Although we might have heard of the possibility, the fact is that we do not know if the de-conditioned human brain might or might not be a point in which the totality becomes aware of itself, or where the sacred might manifest. But we do know that no phenomenon of this order and magnitude could possibly occur unless the psychic field were to somehow be emptied of its unnecessary and redundant psychological content. Self-absorbed limitation, egotism, is clearly a block to whatever non-dualistic awareness might be. Our present consciousness is limited to the awareness of "somebody" about "something" in here or out there, but we are talking here of the unthinkable possibility that the duality inherent in the subject-object relationship may dissolve in an incandescent point of impersonal and timeless attention. Having said this, let us go promptly back to the immediate reality of our separate and conflicted existence and unflinchingly look at it. (133)

Memory is previous perception, previous experience, and previously acquired knowledge according to which we perceive, experience, know, and act in the present; and will perceive, experience, know, and act in the future. Now, is there a realm of existence or, rather, a realm of awareness, not exclusively mediated by experience and the desires that memory determines? Can thought restrict itself to where thought is adequate, and otherwise not interfere? Is there a realm of awareness that is vast beyond the wildest imagination simply because it is not limited by the knowledge and the preordained grasping of previous experience?

Experience as knowledge constitute and sustain the separate acts of existence of individuals and cultural groups in so far as both represent particular cumulative manners of dealing with the otherwise common facts of insecurity. Some pray, others meditate, others go shopping, still others get drunk, watch television, philosophize or work relentlessly. Paradoxically, we do not ever attempt to come to grips with the fact that fear and insecurity are common to us all in a way that is inseparable from our very diverse cultural and psychological being. Instead, we attempt to deal with the threat they pose in foolishly egotistical ways, that is, through the creation of exclusive conditions of worldly or "spiritual" power and privilege.

The exclusivity of wealth then condemns the poor and the weak to enormous privation, danger and anxiety leading to practically collective forms of subservient mental retardation that express themselves in constant resistance and occasionally erupt in bouts of great physical violence. On the other hand, exclusive and excessive wealth condemns those presumably privileged by it to the violence and stupidity inherent in being responsible for, or merely indifferent, to the suffering of others. Charitable actions do not redeem the wealthy; they merely disguise their thick insensitivity by applying further coats of whitewash to an already opaque conscience.

Any form of cultural demarcation-political, historical, religious or any other-sacrifices the general security of humanity for the false sense of security it provides to its particular sets of adherents. The possibility of ever attaining unity, harmony and the intelligence necessary to deal together with global issues, is denied by the absurd quest for safety and "greatness" characteristic of persons and tribes of every stripe. Did a president of some dominant country not declare once that the standard of living, (or was it the "life style"), of its citizens was not subject to negotiation?

One wonders what it will take to make us realize that the competition, deception, confusion, and conflict implicit in the procurement of exclusive certainty, power and privilege, lead directly or indirectly-but inevitably-to progressively worse manifestations of the original fear and violence we have always suffered from. This much is copiously clear: unless we radically confront who we are, personally, and consequently realize that we are not fundamentally different from one another, the Earth will continue to be the battlefield in which generations of human beings endlessly fight and destroy themselves.

There is nothing one can possibly do to escape this chronic stupidity of ours with its fixed rage and sorrow. There is no escape; there is no way in which any particular individual or group can attain certainty and security for any significant period of time by contesting, diminishing or destroying the certainty and security of other groups and other individuals. The only possibility of significant change must, therefore, lie in a form of death in which thought relegates itself to functional areas by shedding its psychological content and projection. Conflict, suffering, and final death figure prominently and inescapably in the life of the entity that thinks of itself as existing in isolation from the rest of humanity and from the universe as a whole. The self-centered mind cannot but create disorder and suffering for itself and for others, therefore, unless the source and center of divisive egotism ends, suffering cannot possibly end. (134)

Culture, any culture, is to a great extent the manner in which we human beings protect ourselves from seeing our cosmic place, our real nature and our desperate plight. Psychological facts do not need interpretation, especially interpretation mediated by authority and biased by tradition and particular experience. Facts demand clear, independent and direct perception. Then, it is not a particular and particularly biased human being who acts, it is the truth itself that does. (135)

We live within a human-made mind and in the social environment this mind has, over millennia, created. In these two claustrophobic and intimately connected realms we all struggle, suffer, and finally die. Is there a different, infinitely more spacious mind and, hence, a different world space possible; an ever-fresh world, a world unconditioned, untouched, by anything pre-programmed human beings have experienced or could ever hope to experience or desire?

What is called "my" mind can never hope to reach the greater mind of which the order and strange beauty of the material Universe may be a mere glimmer or reflection. And it is precisely because it has understood this basic fact that, all of the sudden, the petty little mind is no longer grasping or hoping for anything. It is clear to it now that there is no such a thing as psychological progress or trustworthy security. Aware of the impossibility of ever possessing the truth, the mind simply stops aspiring to anything other than what simply sustains and protects the organism.

The great religious paradox resides in the fact that no one in particular could ever know if in this silent passivity, in this emptying of the little personal mind, the greater mind would manifest or not. The single step that enters the unknowable space of the religious mind is always taken by a particular individual, and it always implies his annihilation. And this is why no form of knowledge or belief fleshing out someone's conditioned persona and propaganda, can ever convey to someone else how to take this step. (136)

Insecurity has its original source in the vulnerability of the physical organism. However, for most of us (especially those of us living in the wealthy areas of wealthy countries), insecurity is generally more closely related to psychological status and its own overwrought vulnerability. In other words, we tend to suffer much more from real or imagined threats to our perceived social and "spiritual" standing (our conception of our own importance), than from threats to our physical wellbeing.

A person who has no idealized images of himself and who, therefore, does not worry about his social standing nor envies anyone else's is, to the greatest extent possible, free. Free from anger and hatred; free from jealousy, fear, and competitiveness; free from ambition, conflict, depression and anxiety. This equanimity must surely create the mental space and the lucidity necessary to explore terrain unimaginable to the insecure person mired in the intra-psychic and inter-personal disorder that inevitably results from endlessly struggling to become certain and secure.

The capacity to function without a hint of materialistic and "spiritual" status seeking, characterizes the truly free person, and this very capacity is her gift to whomever comes in touch with her and has eyes to see the goodness of effortless self-abnegation. The particular social function with which the religious mind chooses to serve others in order to satisfy basic physical necessities, may be determined by memory, but functional memory has in this peculiar mind no particular identity and, hence, no status to protect, magnify and maintain. (137)

Creativity-what is generally understood by that word-is, in many respects, a significant source of social and cultural atomization. It multiplies the number of roads leading to the state of alienation we have always known: alienation in superficial difference and in the imitation of psychological traits not worth having in the first place. Much of what passes for creativity fuels the double illusion of progress and self-fulfillment, and in so doing provides the wars of political, religious, cultural, gender, and class supremacy with all the human beings they can destroy. Just picture the creativity that has gone into the creation of the machinery of war, the erection of barriers designed to impede a just distribution of wealth, and all the over-production and over-consumption practices that are wrecking havoc in the oceans and the land. (138)

There is nowhere to turn now that it is palpable that when I look at myself, the one who is looking is no other than what he is looking at. The psyche is the entirety of its self-projecting contents and cannot be divided and acted upon in any relevant way. To think about "my" self is lunacy as it implies there is two of me. And to "work on myself" implies the illusion that through an effort of will one part of the psyche can be substantially altered by another part.

