is as common in the human organism as are the digestive and circulatory systems, operates on the bases of symbolic and particular (personal) memories and within a time frame of its own creation. The problem lies in that memory and its modified projection in mental time, are largely unrelated to the actual and mysterious co-existence of everything else. In other words, because the self-sustaining and highly subjective narrative of the thinking “I” hinges mostly on a mental recollection of what no longer is (if it ever was) and on the imaginary projection of what still is not (and may never come to be), this narrative tends to largely ignoring the actual, moment-by-moment presence and significance of life as a whole. What else could make us so indifferent to the wholesale destruction we have brought upon the life support systems of the planet? What else could explain the damage done to the human brain now so extraordinarily insensitive to the cosmic intelligence of life itself?

The delusional preeminence of a species-wide mental fixation on past experience over the actuality, multidimensionality and non-linearity of life as the whole has, undoubtedly, real and horrific consequences. Self-centered thought generates an unending stream of irrationality that it is then incapable of seeing and containing, let alone rectify or transcend. Regardless of what we, human beings, may attempt in order to solve our problems, our thinking remains atomized, conflicted and essentially alienated from life itself. Even though the true ground of the human presence and its only significance is life, our sense of separate existence and unique identity is attained and maintained at the cost of driving this ground out of sight and out of mind. Our very act of multiple psychological being with its endless process of conflictive becoming, constitutes then our own condemnation to an on-going hell of alienation, conflict and unnecessary physical and mental pain. This self-inflicted torture can only stop at the cost of our most highly regarded treasure: ourselves. And, so, we balk. We balk, until we are ready to see that a life of fear and procrastination is no life.

The great religious paradox to which all the traditional religions, organized and not-organized, only hint at, lies in the fact that we are not what we think we are; the fact that we actually do not know and cannot ever come to know the common depth of our being. This, among other reasons, because knowledge is not the proper way to bridge the gap between what we think of as our lives and life as a whole. Seeing that life does not seem to separate, rank, catalog, and give independent management capabilities to aspects of itself, quietly undermines the veracity of our sense of separate and unique existence. It also exposes the insanity of our desire to control everything. No matter how opulent, the spoils of self-centered thought and desire can never rival the simple fact of our participation in the mystery of life. Have we not had enough of the awful consequences of believing otherwise? (127)

Ø     If humanity has remained stuck over the ages with the same sources of social disorder and mental suffering, it is largely because of this: As individuals, we have never managed to go beyond the psychological pain and pleasure we have known without engaging in life and identity defining efforts to get less of the former and more and better of the latter. At the societal level, countless forms of traditional cultural activity (in the anthropological sense of the word “cultural”: that is, action in the religious, scientific, political, economic, educational and artistic fields), are still attempting to pull the long and heavy train of our personal and tribal hopes towards countless different and contradictory versions of the “promised land”. Even as the psychological and cultural distance between us widens, and all around us relationships and institutions constantly malfunction or fall apart, what keeps nations, organizations and practically every individual moving along, is the deeply set conviction that our trust on a particular set of diagnostic tools and gradual solutions will eventually deliver the happiness and security we all commonly want. Yes, against all reason we keep hoping that our ideological and psychological ghettos will achieve (always at some point in the imagined future and at the cost of significant effort) a stable, if not outright permanent, state of security, peace and joy. Amazingly, not many seem to realize that the endlessly reiterated assertion of exclusive and therefore conflictive claims to wealth, knowledge, belief and power, will never, ever, result in anything other than a slightly modified version of the mental and social disorder we have always known.

If you are at all aware of what is presently happening in the world as the result of tribal and personal shortsightedness and egotism, and have survived feeling you were actually going mad, you may occasionally and rightfully feel like screaming. Needless to say, such gesture would not be very well received in social circles in which the typical conversation is contained within the comfortable, familiar, boundaries of gossip, entertainment and political and cultural reform “light.” You may, indeed, be thought insane and disturbing the reigning peace of deadly indifference and insensitivity. Even in the most serious discussions, acute problems are often conveniently separated from one another and externalized as though they were entirely apart from and unrelated to us, the human beings who actually create, maintain and suffer them. In widely different environments ranging from the family's living room, to corporate boardrooms, church councils, universities, the sanctuaries of so-called “terrorists”, and the deliberative chambers of national governments, the causes of psychological and social problems are routinely identified and described according to different intellectual schemes. According to the diagnoses, blame is then judiciously placed wherever it might be most convenient, and promising methodologies for solving these problems are determined, and occasionally funded and implemented. How could the contradictory solutions different groups come up in this process, not only not solve but actually worsen the fundamental problems affecting us all? How could we expect that our disparate solutions would not become the source of new problems.
War, radical climate disruption, growing poverty and violence, and yet we continue everywhere mentally and tribally isolating ourselves, routinely abusing and hurting one another in the very effort to “love” those closest to us and, therefore, staying pretty much in the same distressing multi-cell sound studio in which we have always lived recording and endlessly re-replaying our guffaws, cries and moans.

Is it not yet evident that unless we manage to go beyond our respective mental corrals, the actions our contradictory thoughts inform will remain unable ―as they have always been― of solving our antagonism and healing our suffering? No one needs to be a genius to realize that the way we personally think and relate, and the consequent chaos in the world today, are the result of thousands of years of personal development and social “progress.” Without moving beyond the inherent inadequacy of the exclusive ideas and ideals with which we define ourselves and, consequently, without the willingness to properly see the only source of all our problems in ourselves, nothing will ever change significantly. We desperately need to discover that tribal and personal consciousness does not constitute the axis and apex of human existence, but rather the source of the stupidity, violence and sorrow that has always afflicted us and that is now increasingly putting in jeopardy not just the fate of our species, but also the survival of thousands of other animal species and, perhaps, even that of the entire biosphere. The challenge we confront demands, then, much more than yet another set of therapy sessions, a prescription for a more effective tranquilizer or antidepressant, another turn in the revolving door of geopolitical power, or even another paradigmatic shift within the same divided and conditioned intellect. This staggering challenge demands, rather, the end of the self-centered psyche as the source and destination of the competing psychological and ideological remedies activating and antagonizing every level and every sector of human society.

