Many people react with annoyance-if not derision or outright hostility-to the mere enunciation of the possibility that there might be no solution to human problems through the traditional process of predetermined sequential and incremental steps leading to an also predetermined goal. "What else is there?"-they say with impatience. "Whatever positive change we have had over the years came that way, gradually; at the beginning often two steps back for every one forward." To this one responds: -"Look, if you see that our minds remain caught in all the divisions and problems they have themselves created because they are restricted to diverse but extremely limited experience and knowledge, then you will also realize that they are utterly incapable of ever solving these problems." And so the conversation ends there, or drifts into less threatening territory.

Since we are uniformly conditioned to think that all that is needed to achieve peace and justice in this world (or transcendence in another), is more time and further effort, (applied according to any of the plethora of available ideological alternatives), we almost instinctively reject any notion that this may not be true at all. This mechanical dismissal of the possibility that we may be caught in a mental dead end is, of course, the only possible defense strategy for a self that cannot exist if not deeply identified with a given faith, hope or plan demanding gradual progress and offering a predetermined outcome. Whatever anybody's particular design for the future might be, it carries within it the enormous power of guaranteeing the continuity of the self. In other words, personal existence, a given measure of self-esteem, and the promise that things will eventually get better thanks to one's or somebody else's actions, are all components of the continuous activity of the conditioned mind.

Not one of the many ideologies that determined the past of humanity was ever capable of fundamentally changing the human psyche, or of reforming the unjust, conflicted and warring societies this psyche created. So it might be quite safe to assume that no revamped or newly ascending ideology will improve on this dismal record. The same holds true at the personal level: no foreseeable improvement of the psyche added to the collection of previous ones, will ever manage to eradicate suffering or to eliminate our common willingness to inflict pain on others. It is simply foolish then to continue thinking that the knowledge and wishes generated by previous experience will ever drastically alter the way our conduct and the way we relate to one another. The diverse promises of personal and social change that different cultures use to educate and proselytize, are instantly and easily negated when seen for what they are: a common avoidance of the real challenge confronting each one of us and, through us, humanity as a whole.

The radical necessity of seeing oneself as just this unassailable wall of incompetence we have been describing, signals the dawn of a silent mind. The mind is silent because it has had an insight revealing that the solution of our fundamental problems is totally unrelated to the remembered past or the projected future of our divided and conflicted personal and tribal lives. It is silent because it has finally seen that the only possible way out of the chaos in which we live lies, not in the gradual transformation or evolution of the self-centered psyche, but in its death.

We live in mental soil that has been thoroughly exhausted and there are no fertilizers that thought may device capable of making it fertile. A correct reading of the historical record and of the actuality of our chaotic personal struggles and our common suffering, pleads for an immediate negation of all traditional, presently new or forthcoming developmental or transcendental escapes. In finding no other recourse than to extinguish its faith in the eventual realization of its own presumed potential for goodness and intelligence, self-centered thought freely and effortlessly negates itself out of existence. Naturally, if this is to occur, it must be without any prior knowledge of what may be the outcome of such radical action. It is clear now that any predetermined sense of future reward or punishment, signals of the persistence of the same alienated and conflicted egotism we have always known. (299)

Particular meaning is a reduction of reality in no way related to the truth. This if the truth is understood, not as a product or discovery of the human mind, but as the whole; and not merely a symbolic representation of the whole, but the unthinkable totality itself. The meaning that every human being invents or appropriates as the gift or imposition of others is always a mere verbal representation, a conceptual construct more related to the function of providing identity and security to whomever dresses himself with it, than to anything else.