I am, first and foremost, what all humans are, and that is that I am what I was yesterday and the slightly modified person that I will be tomorrow after I waste today struggling to go from one to the other. Again, the "I" exists only by splitting off from a constellation of changing images and ideas gathered and subjectively remembered through time, and by then thinking it remembers the past, understands the present and creates the future. Outside the universal mental process of remembering and projecting by means of images and ideas inherently devoid of actuality, there is clearly no "me". (139)

What is the "concert" of nations at any point of historical time, if not a cacophonous conglomerate of separate and conflictive projects of domination with relatively different degrees of success? The "United Nations" is an oxymoron. (140)

We are so obsessed with what we would like to contribute to life and take away from it, that we fail to perceive the mysterious bounty of life as a whole. Does life perceive itself? And, if it does, can that selfless, undivided, perception occur in or through the human brain? In other words, if the human brain were to be emptied of needless psychological content and self-projection, would the vacuum created by that space not usher the manifestation of the other? We might not know the answer to this question, but we certainly know that as we have it now we spend most of our time and energy struggling to narrow down life to fit our self-serving preferences and desires. We put a little water in a small shell and call it the ocean. (141)

The saddest thing of all is, perhaps, that we seem to have no capacity for sadness beyond self-pity. Without fundamental empathy there is no chance for clear perception or for the intelligent, caring, action that would certainly emanate from such perception. In our fear of personal sorrow and depression, we dutifully contribute to the cruelty and stupidity of the species and lose sight that, in attempting to protect ourselves, our selfish personal actions are gradually leading humanity to a tragic end.

This morning a report in the news told of a new initiative by several major corporate producers of luxury goods whereby a new line of products, expensive sports shoes, sunglasses and the like, will be placed on the market and publicized as consumption with a social conscience. One per cent of all proceeds will go to people with AIDS in Africa.

Ambition is insensitivity, it is quite capable of utilizing even the worst suffering as propaganda for attaining its goals while simultaneously polishing its public image. Humility is stupidity; ambition, virtue. The historical phenomena of poverty and ignorance have never been solved and will never be solved with charity, nor with any of the political and religious actions advertised as reducing the distance between the rich and the poor, or that said to exist between the evil and the good. Contrary to common belief, insufficient and ill-conceived actions do not become any more efficient through innumerable slightly modified reiterations. (142)

The impulse to fix what is not working properly and to solve any problem that may arise, is central to the basic operation of the human mind. This capacity is clearly effective when dealing with technical or logistic challenges, but a liability when applied to psychological or social problems. I may want desperately to become a better person or to take care of all the poor and dispossessed of the Earth, but that urge might well do nothing but further complicate and worsen matters.

We tend to rush into action without having a clear sense of the nature of the conditioned personal egotism that is at the source of all psychological, interpersonal and social problems. And if we do have some sense of the toxicity of psychological self-centeredness and cultural insularity, we still tend to detest (and, so, reject) the fact that we cannot simply create and then administrate a definitive antidote. However, this very anger at our impotence in this essential matter sheds considerable light on the nature and dynamics of a psyche programmed by experience and the desire to improve on that experience or altogether transcend it. (143)

The human brain is not a creation of thought. It is part of the cosmos and whatever might be behind the imperceptible and ultimately undecipherable order of the cosmos. However, this common brain of ours seems to have totally lost its connection to the general context of manifest and non-manifest being through its claim to discrete existence and autonomy. More precisely, it is because the human psyche has come to be governed by experience and knowledge gathered throughout the life of the species and the life of every particular psychological entity, that we perceive ourselves as standing somehow and somewhere outside of Nature.

Now, if mind is not an exclusive function of the brain as it is generally and rather pedantically thought, but rather a diffused quality of life as a whole, and if self-centered and pre-determined thought is unable to solve the problems it has itself created, then it seems only rational to turn towards the admittedly strange possibility that, emptied of its psychological constraints, the brain may find itself directly and naturally connected to whatever the larger cosmic mind may be.

There is no way in which thought can access of its own volition and craft anything other than yet another faintly modified version of its chronic self-centeredness, namely, a new form of limitation and irrationality. Consequently this possibility of unity with the totality, if it exists at all, must involve a single unwilled act or event of total psychological de-construction-a sudden and unprovoked cessation of the self-centered movement of personal memory-leading to some ever unknown measure of intra-psychic silence and space, itself naturally open to the unprecedented, the timeless. (144)

If there were a moment-by-moment observation of intra and extra-psychic events free of mechanical reactions dictated by the limitations of memory/desire, would "I" (you) still exist? And if self-centeredness as projected like and dislike were to dissolve, would the mind not respond then intelligently-to be more precise, caringly-to what is actually going on in the world as a whole? (145)

The most beautiful thing about awareness of psychological limitation and cultural fragmentation, is that a deep sense of the equality among human beings becomes apparent. Seeing right through the isolation, the pretense and the antagonism responsible for the sense of uniqueness felt by each and every tribe, clan, and person, this awareness reveals every human being as equal to all others. We are indeed equal in our vulnerability and in our fear-born propensity to react to our shared insignificance by claiming a sham personal and tribal identity and then using deceit, power and violence to secure its comparative status and continuity. (146)

Why is it that so many of us do not work just enough to satisfy fundamental needs? Why is it that we do not demand unhurried lives as the most basic human right, lives characterized by the leisure without which we cannot help but become either pitiful beasts of burden or spiritless intellectuals and bureau/technocrats? Why need we aspire to particular value and meaning, anyway? Why must we enslave ourselves in order to justify and maintain the illusion of our sorry separate existence? Is our participation in life not honor and treasure enough?

Perhaps here is the whole point! We strive so hard to identify ourselves with exclusive wealth, knowledge, value and meaning, because we are either too insensitive or too fearful to see the actual and all-encompassing splendor of life. A sense of separate existence makes most everything uninteresting and most everyone foreign and therefore potentially dangerous. And we then react to the resulting feeling of isolation, vulnerability and boredom by striving to become, in comparison with others, special, unique, richer, wiser, more powerful, morally superior; in one word: better than them, and therefore deserving their appreciation and deferential treatment. This insane appetite for respectability and adulation naturally demands, among other things, that we be perpetual workers, slaves to the senseless ambitions that define (as our most autocratic masters) who we are at every moment in relation to others and, above all, what is it we need to do in order to become who we ought to become.

Take notice of how overwhelmed we generally feel by the ever-accelerating tempo of self-imposed obligations and the ever more outlandish demands of others wielding the greatest power-bosses, gurus, politicians, financial experts, educators (if they can be called that), "dream facilitators" and our own children. It is amazing how little time we generally leave to contemplate the beauty of the Earth, and to spend time with one another in the quality of leisure that will naturally propitiate a serious exploration of our extraordinary relational presence within life and death as a whole.

Take notice of how often we abandon the young, the old and the weak in our rush to fulfill ambitions naively expected to deliver, eventually, the joy and the equanimity that we so readily forgo right now, the only time we really ever have. And, take notice, as well, of the extent to which we are often willing to surrender doing what we love, (in consonance with what the plight of the Earth as a whole demands), just to maintain the dull job that pays for the "stuff" and the extravagant experiences we hope will compensate us for no longer even knowing why we keep doing the senseless things we do to "make a living".

The great religious paradox lives in and enlivens the individual who, in gladly rejecting all the vanities and false promises offered by the world, anonymously allows himself to be devoured, as it were, by the unknowable mystery of life and death. Do you not sense that simple sanity, let alone the possible manifestation of the plenitude of life, necessitates ending the overstressed, fearful and greedy pettiness of one's life? After all, to leave things as they are will only deliver endlessly renewed forms of sorrow and conflict punctuated with occasional and ephemeral pleasures and, yes, work-endless work, the overwhelming piling up of meaningless obligation. (147)

Perhaps you feel that there might be an entirely different mode of being human. You do not know what this state of mind might be or imply, but somehow it is now evident to you that the obstinate pursuit of the false values of the world destroys the natural sensitivity of a healthy body and the keen alertness of a sane mind.