The very survival of humanity demands that each one of us question, literally to death, whether separate tribal and personal consciousness is the source and destiny of our existence.
The consequences of this radical query are shocking, but for that very reason also truly enlivening. They start with the fact that the person that accedes to this inquiry is by that very act admitting terminal impotence; the end of any hope in the future and, therefore, the impossibility of any eventual and exclusive form of psychological fulfillment. Acknowledging the inadequacy of the psychological and cultural content that make up the self and, consequently, the futility of future self projections extrapolated from this content, determines in a flash of perception that self-centered thought cannot possibly ever solve or transcend the division, the problems and the suffering it has itself created. This insight, annihilates the mental time that props the self up and tortures it with the constant shock of the alternate current of pain and pleasure. And in doing so, it puts an end to the ideological conjectures and projects with which the self merely pretends to be solving its chronic psychological and social problems while simultaneously improving its status and circumstances.

Once it is clear that the self cannot extract himself from the suffering it creates for itself, there is no further evasion or possible therapeutic or corrective action extended in mental and chronological time. There is no more executive central agent. The “me” forever hoping and laboring to ensure that sometime in the future she will no longer feel lonely, unloved, insecure, greedy, violent, stupid or whatever else, is no longer there. The basic traits of the human psyche conditioned and alienated by particular experience and knowledge-based self projection, are fully evident only when it is clear that there is nothing “there” capable of improving or overcoming them. Sudden and complete perception of the basic incompetence of self-based thought and action, cancels out both the value of previous psychological experience and the viability of any ideal that this same experience might project onto the future. Although still fully capable of using and learning practical knowledge, the mind is no longer held captive by any predetermined cultural or psychological form. Nor is it any longer subject to the inflexible demands of different notions of self fulfillment occurring within particular models of manifest social and personal destiny. A radical and instantaneous mental change has occurred, but not as the premeditated fruit of the falsely evolving self but, rather, as the impersonal perception of the most fundamental facts of mental conditioning. If this sudden and full perception of the psyche programmed by experience and its subsequent collapse were to happen in enough individuals, the corrupt social reality that such psyche constructs, inhabits and projects onto the future, would also collapse giving way to an entirely different manner of human coexistence. (128)

Ø      Two billion people live on less than $2.00 per day; over a billion of them suffer from hunger, and thousands die from malnutrition every day. This and a host of other similarly scandalous and rather unnecessary tragedies happen because the rest of us, those not directly afflicted by poverty or war, generally do not care or do much about what happens to those who are. Whether willfully ignorant or not, our indifference is a form of violence responsible for untold suffering. Hunger, war and abuses of power in different places and at different levels are nothing new to humanity, nor is the exploitation of the poor, the ignorant and the weak, or the destruction of young minds through indoctrination and inadequate or insufficient education. We have lived with these obscenities for century upon century. We are used to them to the point that we are no longer touched by their horror or much bothered by what their sustained presence says about humanity and our much vaunted intelligence and capacity for love. We generally think of division, conflict and grief as a natural part of life. We are quite proficient in masking our callous disregard and rationalizing outright cruelty in a thousand different ways. After all, what is worse than having our personal lives inconvenienced by the silent tears or the loud cries of despair of others.
Some of us participate in programs or in long lasting reform efforts created to ameliorate the impact of hunger and war, but these partial and gradual efforts to stem the tide of sorrow either fail altogether or have a negligible effect. Ideological and social divisions with their many nefarious consequences continue largely unabated, and multiply further as emerging idealists compete with old ones in the attempt to reform the inadequate results of previous reforms, or revolting against the abuses of previous revolutions. At the same time, the great majorities ―the more indifferent or “well-adapted” amongst us― either pump up the volume of our distractions of choice, or gather ourselves to pray or meditate in self-pity or in gratitude for our good fortune and to reinforce the hope that the calamities suffered by others may not one day alight on our own shoulders. All this may sound very cynical, but only to those who have not yet had the wherewithal to actually feel (and not just theoretically learn about) the enormous suffering in the world, and see in ourselves the reasons why we have been historically incapable of stamping it out.

The central fact of human existence seems to be our unwillingness to undergo profound change. We have essentially remained as irrationally divided, conflicted, brutal and sorrowful as we ever were, and there is every indication that we are preparing ourselves to be and do pretty much the same in the future. It is the same old human brute that reigns, only that with greater hypocrisy and higher technology.
Even though at first sight it seems absolutely counterintuitive, the only adequate response to suffering and our impotence in the face of it, is to stay passively in touch, not just with the problems of hunger, exploitation and war, but with the entire tragedy of humanity endlessly projecting itself through the actions (divisive, ignorant, and hostile or falsely generous) undertaken in a common attempt to protect exclusive identity and gain security and status for ourselves, our families, clans and tribes. This alert passivity comes from confronting oneself and the world with the utmost honesty and accuracy. The world is the brutal mess it is, because we each insist in being who we think we are and in becoming whatever we think we ought to become. Awareness of things as they are, if free of resistance and of any willful effort to alter them in any preconceived manner, overwhelms and overthrows the limitations, fears and claims that constitute the past, present and future of the self-centered mind. This radical mental change occurring in a single brain may not have a great impact in outward circumstances; its significance lies, rather, in that it impacts the very mental source from which all human problems emerge. Radical self abnegation is the only real solution, every other action is either insufficient and wrongheaded effort or outright fantasy. (129)

Ø     If I change in accordance with a projection of thought (an extrapolation of memory), that change embodies within itself the limitations of my previous experience and knowledge (including the traditions, dogmas and authorities I have inherited or consciously chosen), and so it is never profound enough. To see the futility of superficial reform confronts one with the necessity of something that is radical to the point of being unprecedented. Unprecedented not in the sense that it has never occurred, but in that it is not and never will be informed by consciousness. Once keenly aware of its impotence the isolated and conditioned mind stays quietly with things as they are within itself and in the world (and at every moment). It stops straining in any direction, no longer regretting or craving, accepting or condemning anything; never again in conflict with itself or with others.

