Not being anything in ourselves, we gain a sense of identity through reference to other things, ideas and persons. Anything to which we may become strongly attached, serves as a source of identification and subsequent self-assertion. But, since particular emotional bonds cannot ever provide enough protection and lasting satisfaction, our very psychological existence depends on a permanent process of defending and then rejecting old attachments only to adopt new ones in which to redeposit our absurd hope of someday attaining enduring happiness and foolproof psychological security. Within this mental and actual behavioral matrix, the "loves", possessions and ambitions defining our personal and tribal existence and identity at any given point of our lives, constitute as well what separates us from many others who, with their own peculiar attachments, possessions and dreams, also see us only as potential or real threats to their own sense of security, certainty and status. (94)

Having beforehand invested all his energy in worldly achievement, and perhaps also in vain attempts at otherworldly transcendence, a free person has now no sense of personal becoming. She can see full well that any movement of self-centered thought is but a modified projection of an ancient transpersonal agenda that is full of promises but that has never, and will never, lead him or anyone else away from fear and pain. She is aware now that any attempt to counteract what she may disapprove of in herself, let us say dependence or violence, implies projecting onto the future mental opposites that do nothing but carry forward precisely what they are intended to eliminate.

She has realized that conceptual desires for non-violence and detachment are false in that they only manage to disguise and sustain their actual opposites, while torturing and degrading the mind with the conflict between what is actually happening, (the real), and what is thought ought to happen instead, (the ideal). The goals that the self presents to itself to guide and energize its development, actually makes the actual problems disappear, so that they do not have to be instantaneously solved. Thus, the deeper problem lays not only with the particular desire she may have to improve herself, but with desire itself and with herself as the very entity who desires. In this disturbing perception of its trickery and limitation, thought itself (desire) sees the necessity of its coming to an end, bringing down with it the mockery of the independent and controlling "I." Achieving psychological continuity through endless attempts to attain pre-determined stages and measures of psychological, intellectual, and spiritual progress, is no longer an option. The not-so-merry-go-round of psychological time and evolution suddenly stops revolving around the axis of the "I". The fraudulent projection of psychological change onto the mental future has been finally seen as precisely the way in which self-centered thought keeps itself going. (95)

We are all little bubbles furiously bursting in History's permanent boil. There are a few bubbles that seem to stick around a little longer and appear to have some effect on the short lives of others; fundamentally, they seem to deform them as they push them around till they burst. But then, they too disappear ceding their dominant place to others as the social, cultural, and psychological stew continues cooking for millennia, tragically undisturbed.

Is this all the past, present and future there is? Is there life beyond the reiterative slave and master roles that characterize the alienation and self-centeredness of thought? Is there anything beyond the time we create to have been what we remember, to be who we think we are and to become who we think we ought to become?

If the source of conflict and suffering lies in psychological separation and cultural fragmentation, why is it that most human beings continue to believe that they will be eventually free of strife and pain through personal and tribal "progress"? (96)

It usually comes as a shock to realize that one's perceptions, thoughts and reactions are almost totally predetermined by past experience and previously acquired knowledge-one is so taken in by the illusion of personal freedom. Most of our actions are undertaken merely to get greater or better versions of the pleasure we have already experienced and to avoid worse versions of the pain we have also already experienced-and this robotic behavior is, of course, not freedom. Freedom implies, if anything, the absence of predetermination and, consequently, action coherent with life in general, and with the facts of every given situation in particular.

Psychology, the internal life of the separate self, is memory subjectively interpreting, evaluating, and projecting experience and, therefore, reducing and distorting life, robbing it of its wholeness and disregarding its unfathomable creativity. Real freedom from this memory bind implies then the possibility of a brain/mind liberated from the "experienced" self through a merging with the unthinkable totality of life. -Is such radical freedom possible, or is it just another dream, another illusion begotten by the same foolish pre-programmed mind? -Is there a life without any "one" living it? -Why is it that we are so convinced that all that is possible is this painfully separate act of existence forever struggling to improve itself by chasing after different forms of private pleasure and achievement? -Can a human being live in this world free of the constraints of personal knowledge/thought with all its biased remembrances, its dreads and self-serving projects? -What would life be like for a mind that lived from moment to moment without accumulating or projecting anything psychologically? (97)

Is there anything in the brain beyond memory and desire, the projected offspring of memory? The physical brain itself is clearly not a human creation. It contains memory and the movement of thought-the self who fears and craves-which is a product of human experience, but the brain is not in itself the creation of any of these. Clearly, the question of whether or not there is something beyond memory and the self-centered projections of memory cannot be answered, because the only possible responses would come from memory. So, does the emergence of this seminal question deep within the brain/mind not in itself block thought from attempting to find an answer to it within its own puny experience and knowledge? (98)

It is most interesting to observe how the mind-when presented with irrefutable evidence of its incapacity to solve psychological and social problems in a decisive and complete manner-still insists in trying to gradually and slightly improve itself, holding fast to a nearly unshakable belief that greater effort, more knowledge, more capital, or greater "faith" will in the end adequately meet any challenge. And if this belief is somehow overcome so that one can actually see what is going on in the world and in our own lives, then fear is the first reaction to the realization that we cannot think ourselves out of the immense problem of suffering that thought itself has created. Fear, as if things were not already quite out of our control. Such is the hold of the habitual trust we place in that the "authorities", or the gods we have created will take care of things because they are in a better position to do so than the common individual who really does not want to be bothered, or simply does not know what to do.

Life is constant change and challenge and, our personal and socio-cultural egotisms, forever in contradiction and conflict, cannot intelligently and harmoniously respond. The question of appropriate, intelligent and complete action-of what to do about all the terrible things that are happening in the world and in our own lives-is not fully and adequately posed and, therefore, never fully answered. The problems are multiple, multiplying, interconnected and, hence, of ever growing complexity and difficulty. Because frustration is extremely high, depression and violence are never far away. Yet, despite all this, we go on celebrating the presumed greatness of our separate personalities and intellects, and continue clinging for dear life to our clans and tribes with their reiterative traditions. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, we generally remain convinced that since intelligence and the capacity for progress of the human mind is the best fruit of life, there is practically no obstacle that the power of knowledge, thought and will cannot overcome...one of these days. (99)

Could the general challenge of being human be appropriately met through a single action? What would constitute the fullest expression of personal responsibility for all the terrible things we can see happening in the world? Is there a single action whereby we could set straight our relationship, not just with others and the world at large, but with life as a whole? If such an action were possible, would it not involve first and foremost confronting the facts of our daily existence directly and totally, that is, free of intermediation and without recourse to escape, illusion, or postponement?

Clearly, unless we are absolutely aware of the source and nature of our mounting, complex and interconnected problems, nothing anyone can do will ever solve them. And that act of awareness, that extraordinary change in perception might be, in itself and at an entirely different level all that may be required to bring about an unsuspected solution. If you do not know what the nature of your illness might be, then you will not be able to find a cure no matter what you do. Most of us are full of ideological answers, and so never sit by ourselves or with others (enlivened by the vitality of friendly dialogue) to consider the problem of being human. The desire for security and expediency is content with the illusory solutions projected by ideology onto the always-permissive future of the imagination. Do delusions and escapes not constitute the essence of the psycho-social provincialism in which most of us live?

The extraordinary impasse created by the separate and conditioned presence of the self always looking for exclusive security, may only be broken by common individuals, like you and I who, profoundly aware of being the problem humanity suffers from, somehow break free from their respective herds and do whatever is necessary to question and know themselves. Correct answers and true solutions are never independent from a profound and direct awareness of the questions and the problems that demand them. (100)

The making of art is generally fueled by the conviction that there is a natural progression from one piece to the next; an evolving process that, in its totality, represents the development of both the art and the artist. This progression in time is what some critics call the artistic search; the process of inquiry that may eventually be crowned by an unexpected or sought after partial insight or even-and more to the taste of the naïve-a veritable encounter with the sacred itself, an epiphany. The presumption of this transit is, of course, typical of the general belief in psychological becoming, the absurdly persistent notion that the desire for certainty will occasionally produce special experience and privileged knowledge that if artistically broadcast will make the broadcaster, the artist, rightfully deserving of status and the supposedly benign exercise of influence.

