She had said to her friend: "Sure, being who I am and in comparison with others, some times I feel pretty inadequate. But, existentially, I feel totally insecure. I can't bear to even think of myself as a tiny organism lost in the immensity of an utterly indifferent Universe. Not only because such notion scares me to death, but also because there is nothing I can do to extricate myself from such an impossible situation. So, I pretty much reduce my life to what I can do, and that is to work hard to improve my social and economic position as much as I can or to, at least, maintain it at a more or less comfortable level. Don't get me wrong, I'm not just a social climber. I'm forever trying to become better morally and in every other way. I want to make a fair and decent contribution to society and, certainly, I don't want to hurt anyone. On the other hand, this doesn't mean that I'm not always prepared to defend myself from those who would want to hurt me or put me down. Why would I want to suffer unnecessarily?"

We are not generally aware of the profound and unavoidable insecurity that comes with being conditioned to see oneself as existing apart from everyone and everything else. And, of course, the same conditioning blocks from most everyone's sight the fact that the same insecurity is experienced in one way or another by everyone else. Unaware of what matters most, we tend to focus on the few activities, hopes, beliefs and desires that we each feel will grant us at least temporary escape from a common and commonly denied sense of meaninglessness and insecurity. And these particular-personal and tribal-reactions to all the different levels of existential insecurity are always inadequate precisely because in their divisiveness they render invisible the essential unity of the whole. In other words, the multiple ethnocentric and self-centric realities that determine our separate existence are in themselves the denial of truth.

If we are constantly and anxiously seeking influence over others and control over ourselves and our destinies, it is because of this barely perceived but nonetheless extreme sense of insignificance and vulnerability felt deep within ourselves. And yet, even though our personal circumstances and our general planetary situation are becoming more and more difficult, few seem willing to take an independent and complete look and come face to face, in themselves, with this universal sense of worthlessness and insufficiency. Is there really within the separate psyche an independent actor who is capable of doing anything significant about this terrible and chronic insecurity, or that is just an illusion inseparable from the insecurity?

Does getting to the bottom of this matter of insecurity not imply abandoning the temporary false certainties granted by self-projecting cultural and psychological enclaves and, therefore, ending the process of becoming through which we hope to overcome the insecurity intrinsic to a separate existence? In other words, can one see oneself instantly and completely without irreversibly ending the activities intended to gradually transform one into someone else, someone better, more powerful, wealthier, more intelligent, or more loving and compassionate? The isolated and self-centered process of thought is this reactive, strident, grasping mental lurch onto the imagined future that hides from itself the deepest and unchanging facts about the psyche and life itself. One is, paradoxically, the particular effort to get away from oneself and the most fundamental facts of life.

Only the willingness to question the relentless and yet pathetic desire to overcome insecurity through self-realization opens one's eyes and heart to the common insecurity-the universal suffering-underlying all our misguided efforts to fulfill ourselves. That the individual does not see partaking in life as eminently sufficient unto itself, but rather as an exclusive possession, ("my" life), demanding arduous justification and ever expanding and extravagant reward, brings to light the extent of our alienation as well as its inherent myopia and proclivity for violence. Conversely, clear perception of the dangerous absurdity of claiming and permanently striving to defend a made-up story of permanently evolving uniqueness, instantly puts an end to this entire process. That ending brings sanity to relationship and creates the mental space and quietness in which the plenitude of life as a whole may manifest.

Once the egotistically evolving separate self is seen as a general malaise of the human psyche and, hence, of the species as a whole, it is easy and natural to be different regarding technical capacities and roles, but simultaneously free of any sense of separation based on superficial or outright useless (physical, psychological, financial or cultural) differences and desires. Different functional capacities are absolutely necessary to serve the common good, but all other cultural and psychological differences bring nothing but isolation, strife and distress. (245)

Whether we like it or not, we are all defined by different experiences, ideas of value, and the relative amount of knowledge and wealth we may posses. Paradoxically, these differences are also the tragic measure of the disconnection amongst us. Even though the content of the personal and cultural identification-and consequent alienation-of a given individual may change over time, the fact that these contents condition the mind, bias the operation of perception and thought, and corrupt our relationships, never changes.

Many believe, rather uncritically, that it would be impossible for a human being to live free of the particular psychological experience, knowledge, and self-projection presently making them who they think they are and who they would like to become. It is common to see the pain of alienation and constant conflict, as a just and necessary price to pay for the dubious benefit of being unique and, perhaps, even uniquely valuable to history or to one of the many deities or sacred principles available for opportune sacrifice and ultimate personal investment.

It seems almost impossible to challenge this general psycho-cultural context, but it is not. It implies the extraordinary paradox of seeing oneself as a particular case of the general alienation and conflict blinding everyone to the larger, pre-personal imprint of human experience on the brain. It also implies awareness that any effort to do anything partial and gradual about the fact of conditioning is merely to extend it in time under a slightly modified form.

Because mental programming exists and sustains itself by changing its configuration, it is incapable of terminating itself. However, there is an insight that is not a product of thought that, in revealing that there is no difference between mental conditioning and the "I" posing as the agent of change, does in fact bring about the collapse of the illusion of an evolving personal existence that dominates the psyche. This collapse is a real death of the separate self, and not a figurative one that would still allow for further self-projection. There is no clever born-again subterfuge here. Nor is there a convenient post-mortem re-emergence through reincarnation, resurrection or any other means. There is nothing but an impersonal confrontation with the emptiness that is at the core of the psyche as it is at the core of all life.

It has already been mentioned, too many times perhaps, but we will say it again: there is no bridge leading from this familiar personal and tribal shore to the impersonality of an unknown and unknowable otherness. There is no bridge and no one there to walk across. A radical break in continuity; a total abandonment of psychological precedence and continuity only occurs when there is absolutely no sense of what may come next. Nothing comes next. (246)

To affirm that the truth cannot be particular and not of the nature of experience does not mean that those who hold particular truths will easily accept that affirmation as true thus annihilating their knowledge and leaving their experience without effect.

The fundamental fact of personal insignificance (past, present and future) has no expression, particularly, no self-expression. Whatever finds positive expression has-or is perceived as having- exclusive personal significance and, hence, cannot possibly be the truth. The truth cannot be reduced to words or images, nor can it be fixed and appropriated in any other way. Consequently, this last statement is not a portal to truth either. (247)

The whole is what it is-whole, unbroken, not relative. It has no parts. As far as our psychology is concerned, parts are the creation of the limited and always fragmenting operation of memory-based thought gathering experience and, therefore, knowledge in its permanent pursuit of protection, certainty, pleasure, status and self-fulfillment.

The perception, investigation, classification and deliberate manipulation of parts is, of course, useful in certain limited areas, but this same ability is inadequate as a way of approaching life. Life is definitely not the sum total of separate parts perceived by the extremely limited perceptual endowment and cognitive capacity of the human organism, but something entirely different and inaccessible to thought. A human being who sees herself as an independent entity, as a part, and who nevertheless thinks that she perceives and understands the whole-or that she will eventually come to do so-might be doing something much worse than simply deluding herself. How could the whole manifest while the presence of the alienated self still reigns supreme? (248)

Thought, the brain faculty that categorizes, compares, measures, and projects, has created the cultural fragmentation of humanity with its innumerable divisions and hierarchies. Every cultural demarcation, and every individual within each demarcation has-and is-its own conception of things: endless subjectivity creating endless separation, stress and conflict.

Within this general context to perceive one's ignorance-to simply say: "I don't know"-is to be uncommitted to anything in particular and therefore to be empty and silent. And that is generally thought of as death or, perhaps, a peculiar madness. Yet, this "unknowing" is freedom from the fragmenting and distorting imposition of memory/tradition/thought. An individual unburdened by unnecessary psychological and cultural knowledge and desire, still has to live in the world created by them and must still make use of memory and projection to resolve practical problems, but his very presence and action would not be that of the neurotic "thinker" who knows himself as being this and not that, and who assumes life to be this, but not that or the other.