The difficulty lies, of course, in that this passivity runs against the grain of that aspect of our mental programming that urges us to overcome any obstacle that may stand in the way of the universal and universally contradictory project of self-fulfillment. Thus, any invitation to consider the negation of this enormously strong impulse, is almost instantly rejected. Why would anyone want to give up what one has already achieved, and abandon what one could achieve in the future, all in exchange for nothing? In so far as the self-centered and conditioned psyche is concerned there are, indeed, no guarantees whatsoever that anything may change for the better once the mind is quietly abiding with itself and the world exactly as they are. And yet a mind in which the immediate and extraordinarily potent relevance of actual fact destroys ideals and all other forms of mental subterfuge and distraction, is already different in an unprecedented manner. Everything is finally seen passively for what it actually is, and so the false intrapsychic division between the real and the ideal self comes to end, as does the equally false sense that the self is different from others and distinct from the world we all create together. This passive, impersonal and, therefore, timeless mental stance is immeasurably more significant that a mere change in consciousness; it is a mutation in both the brain and the mind. (130)

Ø     A significant majority of human beings seems never to question themselves or their cultural placement and convictions, at least not very much. They live and die just as they were told. Many others do question who they are and how they live at different stages of their lives, but do so rebelliously and merely as a reaction to their own background or the demands of others attempting to impose their own backgrounds. Which usually means that they will rapidly and easily seduced into adopting a “new” identity characterized by forms of thought and behavior as fixed and limited as those they replace. Do not rebels and revolutionaries merely go from one set of previously established conclusions, norms, goals and authorities to another? There is another possibility and it is utterly unrelated to either enduring conformity or shallow rebellion; it comes as a profound insight into the psychological and cultural conditioning of the brain, which is in itself its instantaneous unraveling without substitution, without further option. (131)

To put it differently: Our reality is, at best, a set of conflicting and rather crude maps or representations of what different human groups and individuals perceive and think of life at every point in space and time. We interminably confuse images and ideas with the undecipherable actuality they merely attempt to represent. A simple example may help illustrate this. It is common to depict and understand the landscape as a collection of separate things: the sky, the trees, the lake, the sun, the animals and people, the houses, etc., when in reality all these seemingly disparate things are inconceivable without one another. It is especially absurd to say that the entity observing the landscape is himself not an integral part of the landscape; just as that particular landscape is indistinguishable from the planet, and the planet from the cosmos. The point being that the infinite and lively totality that transcends all knowledge and understanding, and which we may agree to call the truth, is nothing in the sense that there is no-thing separate from it. Separate things are, to a very great extent, abstractions created by the alienated human mind. And, of course, this does not mean that from now on you will be expose to the risk of bumping yourself against trees and similar things because you no longer can tell the difference between different physical entities. We are simply stating that the psychological distance created between the knowing self and the presumed objects of its observation and knowledge, is illusory.

The perception of this essential fact, not as a theory but as an actuality, necessarily implies the abandonment of whatever version of fragmented reality one has subscribed to, and this abandonment implies, logically, the end of the separate, observing and self-centered process of thought. Thought remains for meeting practical problems and carrying out tasks requiring previously acquired knowledge and the projection of sequential steps leading to predetermined goals. But it is no longer or ever again the ground sustaining the existence of a separate and self-protective entity permanently looking to prolong itself by improving its relative social, intellectual and “spiritual” position. (132)

Ø      The extent to which the human psyche is both conditioned by experience and not under the control of the self may be suddenly revealed through intense, sustained and direct observation of the movement of thought. Although a significant part of the knowledge we have gathered from our pre-historical and historical experience is useful ―essential in some particular ways― it is also fairly clear that knowledge, per se, and especially the subjective knowledge which gives shape to both self and tribe, makes us incapable of reaching the unity and harmonious cooperation without which peace, justice and, perhaps, even the very survival of the species, are highly unlikely. Even as the serious dangers posed by thought's incapacity to solve the problems it has itself created become more and more evident, we remain extremely reluctant to look beyond ourselves ―that is, beyond what we each know and what we think ourselves interested in and capable of learning― for the simple reason that the particular human mind itself has come to be exclusively and deeply identified with both the intrinsically limited experience perceptible by the organism, and with small parts of the entire body of objective and subjective representational knowledge constructed by the species on the basis of that same sensory experience. We are what we know and we perceive, think, learn and desire on the basis of what we know, thus we are also generally uninterested or greatly threatened by anything that would challenge or disrupt the contents of consciousness and their projection. Basic awareness of the extraordinary depth and breath of this phenomenon of mental conditioning, carries the disarming implication that there is no future human action that would not be informed by previous experience and its inherently limited knowledge. Which implies, in turn, that a complete solution to the psychological and social problems we have created for ourselves, if it exists at all, must lie beyond the grasp of our intellect and even beyond the reach of the wildly imaginative power of our fear and desire.

The problem is not only that our presence within life has infinitely more complexity and depth than human thought will ever be able to detect, classify and decipher; but also that the mounting and contradictory definitions, classifications, explanations and predictions we make about life and, especially, about ourselves, are ultimately only good enough to grant each separate group and person a sense of separate identity and, thereby, also a reason for us to interminably fight with one another about our contradictory versions of reality. Our mental constructs, the images and ideas we hold about ourselves and everything else, are obviously ill suited to ever make us free from the mental and relational dead-end they themselves create. And because there is this unbridgeable chasm between us (what we each know and believe) and the actual reality of things and events (let alone whatever the ground of being or life as a whole might be), no matter how hard we try to develop ourselves and reform our respective societies, we remain chronically incapable of overcoming our confusion, bridging our ideological and experiential differences, and putting an end to our violence.

Regardless of how much certain parts of our senselessly fractured species may manage to improve their technological and geopolitical adaptation to the extraordinarily complex reality of the planet, there is no action (present or future) undertaken from within (or, more precisely, by) this cumulative knowledge determined by isolated and self-projective experience, that will ever clarify or reform itself enough to attain complete coherence ―or should we say, communion― within the species and between itself and life as a whole. And without the advent of just such unthinkable communion bringing order to the human mind and some real measure of unity, harmony and peace to the world, we seem doomed to destroy ourselves. It is patently absurd to continue hoping that some particular form of knowledge or belief will ever be able to bridge the distance that separates individual persons and groups from each other, let alone connect the thinker to what is essentially beyond the reach of her presumed intellectual capacity and affective grasp.

And yet, even as fragments of exclusive psychological and cultural knowledge interminably struggle with each other (and with themselves) in the insane attempt to defend and expand their own contradictory and equally false versions of the truth, the unknowable continues to exert an irresistible attraction on the human mind. Would we continue spending the amount of energy and resources we invest in things like orbital and land-based astronomical observatories, particle accelerators and techniques for genome mapping, if we did not intend overtly or covertly to gather all the knowledge we assume may be necessary to bridge the distance between the sorrowful human mind and the mystery of the totality? And are the mental bridges proposed by the sciences all that different from the mutually opposed doctrines and methods that the great religions have tried for millennia to put across the great divide between suffering humanity and the presumably redemptive truth each claims to represent?