If artists are just common human beings pre-programmed like all the rest, but whose mental conditioning happens to include the capacity to produce art, would it not be reasonable to circumscribe art, (together with other similar relatively harmless human activities), to the realm of mere function? In this way, it could be clearly understood that the artist uses particular instances of previous experience and knowledge to serve a practical social purpose (art as decoration or, at best, as a modest purveyor of partial insights) in exchange for the satisfaction of his or her fundamental needs? In other words, could responsible and intelligent artists, as well as individuals active in all walks of professional and vocational occupation, free themselves from the vulgar desire to claim special significance and exclusive privilege as reward for their rather humble contribution to society? Could each one of us do whatever we do essentially because that is what we do best, because it is good to help satisfy the fundamental needs of others as well as one's own and, essentially, because it liberates us all from the complications and conflicts inherent in ulterior psychological motives?

Why should a sculptor, an electrician, a barber or a surgeon, not be just that: an electrician, a sculptor, a barber and a surgeon? Could we stop hyper-charging occupational roles with foolish claims to self-importance demanding extravagant rewards and, worse yet, linking whatever one does to earn one's living to still more foolish claims to pedigree such as nationality, gender, level of education, race, ethnic background, and intelligence quotient?

Why should anyone be afraid to be only as worthy of being human as anyone else? Is not the gift of life all the honor any human being will ever receive or need? Why, why indeed, would any sensitive and intelligent person want to discriminate against other human beings in his own favor? Does that discrimination not reveal, beyond mere unfairness, a level of psychological insecurity and fear so profound that no such crude maneuver could ever possibly eliminate? And do the tricks of exclusivity and discrimination not result in further and further attempts to safeguard an ever growing sense of personal separation, poisoned by compounding insensitivity and inexorably leading to violent conflict, sorrow and greater insecurity still?

Could we not be insignificant psychologically and yet, whenever possible, capable of humbly rendering significant service to our fellow human beings, just for the love of them and the impersonal intelligence and goodness inherent in such activity? (101)

There are billions of us, human beings, walking around in relative isolation and clinging to neurotic claims and projections that have a deep impact on others as well as on ourselves. There are billions of us living in conflict with ourselves and others over who we think we ought to be if only our personal performance could be improved, if only others' reactions to one's performance would be more favorable. There are millions and millions of us hurting others by frustrating or negating their claims as punishment for having frustrated or negated ours.

Now, can all this nonsense stop? Can one's reflex predisposition to create and to experience hurt be instantaneously uncovered and destroyed? Can one be totally open, without guile, without fear, without dependence, without wanting anything from anyone for any psychological reason whatsoever? Can one be free of the desperate craving for "love" we all feel-precisely because it is clearly responsible, this counterfeit love, for so many of our hurts, angers and stupid reactions? And, would the basic requirement for such freedom not be a mind totally free of egotistical images and ideas of a phantom self, a mind that others could never ever bruise with their own egotistical insensitivity? To be free from oneself implies, does it not, being free of any sense of having a psychological past or future and, hence, never needing to objectify oneself or others in the delusional attempt to attain security through exclusive self-fulfillment. (102)

If one were troubled by having, let us say, a large head, the trouble would only end with the realization that there was nothing one could possibly do to alter that condition. And it is only the same type of passive realization that can remedy whatever trouble one feels about the fact of having-rather, of being-a mind alienated and conditioned by experience and, therefore, condemned to the boundless suffering that necessarily emanates from this existential separation and limited experience. At first sight it might appear as though the realization that there is nothing one can do to radically end the permanent process of the mind deceiving, conflicting, and confusing itself, merely bypasses the problem of suffering. However, when this impression is seen as just another byproduct of the same general conditioning, it is simply and immediately dismissed as just that. Then, it is precisely in the dissolution of fixed mental reactions along the lines of fear, inhibition and greed, that the now impersonal mind finds freedom from internal and interpersonal conflict and, hence, also the energy necessary to see the nature of the general human problem in all its real complexity and depth.

Like millions and millions of others, you and I feel-to some degree or another-isolated, at risk, insufficiently loved, eternally unfulfilled, and deadly afraid of further disillusion, failure, loss, pain and death. Like millions and millions of other people, you and I simply dislike many people, and hate a few. They have been indifferent or hurtful to us, and we feel that all that can be done to protect ourselves from future hurt, is to cut ourselves off emotionally, to threaten reprisal or to actually hurt them. Like millions and millions of others, you and I have built high and thick walls to protect ourselves from their ugly beliefs, ambitions, and violence. Self isolation is never a good measure of protection, though, because to the extent to which it breeds, protects and expands material and psychological exclusivity and a sense of certainty and superiority it will, unsurprisingly, not only strangle the life-giving relationships that can only be had with others who are functionally different from us, but it will also, this isolation, make our minds dull and insensitive, and constantly provoke the fear, rage and ambition of others.

Now, in seeing that we are exactly like everyone else (in the sense that we are all fundamentally thinking and behaving within the same destructive patterns), the very foundations of what we have always thought was our unique identity and separate act of existence, come crumbling down. In that terrific crisis, in that devastating but strangely healing realization of psychological non-existence, the human brain sheds this deeply ingrained feeling of "you" and "I" that has conditioned its operation, thus awakening to something entirely new, something that we may tentatively want to call: non-separation as truth. (102)

I have searched endlessly in the annals of personal experience and knowledge, that is, in the archives of the mind, for a passageway out of isolation, frustration, and fearful neuroticism, and into goodness, intelligence, and love. Suddenly it has dawned on me that there is absolutely no way out; at least not while still being "someone" moving in the fixed mental space and time of personal becoming. After all, are the memories and desires that make up who I think I am, not intrinsically the negation of freedom, goodness, intelligence, peace, and whatever true love might be? I see now that to be myself-that is, to think and feel as a separate entity, as well as to yearn for what I yearn and fear what I fear-precludes good relationship, not just with others, but with life as a whole. The self is fundamentally a process of on-going exclusion and cannot, therefore, create anything other than the clingy, pleasure and power seeking and, therefore, easily hateful and precarious relationships we now so easily assume to be the only possible reality.

I look around and see everyone else being as defended, self-absorbed, and memory/desire programmed as I am. I see practically all of us bent on finding whatever or whomever we think may deliver the exceptional personal prerogatives and particular life circumstances we all covet. Some of our psychological and socio-cultural goals are common, forcing us to compete ruthlessly with (and occasionally harm or even destroy) one another to gain the possession of finite material resources and even more limited psychological distinction (power, prestige, "salvation"). Other personal goals are entirely different and divergent, and their pursuit isolates us making us indifferent to others caught in their own peculiar dreams and pursuits. I may want, for example, to be a dedicated mother losing herself in her child's and his best possible future, and you may want to be a bleary-eyed computer gamer that will, if all goes right, be ultimately chosen as the best in a given category or level. Or you may want to be a lawyer, smart, wealthy and well dressed enough to be elected for high government office, and I a successful environmental activist, or the most respected (feared) gang leader in the entire city.

Sure enough, it seems that at every point in time at least some individuals within certain groups manage to have a measure of physical security and material comfort, relatively good family and professional lives, friendships, etc. But even these privileges enjoyed for relatively limited periods of time and in relative isolation from the surrounding ocean of poverty, violence and exploitation, inevitably harbor the fear of their inevitable ending which, like death itself (the truest equal-opportunity provider), waits for each one of us at every unknown turn of life.