Clearly, we are not interested in merely migrating from one cultural pressure cooker to another. We are talking here about definitely ending affiliation to all existing and potential mental subdivisions or categories and, therefore, quite willing to never again act according to the norms and methodologies of any particular ideology or set of ideologies. No one does this without being perceived as a "traitor" or as hostile and/or insane by members of the groups left behind in this manner. And just as one cannot dissolve one's loyalty to identity bestowing groups and organizations without suffering their resistance and possibly harsh reactions, no one leaves them either without feeling insecure about the mental and even physical risks incurred. However, when the wisdom of putting an end to the false securities and privileges granted by cultural parochialism becomes apparent, the insecurity of honest ignorance and non-attachment is more than bearable. To stand alone and in ignorance is the gift of sight to the blind and the gift of silence to those deafened by the obscene blare of fear, greed and violence. (249)

You no longer have a nationality now, nor do you belong, psychologically, to any religious, cultural, racial, ethnic, or professional group. You still have a given level of education and whatever economic occupation is more coherent with your background and the joyfully austere life you lead, but you do not associate yourself with any educational or economic class. Somehow, you have swiftly gone beyond the deeply ingrained habit of identifying with something greater than yourself. Being nothing in yourself there is nothing there that could be offended by that truly objective reality. And because this insignificance sees everyone as being fundamentally the same as everyone else, it also eliminates the need to ever again compare yourself, (or anyone else), to advantage or disadvantage, with anyone else. In other words, awareness of personal insignificance eliminates intra-psychic and inter-personal conflict.

The biggest challenge might lie in relating well with people still trapped within exclusive choices and fixed expectations. Perhaps, also in earning the money you need to live. After all, relationship and economic well-being usually depend greatly on belonging to specific groups and on obediently paying tribute to certain traditions and their social mores.

On a very different level there might still be certain confusion, not knowing what might come next. Perhaps loneliness as well, not because of isolation, but rather because there might not be too many friends with whom to intimately share this extraordinary adventure of non-attachment. Deeper yet, there may still be lingering feelings of fear and even despair; a sense that life is passing you by. This, not because you are not achieving what others are and have, you are way beyond that, but because you do not seem to be attaining anything at all. You ask yourself: Could all this self-abnegation be worth anything if I am still not feeling or experiencing anything special or if others no longer find me interesting or attractive enough?

For all their disquieting effect these questions, well observed, are a treasure trove of new and useful leads. They show that you are still comparing yourself with others, real or imagined, and that your actions are still motivated by the same old craving for status and special experience. Guilt, fear, or shame, do not come up when this simple observation of fact is made. Fact is fact. The observation continues and suddenly and unexpectedly there is a simple and direct (immediate and non-verbal) perception of thought's limited content and its ultimately barren nature. That perception is not anyone's perception. (250)

Those who believe in the pursuit of wealth and fame or in life after death as the justification for this life and its hurts, do not have to do anything radical in their lives. They have lost the essential questions because they have embraced one or more of the many fallacious answers given by others in their own escape from fear and concomitant pursuit of self-fulfillment. (251)

Although at horrendous personal, social and ecological cost, up to this point in its history humanity has managed to thrive on a general program of antagonistic cultural fragmentation, wide-ranging interpersonal abuse and conflict, and different forms of a common self-centeredness laced with anguish and confusion. Despite its predominance, this general operating program running our minds has by now created problems of such complexity and interconnectedness, that anyone who knows well his or her own mind and is fully aware of the chaotic state of human affairs, also realizes the foolishness of expecting real solutions to come from the same barren source.

More simply said: it is no longer reasonable to expect the intelligent cooperation we so desperately need, to come out of our longstanding cultural fragmentation and psychological division. Pressing global problems are definitely not going to be solved by a given cultural, religious or political group or nation imposing its will and sense of manifest destiny over those of all other groups and nations. Thus, it is no longer safe for anyone to seek security in the exclusive separation and status traditionally granted by different cultural ideologies to the particular forms of myopic egotism they engender and protect. There is no such a thing as progress through improved forms of violence and exploitation. Contrary to popular opinion, egotism and tribalism do not get any better with time. The only decent future for humanity hinges on their disappearance.

Who amongst us is free and caring enough to independently challenge his or her own psychological and cultural insularity as a chronically unwise reaction to a sense of insecurity that is common to all human beings? Can there be a definitive break in the historical and biographical continuity that sustains the conditioned operation of the alienated, conflicted and conflictive psyche? (252)

After thousands of years and innumerable attempts, nothing has changed the fixed thought patterns and the resulting dysfunctional behaviors of the human being. And yet we insist in trying to "develop" ourselves either by revamping old ideas and methods or by creating new ones out of the same worn out fears and false conceits. We are extraordinarily reluctant to see that real change could not possibly occur regardless of the nobility of the goals we may create for ourselves and of how hard we might work in trying to reach them. Only the irrevocable casting aside of all psychological goals, methods and efforts opens up the possibility of unprecedented change. Change that because it is unprecedented, is not mere trans-formation-a gradually moving from one particular form to another-but rather a sudden and immediate mutation beyond all form and pattern, utterly unrelated to conscious will and deliberate, gradual effort.

If I am unhappy with what I am and consequently want to become more like someone else or more like some idea I may have of whom I should ideally be, then I am in a permanent state of contradiction and all my efforts to change are bound to create internal confusion and external resistance. The question is then: Can the mind stop fighting itself? Is there a single or immediate action or event that will terminate the self's mechanical attempts to become better or something else altogether while simultaneously staying the same? (253)

The truth is not pleasant, much less entertaining. The pursuit of pleasure and entertainment is a distraction from the truth.

The truth is not cultural; it does not belong to group X but not to group Y. The truth is not personal; yours, mine, or someone else's. The truth does not make you free because it makes you right, but because it kills you.

The only step towards the truth is one that dissolves the culturally and psychologically determined self who has (and is) a plan to reach what he thinks is the truth.

The truth cannot be known because it is neither a statement, nor something to be experienced by someone apart from it.The truth is not something static, a mere destination to be reached after undertaking a particular, pre-determined, journey.

The truth is totally unrelated and unresponsive to the desire anyone of us may have to attain it.

The separate and conditioned self is the negation of truth. (254)

Because emotional attachment, (more commonly known as loyalty or love), is deeply related to fear and insecurity, it generates the undercurrents of mutual utilization and the many other forms of violence that characterize so many of our relationships.

Attachments are sentimental addictions; obligations devoid of joy and often permeated by heart freezing possessiveness and self-congratulatory sacrifice. In our incapacity to stand, psychologically, by ourselves, we shelter our inner sense of insufficiency in the embrace of other individuals, groups, fixed ideas and even the things we posses. It is well worthwhile to explore these long winded or short lived devotions, for only they can reveal who we are and what is it that we are seeking through them as well as through the closely related desire to trade them in for others that might prove to be higher-yield investments. Our most typical attachments are to the nation state, political tendency and religious faith, all with their respective authorities, traditions and expectations. We are also deeply and exclusively attached to gender, class, age group, clan, family and friends, as well as to material and intellectual property. All of these gradually evolving attachments and many others that would be too long to enumerate here are tied together in what is the central attachment of the human psyche, the almost desperate way in which we cling to the ideas we have of ourselves in the past, the present and the future, what we each remember, feel, believe, know, think and desire.

Fixed sentimental loyalties to specific groups, persons and ideas are the costly insurance system of a chronically frightened self forever incapable of seeing beyond the experience of success and failure, reward and punishment. And our cultures are literally awash with the incentives and disincentives controlling the thought and behavior of millions and millions of unquestioning individuals who feel lost without the commanding voice of the master resounding in their ears. Could we possibly live free from the influence of the political, commercial, aesthetic, and religious masters of the world? Can the human mind be ever rid of the misery that multiple, contradictory and self-serving loyalties inevitably bring about? And would this liberation not imply an unthinkable merging with the totality of life? Why could we not cooperate and live with one another without forming the kind of rigid and conflict prone attachments that block from sight life as a whole?