To see the psychological and cultural fragmentation of the human species conditioned by particular knowledge and the consequent built-in incapacity to go beyond the inherent limitations of thought, is to see as well the imperative need to somehow put an end to the blind urge characteristic of this entire mental programming that would have us endlessly trying to improve what is beyond improvement. And in canceling all action deemed inherently erroneous or insufficient to adequately meet the serious challenges we face, this perception also terminates the overbearing presence of the presumably independent “me” that has always thought himself capable of eventually finding a way out of the endless violence, fear and pain that result from his very own separate existence and largely irrational action.

One last pass. Intimately identified with experience/knowledge and acting almost exclusively from that base, the self has always thought itself somehow apart from the body, apart from the periphery of the psyche, and separate from others and from life itself. Unsurprisingly, the extreme isolation and insecurity that results from exclusive memory and the claim to unique identity, endlessly attempts to attain a better state of mind by projecting improved versions of the self onto the future. The laborious process of psychological becoming designed to overcome the suffering implicit in separation never achieves its goal, for the simple reason that all our idealized futures are conceived, built and projected with the inadequate material provided by the same exclusive personal and cultural past. Again, if the falseness and danger of this process of illusory self-projection is clearly seen for the irrational farce it is and therefore negated, then the whole content and dynamics of the self-centered psyche collapse. Except in practical or technical matters in which thought is required to remember, interpret, communicate and react, now every moment stands on its own ―for a moment― without it being used as a representational brick meant to increase the height of the ever growing edifice of isolated and self-centered mental existence. The mind is then no longer a junta of bickering judges assessing every experience on the basis of previously determined like and dislike, nor are will and desire mechanically serving goals of self-protection and self-projection. The fixed psychological time frame responsible for the endurance of the object/subject duality is simply no longer there. (133)

Ø    What is it to be a human being present in this mysterious universe of ours? What does it mean to be you or me? The dire general situation of the species and the confusion and anxiety (or the perplexing indifference) present in the personal lives of most of us, demands that we pose this fundamental question with more urgency than ever, does it not?
In looking at oneself intensely and as if for the first time, what is first revealed is all the traits and proclivities that make us all human; members of the same species. We inhabit the same general location in cosmic space; “our” lives are equally and vitally dependent on the Earth’s biosphere; and we are the common outcome of the evolutionary process that has produced our bodies including, evidently, our brains. The key operative word here is “outcome” because being the common by-product of the same evolutionary process, we might not be as unique as we generally like to think we are. Our species is not all that different from other species in that we all share the same existence and in that, as individual members, we are not at all that different from one another. Our bodies and our life cycle are fundamentally the same, and we are largely without choice over the basic instincts, drives and reactions that characterize the species as a whole. The fundamental experiences and events that, repeated countless times in slight variations, made up the evolution of humankind, are enfolded in the brain determining much of our present behavior along the common and rather mechanical lines of fear, pleasure seeking and pain avoidance. Yes, in many ways we are just like any other animal, with the difference ―a non trivial one, for sure― that in us humans basic animal needs and drives have been psychologized; that is, extended in many different ways into the personal psyche. For example, the defense and expansion of a person's or a tribe's interests, values and sense of deserved status and influence, over and above those of others, seems to be but an extension of the territorial instinct of the animal; perhaps with the caveat that our capacity for sustained grudge and hostility makes the wildest animal seem tame by comparison. Only human beings are capable mental injuries and neurotic claims so long lasting that their dissolution is often linked on the death of the particular identity that depended on them to live.

We commonly assume that thought as a uniquely human faculty, establishes a radical difference between ourselves and all other living beings. However, while this assumption is true to some degree, it erroneously disregards the extent to which fixed images and ideas control our thought process, thus severely curtailing reason and freedom in our relationship with others and with everything else. In other words, we are so taken by the degree of choice (especially psychological choice) made possible by our unique intellect, that we remain largely unaware of the enormous extent to which our thought and behavior are predetermined by past experience and, therefore, fixed and not subject to rational assessment and control. The central implication being that it is not up to the ego to somehow transcend or override to any significant extent this lack of freedom. The chronic persistence of awful psychological and relational problems responsible for much of our suffering, is living proof of this built-in inability to intelligently solve the problems we create for ourselves at every level of our existence.
Now, since we generally define ourselves in contrast with others by reference to distinct (though relatively superficial) physical, psychological and cultural characteristics, and since we also like to think that the eventual solution for whatever torments us as particular individuals embedded within particular tribes lies within the value attributed to those same characteristics, we seldom realize the level of irrationality and the lack of freedom intrinsic to human frame of mind that not for being fragmented is any the less common to us all.

Clear perception of the extent and nature of the suffering created by our incapacity to solve the psychological, relational and global problems our thinking itself has created and is unable or unwilling to solve, tells us that a first answer to our initial question regarding the meaning of being human is that we are, more than anything else, a largely irrational and tragic animal. This, notwithstanding our rather obvious advantage over other animal species in technical, logistical and communication matters. Whatever potential our large brains may contain, remains largely unrealized by our narrowly self-reflective and largely self-serving psychological isolation, as well as by the concomitant multiplicity of competing cultural groups all harboring and sustaining this same tragic phenomenon of existentially isolated individuals in some way convinced of their own superiority.

If surveyed within the general context of life, the meaning of our presence within it would have to be the meaning of life itself. However, this is generally far from apparent to most of us because we have opted to give particular cultural and biographical narratives the weight, meaning and projection of particular acts of existence. The internal and relational conflict that characterize these isolated acts of psychological existence is intense enough to practically destroy the organismic sensitivity and intelligence that would otherwise naturally seek and preserve caring and intelligent coexistence as a primordial condition for seamless participation in the mystery of life. Now, to see the monstrous loss implicit in separation, is to freely and easily drop into that immense and unknowing mental space in which the noise and struggle of particular existence and psychological value do not exist. (134)

Ø      It seems that it would be only fair to assume that any alert person is be aware of his or her own pain and sorrow occurring within the overarching experience of human suffering extending across geographical space and historical time. Is not every human being necessarily hounded by the sheer isolation of his being? Is he not permanently vulnerable to loss and accident, and to the ravages of old age? And, does he not have death as its unrenounceable ultimate fate?
Would basic wakefulness not also imply that one is fully aware of the intimate connection between the psychological and the social manifestations of disorder and pain. The chaotic and violent world we live in is clearly the product—the sum total, rather—of the disorder in all of our minds and relationships, just as this personal disorder is, in turn, the conditioned product of the long and tragic experience of the species and of the cultural characteristics and circumstances of our particular and more immediate social and cultural environment.