How could anyone reasonably expect a truly free human being to emerge from any extension or variation of this same fragmented and utterly inadequate ground of knowledge and experience? This question is asked not to deny that things could be radically different, but rather to suggest that it is irrational to continue hoping that such outcome might be something that can be simply thought out and diligently worked for. Being what it is, thought can never be expected to have or to develop the intelligence that would then act as an antidote to its own limitations and the inherently blind cruelty of its separation. Intelligence resides, paradoxically, in the shock of realizing that the experience and the knowledge we gather from experience and so painstakingly invest in diverse and contradictory desire, will never deliver lasting security and happiness to anyone, let alone bring unity and peace to humankind.

If we are programmed to endlessly repeat the antagonism and the suffering we have already experienced for millions of years, why maintain the belief that a significant solution is going to come from the same mental set-up? Would that foolishly stubborn expectation not have to end to allow the emergence of something truly new? (103)

Although fragmented and conditioned by different forms of psycho-cultural experience and knowledge, thought is still the mental space common to all human beings. Its content and structure constitute the interior habitat of humanity and its continuous movement from the past to the future, the all too common historical illusion of personal, social and "spiritual" progress. Thought is standard equipment in every particular brain, and beyond its innate, fairly impersonal technical capacity, it is imprinted with the peculiar illusion of having an independent individuality that is radically different from everyone else, and that is also capable of improving-not just external, material, circumstances-but its own intrinsic reality, the reality of cognition, emotion, and will engaged in "relationships" with others and the world at large.

This sense of separate existence and relatively open psychological potential exists in different ways and degrees in all particular cultural groups of every historical period, and its central function seem to be that of providing the individual with a sense of psychological security based on an identity comparatively different to that of others and definitely separate from the world at large. Be that as it may, for many individuals-specially and paradoxically in modern societies with a significant degree of vertical and horizontal mobility-this security is extremely difficult to attain and nearly impossible to maintain; proof of it being the rather high incidence of mental illness; the constant exchange of one source of identity with another; and the brittleness and ultimate volatility of so many relationships.

Membership in a given religious group may give a husband and a wife a shared identity and a strong sense of common purpose, but none of this will necessarily prevent them from bickering with one another, reduce their sense of isolation from others and from each other, or eliminate the eventual failure of their relationship (regardless of whether or not they continue living together). Shared cultural identity never fully dampens or overrides the more fundamental sense of being an independent self with a separate identity and particular memories, goals and claims. Which also explains why individuals who have come of age within a particular cultural group, can still be terribly hostile with one another within the same context, often to the point of creating dissident or splinter factions that will resist, pull away from and possibly destroy the original group.

Psychological reality is, thus, one of fundamental similarity functionally hidden by a blinding diversity in superficial difference. We are generally so identified with particular manifestations of a common illusion of cultural and psychological difference, that we remain unaware that we are, essentially, the same. In choosing at every moment to identify ourselves with particular cultural and personal characteristics, while strenuously attempting to avoid suffering by asserting, defending, fixing, expanding, or even attempting to transcend, the personal or tribal psyche, we blind ourselves to the central fact that our fundamental nature and our suffering are common.

To see that one is helpless to overcome the general matrix of psychological thought in which we each inhabit the illusion of separate being, liberates the psyche from the influence of alternative ideological convictions promising to liberate their new converts from suffering and even death. This in turn means that the self cannot any longer look to the future as the realm of significant personal or social change and expansion. The built-in procrastinating tactics of gradual and partial psychological becoming are no longer an option, because it has become terminally evident that action that emerges from self-centered thought cannot possibly overcome the conflict and the suffering that thought itself has created.

Without further recourse to the always limited previous experience (the knowledge) used to manufacture future hope and to react to actual events with actions intended to coax along the realization of that hope, only a passive moment-to-moment perception remains. Direct and complete awareness of what one is as a human being and, by extension, awareness of the totality of violence and sorrows generated by egotistical human behavior, brings about an immediate collapse of the whole self-centered structure of thought. The perception is the collapse and the collapse the perception.

The total and instantaneous realization that a brain conditioned by pre-personal and biographical experience cannot transcend its essential limitations in order to solve the problems it has created, eliminates altogether intra-psychic conflict and contradiction. It also renders interpersonal conflict impossible because one is no longer impacting others in the general struggle to attain predetermined psychological and material goals. Now, a mind free of conflict is already a radically different mind.

One can hypothesize endlessly about silence and compassion, but conjecture disappears altogether when it is clear that what may happen in the absence of the self endlessly traveling from the past to its projected modification in the future, is not discernible to thought. Whatever may lie for a human being beyond self-centered thought-if anything at all-is not a desirable or undesirable experience. It could not possibly be an experience at all, for experience implies the separate existence of the one having the experience and recognizing it as such by recourse to previous experience/knowledge. And this is also why it is also safe to assume that he who claims to have had the experience of going beyond thought and tells others how to go about getting it, is lying in both counts. (104)

If my thought and consequent actions are exclusively related to the urge to satisfy personal desires, (psychological desires often enough placed well above and ahead of the satisfaction of physical needs), then the other if he or she manages to penetrate at all the thick walls of my indifference, appears merely as either a useful means to an end or as a hindrance that must be avoided or altogether eliminated. That is, other persons are seen as disposable objects deprived of humanity; "things" whose relevance increases or diminishes in the measure in which they willingly or unwillingly serve one's plan for self-fulfillment. Central among other justifications for this rather common ruthlessness, is the argument that the other-in the urge to satisfy his or her own needs and desires-is equally trying to turn "me" into an instrument useful only in the attainment of his own goals and ambitions.

This reduction of one another to convenient images and functional instruments, energizes the reactive field of fear and desire in which indifference so easily turns into manipulation, and manipulation into psychological or physical violence inevitably leading to suffering and further violence.

Clearly, unless particular individuals like you and I see the fact and consequences of self-projective separation and immediately, (without further thought), allow that very perception to be its annihilation, in the ever worsening continuity of this common selfishness the human species will certainly perish, probably long before its time. (105)

If alienation and suffering are common to us all; if our perception, thought and behavior are biased and reduced by memory; if we are all engaged in the same effort to avoid particular pain and sorrow while simultaneously attempting to increase as much as possible exclusive privilege and pleasure; and if this conflictive effort does nothing but worsen our common suffering-is not our sense of independent psychological existence the cruelest and most unfounded of all illusions? (106)

I know that I move inexorably towards death. And so do you as well. After all, this forced march towards an unavoidable end is one of the more salient characteristics of what we all call "me". The nature of our self-definition as separate beings, forces us to see the death of the body and, especially, of the psyche, as a total devastation. And so we struggle mightily against this fate. We invent fantasies of postponement or of particular exception and transcendence. We absurdly console ourselves thinking that others will precede us in the presumed horror of the annihilation of the self. We keep ourselves chronically inebriated with pleasurable experience and entertainment, and paradoxically work ourselves literally to death in the insane hope that the perdurability of the self might lie in securing a permanent place in the admiring memory of those who will survive us.

And yet as each one of us dies physically and psychologically, the great current of human alienation, conflict, suffering and fear of death goes on unabated. Human history with all its reiterative cruelties and horrors continues, forever searching for multiple forged versions of what-at least theoretically-we all crave for: truth, progress, unity, peace and immortality. The young of the young persist in the search for psychological development and social evolution, but that trodden path of becoming remains largely one of separation, violence, exploitation, and the ancient anguish of a feared, meaningless, death. One dies and the other, my wife, my son, my daughter, my friend, continue as the ones who, in continuing to think of themselves as being independently alive, will also inevitably die.