The conflict of opposing loyalties in the social context is mirrored intra-psychically by contradictory ideas, feelings and desires, all combatants in the overarching battle permanently raging between who we actually are from moment to moment, and who we would like to become sometime in the imaginary future. Usually the innermost devotion of a confused and apprehensive self is to some sense of obligation and "honor", or to the possibility that a given "dream" may come true. Honorable obligations and wishful dreams provide a certain security and respectability to the self, but they do so at the cost of reducing and warping perception and hindering the emergence of a deeper and more inclusive sense of responsibility. The only way out of the pain of isolation and conflict is through the ability to respond adequately to the totality from which the self is indistinguishable physically and mentally. (255)

Do we want to lead a worldly life, a life driven by power and pleasure seeking? Or do we want to lead a "saintly" life dictated by otherworldly ambition and thus filled with pretense, obedience, intolerance and ritualistic obligation? Is the muddled and violent world we live in at every point in time, not the sum total of our worldly lives and otherworldly ambitions with their respective conceits, claims and obligations? (256)

To say that there is nothing that conditioned human beings can do to put an end to suffering in the world, usually brings about nothing but protests like this: "Oh, that is far too negative; absolutely depressing!" But, is this response itself not a fairly typical indication of our general unwillingness to face the full extent of our interconnected personal and collective problems and the propensity to put our trust in illusory future solutions that comes with this reluctance to see things just as they are? It is hard for most of us to see that the act of withdrawing trust from the solutions proposed by conditioned thought and articulated through all kinds of misguided and contradictory effort, does not imply negating the possibility of freedom and the manifestation of a better world. To question thought only implies the honesty to the improbability that thought will eventually come around to heal all the divisions and solve all the problems it has itself generated over thousands of years.

To acknowledge ignorance and impotence is an act of pure freedom and total meaning. It is the alienated personal/tribal life with all its lies and phony overreaching that is devoid of both freedom and meaning. Being that we are not presently free to apprehend the mystery of life as a totality, it seems ridiculous to affirm that it does not exist or, what is far more common, to try to fill its immense absence with some proprietary and, therefore, divisive mental construct inevitably creating mental, interpersonal and intertribal friction and violence. So, why not simply stay with who we are? In the passive, quiet, space of enlightened ignorance, the only relevant question sharpens itself: Is the self with all its presumed attributes and neurotic imperatives, not the wall standing between the impersonal brain and the manifestation of the all-pervasive but unthinkable flow of life as a whole? (257)

One of the most salient characteristics of thought is its restlessness. It is not only that the "I" is permanently engaged in attempting to find and implement ways to control, secure, occupy and entertain himself, but that all this activity generates an enormous volume of uncontrollable (autonomous) mental chatter and interference. Despite the exhausting hyperactivity and painful disorder of our minds, we are generally unconcerned with the possibility of a mind at ease with itself. Is this indifference to our own mental health grounded in the belief that the defense and expansion of the self's psychological and social territory (its sense of identity and status) amply justifies self-centered thought's endless and noisy occupation with the hard labor required to accomplish those goals?

We seldom have sufficient mental rest and recuperation, and as a result our nerves fray and mental degradation and illness strike early and with alarming frequency. Afraid of confronting the hard facts of our existential, interpersonal and tribal reality, we commit our time and energy to all kinds of largely unnecessary pursuits wrongly assuming that reaching their stated goals will deliver the personal fulfillment and mental stability we so yearn for.

It is common to feel great anxiety whenever our regular work activities, and the recreation/relaxation periods we may have planned around them, are blocked or eliminated by unexpected events or changing circumstances. Life invariably disrupts or terminates our dreams and projects. Have you ever wondered what would happen if the mind found itself suddenly free of worry and chatter, free of any mental activity not related to necessary and actually occurring work and interaction with others? And if the mind happened to somehow stop fighting with itself, others and its circumstances, do you think you would still be around to report on the relative value of this unprecedented mental state? (258)

If you think your problems deserve center stage, they will render invisible the general disarray of the world, and you will become more and more insensitive to the problems of others. The conviction that your suffering is unrelated to that of others and to the general disorder of the world is the source of this insensitivity. And this insensitivity obviously affects the overall quality of the mind.

Just as attention to ecological concerns and the appropriate allocation of global resources is negated by the effort to force the general reality of the world to comply with sacrosanct "national interests", undue attention given to the satisfaction of one's own craving for fulfillment, destroys the possibility of even noticing the person right in front of one, let alone caring for his or her well-being.

The central issue confronting each one of us is really not what to do about personal, interpersonal or international problems, but whether or not the totality of the human situation can be observed in the most impersonal manner possible-not "out there"-but in ourselves, in our own minds and our own lives. The disorder outside is not different or separate from the chatter and confusion inside, and it is enormously important that there be no personal judgment or pre-ordained reaction reducing or in any other way affecting the significance of this observation. (259)

If there is no adequate response to the fundamental problem of human separation and suffering within the reach of the conditioned mind, then what else is there to do except quietly abiding with the problem? Why is one instinctively frightened of this otherwise totally logical transit from a state of sterile hyper-activity to a state of caring but passive watchfulness? Is it because our very sense of psychological existence and place in the world resides in identifying with a given response as opposed to others? Or, deeper yet, is it because the basic function of thought is to solve practical problems in a certain manner, and here it is being confronted with a psychological problem for which it cannot possibly have a solution?

We live in the mental noise of our own self-interest and self-pity, and to gain access to the depth of the problem of human suffering is to step into a mental realm of passive silence to which we are not at all accustomed and that we-quite correctly-fear will cost us our petty little lives with all their familiar nightmares and hopeful dreams. (260)

Is the other forever "the other"? Is the other irreducible to anything not himself, not ever to change significantly in any way, much less the way one would want him to change? Is one destined, by the same reason, to be a stranger forever; forever the other to another? Is this the human condition, each human being that ever lives condemned to self isolation and, therefore, to conflictive relationship?

And what happens when the other is persecuted or resisted; forcefully educated or re-educated; his manner of thinking or his actions systematically contradicted or punished? How can one possibly think that the other is liable to change if the basic fact may be that he or she is not free to change in any relevant manner even if that was his or her inclination? And if oneself, the one who is urging another to change, is also not free but-as everyone else-the product of fixed memories and ambitions then, on what basis can one possibly demand change from another? Who is capable of significantly changing himself, let alone another? Who has been granted authority on the basis of demonstrated capacity for radical psychological change? What are the limits of inter-personal influence? (261)

Thought is the problem-solving function of the brain. When confronted with information that in the psychological and inter-personal realms thought is in itself the problem, thought still requests time to do something about it, and then projects a false solution that can only further compounds the original problem. If there is no thought-based solution to thought as the root of all problems, then there is no moving away from the facts of our common humanity: isolation, conditioned fragmentation, violence and suffering. Paradoxically, to remain with the problem without attempting to solve it, to negate all positive action, is the only correct action.

Since our thought and behavior are determined by the experience/knowledge conditioning our brains, it is foolish to blame someone else for what is wrong with society or oneself. Aside from entirely missing the point, the externalization of blame makes the entire problem of suffering worse by creating and projecting contradictory pseudo-solutions that ultimately only manage to perpetuate separation and violence.

Because we are the problem, the only wise action is one that relinquishes participation in any action seeking to improve, escape or transcend oneself or the world. This attentive passivity unveils in the self itself, (in its memories, judgments and projections), the entire nature of the problem, and this revelation contains the only real solution. (262)

Consider the isolation in which your dreams and ambitions are conceived and nurtured; consider the solitude that harbors your fears, anxieties, jealousies, and frustrations. You may feel alone, but you are certainly not alone in feeling this. We share the same psychological realities; we all inhabit the same fundamental consciousness.