All that matters then is the all-pervading and unfathomable mystery of life. Anything else, that is, all the material, intellectual and spiritual ambitions of the conditioned mind, and all the promises of its disintegrating cultural context, are but false substitutes of the real thing. One will never attain a truth that, by definition, is beyond the grasp of knowledge and experience, but one can certainly detect what is false and know what to do with it. (148)

Many people seem convinced that freedom is expressed mainly through the purchase of goods, services, experience, and the labor of others. This conception of freedom has turned many into serfs if not slaves and made life especially difficult and ultimately dangerous for all. Freedom lies not in getting what one wants but, rather, in the ending of unnecessary and contradictory desire, especially the urge to exercise power over others or the self itself.

Freedom must ultimately be from oneself; freedom from what one has been and freedom from what one is demanding oneself to become; freedom from the blinders of conditioned sentiment and knowledge, and freedom from the extraordinarily inadequate perception they provide of life as a whole.

If the species is to survive-let alone reach the plenitude of life-we must stop trying to gradually "evolve" guided by the traditional ideals that fuel our provincial resolve. The historical failure of self-centered and ethnocentric solutions to our multiple and growing common problems, seems to beg for a radical break in continuity; a break with the images and ideas that make up the past, the present and the future of the self and the societies that the self creates.

It is not difficult to see that even our best-intentioned efforts to improve ourselves and the communities in which we live, are polluted by the short-sighted egotism underlying our psyches and, wittingly or not, extending itself into the future through these very efforts. Why is it then that we find it so difficult to even contemplate for a second the collapse of the petty threshold determined by broken up, conditioned minds? Is it that we prefer to remain within the fixed pattern of our familiar pleasures and our equally familiar tragedies than meet the truth in the abnegation of the self? (149)

I do not know if you have ever felt, like I do, a peculiar sadness in not being able to see and feel totally the extraordinary geyser of life that explodes everywhere with form, color, light and vitality when Spring comes around every year. It is something akin to a feeling of claustrophobia; the sense of being stuck in an all too-reduced place in space and time.

It is important to pay attention to this and other expressions of the morose frustration of the separate being; important not to rush and cover such feelings up with the rigorous compliance of obligation or with a predetermined and worked-for jolt of pleasure.

There may be a very deep reason for this sadness and if we were to stay with it long enough, perhaps it would unfold revealing what is its source and what it is really reaching out for. Perhaps it is something unimaginable, something that may not be experienced in so far as that verb (to 'experience') implies a separation between the specific event or circumstance to be experienced, and the entity-also fixed in time and place-who in the act of experiencing reduces the event-and with it life itself-to something pre-existing in its mental record.

To stay with the pain and sadness of limitation, without reacting to it in any way implies a rupture with mental time and, therefore, silence; silence as the end of self-centered thought along with its sequential laborious plans to free itself from limitations, fears and insecurities. In that meditative silence, in that open space untroubled by any imperative urge to act, the question of whether or not there is a radically different mode of partaking of existence might pose itself and unfold.

To say that this rupture with the intra-psychic past and future is unthinkable does not disprove its possibility; it merely ascertains the general nature of what, based on an adequate assessment of the infertility of thought as our only current option, seems to be needed. Put differently, no one can know what to do in order to end the movement of thought within mental time nor what this ending might entail, but everyone can come to see that there is nothing to expect but disaster in continuing with things as they are. This alone may be shocking enough to change the self-centered mind in ways it cannot even dream or fret about. (150)

The problems we have, both personal and collective, are not as serious as our proclivity for cutting ourselves off from them, and not as deadening as the mental dullness and anxiety this disassociation generates. Direct and complete awareness is as feared as death and rightly so, for it is the very contents of consciousness (including the image of "me"), that block clarity. Is this chaotic world we all live in not the out-picturing of our own psyches and of the way we relate with one another? To stay with who we are from moment to moment provides the only vantage point that matters as well as the only silence attentive enough to hear the truth spoken by facts themselves. (151)

It is commonly said that without hope we wither and die. But it is rare to hear anyone explore the connection between the self-projecting mind and fear. If there were freedom from alienation-the root cause of much of our physical suffering and all of our psychological distress-there would not be need for imaginary projections, no need to make an unhappy present bearable by believing against all reason that something wonderful will or might happen sometime in the future.

Feeling oppressed by a given political regime, most of us only see fit to hope that a new set of, most likely equally corrupt politicians, will do a better job next term. If disenchanted with a given religion, the solution for many lies on migrating to another, even if it is equally deceitful. And if unhappy with the self-enhancing services demanded from a lover or spouse, one usually knows no better than to seek someone new in the hope that "love" will flourish again and that, consequently, one's state of consciousness will improve and the new and improved relationship will be happier and more durable than the previous ones.

Considering its dismal track record when it comes to actual results, hope has a remarkable reputation. Against all reason, we continue hoping in new versions of the same dead ends, preferring to live in illusion than face certain facts about ourselves, our relationships, and the world at large. Why is it that we yearn to attain tomorrow something that right now is a mere image created by previous experience? Why think that tomorrow we might be vastly improved if today we are insensitive, egotistical, caught in particular identities, each with its particular host of dependencies, habits, routines, beliefs and ambitions? Why dream with freedom if we only want to remain caught in our selves, our particular families, clans and tribes with their particular hopes and illusions?

On the contrary, if the futile projections of hope were resolutely negated and we were made, thus, intensely aware of what our lives actually are, then it would be evident that we are not that different from one another, that we are all caught in the same suffering egotism, but self-blindingly identified with only one or just a few of its billions of faces.

This falsely evolving self-centeredness is the human condition, and the fact that one cannot transcend or otherwise fully escape the sorrow it generates, trumps, not just the hopeful action of the "I", but its very existence. No positive action undertaken by self is able to overcome sorrow because the "hopeful" selfishness attempting to implement this remedial action is no other than the "I"/self himself, and not just a condition external to him. Suffering can never be significantly diminished or eliminated-sometime in the future-through the noble action of a generous "me", or through the charitable intervention of a divinity expressly created to justify the empty promise of his desperate hope. The hard truth is that we are not separate from sorrow and, therefore, utterly incapable of healing it.

No matter how long we might care to wait and toil, there is no "higher" self tomorrow, nor a selfless "me" the day after tomorrow. There is only a present moment, present, among other things, because it is hope-less. Being free of any shadow of the past in the form of a better self to be attained tomorrow, the present moment is extraordinary timeless awareness and, hence, in itself immediate and complete action. (152)

It is fairly obvious that regardless of the intelligence and affection we may think we posses, we can only perceive and think according to the always small funds deposited in our memory bank, and the always ultimately self-serving reach of the desires this bank can issue and attend to. No action is correct, complete or immediate while still undertaken by a human being who, no matter how well intentioned, is blind to the true magnitude and depth of the human predicament and, therefore, also incapable of acting correctly. In other words, nothing will change significantly until and unless the human psyche, somehow freed of its self-enclosure in fixed ideas, beliefs and desires, is able to properly relate at every instant with whatever challenge life might offer.