The interconnectedness and creative nature of the material universe and whatever hidden order sustains it, seems to be one with death in so far as death serves life as an integral part of it. Observing that within this greater context it is only the "me" that suffers the idea of death it has itself manufactured, makes it more than reasonable to ask if there might be a mode of existence that being free of self-isolating singularity, is unconcerned with and certainly not frightened by death.

To raise this possibility is, of course, to suggest that the self-projective existence of the individual-the particular life of the one who dies-is totally unreal. It also suggests that what is real beyond the provincial made-up reality of thought, is the totality of the existential geyser of energy/matter and whatever may be its unbroken, formless, source: the mysteriously creative emptiness about which the conditioned human mind cannot possibly formulate any image, idea, or theory.

It is indeed licit to ask what is the meaning of death when placed within the context of a deeper reality that is formless and timeless, without discernible (not conjectural) beginning or end. Is death only the necessary end of a separate and self-serving psychological entity that exists only in his delusional mind and the traditional mythical tribal mind he may share with some others?

No one doubts the finality of the physical death of the organism, but what would be left of the sting of that death were there no identification of a particular psyche with that organism or with anyone or anything else for that matter? What would life be like if free of the fear of death? Is life not death, at every instant, of that very instant? And what would death's presumed final victory be without a fearful, reluctant, victim? (107)

In no insignificant measure the self survives and propels its self-serving project onto the future by comparing itself advantageously with others considered to be much more evil in their own particular selfishness and cruelty. Witness, if not, the enduring popularity of Hitler and Stalin and other historical ruffians out of whom the new ruffians of every generation get so much political mileage.

Because egotism is a general sickness, to compare degrees or different symptoms, is mere hypocrisy and self-deception. On the other hand and unsurprisingly, to drastically eliminate psychological comparison with others, or with the idealized images one may have formed of oneself, ushers in a great measure of understanding and equanimity.

Who is one when no longer propped up by convenient if counterfeit psychological comparisons? What is left of one once there is no longer any identification with some and disassociation with others? What is the un-identified self, who or what is the self in itself, the non-becoming self, the self alone? Is it, he or she any "thing" at all? (108)

The extent to which the suffering of others-as well as one's own-is not felt, makes evident the extent of personal alienation and egotism. This insensitivity, this selfish lack of attention inevitably leading to grief, paradoxically guarantees its own continuity. Conversely, total awareness of and responsibility for human suffering, exposes self-centeredness and blocks its endurance. Open, unconditioned perception of what actually goes on in one's mind and in one's relationships with others at every moment, merges the individuality that has all along been presumed separate, into a single, conditioned, self-centered, and suffering human psyche. And it is only in that dissolution of the self as an independent entity that there is a chance that the proclivity to create, experience and fear suffering and death, will disappear. (109)

Real relationships between human beings occur only if there is a reciprocal and symmetric perception of the self-serving subjectivity-the prejudice, really-of each one's judgment of the other. The enhanced reality would come from the relationship being as free of interpersonal friction as it would be free of intra-psychic images, fear, confusion, and the consequent self-isolation. It is our common recalcitrance to perceive ourselves as a mere particular cases in a general matrix of conditioned human egotism, that allows for the projection of "improved" particular manifestations of the same self-centeredness into the future, along with all the manipulation, conflict, cruelty and sorrow that are intrinsic to such projection and which have characterized human history all along. (110)

You and I may consider each other intolerable by focusing exclusively in what neither one of us might be able to see, let alone stop being. The individual behavioral expression of particular personal and cultural backgrounds existing within a general context of self-centered consciousness and egotistical desire, is not something that any one of us can control or eliminate from the inside, as it were. A great big dose of honesty may allow, however, for a lucid reciprocal perception and gentle communication of what blocks relationship. This accurate and caring mirroring of each other is the friendship-the love, really-that is only possible among those who help each other see that they are, in themselves, nothing. (111)

The illusion of discrete personal existence and unique identity that is largely responsible for our conflictive relationships, is based in particular versions of a universal mental agglutination of different memories, attachments, and projects that upon close examination is constitutionally incapable of granting anyone separate existence. If these mental figments and objects to which we cling were to be removed, the self would instantly cease to exist, as would the body were the necessary supply of air and sustenance to be cut off.

Let us be clear about this. To say that one exists as "oneself" is not an indication of intrinsic, actual, existence, but rather a reference to a set of other things, none of which are exclusively and intrinsically "me" or "mine", but rather externalities, ideas or images (non-actualities) to which the I is so profoundly attached that it takes them to be the ground of its existence: my name and physical appearance, my religion, my country, my gender and race, my wife or husband, my children, my traditions, my experience, my house, my opinions, my skills, my car, my intellectual level, and so on. We generally define ourselves by referring to a particular historical sequence of images, ideas and attachments and their modified projection into the future, but who does not balk when asked who one is in oneself? Is there such a thing as a permanent and actual self to be found anywhere?

And if in a single human brain the illusion of a separate, intrinsically matchless and free entity called "me" ceases to exist, what would then be the relation of this brain (no longer tethered to the general matrix of thought and emotion) to the rest of suffering humanity and to life/death as a whole? -No one can "know" the answer to this vital question, but seriously posing it does create an extraordinary sensitivity to the facts of each instant of everyday life, and that is enough. (112) -

When we free ourselves from ideology and hypocrisy-and ideology is hypocrisy-and simply reveal to one another our selfish ways and our fears and how they have contributed to the grief and sorrow we all experience, one of the first things that stops immediately is the blaming. This, because we can only inculpate others when hiding from ourselves that the same injustice and cruelty that we see in them lives in our own hearts behind the perversely sanctimonious supposition of lesser responsibility. There may well be endless arguments and counter arguments regarding what relative place one person, country, or group occupies in the most popular rankings of good and evil, but the total responsibility accruing for everyone from simply partaking in the ongoing disorder and cruelty of a common psyche, admits no argument, no advantageous or disadvantageous comparison, no pretense and, most of all, no bickering.

If the human psyche is conditioned by the totality of the human experience and its accumulated knowledge, if your mind and my mind are filled to the brim with all the tragedy of the species, then no personal or cultural alibi is valid. And since the discrete self is-in its presumed separation, autonomy and illusion of self-realization-nothing but an alibi, to forgo the cover is to forgo the self. And that is essentially what it means to assume total responsibility for the entire tragedy of humanity. (113)

It is good to apprehend the nature of personal subjectivity, that is, to directly perceive the fact that one is the embodiment of particular prejudice and, hence, to never be tempted by the desire to replace it with an improved version. And if there is a total awareness of the contents and the ill-advised projections of oneself as a particular case of a general human subjectivity, the myopia and prejudice of other individuals, and the error and conflict potentially present in each and every instance of human interaction, is also instantly apparent.

Put differently, keen attention paid to one's own bias uncovers the basic human condition that is its general setting. "I"-(any I)-am limited and coerced both by the general characteristics of humanity, and by the memories and the fixed negative and positive preferences gathered and modified throughout my own personal experience. Seeing at a glance the entire mental environment of the species conclusively ends the self's fantasies regarding competence and special status. Free at last from the burden of particular psychological knowledge and the mechanical effort to move up social ladders and passively and impersonally aware of the human condition, the mind can then inquire deeper into the wholeness of life. (114)

If "I" am programmed by the experience of humanity as well as by my own personal memories and acquired knowledge, how can I possibly judge somebody else's thought and behavior? How can I expect someone else to change radically if everyone is as deprived of freedom as I am? On the other hand, would not sharing this perception of present human reality be the overture of love? Love, not in the sense of the sentiment that permeates selective and exclusive attachments largely determined by subjective preference, but, rather, love as the all-inclusive embrace of the disaster and mystery of humanity as a single, indivisible fact?