There is a single prison holding captive every human being alive. It is a huge prison complex that has many separate buildings of different sizes, each holding a particular group. And each of the inmates held in these buildings is assigned a slightly different cell created by what he thinks is his particular personal history.

Each one of us lives his life sentence largely unaware of the nature of the imprisonment and oblivious to the fact that the rest of humanity is doing time with him. While alive, everyone is keenly focused on the tasks demanded by the viability assessment and the implementation of pre-determined and highly exclusive (personal and tribal) plans intended to improve the accommodations and provide special compensatory rewards for whatever suffering and discomfort are experienced. We live and die in jail, and we carefully groom our jail-born offspring to uncritically do the same. Different and evolving ideologies of freedom, progress, enduring pleasure and eternal life after death, rationalize this miserable existence through the projection of illusory escapes or superficial improvements.

This prison is our mental reality; this prison is human tradition and human history. And, unless our brains go through a veritable mutation, this prison will continue to be the only habitat that future generations will know. The question of real freedom is all that matters. (263)

Psychologically, one is no different from the memories conditioning the psyche and, hence, determining perception, thought and the actions that emerge from them. Yet, we do not generally feel this. The same self that feels separate from the material world, also feels separate from the periphery of the psyche and capable to change aspects of it at will.

If this illusion of intra-psychic division is dispelled, the struggle between the actual self and an imagined better or ideal future self naturally comes to an end. The mental conditioning may continue mechanically reacting to everyday events, but how long would this process last if it were no longer sustained by the ego as a dominant and self-projecting force? (264)

The human condition is a tragedy, but not a moral tragedy. If the chaos of our personal lives could be straightened out by morals, those who decided to act morally would rapidly gain access to a visibly better life free of conflict and sorrow that would prove to be an irresistible argument to others still mired in the miseries of selfishness and ignorance. But this has not ever happened; human beings have never been able to change drastically by subjecting themselves to pre-determined codes of moral behavior. In fact morality-worse yet, different moralities-have been for thousands of years, not the cure, but the very source of interminable additional conflict within and among human beings, each striving individually and as members of particular collectivities to be something they are not, while simultaneously attempting to impose their idealization of themselves on others. By and large we have not grown more capable of defeating our vices and overcoming our stupidity, we have only gotten more hypocritical and insensitive.

Now, if there is no worthy morality, either tribal or individual, then there is no ethical method to follow nor any goal to achieve. And if there is no process of psychological improvement, then there is no time anyone may take to go from what he actually is right now, to what he thinks he ought to be tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, or ten years down the road. Is there separate being if the time created for independent becoming ceases to exist? (265)

Each one of us is, essentially, what the other is: insufficient, confused, lonely, afraid, and therefore endlessly attempting to adhere himself to anything perceived as providing a certain measure of certainty, continuity and stability. Thus, our interiority, our sense of a separate psychological existence holds, simultaneously, these profound feelings of insufficiency and vulnerability plus all the efforts made to overcome these feelings through endless attempts to become more and better, perhaps something else altogether, something unmatched, supreme, divine.

To be "myself" implies not only an act of separate existence based on an identity attained in opposition to "you" and yours, but also that the totality (the sacred, or whatever you might want to call it), either does not exist or that it does, but only as an idea, a possibility, possessed by some but not by others. But if the sacred is just a product of the human mind, a cleverly crafted representation of an unknowable truth venerated by a given group of "us" as source and destination of our separate tribal and personal existence, (and, therefore, as potent proof of others' inferiority), then the "sacred" has absolutely nothing to do with the real possibility of an unimaginable reality containing-and therefore negating-all separate realities.

The human tragedy has its roots in this psychological and cultural division that condemns us to a common and enduring reality of separation, hostility, and grief by blinding us to the truth. The multiple personal and cultural realities created by thought, are all equally incapable of ever coming in touch with that which is not the product of thought: the truth. (266)

The drive to succeed, the urge to be loved or to be "saved", foments insensitivity for the simple reason that whatever each one of us does to attain material, moral, intellectual, cultural or spiritual privilege (exclusive fulfillment), blocks from sight the true scale and nature of the sorrow of humanity. Conversely, the paroxysm of sensitivity necessary to perceive the totality of human suffering, not as an abstraction, but as an actuality, demolishes egotism not by reforming or saving the egotist, but by killing him. (267)

To see that we are constantly making comparisons based on subjective notions of psychological and cultural superiority or inferiority, is to also see the extent to which humanity as a whole is divided by, and enslaved to, absurdly rigid and contradictory ideas and beliefs that strengthen and extend themselves in time through effort, resistance and open conflict. The limited and exclusive nature of self-centered thought is in itself the separation that exists between us. It is also the interminable animosity with which we torture one another. (268)

There are only two possible approaches to the question of separation. Either there is a mental state in which existential separation is non-existent, or there is not. If the latter is true, then we are condemned to alienation and to continue forever seeking exclusive, and therefore illusory, security through different forms of pleasure; multiple religious beliefs; the hoarding of money and material goods; false charitable deeds; private loves and power grabs. Although we all suffer the effects of existential and cultural alienation, we hardly ever talk seriously about it. We have come to think of our isolation and the fear and hostility hidden in this isolation, as natural. The ideological explanations and rationalizations we have internalized have dulled our brains and hardened our actions to the point that the matter of whether there is or there is not an alternative way of being in the world is not likely to be discussed.

Thus, the possibility and urgency of a non-dualistic state comes into full view only if and when an insight into the nature of mental alienation has abolished all the existing rationalizations and false solutions that are (or might) be given to it. To quietly stay with the overwhelming reality of mental alienation and the suffering it creates without seeking any escape or consolation, that is, without in any way hoping that it may be overcome in the future, radically alters the conditioning of the brain. Because alienation is what one is and not merely what one suffers from, this is not a state to be improved or transcended through effort and will for the simple reason that any particular desire for amelioration or liberation is, itself, a further expression of the same fixed isolation that assures its continuity by projecting onto the imagined future new and "improved" forms of itself.

So, if there is awareness of the enormous problem of separation, the pertinent question is not what to do in order to overcome or transcend this state, but rather whether the self that has to continuously identify itself with something in order to exist is, in fact, real. And if the self is not real, if it does not exist in and by itself, then of whom is the mind to predicate separation, conflict and suffering? (269)

Regardless of very loud protestations to the contrary, no one really knows what to do about the general mess in which we all live, and no one is less responsible than anyone else for its virulence and its continued existence. There might be different forms of insanity amongst us, but this variety obviously does not include sanity. Thus, to merely see that the world of human affairs has always been and continues to be in chaos, is to negate the value of any particular cultural initiative promising to somehow improve our lives and bring about social progress. In other words, the very fact that mental disorder and cultural insensitivity cannot overcome themselves, enables the mind to reject the influence of authority and end its participation in hierarchical social structures and their plans and projects.

Can the individual psyche leave behind forever the fraudulent business of attempting to become what it is not, without collapsing in a heap? Is the brain capable of observing the totality of what is occurring intra and extra psychically from moment to moment without either judging or projecting anything? The psyche presumably controlled by the "I" is irrational because it is conditioned, alienated and violent; period. -Can that irrationality be seen and left alone, not appraised or interfered with in any way by information stemming from past experience and acting on behalf of pre-determined future outcomes? Given the circumstances and the character of the general problem, is this single act of perception not the only possible act of reason? (270)

What does it mean to stop comparing oneself with anyone else or with any idea depicting who one should become? Is it not that psychological time has stopped ticking? To see that one is stuck with who one is, paradoxically implies freedom from the illusion that one can in any way strive to become significantly better or different in the future. And freedom at this level implies no longer being at odds with oneself and with others.