Because it is psychologically and tribally functional as a source of exclusive identity, meaning is always multiple, divisive and conflictive. We are what we are and treat each other the way we do because the particular psychological sense of significance and the particular values and ambitions with which we each identify, necessarily create separation and antagonism amongst us. (300)

In The Life and Times of Michael K, J.M. Coetzee depicts with immense perceptiveness the particular human life as lived in a series of camps in which one is more likely to be a prisoner than a guard. It seems as though no one escapes this brutal and yet paradoxically willing imprisonment that begins with the obliteration of all direct awareness that one is, indeed, a captive forced to comply, not just with the often cruel will of others, but with one's severely limited mental content and mechanical function: the horror of a nearly total lack of freedom.

There might not be escape from this existential predicament, but to be conscious of it is, in itself, already a significant measure of freedom and order. To see one's life as successive internments, first ascribed then chosen, is to be aware that imprisonment comes from fear and habit with their concomitant craving for certainty and security in any convenient illusion and at any cost. The myth of consensual protection and comparative status is the mental gruel that tribes and clans serve their members in exchange for fighting strangers and working themselves to death without ever envisioning the possibility of true freedom. (301)

Morality: the classification of human beings as good, less good, evil and less evil, assumes that the solution to personal and social problems lies in a gradual, progressive, transition from one end of the moral continuum to the other. This assumption is, evidently, incorrect for the simple reason that every human being alive is but a particular manifestation of a general psychological dead-end that no particular ethical conceit, effort or imagined divine intervention will ever be able to cure. Therefore, the real solution to all our problems, if such solution is in fact possible, must necessarily lie outside the provincial mental field where this fatally simplistic rat race morality holds its games.

If we remain unaware that we are literally the memory of limited and fractured experience (exclusive psychological knowledge and belief in reactive movement), we shall continue to endlessly enact further insufficient or downright erroneous attempts to reform our societies and our own minds, thereby condemning ourselves to the same chronic failure and the same chronic suffering we have always known. It is, therefore, imperative to see, first, that psychologically we are-(fundamentally and, therefore, equally)-limited by our divisive knowledge and, second, that this conditioned mental content, structure and dynamics, includes the compulsion to control and "fix" particular aspects of ourselves, our personal lives, the lives of others, and our general social circumstances.

Unsurprisingly, the possibility that this obsessive-compulsive process may come an end has enormous implications. For one, an irreversible termination of the movement of self-centered thought, cannot possibly come from within the annals of memory which contain nothing but recorded images of previous thoughts and actions, their recorded consequences, and the plans these consequences suggest for future actions intending similar but somewhat better results.

Non-action in the realm of self-improvement and social progress implies nothing less than the end of the self. For, what is this self without the habitual agenda drawn from the past and projected onto the future on behalf of a better, more secure version of itself? And who would be the one to realize that egotism and violence are not likely to disappear through the application of new and better disguised forms of egotism and violence? Would there be any trace of the perennially self-projecting "me" left if the past stopped being the source of a future created on the basis of illusory psychological idealizations? (302)

Who is it that nurtures an imperious desire for open-ended continuity? Who is it that hopes for fixed outcomes and then frets or despairs about the possibility of their frustration by simply imagining adverse future scenarios? Who is it that desires to find a particular treasure by either regressing or progressing in the predetermined, time-bound, landscape of the mind? Who is it that strives and struggles, fears, covets, hates and isolates? Who is it that while holding on to the illusion of being a discrete entity, continues to presumably evolve in a broken up world that has never found the way to unify and heal itself?

Sorrow and misery are unavoidable to an entity whose falsely independent and falsely evolving existence was long ago hard-wired into the brain. If it is true that the inevitability of suffering is one with the very sense of separate existence and exclusive becoming that typifies the self, then only an impersonal sensitivity to the totality of the permanently re-created tragedy of the human species will reveal the necessity of an irreversible ending of this mental process and, in so doing, bring this ending about. (303)

Raised as a Christian, he knew what it was to announce goodness and to denounce evil in the ancient prophetic tradition of his faith. But now he was no longer a Christian, nor anything else. He had come to see himself as just another ordinary human being with no particular gospel to announce and nothing to denounce in others that was not also present in himself.