And if it is only subjective self-pity that suffers and dies, would a mind free of our habitual sense of personal centrality and isolation not be impermeable to psychological pain and the fear of death? Beyond that, would a mind free of the strictures of personal and tribal grief and fear not have a voice persuasive, perhaps not to those still made obtuse by tradition, respectability and greed, but to the inconsolable, those burning with discontent and yet determined to see things as they are? (115)

Particular events of thought and emotion occurring in your brain determine who you are at every moment infinitely more than "you" determine what you think and feel. The "I" is really a figment of the collective imagination; nothing in itself and yet a permanent fixture of our shared conditioned mind and the generally tense and unstable relationships this mind tends to generate. Psychologically, there is only memory and the movement of memory, which is thought interpreting and utilizing the present to project itself onto a pre-imagined future. There is no freedom or intelligence-let alone love-in this movement of thought through a time of its own making. If there were, we would have long ago gotten rid of the greed, fear and conflict that soil our interpersonal and inter-societal relations, thus altogether eliminating war, the exploitation of the weak and the poor, and all the other personal and social miseries which have always been part and parcel of our existence on this planet.

It is silly then to keep hoping that our much-celebrated freedom of self-expression will eventually achieve anything significant in the realm of mental and social health. Except in the admittedly limited space where our purest scientific, technical and logistical efforts take place-realm where, tellingly, there is not much room given to (subjective) self-expression as such-we seem only capable of regurgitating modified versions of what has already been experienced and learned. Our memories simply continue to mechanically re-impose themselves propelled by false pretensions of creativity and the ever renewed bullying of an utterly contradictory sense of manifest destiny.

Be warned then not to trust what you are reading here even if, on the page or the screen, it seems truthful and good. For all you know, this material may just be a good example of the travesty just described. Again, there may well be a radical mutation of the brain/psyche leading to unprecedented freedom and truth, but one must find out for oneself whether there is or there is not such mutation. Anything else might merely be the tragic conjunction of someone's desire to tell a lie, with someone else's desire to be lied to. (116)

The moment you criticize or deny the value of something held in high esteem by somebody else, tension between both of you-and possibly an open conflict-begins. The same occurs, of course, whenever you want someone else to appreciate something you are intensely identified with. Indifference or outright rejection of what you offer is, more often than not, the automatic blossoming of anger or bitter disappointment. On the other hand, joint identification with anything thought of as having particular value and meaning, generates exclusive tribal, clannish, or cliquish bonds that, in turn, tend to generate antagonism with other groups. This personal and tribal attachment to exclusive sources of identification, certainty and security, is the general context of conditioned fragmentation where our sense of separate existence takes root also determining the nature and quality of our relationships.

Now, is a human being who is aware of the limitations and danger of exclusive meaning capable of instantly and irreversibly terminating her fixed positive or negative connection to specific sources of identification? And, if this is possible, what is the character of such a mind? The realization that the programmed mind cannot possibly produce the depth of meaning and the inner peace that would drive away conflict and insecurity, implicitly negates hope placed on the same desired goal from the same source at any future date. This negation of illusory hope is enormously significant because, although nothing else may have changed, the psyche that is no longer yearning for anything is also free of internal contradiction and conflict with others and, hence, capable of extraordinary attention.

Can a person free of attachment and no longer living in the space and time created by the process of psychological and social becoming, survive in a broken and conflicted world in which most everyone else is still identified with particular ideological and material attachments and struggling with themselves and against others to defend, expand, or modify their influence and territorial reach? Can someone who has given up the protection automatically granted through membership in exclusive groups, and who is free of all pretense and all ambition, survive in this competitive, cutthroat world of ours?

Assuming that there is no longer any need for psychological defense, expansion and continuity, physical survival in this peculiar context still implies procuring, through the performance of some service or the production of a given good or set of goods, the satisfaction of the organism's basic needs without attracting excessive negative attention from others in the process. Is this possible? Is close relation with others not necessarily based on agreement about fundamental premises (memories, traditions, attachments, convictions and projections) regarding relationship, society, life and death? Can one render a service and earn a living without psychologically committing to anything or anybody? All these questions are merely speculative and reflect the unconscious or half conscious fear that is always there to block a total perception of the self and the world as they are. There is no half ways or gradual processes in this matter, either there is an actual crossing of the threshold of psychological separation into the impersonal and unfamiliar, or there is not.

The possibility of living free of illusory security in separation while still managing to earn one's most basic keep can, when expressed to others, be easily understood as the proselytizing siren call of yet another strange cultural tradition and, thus, instantly rejected without serious examination. Worse yet, it can be perceived as an outright attack on the particular ideological choice of the interlocutor, which will bring about an even stronger negative response. But it could also be taken in as totally logical and coherent with the interlocutor's own observations and sense of the urgent necessity to be sane and free. In this case the question of survival does not come up. The collapse of attachment to particular meaning and value is one with the perception that their degree of falseness and inherent danger overrides any other consideration. If there has been an accurate and complete perception, there is no other choice. Choice only exists in the field of separate being and becoming.

It should be clear then that if this possibility of a radical freedom from fixed cultural and psychological moorings and their projections in mental time, is not the actual fruit of one's direct observation, but only a theoretical possibility suggested by someone else, then it will be nothing more than yet another idea that is either rejected or turned into a slowly developing plan of illusory self-transformation leading -as all the gradual plans of thought lead-nowhere.

Make no mistake then. What you are getting here is merely a verbal announcement of the possibility of a timeless, unconditioned mind crowning a complete perception of the general facts of the conditioned psyche and the hopelessly fragmented and conflicted world it brings into being. This announcement might be necessary, but it can never be sufficient to bring about in the interlocutor the radical change implied. The map is not the territory. On the other hand, if the interlocutor, (you, my friend), merely uses the description provided to focus on the actuality of the total human predicament, that very heightened level of passive attention is already the psychological "emptiness", the silence, of a mind free of the reactive projection of self-centered thought. The interlocutor has moved well beyond the words read or heard to instantly and actually see the reality of what they refer to. If there is a time lapse, if you find yourself saying: "Later on I'll think further about these ideas", then that is clear indication that the description has been turned into the stuff of thought and, hence, irremediably cut off from the living truth to which they refer; truth that will then remain invisible. (117)

It is a perfect summer day and I am riding a bicycle down a quiet street full of trees bathed in color by a late afternoon Autumn sun. Although I have no particularly pressing problems weighing on me, I notice that I am not at ease. I look for the source of the dissatisfaction clouding the mind and thus blocking the full impact of the extraordinary sight before me, and find that it is a form of deep nostalgia, a barely buffered craving for something I have never known, something that no worldly pleasure of any kind could possibly match or displace.

I presume everybody feels this powerful thirst and can see that everyone seeks to find, in different things and through different practices, a way to quench it. There seems to be a permanent pain associated with consciousness itself, that overbearing personal presence that every night most of us seem eager to be rid of even if just for a few hours when we go to sleep. It is the sense of separation; the fear of the thousand things that could go wrong and of the goals that may not be accomplished; the fear of the loves that may be frustrated or that might unexpectedly end; it is the dread of the uncertainties of aging and of the ultimate humiliation of death. It is also the sense of permanently missing out on something of total importance, something that may well be a human birthright, but that for some reason does not manifest. Could you and I be that reason? (118)

Every moment has unthinkable value and that value is the same for every other moment for the simple reason that what is actually happening is not only fully real, but utterly unprecedented, mysteriously intertwined with everything else and unthinkably new. Preference and, therefore, negative or positive assessment of what is beyond certain necessary bounds, (you do not want to be unable to tell cold from hot in the shower or green from red in front of a semaphore), implies the irruption of thought and the consequent clouding of the real with the anxious yearning for preferred outcomes-re-editions of the past in the future. In psychological and relational matters, preference clearly indicates the interference of memory with its cumbersome baggage of manipulative prejudices, emotions and self-serving desires. (119)

Freedom comes with the instantaneous decision not to be ever again caught, for more than an instant, in interpersonal or inter-social conflicts of any type. Freedom is then freedom from society and from the self, for what are society and the self if not the conflict of contradictory opinions, beliefs, and interests: ethnic and racial conflict; gender and generational conflict; the conflict between different social, economic, and educational classes; international and inter-regional conflict; and finally the struggle within5the permanent conflict between what the self actually is and what it thinks it ideally ought to be. Inflexible commitment to particular cultural or psychological ideas makes for prejudice, and prejudice invariably informs perception thus generating inadequate thought and dysfunctional behavior.