The breakdown of the fantasy of personal (psychological) progress has profound implications. One is conditioned, and so is presumably most everybody else. This means that the psyche and the human brain itself are conditioned and, therefore, that there is no autonomous internal or external agent that we can perceive or think of capable of affecting relevant change. It also means that unless the brain is instantly freed from its psychological conditioning and is, therefore, no longer operating on the bases of self-centered memory, thought and desire-which are all integral parts of the conditioning-nothing truly significant has occurred.

Now, is there anything unrelated to the contents and reach of human knowledge and experience that might be the real ground of our existence, and can that something act to radically change a human brain/mind that no longer believes itself capable of doing anything significant to change itself and alter its social circumstances? This essential question presumes, paradoxically, the absence of anyone posing it. Because if there is some "one" behind it, then the answer will necessarily be still within the realm of thought and, therefore, inevitably also the source of further separation, confusion and quarrel. (271)

For as long as we continue making mental images of ourselves and others, our relationships will continue to be manipulative, violent, and unstable. For when it comes to psychology and relationship, nothing is ever what we think it is. Contrary to everything we might have learned, in the realm of human interaction, knowledge and experience prevent us from seeing who we really are, let alone who others are. (272)

You leave and then you leave again. Again, and again you leave. Occasionally fear may bite hard, but the angle of vision does widen appreciably. Because you have given yourself the leisure necessary to see, the obsessive busyness of most everyone else is evident, as is the shallowness of most interaction and the relativity and ultimate meaninglessness of contradictory value systems that different individuals and different groups use to prop themselves up.

All seeking and all resistance end when the illusion of psychological security fades away. No more conflict with others or with yourself, then. There is nothing left to achieve, nothing of a personal nature left to express, nothing left to defend or fight for. Though not isolated, now you stand alone no longer yearning for new connections and attachments in the hope that they will prove to be more gratifying.

You trust no one to lead you and, consistent with that, you do not attempt to lead anyone else, for there is no place and no experience capable of delivering the security and certainty everyone seems to crave. With no more time and energy wasted in protracted and taxing fool's errands, mental energy pools in silence. (273)

What is the greatest possible measure of disappointment? Is seeing the state of the world, not reason enough to be disillusioned with practically everything? Disillusion, when total, is a form of personal death, for what is the separate self if not illusion armed with the will to realize itself?

When the mind no longer harbors within itself any hope that any thing or experience will ever bring about lasting security and happiness, there is no longer frustration nor any of the emotions associated with loss and disappointment. Discontent may still be there, but now it is no longer the launching pad of new futile attempts to attain contentment and respectability.

The human condition consists of a general insecurity plus the multiple, conditioned and antagonistic ways in which the particular mind reacts to this insecurity. Thus, the perception that actively sought pleasure, success and redemption are to conflict, confusion, fear, and loss what one side of a coin is to the other, frees the mind by killing the self. To see is then to die an easy and natural death. (274)

Our common desire for respectability and success depends for its existence on the unfortunate need to attain a sense of identity by comparing ourselves with idealized images of we form of ourselves or of others. And the very possibility of attaining this comparative sense of oneself-pleasurable and superior or not, is not the point-implies in turn the continued existence of a foolishly hierarchical, unjust and violent society. Conversely, the perception of the basic equality of human beings, which beyond superficial differences is obvious, is in itself the rejection of any form of status, actual or potential, attained by comparing oneself with idealized images of oneself or similar images, positive or negative, held of others.

Once experienced, the admiration of other people never seems sufficient. Adulation merely feeds a voracious need for greater adulation, and ambition does nothing but fatten itself with the ever-greater efforts it demands on behalf of higher and higher levels of achievement. Can one merely do what one does best without wanting anything for it from others, except what is essential to satisfy one's most basic needs? Can the social and economic function of the individual serve the common good and yet have no psychological importance whatsoever? (275)

The decision to independently observe life and oneself necessarily produces a movement away from the rigidities and half-truths of culture and one's own internal habits and convictions. However if one is trying to abandon tradition while at a different level still desperately wanting to belong to something and to exert some form of influence on others, uncomfortable feelings of confusion, vulnerability or anger are unavoidable. But these feelings and the contradiction that generates them dissolve without resistance or effort when they are properly (independently, passively and completely) seen and understood. One walks the Earth alone and in silence then.

As far as relationship with others is concerned, it is enough to in all honesty reveal oneself to oneself and to them as the very source of the mental and social disorder in the world. For in this revelation they too may come to see themselves as they are, thus planting in their own minds the basic germ of true humility and truth. But be forewarned. Most people are quite unwilling to even see, let alone disclose to others their ignorance, insecurity, fear, confusion and sense of personal insufficiency and vulnerability. They might well be living lives of quiet desperation, but to have someone talk openly about the importance of seeing and exposing just that, is hardly ever welcome. After all, awareness that one lives in the cage of one's experiences, beliefs and ambitions, and that this little cage exists within the general cage of the human condition, does not leave much space for grandstanding and open-ended personal advancement. (276)

The fact that suffering is universal brings to light the unity of humankind. But we are so involved in trying to escape from what is perceived as personal or tribal suffering, that we generally fail to see this unity with sufficient clarity. Our common dread and pain would come directly and immediately into sharp focus if we were to resolutely set aside all personal escape and subterfuge. There would be nothing more to argue and fight about, then. Our minds would naturally move away from what we each know, believe and covet, and having thus eliminated the cause of our separation, our eyes-all our eyes-would naturally turn towards the unknown as the only possible source of peace and freedom. (277)

There are those who are only interested in money and their own pleasure, opinions, and power-and they seem to be legion. There are also those who are genuinely interested in human problems and who act vigorously on their particular concerns. But they do so only within the limitations and particular methods of the political and religious ideologies, and the scientific disciplines, to which they subscribe. They are the do-gooders, reformers and revolutionaries, and they are also numerous.

Then there are those who, while equally concerned with the fate of humanity, realize that all existing and possible solutions conceived by the conditioned psyche and proposed as adequate means to deal with the human plight are, by definition, limited, contradictory and, hence, divisive and ultimately counterproductive. Because they have abandoned the false securities and illusions of religious, political, economic and cultural ideology they stand alone. They live out of the psycho-sociological "grid". In them thought no longer projects onto the future different versions of an idealized personal or social self. They have shed their cultural content and abandoned their personal ambitions, and so no longer attempt to continue traveling from the experienced past to the imagined future. Life is only now and that now is limitless because it is timeless, selfless. These people do not know, or care about, their number. (278)

There is nothing you and I can do directly to help save humanity from itself, for we are not exempt from the general disease that has been afflicting it for thousands of years. The only worthy task is this: to clearly see whatever might be reducing and biasing our perception and to let that perception itself instantly deal with the problem. (279)

Humanity has over the centuries amassed extraordinary wealth, knowledge, and power. And yet our personal, inter-personal and collective affairs remain quite primitive and conflictive. Despite extraordinary scientific and technological progress, there is little space in our minds and negligible peace in our hearts. And as we continue to compete with one another ruthlessly chasing after the ever more ambitious markers of personal and tribal success, conflict and violence are everywhere. The sense of personal isolation, fear and helplessness is ubiquitous, because their source in psychological separation and cultural atomization remains largely undetected.

There is a young man I have often seen while riding the bus. He has a minimum wage job cleaning tables in a large food court in the town to which we are presently headed. From a previous conversation I know he is an aspiring musician. He wears everyday a different and extraordinarily extravagant stovepipe top hat with which he gives the rest of us a hint of just how unique he is. Everybody seems to notice the hats, but most only look furtively at him. He usually seems lonely and rather sad, and by the end of the day he is clearly exhausted. He pretends to be very special with his hat and all, but that very claim seems to isolate him from others who may think he is far too exotic or, perhaps, even dangerous.