We are saying then that the only way humankind will ever be able to rid itself of its destructive blindness and chronic suffering, involves individual human beings dying to the personal and tribal self. And we are also saying that this psychological death and its possible outcomes are not something that can be thought about, projected onto the future and, hence, most likely indefinitely postponed. What dies is personalized thought that in traveling forever from the past to the future, is the negation of attention, now. Attention is action in the absence of self-centered thought. (153)

There is no point in criticizing others for what they may think, believe, or do if one's critical opinion is based on limited, biased, and therefore worthless convictions, fears and desires. It is reasonable to assume than in the interest of truth, all personal values and opinions cancel each other out. Therefore, unless we think it is a good idea to continue indefinitely living the consequences of stubbornly and violently asserting particular, subjective values over those of others, we must-together when at all possible-question all particular values and convictions, literally, to death. (154)

Awareness of the relativity of value and opinion tends to create a particular type of isolation because, although one might no longer be opposing or agreeing with what others think or do, the lack of positive or negative association with any group tends to evoke indifference, withdrawal, or direct hostility. The relational difficulties intrinsic to not being attached to anything, (again, of neither supporting or resisting what others think, believe and do), may also impair the possibility of earning even a modest livelihood. This, simply because within even the more permissive and open of work environments "good" relationships usually operate within certain given ideological constraints, while "bad" ones imply significant ideological differences. It is unlikely that your colleagues and co-workers will not want to find what team you root for, and what political, cultural, and religious convictions you favor, and it is unlikely that there will be a positive reaction to your lack of attachment and commitment. Patriotic people will probably not listen patiently to the fairly complex explanation provided by someone who is not aligned with any nation.

We are so conditioned to be defined by the groups to which we subscribe, that once free of them and their influence, it is fairly easy to succumb to confusion, melancholy or feelings of abandonment. The desire to be well liked, to be among peers and, if at all possible, to exert influence over others, is so deeply embedded in the brain that to let it all drop appears to present an impossible challenge. To feel this way means, of course, that one has not really let it all drop. (155)

As memory based entities, we are necessarily isolated from one another within the particular experience, knowledge and projections that make up our separate selves. This existential alienation from everyone and everything perceived as "not-me," creates a profound sense of vulnerability which in turn leads us to the merciless pursuit of a great variety of illusory forms of security. Illusory in that they are anchored on identification with things unrelated to what the self might be in itself. Also illusory in that being divisive, contradictory and conflictive, they inevitably generate further and, often worse, sources of insecurity.

When feelings of psychological discomfort and pain increase to an unbearable point, we may migrate from an original source of sentimental, ideological or material security to a different given one, but since the root of the uncertainty and insecurity is deeper than all the particular pseudo solutions that may be found for it, what ultimately accrues from our efforts to protect ourselves is greater anxiety and confusion requiring further pseudo-solutions, ad nauseam.

Granted, some of us have managed to live better lives in the sense of having access to extraordinary means of transportation and communication, as well as to extremely efficient health and sanitation systems and technology undreamed of even a decade ago. However we, the lucky ones, are also the greater spoilers of the environment and must work incessantly to maintain immense arsenals, including nuclear weapons and other types of weapons of legalized mass murder, to defend and expand "rights and freedoms" that are heavily dependent on the manipulation or outright domination of other peoples.

A hundred years ago there were comparatively less people abused or abandoned by the voracious greed of others, and weapons did not have the capacity to intimidate billions of people and kill, literally, millions is a flash of horrific destruction. A hundred years ago people would have laughed if told that the expansion of the human species would soon start destroying innumerable species of plants and animals and thus place the whole biosphere at risk. Psychologically, we are today what we were then, but our destructive capacity has increased exponentially. So, let us break ranks with the certifiably insane and, at least, stop using the lie of progress to relinquish responsibility for the true state of the world. (156)

It is relatively easy to set aside certain forms of pleasure and attachment. What is extremely difficult is to let go of the desire for fulfillment itself; to abandon the will to experience something, someday, that will completely redeem one's and ultimately meaningless life. Not to hope and yet not to despair (given that these apparent opposites are actually twin offspring of thought), must be the core of true humility: a simple ignorance and a radical simplicity; a psychological emptiness not aware of itself.

What do you think would occur if the ever-wishing self would suddenly realize that it is no different from others nor from what it hopes to become and that, therefore, all efforts made to attain self-realization, let alone self transcendence, are pointless? Does the fact that there is no time interval that can ever bridge the distance between the real and the ideal self, not imply the end of the mental process (the thinking) that incessantly hopes for fame, enlightenment, salvation or reincarnation and that fears the possibility of their not coming to pass? (157)

For one who comes to see that the human mind is hemmed in by the experience of the species as well as by particular biographical experience, it is also apparent that there is no point in drawing (psychological or cultural) comparisons positive or negative and that, consequently, it is also useless to attempt to reform society or oneself. If this is a direct perception-direct insight-and not just someone else's theoretical presentation of yet unseen fundamental facts, then a breakdown of the whole structure of the self and its movement in psychological time can occur. There is nothing now where the self had previously stood consulting and reformulating the past through the creation of innumerable plans (social, political, cultural, religious and spiritual). There is nothing now where the self had previously stood endlessly sacrificing the present on the altar of these projects. There is no longer valid inspiration to be drawn from the past, nor any methodology of progressive self transformation; nor, indeed, anyone there to travel the illusory road leading from mediocrity and despair to success and self-realization.

One cannot resist "what is" biologically, socially and psychologically because one is the world as much as one is the contents of the psyche, and any attempt to resist, significantly alter, or somehow transcend this ironclad determinism will do nothing but increase self-delusion, resistance and conflict thus securing nothing but the continuity of the self and its inextricable suffering. Ideals are pure deception because, regardless of their theoretical "nobility", in ignoring the real nature of the human being they can never possibly deliver the new man in the perfect kingdom they generally preach about. Ideals are just the means with which the general mental matrix of exclusive psychological and cultural identity tramples on the present while forcefully, often violently, attempting to move from the dissatisfaction of the experienced past to the fantasy of a predetermined future.

It is terrifying to face the possible ending of the regressions and projections of memory because in the abrupt loss of momentum implied in that ending, lies the death of the self. But because one cares passionately about the world, the truth, and one's own life and fate, one might have finally crashed against this now totally evident and unavoidable wall. Whereas before one's life energy had been invested in self-defense and the realization of false solutions to personal and human problems now, having nowhere to go, this energy gathers and fuels an intense and all-inclusive attention that having no center has no circumference, no limit. This attention is, in itself, the solution to all human problems. (158)

It is only sensible to assume that nothing can be seen clearly and completely for as long as one remains emotionally or intellectually attached and, hence, needy, dependent, reactive, conflicted, confused and in fear. What is it in ourselves that we so desperately want to avoid? What would occur if one were to free oneself from the stranglehold of unnecessary material possessions, and from dependency on persons and groups each demanding allegiance, if not subservience, to their particular ideologies, values, methods and goals? What could possibly be the consequences of simply staying with oneself as one is and with things as they are, and not as one (or anybody else) would like them to be? Does the ending of the mental process that seeks psychological security imply death, or the plenitude of life? (159)

We generally do not want to discuss at any significant depth and length the most difficult implications of being human. We especially dislike, it seems, closely examining the strange and complex ways in which physical pain and pleasure are extended into the self-enclosed realm of the psyche, where they flare up intensely as we either fail or succeed in our unwavering pursuit of the vain goals of material, intellectual, social and spiritual grandeur. (160)

Separation and the continuity of separation guarantee that conflict and suffering will also remain as unavoidable central characteristics of human experience. There may be all kinds of available privilege, but ultimately there is no privileged anguish and no first-class suffering. Suffering is neither optional, nor stratified. When pain and sorrow come they are as devastating to the smart and the wealthy as they are to the poor and the dull.

Physical suffering, which is equally universal as well as often closely related to the stupidities and atrocities committed by psychological and cultural estrangement, tends to compound the grief and fear of existential alienation. But it is the conflict among different, exclusive and contradictory interpretations and solutions to human suffering that should garner our greatest attention. This, not only because our lives are often consumed by our investment in false solutions, but because they hide from view the psychological separation and the cultural fragmentation that are the real source of our common plight.