By looking intently at himself, others, and his interactions with them, he had come to realize that any ethical or religious projection was but a dangerous extension onto the future of the same alienated and competitive mind responsible for all the mischief and suffering in the world. For many reasons, the passive stance that resulted from no longer projecting a personal future, felt at first like an impossible burden, mainly because many around him, still bent in piling blame and guilt on others while working hard to attain the preconceived fruits of their own worldly and "spiritual" ambitions, demanded to know as a prerequisite of relationship what were his allegiances and his plans for the future. The pressure to conform was intense, but when he considered getting back to march in lockstep with others to the fixed rhythms of a tribally enforced ideological tune, he discovered that that was no longer a tolerable option. (304)

The other is the other because-just like the "I"-she or he is perceived as being some-one and not no-thing. The other is considered as such because-again, just like the "I"-she or he knows, stands for, or represents, something valuable to yet others, or at the very least just to him or her. Only one who is truly nothing or, better said, only nothingness manifest in a human body, could possibly convey to another the urgency of dying to the self. When someone who is still an other to his own self and to others parrots this message, only deception and conflict can result.

Regardless of our interest in the possibility of psychological emptiness, those of us still occupying far too much space psychologically would do well in not making too much about what is still only a possibility-perhaps just an absurd desire-and concentrate instead on the contradictions jamming our minds and ruining our lives; serious contradictions such as simultaneously wanting to be somebody and nothing at all or, worse yet, wanting to be somebody by pretending or trying to be nothing at all. Consider yourself forewarned then: Do not believe what you read here or anywhere else about these matters. Look and see for yourself. (305)

For those not caught up in the frantic activity of the holiday season, December in the so-called "civilized" Christian world, is a time of relative isolation and peculiar sadness. Not sadness over not being part of the artificially induced remotely controlled hyperactivity and glee, but rather over the fact that multitudes are still led by the nose by meaningless traditions and the unscrupulous interests of merchants and religious leaders. What a foolish waste, what an injustice in the face of so much misery in the world!

Beyond that heartache, it is really a privilege to stand outside all that empty celebration and wasteful gift giving; not belonging to anything, not upholding the particular value of anything over that of anything else, and not identifying with or hoping for anything.

In the mental clarity that sees the destructive absurdity of particular cultural values and habitual activities, there is no anxious search for an answer if the question of what to do next happens to pop up. The mind is no longer influenced by culture and no longer concerned with improving itself in any way. There is an immense revolution in things as they are when there is no one there attempting to improve, or to escape from, them. (306)

The on-going world war that results from everyone attempting to defend their treasures and to fulfill their particular hopes and dreams, has created such extraordinary corruption and misery in the world, that one may wish for death and rightly so. For death is the only fire to which the tribal and biographical trash that fills our minds, is vulnerable. Only the annihilation of all the illusions, fears and ambitions of psychological separation can still the mind, and only a still and timeless mind may receive the infinite plenitude of life. (307)

Even more than shared pleasure and money, tradition creates tight and lasting bonds among people. Within the common mental space and time provided by any given tradition, every individual can look back to a common past that includes the conviction of an equally common destiny plus convenient instructions for its realization. Most unfortunately, however, this insular sharing of a remembered past and joint projection of an imagined future is also what keeps superficially different groups of people apart and at odds with each other, not just as members of different cultural groups, but also as individuals. A total stranger, someone commonly perceived as a menacing threat, is one (self or other) whose identity is seen as based on different experiences and opposed or competing worldly and otherworldly ambitions. (308)

Not to seek refuge in the traditional, tribal and personal past and its pre-digested future, appears, to those who remain hostage to conditioned thought and desire, as an action of appalling recklessness. And yet, it is only the mind free of the divisive illusions of security generated by self-centered thought that is stable, intelligent and deeply caring. We all need the physical security that memory-based thought is admirably well suited to provide, but the use of this mental faculty to attain psychological security necessarily creates self-perpetuating conditions of division, conflict and sorrow. (309)