At noon, when I was about to have my lunch at the food court where the hat man works, he came over to wipe clean the table I had chosen. I greeted him and, in a rare display of intimacy told me that he had spent some time alone in a hospital in a nearby city and that it had been a terrible experience. I asked him about the nature of his medical problem and he murmured: "Seizures". (280)

To be human-as we presently know our humanity-is to be a somebody and, therefore, separate. No one can claim the particular identity that goes with being somebody without, by the same token, isolating himself from most others and from the world at large. In other words, alienation is the price we pay for our exclusive identities.

Alienation generates conflict and conflict generates suffering. And when we suffer, we make the expansion and improvement of our vulnerable identities, (the search for exclusive status and fulfillment), the absurdly contradictory manner through which we attempt to overcome the fear and grief that our common psychological separation inevitably generates.

The self is rather reluctant to see that it is caught in this vicious cycle and that, therefore, the only real solution to the problems and divisions it has created has nothing to do with further attempts to improve and enlarge itself. The constant efforts involved in the attainment and subsequent defense and expansion of exclusive forms of security and self-fulfillment, can only create and recreate a chaotic psychological and social reality. Thus, even what we think are our noblest attempts to bring some semblance of peace and order somewhere, ultimately only serve to consolidate and extend in time the cultural fragmentation and the general lack of intelligent cooperation that afflicts the species as a whole. As a functional palliative to personal pain and grief, many continue to engage in ever renewed efforts towards partial and gradual integration, but these too are source of identity and false security and, hence, of renewed contention and alienation as well. (281)

Our world is threatened by a whole set of interconnected and increasingly complex problems, and the application of traditionally partial solutions (political, economic, religious, educational, psychotherapeutic, technical and military), does nothing but compound the general disorder. Herded for a parody of self-protection into separate ideological tribes, untold numbers of people are incapable of looking at the situation totally and by themselves, and so they continue to act according to what they (are told to) think and believe. In this general context, the future is always defined as an unending war for material resources and ideological domination.

Given the nature of present social, economic, cultural and military trends it would be foolish to think that one's action could be of any relevance to the state of the world, and yet one must act, not only to procure sustenance and shelter, but to increase the likelihood of radical mental change. And, clearly, this supreme necessity of a mutation in the human mind must not be informed by memory with its predetermined progressive and regressive tendencies. The only wise action is, therefore, one that seeing the facts and effects of mental conditioning cancels out all positive action. Positive action being any pre-determined reaction to present social and psychological circumstances; anything projected onto the future that-being known, foreseeable and desirable-is but a reenactment of the past.

Because it sees the futility and danger of separate tribal and psychological continuity, the awakened psyche stops projecting invariably incomplete and divisive solutions. Clearly, no results can be pre-imagined and expected from the setting aside of positive actions. Not knowing what to do, nothing more is done. Realizing that any type of hope merely re-forms the past, all hope is terminated. Psychological time does come to an end. (282)

There is no turning back when the human being, any human being, frees himself from the asphyxiating allegiance to nation, class, clan, gender, and faith. There is no turning back when you stand psychologically naked and alone one with the enormous sorrow created and recreated everyday by the greed, fear and violence intrinsic to personal and ideological separation.

The truly independent human being sees that no ideological formulation or initiative will ever transform the hardened heart of humankind, or plant the seed of intelligence and compassion in the parched and barren soil of its mind. She sees that the future of humanity, if there is to be a future at all, depends strictly on individuals who are willing to break away from the habitual mental ghettoes in which everyone commonly lives and dies.

That life is one and indivisible only becomes factual when all the barriers of separation created by thought collapse under the weight of their own falseness. Regardless of what it may claim, achieve, own, control and believe, the isolated and divided mind has always been and will always remain full of pain and sorrow and, therefore, incapable of stopping itself from creating suffering for others now and in the future. Again, the only step out of the mental trap of separation can be taken by individuals who come, on their own, to the instantaneous and complete realization that no deliverance can be expected from the absurd future projections of past experience. (283)

If we could only meet at the level of our ordinariness-our commonality-then most of the friction and tension usually present between us, would disappear. We have essential characteristics in common, and yet they are generally pushed out of sight by the superficial traits with which we each create the illusion of a particular existence and go on to justify the brutal indifference or outright brutality with which we treat others.

We clearly share with all other organisms a deep-rooted dependence on the rest of the material world. Without food, light, air and water, no one can live for very long. And each one of us shares with every other individual human being the same body and, within it, the same ancestral brain product of a long evolution through chronological time. That is, we are fundamentally the whole experience of the species enfolded within memory. And the biographical experience with which each individual is so strongly identified, is enfolded in the same memory and expresses and projects itself through the exact same process of self-centered thought. We also share with everyone else fundamentally the same feelings and emotions; the same insecurities, fears, and anxieties; the same permanent risk of frustration, disease, and loss; the same aging process and, perhaps more important of all, the same physical and psychological death. Just picture it for a second, in different order but certainly in less than 120 years, all of us representing humanity today, will have died.

In the eyes of death as an integral part of life, we are all the same: vulnerable, insignificant, one moment here and gone the next. Why then not be kind and affectionate with one another? Why is it that despite all of our knowledge and sophistication, we are still so incapable or unwilling to acknowledge the overwhelming importance of our shared reality and, thus, shatter the illusory separation between us? The perception that in our deepest humanity we are fundamentally one and the same instantly destroys the habitual enmity and the accumulated grief that psychological and cultural difference and separation maintain fixed in our brains. (284)

When leaving behind the well-trodden paths of cultural and personal tradition, feelings of discomfort and insecurity are inevitably bound to arise. And when they do, one tends to immediately react to these feelings with pre-determined schemes of avoidance or rationalization. The same psyche engaged by the possibility of de-conditioning, reacts to this possibility with the urge to defend the conditioning or to limit itself to superficial alterations. And yet, attention to these mechanical reactions and awareness of their hidden function if acute enough, can effectively block the urge to "fix" things, which is clearly but another part of the general programming keeping everybody in line. Besides, it would be unrealistic to expect that the illusory and real comforts of group consensus could dissolve without bother to self and others.

What is shared with those who live within the same cultural environment, and with those with whom one shares even more intimate psychological memories and projects, constitutes an important and very dominant part of the psyche, any psyche. Thus, the act of abandoning the familiar can be extremely disruptive and uncomfortable. However, to have come this far and not to take this step is to consciously agree to live in falseness, to reject the greatest challenge posed by life and, thus, to be dead alive. (285)

Because knowledge and experience are inherently limited and because this limitation has no future remedy, it is pointless to depend on someone else's knowledge and experience, or on the prospect of acquiring greater or better versions of the same thing oneself. The endless demand for ever more exciting or meaningful personal experience, which then becomes knowledge, is one of the reasons why none of the central human problems ever gets properly seen, let alone definitively solved.

Progress may be evident when it comes to science and technology, but it is largely a myth in the realm of basic mental health and human relationship. And let us not forget that many of the fruits of progress in science and technology are inevitably placed in the hands of the primitive human being, (who may have also commissioned them in the first place), who then uses them to further his own petty interests while simultaneously attempting to block others operating with similar tools and exactly the same intent. (286)

If it is true that all human problems are created by an alienated psyche rigidly, (and homogeneously), conditioned, then it is false that structural social changes and relatively minor mental and behavioral modifications in the individual, will ever solve the constitutional and chronic disorder afflicting each and every one of us. Hostility, greed, fear, insensitivity and the self deceit and hypocrisy with which they are disguised from self and others, have been deeply engraved in the human brain/mind; and, barring some fundamental change, will most likely continue to indefinitely produce suffering in future generations.

Now, if no relevant psychological or social change can be expected from further reforms and pseudo-revolutions conceived within any of the many particular and mutually exclusive forms of cultural and personal conditioning, then there is only one possibility left: That the individual human brain/mind can, somehow, be radically and instantly de-programmed so that it may stop hurting others and being hurt by them.