We destroy ourselves and others through the isolated and futile efforts we make to prevent everything we think we are (what we each have earned, learned, experienced and accumulated), from being slowly or suddenly dissolved by loss, accident, aging, and death. Perhaps there is nothing beyond the claustrophobic psychological and tribal trenches in which we live life as a permanent battle to the death. But surrendering to this nothing seems much more rational than to continue to travel within the ideational and behavioral sewer lines most familiar to each one of us. (161)

In the observable material universe there does not seem to be anything either pure or stable, and there are no fixed points anywhere. Albeit at different rates and in different forms, everything decays and is relative to something else-perhaps to everything else-the whole material world moving, endlessly changing, forming and deforming, dying and living. And yet, for some strange reason we generally believe that there is one exception to this holistic flow; namely, the self. We remain convinced that the self is not only largely unique and constant, but also capable of improving itself through its own will and power. Even more preposterously, many believe that the self will-by virtue of its own moral worth or through the generous intercession of a god or principle explicitly created by the human mind for that purpose-most likely transcend suffering and death in order to realize the ultimate desire: an eternally sustained existence, the privilege of divinity. (162)

The other always remains the other-as I also remain a stranger to him/her-being that we are both encapsulated in particular stories, entombed in thought that while common to all, feigns, defends and maintains insularity at any cost. What each one of us thinks and feels about others and about life at large, acts as the electrified barbed fence and the armed guards keeping us all in the same prison of knowledge and belief: cultural and psychological isolation.

When life is reduced to being my life and your life; when all that matters is the little on-going drama of my self and your self with their all-important future, the only possibility is redundant struggle, psychosomatic decay, and death while still alive. So, who would you and I be were life to suddenly reveal itself to us as an undivided, unknowable, flowing whole? Would we be still afraid? Would we still be bickering, anxiously demanding money, service, love and respect from one another? Would we continue to be alternately depressed and excited? Would we be anything at all? (163)

Is it reasonable to reduce the meaning of life to experience and knowledge which are, by definition, limited? Life and whatever orders and animates life, largely predates the appearance of humanity and, regardless of the amount and level of our objective and subjective knowledge, the depth of life's hidden significance will always transcend our efforts to posses and control it. It is essential, then, to risk abandoning the familiar realms established by exclusive personal and tribal knowledge, and see if there is anything beyond the banal pleasures and the chronic conflict and sorrow we have experienced for millennia.

When the mystery of life as a whole is irrelevant, only mounting and ultimately meaningless knowledge feeding manic activity and rising violence, remain. The only possibility of light lies in the extinction of the darkness of tribal and personal egotism. (164)

What you think about me is largely based on your particular experience and limited knowledge; that is, your prejudice. The same holds true of what I may think of you, as well as of what we each think of ourselves. To realize this has enormous implications. It reveals, first, the superficiality and danger of psychological knowledge and, second, that further thinking will not help either one of us to significantly alter and improve what we know and think. Thought is, itself, the problem.

But what do I have to say to anybody now that my personal worth and even the reality of my existence are so deeply suspect? How can I invite relatives and friends to go out on the same thin limb, and find out for themselves that they too have nothing to say to others, and that sharing this terrible secret will most likely provoke their polite or harsh rejection?

After all, who wants to be reduced to being a flimsy constellation of dead memories and unwise, fearful desires? Who, in seeing his full responsibility in the cruelty and sorrow of humanity, would gladly cancel out the debts of others along with all his own personal claims and ambitions? Who would want to abandon the pleasant if fake securities and the respectable obligations provided by the clans and tribes granting much of his sense of self? Who would be mad enough to disavow her vanities and beliefs? Who would instantly unplug all her distractions and be left alone and stranded, staring at herself and the world? Why would anybody in finally seeing the limitations of human perception and the additive pettiness of the mind, close her eyes, see the stream of thought run dry, and allow the mystery to mercifully swallow her whole? Who, indeed? (165)

A complete observation of the intra-psychic, the interpersonal, and the natural realms implies mental silence, an empty quietude in which fact-what actually is, and not what is thought, felt or wished-is allowed to be. Passive observation can only come through the realization that the particular self is no other than the conditioning determined by biographical experience riding piggy-back on the inherited limitation of vast pre-personal experience. This realization that "the observer is the observed", as Jiddhu Krishnamurti famously put it, implies the death of the self as the collection of successive and largely futile attempts to gradually and partially change itself, others, and society at large. The passively attentive mind has no center, no self or ego from which reactions informed by memory/desire can continue to erupt. (166)

To have one's mind permanently shaped by a particular culture-to belong to any exclusive group or set of groups-is to systematically avoid seeing humanity as inextricably bound in conflict and sorrow and, beyond even that, to remain caught in the determinism of any culture, is to blind oneself to the wholly impersonal mystery of life and death. One must be fearless to be aware of these depths, for they are not compatible with the reductive and distorting tendency of any cultural or psychological consolation. We may not know what the end of the provincial self may entail, but we do know that to limit life to the defense and expansion of the egotistical and ethnocentric self is delusional, irresponsible and cruel. (167)

If thought is conditioned by experience and the intrinsically biased and insufficient knowledge that memory collects, and if the "I" has no reality of its own apart from this conditioning and is, therefore, incapable of significantly altering or transcending itself, all that is possible is to stop ducking the evidence and remain with things as they are. Because the self is nothing but infinitely recurrent attempts to escape from fact, whatever comes in the wings of attentive passivity might well be the truth. (168)

Ideology and fantasy are the crude means with which we attempt to find certainty within the infinite context provided by life as a whole. Because life is unknowable, uncertainty is common to all knowledge-based beings. False certainty, on the other hand, is always multiple because its function is to provide each one of us with a separate identity. The dangerous certainties of self-righteous cultural dogmatism give life and character to particular psyches and particular cultural and social groups. Together, psychological alienation and cultural fragmentation, constitute the unwise choice of a species still largely unwilling to see its sense of separation from everything else as destructive, quasi-suicidal. (169)

What equality is there to be found among human beings if not that tragically emanating from sharing a brain conditioned, not just by particular heredity, but also and mainly by extremely limited exclusive experience, knowledge, and belief? And what justice is there to be found other than the suffering produced by this conflicted and conflictive personal and cultural atomization and our unwavering unwillingness to see the whole thing, and ourselves as an inseparable part of it, with total clarity. When there is an end to conflict, when we stop fighting the world and ourselves as though we were something other than that, then there is no other option than to die to the whole thing? (170)

Because we feel insufficient in ourselves, we generally want to be loved, admired, indulged. We want to be thought of as special or even superior in some way or another. We often feel that those who "love us" owe us whatever privilege or resource we might deem necessary to achieve further gains or to push back those who would dare oppose our claims and demands with theirs. What is most extraordinary is how so many of these psychological entitlement systems operate undercover, hidden by multiple layers of mental camouflage and protected by cultural complicity.

We conveniently blind ourselves to the price others must pay to cover our urge to exert power, least our façade be blown allowing ourselves-and, god forgive, others-insight into the absurd vanity, possible cruelty and absolute falseness of such demands. This nearly universal craving for status and respectability energizes hidden or overt agendas, justifying their intrinsic aggression and, more often than not, creating dependent relationships lacking trust, transparency and stability, let alone love.