Since life itself seems to demand from everyone a service function through which the basic physical needs of the organism may be satisfied, let us ask again if this function can be carried out free of any desire to gain from it status and power? Can one do one's work without projecting any psychological advantage whatsoever? Can one easily abandon all exclusive cultural affiliations along with the constant desire to progress into whatever obscurely or clearly predetermined material and/or mental circumstances are deemed capable of delivering equally pre-determined feelings of security and self-realization?

But why would anyone want to stop trying to feel good about oneself, one could ask? -Simply because certainty, psychological security, and personal realization are all chimeras the willful pursuit of which practically guarantees protracted internal and interpersonal conflict and the consequent waste of energy. To be anything at all psychologically-and to have not yet attained the levels of pleasure, power, and security that one desires-is to be condemned to frequent feelings of frustration and anxiety in a permanent process of becoming that is in itself bondage and lack of intelligence.

We fear losing the sense we have built over the years of who we are and, even more than that, we fear not fulfilling the fantasies we have created for ourselves in a future that only exists in our minds. And, yet, it is precisely in the easy dismissal of neurotic claims and ambitions that may lie the only possibility of real freedom and a reasonable measure of basic physical security. Somehow, it is generally not apparent to most of us that illusion and fantasy can never deliver what they promise; that self-assertion cannot but breed enmity; and that the opposition between the real and the ideal self yields nothing but mental confusion and exhaustion. Conversely, sudden and complete awareness of who we are and how we actually live is in itself freedom. Then it does not matter how this freedom manages to earn its keep. Work is no longer a problem because it is no longer a means to a false sense of freedom. (120)

It is a central characteristic of the conditioned mind to rush to a new form of hope as soon an old one has been discredited and discarded as ineffectual. Not alert to its own limitation and bias, mental conditioning is in the permanent business of seeking or creating and implementing possible future solutions that are ultimately as barren as all the preceding ones. Through this mechanical restoration of hope, continuity is guaranteed for the ever-striving and self-blinding self. And in the hard labor demanded by new solutions, the "good" tries to increase itself through the struggle to diminish or eliminate the "bad", if not the outright evil, with which it paradoxically coexists.

It is usually difficult to see whatever conception one may have of good and evil as false opposites; inseparable equal value halves of the same fragmented, pre-formatted and endlessly self-deluded and self-projective mind. For it is the same mind that thinking of itself as bad makes plans to gradually become "good". As a necessary result of this moral muddle, conflict, frustration and confusion are all permanent fixtures in arduously hopeful lives absurdly sustained by the tragic fact that, not matter what we do or leave undone, the basic problems of life remain unresolved. Who indeed could solve the difficulties created by thinking that one is radically different from everybody else? Who could possibly redeem the actions of an "I" convinced of being different from, and in charge, of the content and the projections of the psyche and the grieving world he endlessly creates and recreates with these actions?

The truth is, of course, that the hopeful self is no different from the contents of the psyche and, therefore, also incapable of significantly altering these contents over time. The managerial "I" is an illusion endlessly reacting to fear and frustrated illusion by creating further illusions of itself and then, struggling against itself and fighting with others to try and bring them into existence.

The unity of what is inside (the psyche and the "I") is mirrored by the unity of the full psyche and society, which is generally perceived as outside the "I", as "not-me". In other words, there is a single mental field where the psychological is the social and vise versa. Given this unity, it should come as no surprise that no particular personal or tribal action can possibly bring about order into the world, ever. We are caught then in a situation in which no reform of the social structure, (either from the center to the periphery or from the top to the bottom or the other way around), can ever reform the individual, and no reform of the individual can ever amount to significant social progress. This situation can be either the source of terminal despair, or it can be seen as the critical point at which particular individuals realizing the futility of all attempts to change either society or themselves, stop wanting and trying to do so.

To be sure, the ending of overarching desire for a gradual psychological progress that does not exist, does not mean an end of concern about the general and particular human condition. Nor does it mean a willingness to indulge in negative, destructive, behavior. It means, rather, an end to the waste of energy, the self-deception and the conflict that a very old and profoundly incorrect perception of human reality incessantly generates. Once the biased, reactive, and generally inattentive operation of conditioned thought has been eliminated, perception of things as they are from moment to moment is radically enhanced, and this perception then acts. (121)

The pursuit of personal happiness through the privileges associated with different forms and levels of status tends to beget actions and reactions contrary to life itself. In its disregard for the basic well being of others and its indifference for the delicate and complex issues of natural, social and mental ecology, egotism-how else to call it-limits and distorts perception, generates different forms of violent fanaticism and, thus, extends in time the fears and agonies of the human mind.

To function healthily and properly, one needs to consider the totality of the human condition inseparable from life itself and under that light alone consider the implications of being an intelligent, caring human being admittedly responsible for what happens to the species and the planet as a whole. But being obsessed with itself and its own desire for power, pleasure and fulfillment, the self-centeredness of a sick, tired and frightened mind can hardly do that. It is too stupid to see its own stupidity; too blind to see its own blindness; too weak and lethargic to act immediately and decisively.

It is essential then to first of all accept the challenge of simply seeing the irrationality of particular claims and beliefs. If we have any honest concern for our own mental health as well as for the future of humanity, we must be critically aware of the danger implicit in a sense of separate existence and exclusive entitlement. How can we ever expect to be worthy of love and peace if we are not, first, fully cognizant that a habitual pursuit of psychological pleasure and power annuls that possibility? And how can we ever expect to be worthy of intelligence if still caught in the falseness of the religious, political, and cultural ideologies with which we rationalize our disregard for the basic well being of most other people, while justifying irresponsible and fundamentally uncaring separate lives? (122)

If the experience-based mental conditioning that extends itself in time through the struggle to attain exclusive worldly and otherworldly privilege continues unchallenged, our violence and suffering might in the not too distant future reach a point in which the human species and, perhaps, all other life forms on the planet, will cease to exist. Therefore, the deprogramming of the human mind/brain is certainly our most essential challenge. However, this is not a challenge that can be approached, like many others, through a given method recommended and enforced by a traditional or avant-garde authority, or solely through one's own convictions and effort. Since our mental conditioning consists, fundamentally, of a self-sustaining sequence of barren transformations (in the sense of permanently moving, personally and culturally, from less desirable to presumably more desirable forms), what is required to break this programming is not just another change, but rather a veritable mutation, and not just of the psyche, but of the brain itself. By 'mutation' we mean dissolution of the fixed manner in which most mental connections and reactions presently occur and, consequently, the emergence of an unthinkably new mental/affective capacity unrelated to experience, knowledge and their projections.