Surly, the alert and sensitive person would have to be aware that despite undeniable scientific and technical development and the successive reform programs and projects implemented by religious and political institutions, humanity remains utterly incapable of solving basic social problems such as chronic poverty and war; problems that for millennia have created unspeakable grief for millions and millions of people. Could not one also safely assume that unless comatose, we must be aware of the problems in our own minds and in our interaction with others and with the world at large and, even more importantly, aware of our chronic inability to find a definitive solution to all these personal problems. In a nutshell, it does not seem unrealistic at all to expect full awareness of the glaring fact that we are not in full control of our thoughts, emotions and actions, and have insignificant influence over the thought and behavior of others, let alone over the larger historical variables routinely clashing on the world stage and mindlessly crushing the lives of countless people.

Unfortunately, far more common than this seemingly obvious awareness is the reluctance to take stock with any degree of clarity of our own personal mental agonies; of all the different forms of fear, conflict and sorrow afflicting every sector and level of society; and of our ancient incapacity to do anything conclusive about any of it. It is as easy as it is common to avoid the raw facts of life by simply holding on to any of the multiple alibis granted by particular and contradictory forms of religious or cultural consensus. But, again, even a small measure of freedom and sensitivity can alert anyone to the falseness and ever-increasing danger posed by the pseudo-security provided by tribal identification and personal isolation. At this stage of the historical process of humanity, it is abundantly clear that none of the solutions offered by particular religious or secular cultural forces, will ever prevail—by force or reason—over all the others to thus bring unity and wisdom to humanity. After all, by their very provision of exclusive identity and a false sense of security, they are in themselves the denial of unity and peace, safety and wisdom.

There is life, the totality, and then there is the six and a half billion ring circus of human life. The circus likes to pretend that it, itself, is life and in so doing makes the living mystery of the whole practically disappear from sight. Unwilling to see ourselves as indistinguishable and fleeting breaths of an infinity we have largely closed our eyes to, we condemn ourselves to a life-long struggle with ourselves and others over the signs and symbols of an elusive worldly success or a delusional otherworldly salvation, neither of which has anything to do with the all-inclusive phenomenon of life. Feeling isolated and therefore vulnerable and afraid we, actors and spectators in the human arena, define ourselves by hopes and ambitions that when frustrated turn into hatred and violence as easily as these subsequently turn back into further fear and insecurity.

There is no way out of the circus because its all encompassing presence is but an out-picturing of the human psyche broken up in multiple sets of exclusive memories and the many contradictory and aggressive ways in which they project themselves into the future. No form of personal development or social progress represents then a way out of the sorrowful chaos of the world, and much less a secure path leading to the truth. The mystery is ever present for that is all there is, but for us, its wayward human offspring, who foolishly take our separation to be life, non-duality has an extremely narrow door.
Life does not hold within itself separate entities of any type. Life is one and indivisible. Our sense of separation is an illusion because it is supported by fragmented knowledge and selfish desire which are mostly illusory, and all illusion must die for life to manifest. You and Me, Us and Them are just different terms for the same fantasy of separate existence. (135)

Ø     I wonder if you have the same sense I have that there is something terribly wrong with the way we see and live life, and the way we see death and die. Something immense that one can barely feel seems to be missing from our reality. Do you not feel that life could not possibly be as shallow and stupid as we generally make it out to be, and death as meaningless and frightening. It seems that just as the presence of the sun can be obscured by a cloud cover, the immeasurable richness of life is obscured by the overbearing presence of the self. Despite its undeniable inclusiveness, the whole has no power to rescue us from our imprisonment in the little stories, categories and ambitions with which we habitually identify and blindfold ourselves. It is left to us, individually, to open our eyes, and there is no gradual method leading to full and accurate vision. We either see or remain blind to what is false, what is illusory and what is true. In this matter there is no dimmer switch, and no one has the power, or the right, to force the willfully blind to see.

Life is not what comes through the senses; nor is it reducible to knowledge; not now or in a million more years. Life has little or nothing to do with the particular conceptual version of reality that we each hold in our memories and regard as “the truth.” What we each hope to accomplish or realize in the future —tomorrow, in ten years or in a convenient afterlife― is not life either. Life is unthinkable simply because it is immense, undivided, whole, certainly not reducible to just a bunch of symbols, comparisons, equations and metaphors. Nothing exists outside the movement of life as the whole. The self-centered, and falsely independent entity that formulates ideas and cooks up fantastic theories and silly fantasies about “life”, does not exist as anything other than an insubstantial collection of images, words and concepts. Now, to quietly realize the unbridgeable chasm between self and life is to let the sun shine through a fearless crack in the darkness of the isolated and conditioned mind. To see is to die to the illusion of a separate existence and its inevitable conceit, ambition, fear, violence and sorrow.

What mind could eradicate from itself the suffering banality of the predetermined human psyche? Psychological knowledge limits the mind, and this limitation is in itself separation and the permanent movement of anxious and, therefore, aggressive becoming. We delude ourselves when we say that we are gradually becoming something other than what we presently are. A person who is angry and hostile is only compounding the problem and further dulling his mind if simultaneously trying to become sweet and peaceful. Ideals do not lead to anything but evasion of the real problem, and a self-deluding and hypocritical mind is also permanently at odds with itself and in conflict with others.
Thus, the only possible way out of the central problem of being human cannot possibly profit or even involve the self. For it involves an emptying of the mind of psychological and all unnecessary cultural content; a veritable mutation of the brain and the mind that are then free from the fundamental contradiction of existential separation. There is nothing one can do to affect this radical change except allow a passive perception of what is blocking it. It is the revelation of the specific falseness and danger of separation that puts an end to the mental time created by though to laboriously bridge the impossible distance between the actual and the idealized self. Without this time and its futile task, there is no self; and where the self is not, life is. (136)