But what in the world is good relationship?, one may ask. But this is not a adequate question, because it is useless to formulate an idea that merely opposes the type of relationship we actually have, and which we then attempt to gradually bring into being without ever actually doing so. It is infinitely better to ask if there can be an instantaneous and total negation of the self-centered pursuit of power and respectability presently polluting our relationships and maintaining the disorder we see in the world at large? (171)

After many, many years of arguing with others and struggling against circumstances both personal and social, all of the sudden a clear perception of the wrong headedness and futility of resistance to the world and to oneself, ends all resistance. Nothing more need be said, let alone shouted; there is nothing else to do in this anguished and conflicted manner. It is now clear that any gradual action related to the desire of bringing about a deep-seated change in oneself or others is, not only doomed to fail, but will actually further solidify our insularity and compound the problems we already have. It is evident now that every new reform or revolution is destined to fail if we-the presumed reformers-are still the same conditioned, limited and self-serving human beings we have always been... attempting to reform.

It is unbearably difficult to concede impotence, and seemingly impossible to stop mechanically reacting to what goes on in our minds, in our lives and in the world around us. But staying quietly with the immense suffering of the world and one's own sorrow makes it obvious that any attempt to do anything about it all while still operating from the ancient platform of the alienated self with its fixed insecurities and overcompensations, just makes everything worse. Clearly, we cannot mend with what is broken, nor heal with what is ill. To attempt to do so just strengthens and further entangles the root of the problem, the self-centered process of thought.

A keen awareness of the fact that sane and complete action can never arise from our thought/imagination, drains memory of its useless treasures-its prides, culpabilities and shames-and in a split second dries the quick-sand of idealized futures. There is nothing much left of one, then, except a profound sense of ignorance and impotence that then looks at everything with totally new, impersonal and eager eyes. The self who looks at herself is no other than the self that is seen.

The self who looks at society is no other than the society she sees: what "I" am, society is. The time previously thought necessary to move from what one is and into what one ought to be, is illusory, a distraction, mere procrastination; the indefinite delay of real and total perception and, hence, the indefinite postponement of real and complete action. (172)

The idea that there is something that can be done to drastically improve oneself inevitably creates a conflictive division between the mass of the psyche (containing that which needs improvement or transcendence) and the "me" pretending to be the agent of change. Implicit in this false intra-psychic division, is the illusion of mental time, the sense of progression that enables the "me" to feel that it is evolving endlessly from the past, through the present and onto the future.

In fact, the divided self-centered and self-reflective mind encapsulates in itself and at every moment, all three stages of psychological time: the past selectively remembered, the present interpreted and then utilized by the past as a tool to reach or avoid the imagined-feared or desired-future, (itself only a projective reformulation of previous experience). And if this is so, if the conditioned human mind contains and is, at every instant, all its representations of time, then progressive change ("progressive" in the sense of gradual) is no change at all.

If there is no difference between the ego (the "me") as the agent of change and those aspects or components of the psyche it declares object of its desire to improve, then the essential question is: What would the human presence in the world be if the self-centered mental process of becoming were to come to an irreversible end? -Would the ending of mental time and the consequent dethronement of the self spell total mental disorganization and possibly death, or would they open the door to an entirely different reality? (173)

In some of the most serious art made there seems to be a religious purpose, a spiritual search. This art reveals a conscious or unconscious desire to somehow find or connect with something stable and incorruptible, something free of the transience, relativity and inevitable annihilation of what appear to exist separately in space and time. It is widely believed, furthermore, that the possibility of an "epiphany", (in this context, the direct contact between artist and the sacred), may then be sacramentally perceptible to others open to receive and comprehend such inspired work. (From sacrament, a visible sign indicating the presence of an invisible grace.)

Fortunately (or for some, unfortunately), there is good reason to dismiss as delusional these encounters with the "sacred" claimed by artists and whoever else may claim to have received the same blessing through contact with the intelligible evidence provided by the work of these artists. Consider the obsessive way in which many artists produce more and more work, and also the persistent manner in which younger artists challenge what older artists have done and found, so that they themselves may attain the coveted metaphysical connection and their own work become object of the veneration of others (and, incidentally, also acquire the monetary value only such attention can grant).

It is the curse of humankind-and not just of some artists-to search for an idea or an image of what is not within traditional human reach, and then pretend that whatever may have been found or invented in the process, bears a divine imprimatur. Illusions and false claims are incessantly generated in this manner with the sole purpose of raising the status and power of the one issuing them, along with that of those who, with their recognition, provide the seal of validation.

Would it not be much easier-let alone more honest-to forgo all search for the sacred out of the simple realization that, were it to exist at all, it could not possibly be found, re-cognized through experience and then possessed by a separate entity itself based on extremely limited memory and predetermined desire? Besides, does the pursuit of an idea or image of the sacred not maintain in time a patently false duality between the searching self and the (presumably) hiding sacred? Does the multiple and contradictory quality of this search and its findings not inevitably create dissension and conflict between people? And, is the disorderly interpersonal and social reality that emanates from our desire to elevate and improve ourselves, not the chaotic history of humanity and its only possible future? This, of course, unless enough minds somehow shake off this mental rut simply out of seeing its falseness and implicit danger.

Put very simply, whatever might be beyond the reach and measure of the conditioned mind is, clearly, not subject to experience and, hence, not reducible to knowledge. It takes but a gram of honesty to see that our desire to independently connect with something greater than ourselves is born out of the sense of the common meaninglessness and fear that pervades all our psyches.

After millennia of attempting to realize the fantasies created by our anxieties, today we only have the estrangement created by contradictory ideologies pursuing equally false plans to grant the individual continuity after death either through fame or through the dubious good grace of some particular version of the divine created by the same fearful mind. This pointless search for perdurable security and divine status within the obvious limitations of self-centered thought, is responsible in no trivial manner for our hardened hearts and foolish minds. Paradoxically, it may also be responsible for blocking the spontaneous manifestation of the sacred as the imperceptible ground of all that is and, hence, existing in a dimension not discernible to the alienated and conditioned mind.

That the presence of the self is the negation of the sacred and vice versa, is the simplest expression of the great religious paradox. Serious consideration of this paradox prevents the waste of one's energy in the pursuit of fantasies, directing it instead towards the perception of things as they are and of oneself as one actually is from moment to moment. (174)

There is what I actually think and feel at every moment and then there is the reaction I have to that, which is further thoughts and feelings suggesting or commanding what I ought to think, feel and do in the next instant and the next. All the links in this "me" reactive chain are mental constructs. And the dominant presence in the mental field of the self as the past remembered and the future feared or desired, keeps the mind convinced of the existence of the time and the necessity of the effort deemed necessary to go from one to the other. (175)

Who will stop the greed and fear of humanity along with the violence they bring about? Will it be the emergence everywhere of individuals who in ridding themselves of identification with (and desire for) anything exclusive and divisive, make a clean break with the past and the future? Or will it be a final and immense tidal wave of revenge and hatred-the last concentrated measure of our ancient cruelty and stupidity-that will destroy the Earth and wipe away all traces of the human species from the Universe?

Except for small children, no one is innocent. We all bear responsibility for what is going on in the world. At this critical stage of our long and tragic history, to be simply willing to see the consequences of remaining attached to our particular sources of identification and continuity, is the only intelligent action. (176)

Death is immeasurable, it holds in its all-pervasive grasp everything that has ever lived, lives, and will ever live. Death moves-with life-at the very edge of time: now, at this very instant before it dies, life having moved on. Everything is new, fresh, unprecedented, discontinuous, one with everything else, one with life and death.