We might have no idea of what the specific nature and consequences of such mutation might be, but we can plainly see now that without an irreversible collapse of psychological conditioning with its rancid memories and its built-in intra-psychic and interpersonal conflict, nothing will change. To soberly consider the possibility of the self-centered psyche coming to an end, is not an act of faith, for faith always has a declared object, the carrot at the end of the stick. Here there is no positive goal, only the radical negation of what is illusory and false. Whether or not this negation opens up the space and creates the silence in which something truly unprecedented might occur, is not known and is not, for obvious reasons, open to speculation. (123)

Silence comes naturally and easily when it no longer makes any sense to assert what are essentially irrelevant opinions and preferences pitched aggressively or slyly against those of others. That silence is, in itself, an overarching awareness of the fixed old moorings and the mechanical overreaching of self-centered thought. That silence is present when thought, seeing its own aberrant optics and cognitive limitations, has irreversibly circumscribed its activity to those areas where it can operate usefully and harmlessly. Silence is in the realization that all personalized, psychological, content is limited and biased by experience and that, since the "I" is but a falsely dominant aspect of this same content, it is irrational to trust its ability to fix, overcome or transcend the general situation. The mind is quiet at the precise instant in which facts finally prevail over images and ideas, thus ending the clatter of fears, illusions, ambitions and sustained negative emotions vying for center stage. (124)

To look at oneself with the intention of doing something to improve what is seen, implies a false division within the psyche and irresolvable conflict between the layer of thought pretending to see and to manage the change, and all those other layers that presumably need changing. Were this false division to be eliminated, there would be no narcissistic self-consciousness and no further intra-psychic conflict. Thought is, of course, necessary for practical tasks, but in generating the illusion of an independent self and dedicating most of its operation to the defense and expansion of the self, thought becomes the root cause of all human problems.

Since self-absorbed thought cannot be trusted to solve the problems and heal the suffering it has itself created, one is left in the extraordinary position of not knowing what, if anything, could possibly help one attain sanity. All that is clear is that any thought-based action intended to solve personal and collective human suffering is only likely to make things worse. However, this act of definitively disowning any and all efforts of self-centered thinking, is already an extraordinary action; a negative action that in shirking the familiar changes everything leading the mind to the infinite realm of the unknown. The self, full to capacity with knowledge and experience cannot ever see properly and act wisely. Not knowing psychologically and not wanting or expecting to know is, thus, the paradoxical prerequisite of lucid perception and rational action based not on idea, but on the truth of immediate and essential facts. (125)

The ranking of human beings according to perceived status is as absurd as it is cruel and dangerous. Our brains are clearly conditioned to compare and this faculty is-we cannot tire repeating-essential in certain areas of thought, but extremely harmful when it is extended to judge ourselves and others because, from there on, the images and ideas we form easily serve to justify psychological and physical violence. After millennia of "progress" our psyches are still riddled with sets and sets of categories and subcategories created for no other purpose than to increase one's sense of relative rank and security by simultaneously, and with the same measure, filing other human beings away in the innumerable mental folders of prejudice and indifference. This fraudulent and dehumanizing use of the inherent capacity of the brain to judge and compare for practical purposes is common to just about every human being, but it is especially dangerous when it helps the rich and the self proclaimed "intelligent" and "good" to justify the systematic violence they routinely use to attain the grossly unfair privileges with which they then buttress their absurd sense of superiority.

Mechanical self-centric and ethnocentric comparisons cease to exist only when it becomes obvious that it is not only irrational, but also dangerous, to assume that any particular brand of psychological or cultural programming is better than any other. Breaking the hold that psychological and culturally determined hierarchies have taken in one's mind, shocks the brain into an all-encompassing perception of the deep mental unity of humanity.

Since the core problem of humanity is the lack of unity and solidarity created by the differentially conditioned human brain, the only possible solution for this core problem lies in the dissolution of one's particular and general conditioning. Nothing else will do. The only real change occurs when one is no longer comparing and ranking human beings on the bases of deceptive criteria, and when there is no better self to become by elbowing others aside. And what is the self if there is no comparative reference to anyone or anything else? What is the self when all striving and competition cease along with the insensitivity, angst and interpersonal conflict they bring in their wake?

Just think about who you would be without comparing yourself to those who you presently assume to be either better or worse than you? Who would you be were you to stop comparing yourself with images of what you think you ought to become? Who would you be without reference to anything else in particular? (126)

Can you see why any judgment issued about someone else is necessarily based on prejudice? Clearly, any assessment of the physical or psychological reality of another rests on totally subjective images and ideas related more to the limitations of one's knowledge, experience and preferences than to what is the ultimately unknowable nature of the person who is the object of the assessment. The same holds true of any judgment one may have about oneself, about who one is, and ought or ought not to be or do. All such judgments falsely presume knowing the ever-changing depths of the psyche. They also falsely presume the capacity to change radically in response to an external or an intra-psychic demand.

Perception of the superficiality and ultimate futility of political, interpersonal and intra-psychic action based on comparative images and ideas, is freedom; freedom to impersonally observe the totality of the psyche and the general social context that mirrors it, uncontaminated by bias and illusory desire. No longer rigidly "wired" to move in the pre-set direction of ideological corridors and in compliance with the greedy mandates of the peculiar authorities and methodologies directing traffic in them, action in daily life no longer brings about further deception and conflict. (127)

One of the central questions in life is whether one-or anyone, for that matter-exists, psychologically, as an actual reality. Traditionally we affirm our existence by pointing to the permanent, though ever shifting, presence and projection of an interior historical entity we all call "me"; an entity made unique and recognizable through certain particular and relatively durable traits and associations. When asked to explain the nature of this entity, we tell "a personal story"; that is, a collection of particular images and ideas quite selectively describing a given past, interpreting and justifying a particular present, and desiring the achievement of a particular future. This one-of-a-kind, relatively independent, and ongoing biographical version of the self gives the distinct impression that there is indeed somebody "in" there who exists apart from everything else and who is quite capable of modifying itself and, perhaps even of significantly influencing the thought and behavior patterns (the story) of others. This impression is further strengthened by the fact that strong emotional and other physical reactions are felt as originating within "me" and affecting "me". However, when anyone is pressed to provide concrete proof that the self exists in itself, independently of these memories, comparative evaluations, plans, feelings and sensations, there is a quick and generally frightening realization that without those references and associations one does not in fact exist.

It might then be totally incorrect to affirm the presence in some unknown location of the brain of one who "thinks", when in reality there is rather a constant stream of impersonal thought of unknowable origin that includes the peculiar illusion of a thinker who imagines himself to be thinking. If the "I" is seen as illusory and falls apart from its own dead weight, what happens to this overwhelming spew of images and ideas gushing forth from some unreachable depth? Does it remain confused and at odds with itself over its multiple contradictions? Does it continue struggling with the thoughts and emotions of others over the phantom spoils of progress, power and personal superiority? Or does it also die as did the "I" that was its central axis, warehouse and projector? (128)

Ideology is the collective memory of a vast archipelago of particular groups, each lightly or strongly held together by the dubious security provided by historical familiarity and the inherent righteousness of a sense of common and manifest destiny. Ideology is the dangerous illusion of certainty and safety in the functional isolation of myopic tribal belief. Biographical memory is, in turn and similarly, the pretense of uniqueness in the illusion of exclusive identity energized by a sense of manifest destiny. If these two-tribal ideology and individual memory-are seen for what they are, and jettisoned as so much ballast, then all that is left is the general and basic mental configuration of the human being which determines that of humanity as a whole. We are talking about the fundamental instincts and basic drives and fears that are at the core of every individual who has ever lived and will ever live. These pre-personal attributes of the human psyche are just that: common to all, not optional and, therefore, not to be perceived as someone's characteristics, good or bad, as opposed to those of someone else judged as better or worse.

As presently programmed the human being, just about every human being, is the reactive memory of the species capped with the ideological conceits of a particular cultural group (or set of groups), and finally crowned with the self-conscious and selective memories and ambitions of what passes for the "separate" individual. Such is our mental reality and there is nothing anyone can do from within it to significantly improve or transcend that reality. In fact, every effort made to that effect merely reinforces the continuity of the underlying psycho-cultural structure, a continuity strictly based on the on-going production of slight modifications of the same personal and tribal self.