Ø     It is extraordinarily interesting to follow the movement of one's own thought as it pines and strives for definition, high performance and recognition, moving relentlessly towards what it projects as a more pleasurable state of consciousness. The self regards itself through what it knows, believes and desires, and it demands to be recognized and celebrated by others for the same reasons. But, are there two minds in each one of us? Is there a mind that does the knowing and the desiring and another that lets itself be known, shaped and controlled by the first? Is there a mind that knows itself for what it is actually now, and another that is yet to be constructed, although on the basis of already existing plans? The truth is that just as there is just one brain to every head, there is only one mind that in becoming self-reflective has split itself in two parts: a presumably dominant part, the “me,” that observes, knows and pretends to control the other (and the world) according to what it knows and wants; and the other, the periphery of the psyche that generally resists the gaze, the intellect and will of the first.
The central core of our psychological being is a dynamic narrative bent back and over itself and embodied by a central actor who is weighted down by the ballast of its accumulated past and simultaneously buoyed ahead by the hot steam of the material and psychological desires pumped up from vast reservoirs of recorded experience, painful as well as pleasurable. We cannot desire or fear anything other than what we have already known, thus our efforts to move in certain direction only yield superficial modifications of who we already are, always within the realm of our own limited experience and knowledge or within the equally limited experience and knowledge from which others preach and proselytize. Thus, if I am an unhappy Muslim, I may want to try out what it is like to be, well, probably not a Jew, but perhaps a Buddhist, a sun worshiper or an atheist. All the myriad psychological alternatives that are available that seem so radically different from one another, are fundamentally the same in that they all have as their base limited experience collected and systematized as exclusive and relatively stable forms of consensual doctrinal explanation and methodological guidelines with which people can identify. The power of ideologies to grant identity and a sense of security to frightened individuals is, without a shadow of a doubt immensely greater than their capacity to actually lead to the truth of anything or provide anyone with a good life.

Can awareness of the futility and ultimate danger of living attached to any fixed pattern of cultural and psychological being and becoming, destroy the conditioning of the mind and its endless and greedy restlessness? Can a human being stop being anything in particular and wanting to become anything and, thus, never again make any effort to control and improve himself? Evidently, these questions do not mean to suggest the desirability of an amnesiac and catatonic organism. They aim rather at highlighting the possibility of a profound insight into the intrinsic constraints of self-centered thought. A perception of such intensity that its impact would unravel personal memory and provoke an immediate and irreversible collapse of any claim to a separate and constantly evolving separate existence. This collapse would not, of course, destroy thought in its entirety, but merely restrict its operation to the practical and impersonal matters for which it is indispensable and well suited.
Perhaps even closer to the core of this matter is the question of whether a human being can live in this madly fractious world of ours uncommitted to any of the religious, political, racial, ethnic, sexual, age, educational and class divisions responsible for the confusion, antagonism and fear we all suffer from. Can a perfectly common person find freedom from the fixed mental and behavioral patterns established by the prepersonal experience of the species, the particular cultural traditions of the individual, and his more superficial biographical memories of physical and psychological pain and pleasure? And can he or she stop striving to attain predetermined experiences of greater pleasure while simultaneously struggling to avoid equally foreseen installments of suffering and insecurity? These questions are enormously relevant and yet they are seldom asked because, even in our worst moments, we generally prefer to stay well within the clearly demarcated boundaries of our respective cultural tribes and our equally familiar personal opinions, routines and fantasies, than put them aside and be lost in the vastness of the unknown even if it is life itself.

What keeps us trapped, and yet tirelessly running down the narrow corridors of a thoroughly conditioned mind living a necessarily parochial and sectarian life? ―Certainly ingrained habit and well worn complacency and fear, all hard-wired into the very chemical and physiological structure of the brain and entirely supported by every existing and potential social structure and cultural tradition. But is that all life can be for the human being? Do we dare ask if there is anything beyond the brain indoctrinated by experience and occupied and ruled by a self that thinks itself into existence by what he believes, knows and wants? Is there an awakened mode of human existence that would not contribute to the general division and disorder of the world through the projection onto the future of useless traditions and selfish desires?

A few noteworthy human beings have told us over the centuries that beyond the habitual hurts, pleasures and fears that characterize the life of the self-centered psyche, lies a boundless emptiness that is the ground of material existence and the essence of a profound and all-encompassing intelligence that could never be culturally or personally appropriated. While utterly fascinating, it would be foolish to merely accept this notion on faith and then strive for its realization, because that would be but a new version of the same stupid maneuver that has kept us forever hurting one other and deceiving ourselves with our respective delusions and ambitions. We are left then with nothing but a sharp awareness of the absence of caring intelligence in the conditioned mind and, therefore, in the world this mind creates. Nothing but the baffling fact that real freedom from the darkness of our meaningless existence, if it exists at all, has to involve the undoing of all the discordant identifications and projections that make up the self and its duration in time.
The central issue confronting us as individuals and as a species is whether this utterly dysfunctional psychological mode of existence can be, not just radically subverted, but brought to an end. And this, not so that we may enjoy the exclusive privileges of an alternate and exclusive reality of which we already have prior knowledge, but simply because the health of the organism and the intelligence of life itself demand that what is false and harmful be instantly and completely rejected. (137)

Ø      What is a sane, complete and accurate response to the present level of disorder and violence in the world and what it implies for the future of humanity and all those other species with which we inhabit planet Earth? Evidently, no individual, regardless how smart and well meaning, can have direct and decisive impact on something like global climate disruption or rampant militarism at the service of irreconcilable ideologies and armed with lethal technology. These and other similar threats did not appear overnight and they are still being strengthened by the mental and behavioral patterns of cultural enclaves bent on extending their influence or growing their piece of the economic pie at whatever cost. But impotence and irrelevance are pills extremely hard to swallow. Even intelligent, fairly well informed individuals who could be aware of their powerlessness with regards to the most serious and interconnected global problems and their root in the individual human psyche, still opt to invest their energy in gradual solutions to particular problems in particular places and only partially affecting particular individuals and groups. Many do so because they still cling to the belief that the synergy created by many reformers acting simultaneously and on a great diversity of political, cultural and religious causes, will eventually turn back the tide of destructiveness and stupidity that seems to be overwhelming the world.

These active and concerned individuals must have at least some suspicion that losing themselves in a particular reform does not solve fundamental problems, but cannot do without the mental comfort that such action provides. We abhor the feeling of not knowing what to do, and tend to fall apart when confronted with difficult situations in which we sense that there is nothing we can do to remedy them. In facing, not parts, but the totality of the problem of being human, we realize that it is not external to ourselves. We are the problem we suffer from, therefore, no amount of effort undertaken along traditional lines and set to attain predetermined personal or social goals, will ever stop the forced march of our psychological and social pathologies and the ineffectiveness or outright destructiveness of their remedial programs.