Every thing is, in itself and in relation to everything else, no-thing. The separate self, like any thing else similarly perceived as existing in isolation from everything else, is a mere figment of thought. (177)

Disillusions produce pain and sorrow only until there is the realization that much of what we perceive, think, desire and do is incomplete, insufficient; if not an outright illusion. The psychological self itself is not an actuality but an illusion, and the unraveling of that illusion may bring into being something entirely new, something beyond the feeble reach of knowledge, belief, and the imagination. This something, by definition, is negated and blocked the very moment thought creates an idea or image of it and sets off to capture it sometime in the future. (178)

Nothing one may think about another ever comes even remotely close to what she may think of herself or others think about her, let alone to whatever she really is. Right relationship between any two persons can only exist, therefore, if both of them cheerfully and unreservedly relinquish whatever they may happen to think about one another and about themselves.

Why is it then that we invest so little time and energy in the intimate exploration that would unveil the falseness of the images and ideas we create of one another and of ourselves? Is it because we know that the truth about the false and the illusory would soon block the destructive tide of the material, social, intellectual and "spiritual" definitions and ambitions on which we depend to exist as separate entities? (179)

Experience, belief, particular knowledge, and exclusive membership in specific groups create the self and constitute, as well, the nearly impassable barriers that separate people and that are frequently breached with violence. Look deeply and intently enough into yourself and you will see that the self we "know" is but the particular conditioning, the content, of every person's brain. In other words, there is no actual self, there is nothing concrete, unique and actual about any one of us. There are only insubstantial memories and the desires and ideals those memories mechanically propel onto the future, more often than not in violation of the health and integrity of human society and the biosphere as a whole. Suffering is, then, this very overarching sense of personal and tribal separation, and it is also the violence of our contesting attempts to overcome what is a common sense of insecurity stemming from an also common sense alienation. The potency of the illusion of a separate personal and tribal existence depends on the ingrained belief that through on-going efforts to become more secure and powerful, the painful sense of solitary vulnerability of the psyche and the particular collectivity will be healed or at least made less lacerating. Thus, for as long as the self remains convinced that its existence is separate from the rest of the psyche, separate from others and from the world as a whole, the impression of insecurity continues carrying with it, the psychological and social conflict inherent in absurd and ever-multiplying attempts to transcend a common sense of insignificance by becoming better than what we actually are as well as better than others. (180)

We create and recreate society at every instant with the fears and ambitions that necessarily emerge from separate and limited psychological and tribal experience and knowledge. Every time a particular individual or group decides to "set things straight" by attempting to impose its myopic version of things on others, the result is acrimony and violence usually followed by redoubled retrenchment. You can see that since the entire human mindset is conditioned and fragmented by its general and particular contents-its shared and its particular experience-the whole history of humanity, including its fundamentally unchanging future, remains locked within the trap of this primitive mindset.

There is then a single issue of importance: Is it possible for a human being-a human brain-to be unconditioned, totally free from its prejudiced, fearful and greedy self-interest? Are particular human beings capable of a supreme sensitivity to the real interests of the world at large and, hence, selflessly, passionately related to everyone and everything? Could there be a totally accurate perception of the world that thought has created and, consequently, the complete overcoming of that fractured reality? In other words, does seeing all this instantly, completely and entirely on our own, not stop self-serving thought dead in its tracks? (181)

What goes for "self-realization" is generally nothing more than the ephemeral realization of a given set of predetermined ambitions. No truly significant change, let alone permanent change, ever comes to the self or to the collectivity from riches acquired, privileges gained, good deeds performed, or otherworldly promises presumably realized. If this is fully grasped and the self no longer has anything to feel proud of or hopeful for, the whole process of self-realization-along with the time created to go from an unrealized state to a realized one-comes to an end. There is no more effort then; no further inadequate use of thought with its concomitant frustrations, fears and regrets. The world is utterly transformed only when the past, present, and future of the alienated, conditioned self are seen completely and without escape or distortion. Only the accurate perception of the false opens up the mind to the truth. (182)

The central issue lies in whether the highest order of perfection resides within the self or in something utterly beyond the self. (183)

Different levels of awareness may exist regarding the relational, environmental and intra-psychic events or stimuli possible at any given moment. But only the full realization of one's inescapable insignificance delivers the plenitude of attention, because then there is no longer in the mind "anyone" presuming to be attending. Having no roots in memory, nothing to gain, and nowhere to go, this impersonal attention is utterly unprecedented and never reiterative or cumulative. Not riding on the fixed tracks of intra-psychic time, attention is ever new, it seeks no pleasure, it is beyond suffering and self-pity, it has no self. (184)

Can anything be simply perceived, that is, apprehended without sentimental associations and plans, without words? Can one look at someone else free of images and ideas? Can one look at oneself without words, affective associations, and reactive plans? Is there an observer if there is such an unprecedented, timeless, observation? And what is it that is observed if there is no particular observer loaded with prejudice and made aberrant by ambition and fear? Is this passive and supremely attentive observation, love? (185)

Could it be that at its core the human mind is empty and that the specific forms created and endlessly displayed and acted out or upon by thought block the emergence of that emptiness? Is thought-the self as thought-the particular form taken by the fear of that emptiness, the fear of the immense desolation of an unknowable world free of the alienated and, therefore, endlessly fragmenting and simultaneously grasping presence of the self? (186)

Why is one so afraid of both austerity and humiliation? Why is one so afraid of what others may think or say about one? Why is there so much anxiety associated with the possibility of not realizing the absurd ideals one has made and projected about oneself? Why do we imagine it would be so difficult to live with the truth of our inner poverty? Is it not difficult enough to live the way we presently do, endlessly exploiting others to receive from them privileges and honors we do not deserve, and endlessly fearing not being able to attain the immensely more pleasant interior reality we crave, that reality that is totally unrelated to who we actually are? (187)

Thought is a diverse but, just the same, monolithic and largely autonomous presence in the human mind, because it is not the thinker who thinks, but rather thought that creates the illusion of an independent thinker. The idea that thought is a function of the self, is just that, an idea, one layer of thought having an opinion about another, and a false one at that.

Our sense of independent individuality is so dominant that we consistently fail to see that the human mind dominated by egotistical thought is common to us all. It is this mind and its illusion of independent individuality operating within sovereign tribalism that has shaped history and the world we live. Therefore, it is false both to assume personal separation from the world and to claim significant influence over what "our" thinking is and does. We are the manifold manifestations of thought and, so, we are also the sadistic and sorrowful world that thought has created and is planning to indefinitely recreate. The light to which we see that we do not have the prerogative of reforming ourselves, also illuminates the death of the conditioned self as the only significant possibility of freedom. (188)

There is a level of perception at which the equality among human beings suddenly becomes evident. Seeing that everyone is the outcome of the same phenomenon of general biological and particular social, cultural, and psychological conditioning, the brain suddenly stops ranking the self and others according to any given criteria. It is evident now that freedom is an irrelevant concept when referred to the self's intent and effort to become materially, psychologically and even "spiritually" better than others.

Because the tragedy of humanity is now lucidly perceived as an inescapable and total reality, there is absolutely no sense of self-pity left either. And because it is the disappearance of self-pity that fully reveals the tragedy of the human condition, this very act also carries with it the radical transfiguration of this condition. The death of fear, insensitivity and sorrow, is the birth of love. (189)

Memory and thought, (the self-projective movement of memory into the future), constitute nearly everyone's basic intra-psychic reality. And central to this reality is the illusion of an on-going individual self, separate from everything else and presumably engaged in a permanent process of development with psychological resources, skills, goals and methods different from those of most other individuals.

Paradoxically, to see the significance and enormously powerful gravitational pull of this illusion is to see the banality of the psychological and cultural differences utilized by this or that particular memory to claim the existence and unique identity of the "I" at its center. And this, in turn, reveals how the conflictive cultural and psychological fragmentation that billions of memories project onto the future through thought, renders invisible the realm of essentially undifferentiated wholeness. We keep each other blind to the general context of life by holding on to the shared conviction that the only way out of our otherwise common anguish and suffering lies in incessantly struggling to have more than others and to become better than them in any possible respect.