Given that this radical cleansing of the self-centered mind cannot be gradually effected from within, as it were, (egotism-the divisive and self-protective process of the psyche that creates suffering-cannot possibly repair or transcend itself), how can this urgently needed internal revolution come about? -This question of "how" reveals that the self is still present and still begging for the psychological continuity provided by further dependence on external leadership and a gradual process of self-fulfillment.

The simple realization that all seeking is inherently divisive and futile drains the seeker of the motivational energy formerly provided by particular forms of concern, faith and hope, and the resulting collapse of the inherently conflicted and conflicting process of psychological becoming is all that is necessary. The undivided mind that abides with actual fact exists in an altogether different, timeless, dimension. (287)

Our subjective interiority, what we have experienced and learned, what we love to love and what we love to hate, is the full measure of our intelligence and the entire base and projection of our psychological existence. This self-centered subjectivity also delineates our separation from others and is, for the same reason, the primary cause of suffering due to conflictive relationship. Rigidly programmed to avoid psychologically pain and to increase pleasure and security, we generally strive to interact with other "like-minded" individuals, (those who share the same imperfect knowledge and the prejudice that typifies any group or tribe), and to fear and avoid or antagonize strangers and foreigners.

From the small-minded unions and alliances established by small-minded individuals, arises the impetus to conquer or assimilate others into the tradition, belief and opinion that typify any particular cultural ghetto. And, yet, precisely because the pursuit of exclusive experience, wealth and status remains as the fundamental human enterprise, no tribal integrity is ever safe from the divisive impact of rebels and dissidents, or the conquering ambition of other tribes. (288)

It is extraordinary to see beyond the pretense of uniqueness with which we corrupt our minds, because then we see ourselves as we really see and come in direct contact with the equality of all human beings. Do we not all enjoy, fear or suffer the same basic set of experiences? Do we not all share the same physical being, the same life cycle and, fundamentally, the same mental structure, content and process. Each one of us is caught, along with everyone else, in the same mind; the conditioned personal and cultural mind that creates and recreates at every moment the chaotic world we all live in together. A central part of the general program of this insane mind of ours, has it that the isolation, fear and disorder we all suffer from can be diminished or altogether eliminated through the attainment of exclusive self-realization. In other words, we are all uniformly convinced that the conflict and sorrow created by psychological and cultural separation can be overcome by improving the character and circumstances of particular instances of this separation.

This blatant contradiction rests on an even deeper, but equally universal conviction that maintains that the "me", the center of the psyche, is separate from, and in charge of, the ideas, emotions, fantasies, ambitions, fears, desires and habits that make up the rest of the psyche. Thus, just as the self lives in permanent conflict with others, the eternally evolving self-centered mind lives in permanent conflict with itself. In comparing ourselves with idealized mental versions of ourselves or with others thought to be superior, we force ourselves to struggle permanently to become someone better, someone superior to others, or someone else altogether.

The truth is, of course, that we are what we are and, therefore, have no power or freedom to alter significantly the way we think, feel and act. What is then the point of further action if the "I" is inseparable from what he habitually thinks needs to be changed in himself and in society? -And, if alert to the fact that there is no significant psychological change, "I" simply stop striving to realize idealizations of myself projected onto the future, do "I" still exist? What is a human being without idealized projections of herself and, therefore, without the mental time and effort deemed necessary to bring them to term?

Individuality is the greatest and more destructive of all illusions. It is as hurtful to others as it is unquiet and sorrowful in itself, because while separate from others and from the world, we cannot help but fear and suffer, and then stupidly react to our distress by straining ourselves harder to become, personally or tribally, more separate and more powerful. Does that make any sense to you? (289)

Thought is based on experience and knowledge both of which are, by definition, limited. Thus, regardless of how imaginative and noble they may appear on the surface, actions motivated by self-centered thought are always insufficient and, therefore, also conflicted and conflictive.

Thought is essentially the movement of memory through positive and negative desire. Images and ideas of pleasure, pain and fear circumscribe and motivate most of our actions. Every actual experience is identified as being either pleasurable or painful through an instantaneous and mechanical comparison with previous experience. If pleasure is the case, desire will project the urge to experience further; and if it is pain, then fear will immediately ensue triggering innumerable maneuvers of escape.

Is there an action that is immensely intelligent precisely because, being independent of memory, it is not compelled to run on the fixed tracks of pain avoidance and pleasure procurement? (290)

Can there be a mutation in the human being unrelated to any of the cultural components of his social environment-(religion, art, therapy, education, technology, science, politics or military force)-from which change is traditionally expected to come? What will undo the patterned firing of brain cells conditioned by thousands of years of experience and invariably reproducing the chaotic rut in which we have always lived? There will be mental confusion, conflict and suffering as long as there is division between thought as the warehouse and launching pad of memory and that layer of the same thought-the "I"-that presumes to observe and control memory from the outside, as it were. Wherever there is division, solitary aspiration and egotistical action based on limited personal and tribal memory, there will be interpersonal and international conflict. Is there any way to overcome this conflict? Can the process of psychological becoming ever end along with the self as its mechanical instigator? (291)

The sacred-if it exists at all-must be something unthinkable, simply because what is conceivable, even imaginable, must of necessity be a product of the limited experience, knowledge and desire that make up the physical and chemical process of thought--and there is nothing sacred about that process. Even though the self perceives itself as "the thinker", the creative center in God's creation for many, the self is in reality only a product of a common phenomenon of thought projecting itself in a mental time of its own making.

While everything else in the world of energy/matter is clearly relative and discontinuous and, most definitely not created by thought, the self is remembered and projected by thought/desire as a discrete entity permanent in time. Just look around, other than the idea of self, there are no particular "things" existing in and by themselves, somehow outside the all-encompassing and permanent change dictated by their relationship with everything else. Much less are there other entities or organisms claiming, as most human beings still bizarrely do, the capacity, even the merit-based entitlement, to transcend their own death.

It does not take much to realize that the sacred, if it exists at all as an actuality and not just as a wishful affirmation of ideological faith, must be something essentially unrelated to the mental and historical provincialism of the particular and the general human psyche. That is, it must be something unconditioned, unlimited, complete unto itself and, therefore, not subject to experience and inaccessible to thought and its predetermined and self-serving cravings. Come to think of it, the very existence of the isolated, pre-programmed and self-obsessed individual is the very negation of the sacred, even as just a possibility.

Again, although we have created out of a common fear many different versions of god, (as well as many different expressions of atheism as the opposite of a faith in god or a sacred principle), the fact remains that we cannot either prove or disprove the existence of an absolute. And, yet, every passing day adds mercilessly to the evidence of centuries showing those with eyes to see the extraordinary limitations and the dangerously destructive inclination of the alienated self. It is only from the direct perception of the false in oneself and as oneself, and from the consequent eradication of any positive or negative, (past, present or future) formulation of, or desire for, the sacred, that the unanswerable question about its existence is properly posed. (292)

The reality we perceive is clearly restricted by the limitations intrinsic to the perceptual apparatus of the human organism and to the cognitive elaborations made and accumulated through time on the basis of that restricted perception. Humanity as a whole is further handicapped by the selective preferences and claims that after thousands of years of separate and antagonistic experience distinguish different national, cultural, racial, class, age and gender groups.

Can a human being gain instant awareness, first, of these limitations and, then, of the danger they pose? And, is this complete perception not the instantaneous shedding of these limitations? Can a particular mind/brain be thoroughly emptied of all psycho-cultural content and, consequently, never again search for anything else to posses, experience or be?

Anybody can come to see that the reach of the senses can never grasp the interconnected complexity and constant change of all that exists, let alone the ocean of formless energy underlying manifest forms. And anybody can realize as well that their intellect is useless when it comes to radically changing oneself, or to understanding the ever trans-muting totality of being and non-being. Anybody can see that thought will never be able to reduce life as a whole to knowledge, and much less use this knowledge to assume perfect control over our actions and circumstances, let alone those of others.