There are precious few sources (the teachings of Jiddhu Krishnamurti and Vedanta in India preeminent among them) urging concerned individuals to radically disregard all tradition and all psychological knowledge so that the problem of being human may be freshly seen revealing, perhaps, its complete and effective solution. As we have repeatedly seen, the tragedy of the world is caused in no small part by all the misguided and contradictory ways in which different individuals, groups and societies with their respective traditions, attempt to bring about some semblance of progress. Obviously, none of the warring and competing nations of the world will ever be able to bring to it unity and peace. Nor will the numerous feuding religions, each with its own creed, redemptive fantasy and inflexible discipline, be ever able to bridge the division and heal the insanity of the human mind. For the same reason, it is highly unlikely that our hearts and minds will ever reach enlightened cooperation through any of the sciences, the humanities, the arts or the ever proliferating technologies, that when granted wholesale personal investment are but different forms of the same universal phenomenon of tribally sponsored separation.

All the countless factions and knowledge compartments into which the species has divided itself throughout its long history, have had the central function of providing their adherents with identity and a sense of security. Many tried in their own way to impose themselves upon all or some of the others, and they all failed miserably, especially when they were initially successful. But failure in conquest or proselytism has never stopped any group or anyone from trying, for the simple reason that even in the recurrent failure of our different efforts and struggles, our identities find the way to survive; and that is ultimately all that matters. It is fairly common for us, human beings, to chose death or murder over the breach of the verbal conclusions and the irrational claims that define our identities and our sacred self-esteem. All too often self-destruction and significant harm done to others, are acceptable alternatives to facing the possibility that we may be entirely wrong; that we may not be who we think we are; that we may not be anything at all; that our sense of separate existence and gradual psychological evolution is but a chimera, a species-wide perceptual and cognitive error.

Seeing all this makes abundantly clear that nothing short of a radical emptying (and not just a routine trans-formation) of the human psyche is imperative. This revolution of the mind is not, however, something that anyone can hope to receive from someone else, simply because it has nothing to do with the transference of knowledge or the exercise of power and obedience. The central issue is here is that the particular experience and knowledge formatting and isolating every brain/mind and informing its perceptions and actions, impedes an accurate and complete assessment of itself (the mental conditioning) as the root of all social and psychological problems. This self-blinding mechanism determines that no one can actively un-condition (or de-condition) oneself, let alone have someone else do it for them. Again, there are plenty of ideologies trying to lure potential “converts“ away from their respective mental programs with attractive verbal or image-inary previews of their own presumed advantages, but freedom definitely does not lie in moving from one form of mental imprisonment to one with better amenities.

Let us put this straight and try to face it completely. When not plain physical violence, it has always been cultural and psychological violence that we have used to try and seduce, defeat, and enslave one another, often with bad if not horrific and self-replicating consequences. Conflict and overt or covert violence is the fundamental reality of an utterly divided and mentally corrupt humanity mechanically projecting itself onto the future without much regard for the source and consequences of its reckless actions.
It is, therefore, essential to realize that positive motivation can play no role in meeting the challenge of emptying the mind from self-centered thought. Identification with a predetermined goal indicates the avoidance of the challenge. Therefore, there can be absolutely no inviting image of what may lie beyond the pleasures and pains of the self-centered and ethnocentric mind; nor can there be any useful set of methodological instructions available to anyone who may want a certain path leading to the realization of this image of a selfless mind. We are merely awakening to the possibility of a mind free of any trace of a personal past, and free as well from any mental construct descriptive of a preferable future. That is, the unthinkable possibility of a timeless human organism; one drawing its vitality and orienting its action not from or towards any particular form of consciousness.

Given that the central challenge facing us as individuals and as a species cannot be adequately approached through any wishful desire or traditional theory, then the only possible action is one, that precisely by negating all predetermined ideological assertions and sentimental enticements, empties the mind of psychological and cultural content and projection. That is all there is to it. Anything else is merely a reiteration of the same old routine whereby one tries to reform or even transcend oneself according to a predetermined pattern and goal. To say that a given mind is in the process of de-programming itself, is sheer nonsense. It is either programmed or it is not; there can be no time lapse between the two states because the illusion of gradual change is precisely what isolates, structures and sustains self-centered thought. (138)

Ø     Practically all human beings are overly concerned about their place in society, and those of us relatively better off from an educational and economic perspective, seem to pay the greatest attention to the business of bettering our status and attracting attention to ourselves. In general, we also tend to be routinely indifferent to and occasionally openly brutal with those whose lives do not merit our concern. We are also easily hurt if those whose praise we conceive as vital, fail to comply with our demand for it. This, often enough for the simple reason that we are not deemed good enough to adequately contribute to their own equally pressing need for adulation and status. It is safe to assume that the more insecure and needy we are, the more we tend to depend on the favor and adulation of others. It also goes without saying that emotional and intellectual dependency is the source of much consternation, fear and antagonism. And what is true about conflicted dominant/dependent relationship, also mirrors a similar phenomenon within our own minds. This, because the extent to which we are insecure or discontent with who we actually are from moment to moment and from day to day, is often also the extent to which we subject ourselves to a heavily neurotic demand regarding who we ought to become in the future. And this inner tension is, as I am sure you can see, directly related to notions about how others are supposed to treat us at every stage of the process of realizing our idealized self-image. This projection onto the future of the manifest destiny of the self creates, not only an almost permanent state of fear and insecurity about the possibility that this idealized projection might never be fulfilled, but also systematic misperceptions of actual reality leading to incorrect actions and an almost constant state of mental obfuscation. In general, the less one desires in terms of psychological security and social status, the less one tortures oneself and others with impossible demands.

For a person capable of seeing the world as a battlefield in which billions of human beings, “nice” and not-so-nice, fight with each other in order to obtain, maintain and increase different types of material, social and even “spiritual” privilege, the foolishness of psychological projection is clear and the empty praise or hurtful criticism of others have absolutely no relevance. The aware human being is free because, psychologically, she wants nothing. She sees what other human beings might still be unwilling to see: the separate self as nothing more than a particular set of mechanically self-projecting images and ideas and, beyond that, the whole human being as a common organism held anonymously in the embrace of life, like countless others.
In a mind that is completely independent from psychological constructs and projections and unmoved by non-essential aspects of culture, there is no favorable or unfavorable comparison with others or with idealized images of oneself and, therefore, nor is there the suffering that stems from fear, undue effort, confusion, conflict and disillusion. A mind free of belief, unnecessary knowledge and ambition is a mind free of conflict; it is the religious mind, impersonal, quiet, spacious and attentive. (139)