To the affirmation that the self is patterned culture and memory and, as such, inevitably bound by the limitations of prejudice and pigheaded belief, the self (memory) invariably responds (if willing and able to go this far in dialogue) by asking what to do to rid himself of this limitation. The very appearance of this question put in evidence the ingrained belief, (part of the general conditioning of the mind), that there must be a solution for every problem and an appropriate method to every solution. After all, thought argues, why should the diagnostic and procedural logic that works in the solution of technical or logistic problems not work as well in the case of psychological and social problems?

Forever poised to overcome impediments and to "change itself", the self refuses to see that the problem he is trying to rid itself of, is nothing other than himself: the cumulative deposit of images and ideas that likes to think of itself as the "thinker", the mind's highly regarded CEO and, therefore, as something separate from what needs to be changed. Now, the direct complete and immediately perception that in the context of the self and his multiple problems, leadership mediation, effort, and further image formation are all useless, is in itself the ending of the whole process of psychological becoming on which the self depends to maintain alive the illusion of his separate existence.

Contrary to common opinion, insight is not the point of transition of the personal mind from one plane of existence to another, presumably more pleasurable and prestigious. It is rather a flash of understanding that in emptying the unnecessary contents of the psyche enables a now impersonal mind to attend to the facts of life as they are and only as they occur from moment to moment. (310)

It is the pursuit of personal security and self-realization that creates the continuity of our existence and vice-versa. Our sense of permanence and individuality comes from a selectively remembered personal history that projects itself indefinitely into the future of the life of the organism and, even beyond that, into the fantasy lands of fame and salvation promised respectively by secular and religious ideologies. And it is because we all project, in one way or another, the overcoming of our limitations, fears and sorrows onto the imagined future, that the mere suggestion that the only real solution to suffering might lie in the termination of the self-projecting history of the "me", is immediately rejected as contradicting everything we know, believe and want.

You and I may have by now understood the notion that the life of a separate being who is permanently seeking expansion and self-fulfillment at the expense of others and in contradiction with its own psychological, social and ecological reality, can only be a conflicted and conflicting saga of sorrow punctuated by occasional pleasures, and inevitably ending in a death feared all along the way. But the real question is whether this understanding is just a mere theoretical nod to what is being said, or the actual dissolution-not tomorrow, at the end of the month, or at the end of our physical life, but right now-of the whole content of images and ideas that determine and project self-centered separation.

In other words, either the mechanically additive and self-projecting content of our psyches actually exists as a discrete entity (the "I"), or it does not. This yes or no disjunctive cannot be gradually resolved in time, except to safeguard and give further momentum to an an illusion perceived as more important than life itself. (311)

Because our very existence depends on our attachment to particular knowledge/experience and desire, it is generally assumed that the word 'passion' denotes fervor about a thing, an idea, or someone else. Thus understood, passion implies duality, cause and effect, a zealous subject-object relationship. But if the flying buttresses that sustain the illusion of the self are shaken to the core by healthy skepticism, passion is suddenly revealed as life itself: unfathomable vitality; liveliness without separation, infinite creativity devoid of particularly active creators and particularly inactive spectators; life unconditioned, totally free of the fixed orders and absurd hierarchies with which thought attempts to eliminate its mystery in, come to think of it, reasonable self-defense.