Which brings us back to questions that have already emerged before: Do the results of our investigation necessarily mean that there is absolutely no alternative to the mental setup described? Could the very suspension of futile efforts made to improve or liberate ourselves from ourselves somehow result in a radical change in our intra-psychic reality leading in turn to an unimaginably different social order? Now, either the suggestion of this possibility is contradictory and false and, therefore, there is no sense in going any further in this direction, or there is actually something beyond the conditioning of the human mind that can act on the brain so as to remove those limitations.

Let us say that after thoroughly discussing the psychological and social components of the general human situation as well as this seemingly absurd possibility of change unrelated to any action of the self, we agree that although we cannot know if there is anything beyond thought capable of eliminating its worst biases and limitations, it would appear reasonable (for thought itself) to end its attempts to solve the enormously complex and interrelated problems it has itself created and is utterly incompetent to solve. In other words, the very perception of the nature and magnitude of the human problem acts directly and immediately by blocking thought's on-going and necessarily futile attempts to find solutions to the psychological and social problems it has itself created. Thought then limits itself to those areas in which it can operate in a relatively rational and, therefore, harmless manner.

Clearly, such perception of mental and social reality has to be total, instantaneous, and free of motives and pre-informed reactions because, otherwise it would be merely a re-installation and further projection of thought. Self-centered thinking can only come to an end through the simple and direct realization that no action informed by previous experience/knowledge and motivated by a particular and predetermined goal can lead to anything but a new chapter in the long serial novel of human confusion and grief. The self as the embodiment of thought does not know what might happen if it were to die, but now understands perfectly well that unless that happens, everything will just continue to get worse (as it clearly is) and nothing significant will ever occur.

Let us put it the other way around: Thought only operates when it is able to project a goal onto the future which, by comparison with previous experience and previously recorded knowledge, represents a psychological advantage. And now thought itself has finally understood that when it comes to an actual solution to the problem of human suffering, all future goals imply, not a solution, but the reinforced continuity of the very root of the problem which is the ever self-reforming separate self. If the irrelevancy and impotence of the self-centered psyche is clearly perceived, then thought has no other recourse than to irrevocably stop wasting energy in creating and implementing further escapes and pseudo solutions. (129)

Something extraordinary occurs with the realization that there is absolutely no sense in comparing oneself with anybody else or with any idea one may have of what one ought to become. Minor changes and adjustments are surely possible, but since they do not ever amount to much, it is absurd to continue exhausting one's mental and physical energy with them. The desire for gradual and partial personal change generates, not only an illusory projection of the psyche, but also a level of intra-psychic tension that is in itself destructive of the psycho-somatic health of the organism.

There may be an infinitely more adequate solution to the general challenge facing us, but to create a mental image of what that solution might be, to then chase that image in open or covert conflict with what one actually is, is clearly not the way to activate it. Not to form, project and strive to realize idealized images of oneself or society implies staying passively attentive, from moment to moment, to what one actually is without in any way interfering, or reacting to what is seen. The passive all-inclusiveness of this impersonal act of attention precludes any form of choice and blocks any attempt to record or create anything.

How can this attention be possible-you may ask-if our every waking moment is taken up with comparing not just oneself, but others and the world at large, with what one thinks or imagines they are and ought to be? Again, comparative choice implies ignorance of the extent to which the human psyche is determined, bound, enslaved by the general experience of the species and the triviality of every person's particular, biographical experience. Conversely, keen but passive awareness of the facts of mental conditioning and cultural fragmentation, frees the psyche from comparative choice with all its attendant labors, frustrations, fears, and hatreds-and that freedom constitutes, in itself, an unprecedented mental state.

You and I come together to the realization that we are equally conditioned (along with everyone else) by the entire experience of the species and by what we each might have experienced and learned during our lifetime regardless of possible differences in the relative quantity and quality of what that personal experience might have been. We seem and feel separate and different, but somehow we now see that, deeply, we are exactly the same. In realizing that we are slaves, we immediately stop pretending to be free, or to be in the process of becoming free. We are what we are and there is nothing that can be done to change that condition without further splitting and conflicting already battered psyches. Now, could this paradoxical insight be, perchance, all that is needed? Does the ground of existence, let alone our desperately needed solidarity, not lie beyond the common small mindedness of our respective sense of personal autonomy and significance? (130)

Our constant desire to succeed, to fulfill ourselves through the realization of personal dreams and ambitions, reveals a profound dissatisfaction with who we are and what we feel the world ought to be in relation to us. But while we tend to have very clear ideas about the objects of our desire, we do not seem generally inclined to ask profound questions regarding the nature of what it is that we are all trying to get away from. We dash instead towards the fulfillment of particular ideals and away from shared fears and anxieties, thus letting the dust raised by this mad rush further obscure what is our deepest and most common nature. Is it not through the evasion of who we actually are, that the separate self comes into being and then perpetuates itself through successive idealizations projected onto the future? And are we not merely re-enacting the past in the pursuit of our exclusive ideals? What else could explain the fact that we are still struggling today, personally and as a species, with fundamentally the same psychological and social afflictions we were unable to solve a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand years ago?

To see and to remain moment to moment with psychological facts, implies the elimination of the imaginary mental space/time created by thought to move from what it has been and towards the fiction of what essentially it is not, but would nonetheless like to become. Mentally, nothing is actual. Nothing of what memory holds or projects is an actual fact; and we are nothing if not memory and the ever-barren attempt to maintain, improve or somehow transcend in the future the experience/knowledge-based contents of that memory. What is a psyche, then, in which there is no psychological record and, therefore, no urge to add to and improve on that record? Would a psychic field free from nostalgia and material, intellectual or spiritual ambition, suffer? Would it fear? Would death be for such boundless mental space something to be avoided at all cost? (131)

Could one possibly be related to the whole of life, to the whole potential of existence, and not merely to what is familiar or narrowly desirable? And, would this total relatedness not be necessarily contingent on a psyche not moored on anything; a psyche not in any way identified with anything in particular, nor chasing after one thing or another? In other words, could consciousness be emptied so that it may perhaps receive something immensely beyond knowledge, particular experience and the immature desires they breed?

Quietly aware of this possibility and moved to respond with integrity to the dangerous provincialism of social and personal life, one realizes the urgent need to somehow inhibit the mechanism whereby the psyche routinely creates images of what it thinks it wants to then tirelessly pursue it. To assume responsibility in this manner implies that one is now alone, (although not in any way in an antisocial stance or somehow else disconnected), and without recourse to any source of direction, motivation or consolation. Freedom from the influence of cultural tradition and individual memory implies standing alone. It implies, as well, a life of great simplicity attained, not with the effort and pain generally associated with renunciation, but rather easily through an immediate insight into the nature and danger of desire, fear, and self-pity.

The human being who has this peculiar response-ability, is still very much related to the world, but is no longer caught in the illusions of wanting to become, psychologically, happier or more secure and successful in this life or the next. Radical change must come not through interminably adding what is falsely deemed to be new to the pile of what is already old and useless, but rather from emptying at its very source the garbage that is recycled in this manner.

Because hope is always merely pining for a modified version of what has already been experienced or known and is, therefore, incapable of yielding any radically new outcome, there is no sense in clinging to any form of it. The future ceases to exist then, except in the prevision of-and cheerfully austere provision for-fundamental physical needs. Only the present moment remains, always fresh, always unknown and unknowable, inseparable from the intense but passive observation of everything as it occurs. In the quietness of this inimitable attention, not even a sense of waiting stirs, for wait implies a predetermined goal as well as the noisy disturbances inherent in the desire and effort to reach it. This is a silence without precedent and without motive. The mind is silent simply because it is now clear that any mental movement reaching out towards a personal goal re-ignites the whole disorderly process of separation, contradiction, conflict and sorrow with which self-centered thought has always maintained itself. (132)