Ø     The natural potential of a healthy brain may only be awakened through the termination of the insularity and the self-projecting egotism dominant in the human psyche. As might be expected, the self has little sense of its usurping role, let alone of what depths its shallow presence might be blocking. Convinced that knowledge, belief, sentiment and desire are everything because they spell out its existence, the self encloses itself in its own particular illusion, and this deluded self-enclosure spells, for the species as a whole, a tragic historical continuity with no alternative in sight. The personal and collective delusion of the conditioned mind is so powerful, that even the extremes of suffering created by psychological isolation and social and cultural fragmentation, seem unable to motivate proper consideration of the possibility of an entirely different mode of existence. Though infinite space of the whole may be the only ones hospitable to humanity both singular and collective, this space without shores is for us utterly unfamiliar; not just unknown but beyond knowledge and, hence, beyond the self. Whether we like it or not, the locus of real change is not in the progressive betterment of the self, but in its instantaneous demise. (141)

Ø     The central issue of human existence is not a moral one. It is childish to think that humanity will eventually reach the cuspid of its development through the final victory of a given code of ethics over all others. The silly notion that the good guys will in the end defeat the bad guys, informs the ambition of every elected and self-appointed leader and the sense of manifest destiny of every unjustly powerful tribe, and it accounts for much of our nightmarish existence. To free ourselves from the false opposition of good versus evil, we need to confront that we are all conditioned by what we have each experienced and learned, and that this conditioning ―even if highly privileged― informs our perception, isolates and dulls our minds and keeps us locked in permanent conflict and sorrow. Because the programming of the human mind is cumulative, it is in some sense fair to describe it as having different levels: At the deepest and more universal level, our generic brain is conditioned by the entire biological and historical evolution of the species as whole; then, by the particular content of the cultural tribe(s) into which we were born or into which we may have been converted or arrived at as migrants. And, finally, at the most superficial level we are conditioned by what each one of us selectively remembers and covets on the basis of biographical experience. To put it very simply, because we are uniformly conditioned, albeit in different and contradictory ways in the upper levels, our thought and behavior are neither free nor intelligent, and that is exactly why the world is the confused, conflictive and violent mess it is.
Given that the source of all our psychological and social problems is this phenomenon of mental programming and conflictive fragmentation, there is absolutely no chance that a real solution to them will ever emerge from within the same general mental setup and as the expression of a dominant cultural fragment. And, yet, we are each so taken by our particular “truths” that we remain blind to the fact that partial, gradual and insufficient solutions to our particular problems, only manage to take us to increasingly interconnected variants of the same problems we have always suffered from. For someone to whom the absurdity of this situation is obvious, there is only one essential question, and that is whether or not the human mind can lose its ties to the past and unburden itself from the obligations and conflicts inherent in the attempt to attain the particular future envisioned by the same past.

An abrupt transition away from the familiar reality of knowledge and belief and into the immense realm of the unknown and unknowable, is precisely what our provincial, security-seeking minds are conditioned to avoid. In fact, the pre-programmed and self-centered mind is all about defending, expanding and extending itself into the future, perhaps with superficial modifications, but without ever challenging its own insular continuity. For thousands and thousands of years our minds have been defining, protecting and extending themselves in psychological and tribal time. It is no wonder then that in that long and discordant historical process, the human mind has been utterly unable to find unity and peace and, only through that, a viable and lasting solution to the countless interrelated problems it has itself generated. It is because we define ourselves by our participation in the restricted and endless process of divisive, conditioned and gradual personal becoming, that we still insist in trying to solve intractable problems by dipping into the same corrupt and useless database of limited experience and contradictory knowledge. We would not know who we were if our very psychological and cultural existence was not bound up in a permanent mechanism of separate, conflicted, and largely uncaring ―and, therefore, also utterly unintelligent and ineffective― change. And this is just the point, because what we sorely need is precisely to forget ourselves, and this can only occur through a direct but passive confrontation with the fact of biological, cultural and psychological conditioning. It is a lucid sense of our very real impotence in the face of a dysfunctional human mind, that puts an immediate end to the process of becoming that in projecting a largely unchanged egotistical self onto a pre-imagined future, sustains the tragic status quo of the species as a whole.

Let us look at this whole thing again from a slightly different angle. Is it not evident to you that the self cannot overcome its conflictive insular limitation and the problems it creates, by projecting onto the future reformed versions of itself, regardless how noble and effective these projections may at first glance appear? If this much is evident, if thought itself can see the absurdity and danger of its self-projective personal and tribal isolation and fixed limitation, then it shakes itself free from it, as it were. A mind thus freed, is no longer an integral part of the general reality created and inhabited by a fractured and pre-programmed humanity. Even though it still inhabits the world created by thought and still “thinks through” the practical problems that present themselves every day, this mind is no longer constrained by the limitations of a personal memory and the obligations of a personal future. Finally free of the contradictory fears and hopes of self and tribe perennially struggling to reach (or avoid) a future predetermined by what is already known, the mind naturally turns towards the unknown and the unknowable.

The harsh reality of our world is the result of the permanent clash between what different people think and believe, desire and fear, associate with and disassociate from. So it should be evident that the living truth, if there be such a thing, will not ever be found within the measure of the conditioned mind and its reiterative barren projections. Again, it is in actually seeing the intrinsic limitations and danger of the content and the projections of consciousness, that lies their instant negation and dissolution. This passive (hope-less) but complete act of perception of what the self (any self) is, does and becomes, constitutes all that anyone who cares about the future of humanity can and must do. Only a mind free of cultural and psychological programming can properly see the nature of human cruelty and suffering and, hence, be a proper antidote to it. Our common ground in life will only become apparent as we each die to the conflictive divisiveness inherent in dynamic psychological and cultural isolation. (142)

Ø     There is nothing wrong with disregarding what everybody else thinks, as long as one also disregards one's own thoughts. It is not only that thought, anyone's thought, is always limited and biased, but that the thinker is not the source of thought (as he would like to think), but the other way around. It is the general process of thought conditioning the human mind that in every particular brain creates the illusion of an independent thinking self.
In its most general and extensive form, thought is the tool with which the memory of the human species, crowned by the biographical memory of each particular human organism, reacts to present experience. Except in the small way represented by its acquisition of practical and scientific knowledge, thought will never be related to the truth. And this is not meant to suggest that the truth can be ever reduced to scientific knowledge.
Whatever the truth might be, it cannot be something limited and static and therefore subject to symbolic representation and subsequent manipulation by particular social or psychological entities presuming to possess it or be possessed by it, and to their exclusive profit. Whether or not truth can be adapted to our limitations is definitely not the issue. It cannot. The issue is, rather, whether or not direct awareness of these limitations opens the way for their destruction by the truth. (143)