Is there a possibility of this empty but endlessly energetic and creative vitality nesting, as it were, in a human brain otherwise only inhabited by the type of impersonal, practical knowledge occasionally necessary to negotiate the challenges posed by the physical and relational world? And, if this possibility is there, what is then the problem? What is there to fear or to desire? Who is there to suffer, who is there to die? (312)

Enlightenment, understood as a state of non-duality, cannot possibly be something that can happen to, or be experienced by, the individual. The presence of the separate psychological self is, in itself, the state of alienation and suffering. Therefore, enlightenment far from being the supreme achievement of particular individuals (or, worse yet, of particular sets of individuals-the famous "chosen ones" making up every pseudo religious tribe), must then be what occurs when the psychological self is somehow dissolved. We say 'somehow dissolved' because the termination of the movement of self-centered thought cannot possibly occur from the inside, as it were, by virtue of a sustained methodological effort or the merited or unmerited intersession of an ad-hoc external entity, human or divine. There might simply be, right now, an immediate and complete perception of the fact that any effort made to procure enlightenment, is merely the instinctive extension in mental time of the constitutional separation of the human psyche hiding under slightly different styles of uniform camouflage... And that might be enough. (313)

Hope lies at one end of the emotional and intellectual spectrum and despair at the other. Despair is the absence of hope and, hope, the wishful projection onto the future either of the image left by a previous pleasurable experience or of an intellectual formulation distilled from the real or imagined experience of others.

It is common knowledge that human beings often wither and die from despair. But everyone also knows that the hope of any one particular group or individual is usually perceived as nothing but by those deluded by a different form of the same type of ignorance and illusion. Is this psychological and cultural fragmentation that makes human beings permanently careen between false hope and withering despair, all that life can be to the human being?

Throughout the millenary human presence on Earth, thought has fractured humanity along the lines of countless different forms of a universal phenomenon of psychological and cultural self-identification, and this atomization of mental reality has produced immense insecurity, conflict and suffering that we are now utterly unable to resolve. Yet, because self-centered thought poisons every succeeding generation and every mind with the conceit of having the capacity to reduce or altogether remedy the problem of suffering, it keeps pitching thousands of separate cultural groups and billions of self-centered individuals against each other, all attempting to simultaneously realize-against all reason-their egotistical and conflicting hopes.

Does seeing that this approach to the problem will never work, not simultaneously free us, you and I, from particular hope and the rotten belief that we are drastically different from one another? And once free from all the debilitating fears and irrational cravings and antagonisms created by the illusion of separation, would the notable capacity of the human brain not find ways to convey this freedom to others and, thus, do what is truly necessary to satisfy the fundamental needs of every human being alive?

If these last statements have triggered an instinctive negative reaction, it may well be because of an instantaneous conditioned reaction to the realization that if what is being said is true, then all of the self's claims, vanities, hopes and despairs are false leaving it, thus, without meaning or purpose and, hence, without a future-dead. Look again, devoid of a personal past and an exclusive and ever "up-gradable" psychological future, the mind stays with the facts of every moment, thereby confining thought (remembrance, comparison, preference, choice, and projection) to practical matters. In a present untouched by the prejudices and limitations of a remembered past, and free of willful and contradictory efforts to bring about a privileged and exclusive future, the mind is no longer in conflict within itself and with others and, hence, no longer experiences ambition, fear and debilitating self-pity.

One cannot "hope" to achieve this state, not only because it is not a reward for good work accomplished but, more importantly, because it is defined by the absence of a separate self. And one cannot despair of not having attained it, for exactly the same reason. (314)

Hurt invariably comes from a contradicted or unfulfilled expectation and is often enough followed by different combinations of sadness, anger and fear. Hurt is also commonly trailed by the urge to do something to undo the disillusion and, perhaps, to correct as well secondary emotional reactions to the disillusion if they are perceived as a further breach of predetermined expectation, this time regarding the self. The unrealized anticipation that triggers the reaction of hurt, is always related to an unrealistic image of the self; an image that being generally unaware of the subjective whim of others, robotically demands from them corroboration, reward and praise. Whatever one is identified with can be then the source-when modified, denied, taken away, or devalued-of long-lasting cause and effect cascades of pain and other debilitating emotions and erroneous re-actions.