Therefore, anybody can also realize that since there is nothing of significance that can be expected from thought, it is only reasonable that its operation restrict itself to those practical areas where they are absolutely necessary as well as relatively harmless-and thus allow the brain the quiet and rest it so desperately needs.

For some reason the word love seems to pop-up when considering the possibility of an attentive but empty mind; not the love of exclusive secular or pious sentimentality, but love as the affective quality that might be present in a psychic field free of all the turmoil of egocentric thought and, hence, in a state of non-duality. (293)

The strong emotions felt when clashing with someone else over conflicting opinions regarding a given circumstance or issue, are usually related to the belief that what the other person thinks is wrong; perhaps also morally incorrect. Aside from one's insecure attachment to one's opinions, the annoyance or anger felt also belies the rather naive assumption that the thoughts and beliefs of one's opponent are quite likely to change, and should change, as soon as the proper 'evidence' is forcibly or persuasively presented. We remain generally unaware that our opinions on most social, psychological and relational matters are subjective constructs that we tend to defend at all cost not so much because they represent the truth and our love for it but, rather, because our very psychological existence and sense of personal security and status depend on their preservation and expansion.

To withdraw all one's opinions on these matters is, perhaps, the first sign of wisdom; a revolutionary act, the dawn of a mind that having realized the seriousness of the limitations of conditioned thought and the terrible danger they pose, no longer strives to defend its isolation and from that isolation improve itself and change the world. Having died to the limited attachments and illusions of exclusive knowledge and desire, the impersonal mind is now capable of seeing things as they really are. (294)

How many truly significant problems have we, personally, managed to solve either in ourselves or in our relationships with others? How is it that after thousands of years of evolution as a species and many years of individual effort and struggle most of us remain unhappy, insecure, afraid and, therefore, permanently yearning for some sort of imagined deliverance? Is there any conclusive solution to serious psychological and social problems within the reality determined by the limited reach of thought? Or there is not and, consequently, the only rational decision available to us is to categorically end the search for one?

This ending of the movement of thought searching for self-realization implies no longer attempting to move away from the facts of thought-based reality and the suffering that might be implicit in these facts. And this implies, in turn, an end to the conflictive division between what I think I am and what I think I am supposed to become so as to feel happy and secure.

Why is it so difficult for us to see that the huge commitments we make to pseudo solutions related to partial psychological and social problems necessarily preclude ever fully understanding why we fear and suffer in the first place? Why is it that we do not see the absurdity and danger of an isolated act of psychological existence bent on overcoming its inevitable sense of vulnerability and proclivity to violence through the attainment of exclusive means of self-fulfillment? Is it not obvious that our personal ambitions clash with those of others souring our relationships, filling the world with hatred and violence, and disrupting the delicate balance of immensely complex natural systems? Why can we not trace our almost permanent anguish and confusion to contradictory desires permanently battling each other in our own minds? Why have we allowed the urge for personal self-realization ranging from consumerism to preposterous life after death schemes to put at risk even our physical survival? (295)

Attention is perception of the world (and the self) unmediated by preference and fear. Choice-desire based on experience and knowledge-informs perception destroying its potential for clarity and all-inclusiveness. If the self is defined by fixed patterns of preference and aversion gathered through time, then attention is, by definition, selfless and timeless.

Preoccupation with the self, that is, with personal identity, social status and personal fulfillment, creates mental and interpersonal conflict leading to further insensitivity to things as they are. Conversely, keen attention to actual fact implies an action free of particular preference and avoidance. In the perception of the dilatory intromissions of self-protective and self-expansive thought as the false, the truth itself instantly acts. For example, if there is a lucid perception of patriotism as contributing to the destructive fragmentation of humankind and therefore as false and dangerous, one does not take time to think about what to do, that perception itself acts instantly, completely and irreversibly ridding the mind of any trace of nationalistic prejudice and violence. (296)

Let us assume that you no longer trust or value the fame, diversions and riches that the world offers. This, simply because as you have grown older you have seen your dreams fizzle out or, en route to their realization, become a source of suffering to others. And let us assume as well that because you have had the good sense of putting aside all religious illusion, you no longer expect an otherworldly consolation prize to offset worldly failures and losses.

Do you not feel a great sense of isolation and, at times, even despair? Does your mind not abhor having nothing extraordinary to look forward to? Do you not feel trapped within the insubstantiality of your memories, the limited scope of all human experience and reach, and the inscrutable and undecipherable immensity of the cosmos?

The multiple menaces of middle age and old age, and the certainty of death are a frequent preoccupation never fully offset by the occasional joys you may experience and whatever pleasures you may still engineer. Do different versions of the same banner headline not run trough your mind stating with great alacrity: -"IS THIS ALL THERE IS"? -"IS THIS ALL THERE IS"? Even though to you the world seems to be falling apart, legions of other people still continue to rush around full of the energy that different forms of ideological illusion and psychological delusion generate. Observing from a certain distance the frantic business of the species, do you not think with a pang of nostalgia of the times when a similar enthusiasm fired up your brain and energized your body? And do you not then abruptly sober up with the realization of how all that hectic activity and eager self-investment led to so little, while taking you with such enormous force to exactly where you stand now?

You are clearly on the sidelines and bereft of any clear sense of what to do, but have not yet collapsed. Being still mightily interested in the beauty and order of the cosmos and the impenetrable mystery of life, you keep wondering why is it that your life, in particular, and the lives of human beings, in general, do not reflect the extraordinary depth, order and creativity of our common (material and immaterial) universal context. You look at everything intently, you listen carefully-more so now than ever before simply because you are no longer fully committed to doing, achieving, or owning anything, or getting anywhere in particular. You are acutely aware of the extent to which personal opinions limit and bias your perception. And because of this familiarity with your own small-mindedness, the possibility of no longer asserting yourself is far more appealing than threatening.

In fact, there is a new sensitivity in you precisely because you have finally stopped throwing your weight around. This freedom to be and remain unattached, to doubt and to easily hold back unnecessary judgments and unwise re-actions and desires, is also the freedom to perceive and feel with maximum intensity and, hence, to be fully alive. Amazingly, the capacity to perceive widens in proportion to the willingness to die to the trivialities of the will to power and self-fulfillment with its unavoidable self-pity, violence and regret. At the point in time in which the self dies, the clarity of impersonal perception is born. (297)

The "me" and the drama of its endless re-creation in time, is the centerpiece of the conditioning of the psyche by general and personal experience and knowledge. As such, there is nothing then that this "me" can do to significantly improve or to altogether transcend the fact that the mind is severely hamstrung by its experience, not free. All resistance, all effort of pre-determined will merely extends in time the same additive conditioning by tacking on to it minor modifications. Worse yet, all the frantic motions and overwrought emotions of false psychological and social reform have the hidden function of blocking perception of what the self actually is and how it contributes, with every self-serving thought and misguided action, to the increasingly chaotic state of humanity as a whole.

Once the presumed separation between the self and the rest of the psyche has been perceived as the fallacy that it is, everything changes; conflict with others over different cultural values and beliefs, ends. Consequently, methods of self-development and participation in social reform movements are no longer even taken into consideration. Freed from the compulsion to escape from "what is", the entire process of psychological becoming is derailed. And since it is now obvious that thought can never solve the problems that it has itself created, the question of what would remains, but without any attempt to seek an answer for it in the files of memory/desire. It is the absolute certainty of ignorance itself that poses the question.

Is this setting aside of all exclusive positive or negative identification with anything or anyone, a supreme form of individualism-the self over and against everybody else? Or is it that in the very destruction of the strictures of experience/knowledge that constitute the separate self, blossoms an impersonal intelligence that is, in itself, the elimination of the capacity to experience and inflict sorrow and pain? (298)