Is there a way out of this conundrum of self-inflicted suffering and certain death? Does a radical solution not imply an ending of the delusional process of separate being and becoming? Since thought is and determines separate existence and narcissistic becoming, it is evident that such emptying cannot possibly be something conceived by thought, projected in mental time as desire, and gradually attained by an effort of will. What then? (190)

Favor no man, fear none, reads the sign held aloft by the man shown standing alone in an extraordinary photograph. There is, indeed, no one to be envied or feared, none to be derided when we are all similarly encased in the inherent limitation of particular memory and are common heirs to the animalistic, pre-personal memory of the species. Therefore, all sense of being either superior or inferior to others is, at best, self-blinding hypocrisy. Only the perception of existing in a common psycho-cultural trap of deception can annihilate the sense of particular individuality and, thus, engender authentic humility, clarity and quietude. There is nothing now to yearn for either in the past or in the future. The intra-psychic time capsule collapses on itself ending the egotistical and illusory transit from what is remembered to what is longed for as an improvement of what is remembered or as avoidance of what is feared. (191)

There is something worse than suffering, and that is the attempt to escape suffering by making oneself so indifferent, so dull and insensitive, that one is hardly alive. Conversely, sensitivity-the plenitude of life-necessarily implies a total perception of the tragedy of humanity as a result of having ended all attempts to escape from partaking in this tragedy. That action-less perception destroys the mental space and time in which thought would continue creating new forms of fear and dangerous over-compensation. (192)

There seems to be an intimate connection between the discovery of the smallness and lack of originality of one's mind, and the discovery of the beauty and mystery of the natural world. Our minds are limited by our specific sensory apparatus as well as by the general experience of the species and our particular, individual and cultural experience and learning. The order of Nature as a whole, on the other hand, is not a product of human thought, emotion, or imagination and, therefore, it is in its totality unknowable, utterly beyond those reiterative forms, events, and patterns perceptible and intelligible to us. The universal order is unconditioned, endlessly creative, and yet seamlessly containing everything that is and happens, everything that lives and dies, including ourselves.

There is also a rather obvious connection between our rather common indifference to the integrity of the perceptible natural order, and our objectification and irresponsible exploitation of certain natural resources and other species to satisfy ever growing physical demands and voracious psychological appetites. (193)

The elimination of the sense of separation we all have, if at all possible, could only come through a direct and fearless realization that life is in itself undivided, not a disparate collection of separate entities claiming particular lives. The perception that thought is a limited faculty of the human brain that has gone terribly wrong in claiming a separate and dominant existence, restricts thinking to practical function (the only place where it is of benign significance to the survival of the organism and society) and, consequently, ends the constant psychological comparison responsible for the phenomenon of personal becoming with all its attendant intra-psychic contradiction and interpersonal violence.

Without comparison feeding the cruel pursuit of success and superiority, there is an irreversible collapse of the mental time and the effort created to try and bridge the distance between the separate and suffering psychological self and whatever imaginary future state he trusts will enhance his relative status and, thus, heal the fear and pain of his alienation. This collapse is the end of mental time, the sudden termination of the overbearing sense of difference and separation between "you" and "I"; between "me" and the world; between "me" and "myself"; between "me" yesterday, "me" today, and "me" tomorrow. We had always thought that freedom is the fruit of self-realization, now it is clear that freedom lies at the end of separate being and aggressive becoming. (194)

As different body shapes and different skin tones characterize different human beings from a physical point of view, different skills with the correspondent claims to status and retribution, often serve to distinguish each one of us from others from a psychological point of view. Consequently and to a great extent, we tend to see ourselves, and are seen by others, as being what we do. Furthermore, it is common for social function to establish not just identity, but social, political, and economic status a well.

The extraordinary mystery of billions of human beings sharing the same life and the same world, is practically erased in our particular minds and private social interactions by the importance given to whatever distinguishes us as individuals performing different functions, each endowed with a predetermined value measured in terms of the influence exerted over others and the rewards that that power can demand. This atomization and hierarchical stratification of human existence along the lines of function and status is, of course, a source of inevitable personal anxiety and interpersonal conflict leading to massive waste of human energy and reckless destruction of life.

Things are made worse by the fact that fear, conflict and suffering tend to ratify as well as increase the sense of separation felt by functionally different identities coexisting in a hierarchical social pyramid. At every level of the structure of society and within just about every existing rung and sector, those who have more and feel superior strive to defend and increase their relative privilege, while those at the bottom resist, often with the same violence and motivated not just by the need to satisfy fundamental needs, but also by the desire to procure power and privilege similar to that of those who oppress them or are merely indifferent to their plight.

Seeing the horror and plain habitual stupidity of this situation one cannot but ask whether different skills needed to serve the survival and well-being of the species as a whole, could be entirely devoid of differential claims to psychological status and power. There may be a real need for both managers and garbage collectors but there is absolutely no need for the former to feel superior to the latter and, hence, to demand privilege far exceeding what is rational, safe, and fair for everyone.

In the mad rush to an illusory sense of personal and tribal certainty, security and superiority, we claim and ceaselessly fight with one another over the ephemeral honors and pleasures that material and psychological spoils may grant, never realizing that in doing so we make the measure of physical security that could be possible for all, unattainable for multitudes and, thus, eventually impossible for anyone. (195)

If you are not trying to become anything, if you are not trying to be the hero or the saint who saves himself and who, perhaps, concocts and implements the plan that reforms humanity, saving the world in the process, then your past is of little if any importance, and it is not a bother to you that you will never amount to anything in the future-all of which makes you nothing now. Psychologically, if you do not project yourself onto the future, you hardly exist. Paradoxically, it is precisely in this caving in of personal identity and status-past, present and future-that lies order and clarity. The death of the self is the dawn of impersonal intelligence and passion for everything. (196)

Hell is a place full of pleasures; pleasures had and remembered, pleasures and honors yet to be had and hence eagerly pursued while permanently fearing they may never come true or not last if they do. Hell has to be full of intentional gratifications; were it otherwise it would be free of pain, conflict, fear and sorrow and not what it is claimed to be. Hell is in "who the hell" we think we are. Hell is the cruel and obstinate stupidity with which we fight to posses and become what we think we are entitled to. (197)

Can a human being move instantly beyond the tribal and personal manifestations of experience, knowledge and desire, and still survive? Can the human organism live through the seemingly devastating jolt of truth that ends its self-centered and self-serving existence? Can a person blind from birth survive the physical and mental pain created by the light, form, color, and movement rushing into the brain once his sight is somehow restored? (198)

Points of Awareness

· The brain/mind is conditioned by the pre-personal (biological) and the historical experience of the species, as well as by the biographical experience of each individual.

· Attention to the degree to which one's mind is conditioned or pre-programmed by experience and knowledge explodes in the realization that the freedom to become, psychologically, is an illusion.

· Because of its homogeneity with and its consequent incapacity to change or transcend the general programming of the human mind, the particular entity central in this programming, (the "I"), has really no existence in and of itself. Consequently, there is no rational basis for any hierarchical valorization of particular human beings according to the type, amount, or rate of expansion of the particular wealth, experience and knowledge that constitutes their evolving identity at any given point in time.

· The realization that the mind is conditioned and that the uniqueness and very existence of the "I" are illusory, brings about the end of the self-centered process of thought habitually dedicated to the defense, transformation, and permanent expansion of the separate self.

· From the space and silence created by the ending of self-centered thought, a question arises: Is there another mode of being or existence largely unrelated to what we know as consciousness and the human condition as the collective out-picturing of that consciousness? · There is absolutely no attempt to find an answer to this vital question. (199)