To be nothing is, conversely, to be free of any past, present or future idealized image of self demanding from others, among other things, the complicity or corroboration deemed necessary to maintain or extend a sense of respectability. Beyond the need for food, shelter and basic physical security that everyone has to somehow satisfy, the free person has no desires that can be frustrated and, therefore, is impermeable to humiliation or hurt, as well as incapable of willingly hurting or humiliating others. To be free of images of oneself, also implies wholeness and, therefore, timelessness-not being caught in the permanent conflict of being and having something today while wanting to become and possess something else tomorrow.

It is relatively easy to see how much human energy is commonly spent to achieve the material and psychological privileges prescribed by every person's sense of security and social respectability. Our pursuit of money, fame and relative position (in both society and the most desirable style of afterlife) is, of course, the source of unending conflict and enormous grief as most of us do whatever is deemed necessary to defend who we think we are and to become who we want to become. Being hurt ourselves, we hurt others by being indifferent or even cruel with them, and they usually respond in kind by disregarding or disrupting our self images, properties, principles and priorities in the process of defending and expanding their own.

When presented as we are here with things as they really are, one-who is the very embodiment of previous hurt, loss and disappointment, and who may also be presently suffering from a social standing and a level of financial standing seen as beneath righteously held claims-might perceive in a flash that psychological nothingness implies no more hurt and, indeed, no one there to experience it. "Yes, I can see that", may be the first reaction. Instantly followed by: "But without a personal identity and some measure of ambition how would I be able to survive, even physically, in a world in which everyone else is ruthlessly attempting to assert their claims and to expand their own territory?

This question of survival clearly has no answer from the defended side of the fence from where it comes. One might as well speculate about the character of one's self esteem after physical death! But the fear implicit in the question instantly blocks the swift insight that in just revealing the falseness and danger of psychological separation would actually empty the unnecessary and harmful conditioning of the self-centered psyche. In other words, the memories, fears and desires with which the familiar maintains itself, easily obstructs an otherwise clearly rational, intelligent perception/action opening the mind to the vastness of what is utterly beyond the measure of conditioned thought.

When confronted with the radical necessity of the mental sanity that only emptiness can grant, the future of the self in terms of status is no longer something to be imagined, let alone something to be forcefully attained. Therefore, a mechanically averse reaction to this necessity, can only indicate that thought is once again attempting to gain control of the mind through the absurd act of speculatively weighting the relative advantage or disadvantage of its own demise. Giving itself time to think about the desirability of possible psychological outcomes, the self secures its own continuity always within the fable of special identity, preferential status, and control over the seemingly commendable pursuit of a better future and a better self. (315)

What about reform and reformers? What is one to think about religious salvation and those "spiritual" leaders and authorities who offer to facilitate it or who claim the power to dispense it outright?

It has been said before but it is, perhaps, worth repeating: The critical situation of the world today is the net result of all the reforms and revolutions that have preceded it. No philosophical, scientific, political, religious, psychological, economic or artistic ideology has ever significantly changed the heart and mind of the human being. In fact, the world today continues to be divided along conflictive ideological lines, each more loyal to its own tenets, traditions and claims than to the plight of the individual human being suffering for reasons common to all human beings.

After thousands of years of human "progress", we are still afflicted by the same horrific plagues of war, poverty, abuse, loneliness, addiction, interpersonal conflict and fear. Humanity as a whole seems too fragmented and individual too insensitive and self-concerned to even realize that when it comes to fundamental social and psychological problems, there is absolutely no relevant progress.Given the level of genuine progress in certain areas, it is astonishing that after all this time we are still incapable of attaining the level of unity and collaboration necessary to remove the difficulties impeding so many of our brothers and sisters from satisfying even their most basic survival needs.

Given the present state of the world, it is fair to say that the fundamental function of all the different ideologies of social reform and religious salvation that exist today, (and of those that may be created in the future), is that of granting a false sense of identity and security to their particular adherents. Participation in anything that is ideologically divisive damages the brain and corrupts the mind by aborting the sensitivity that would instantly see the chronic, inter-related and all-encompassing nature of the human predicament. Once ensconced in our particular ideational selves and ideological tribes, we all collaborate in indefinitely prolonging the alienation, conflict and suffering that have always afflicted human societies and personal lives. Now, to see this aberration as an incontrovertible fact of one's own existence is to never again be taken in by the false claims and projections offered by different groups and one's own conditioned mind. The only act of freedom is that whereby the mind detaches itself from the cultural and psychological grid without becoming isolated and hostile to others. (316)

The world has been what it is for a very long time and for the simple reason that we each are what we are. So, if you are a serious person, the question of right action is a terribly pressing one. No action undertaken by any particular individual or cultural group has, so far, solved fundamental human issues. So, why press on with the same barren mindset? Why not abandon both allegiance and resistance to any of the corrupt divisions responsible for the insensitivity of the individual mind and the tragic state of the world this mind has created? Why not stop acting with the misguided intention of improving oneself or others over time.

Is it not obvious that being the result of memory and the self-serving desires begotten by this memory, all positive action is necessarily incompetent to do anything about the problem of suffering? If one suffers and creates suffering for others, why suppose that one can be instrumental in finding a final solution to this chronic and seemingly unsolvable problem? Why not confront the continuity of sorrow directly and all at once by freeing oneself from mutually exclusive points of view offering different and contradictory hopes through the implementation of inept and false solutions? Is it because one recognizes-however darkly-that such act of freedom implies the ending of oneself in so far as the self (any self) is the entity permanently and strenuously traveling from hurt and frustration and towards the realization of pre-established ideas of pleasure, achievement and status?

How does one come to see that any re-action to personal or social suffering based on previous experience and particular desire-is bound not only to fail, but to make what is already a very bad problem, worse? -Why is it that we remain compelled to improve ourselves and our social circumstances even when we know that it is unreasonable to expect significant results? -Is it because we feel that we are, personally or as a group, better and more deserving than others? -Or is it because in refusing to see the limitation brought about by our separation and common mental conditioning, we continue to believe either that things are not as bad as the alarmists declare them to be, or that significant change is quite possible and just a matter of time, increased capital investment, improved political and technical control, and greater effort on everybody's part?

Despite the confusion generated by all the alternative paths and tendencies battling each other in the world, (and between our ears), we still insist in believing that the "I" that would like to change himself and improve the world, is different from the psyche and this poor broken world presumably created to expect delivery from his super hero stunts. But if you see for yourself that this is not the case, if you see that you are not different from the conditioned contents of the psyche and not in any way separate from the world that is created by them, if you are no longer deluded and confused and no longer believe in anything anyone says, (including me, of course), what then? (317)

If one acknowledges that one's brain is to somebody else's brain what one's arm or one's eye or liver is to his or hers-that is, somewhat different perhaps, but fundamentally the same-then there is no longer room for feelings of separation from others, let alone a sense of either superiority or inferiority. It is not only that we are all in this together, but that, psychologically, we are essentially the same: We have the same instincts and basic tendencies, the same desire for pleasure and power and, consequently, the same proclivity to fear, frustration, anger, jealousy, addiction, anxiety and depression. It is absurd then to continue comparing oneself favorably or unfavorably with others or with some idealized version of oneself projected onto the future. Being essentially memory and the projections of this memory, one is today-fundamentally-what one was yesterday; and, barring an instantaneous mutation in the brain/psyche, one will be tomorrow, perhaps with some minor modifications, what one was in the past and is today. Within the psyche conditioned by experience and projecting ideas of experience, all time is compressed in the present, for neither the past nor the future have any substance. The past and the future (and what they may make of the unknowable present), only exist as thought forms that are irrelevant in the unthinkable reality of what is actual at every instant and everywhere.

Consequently, progressive psychological change, change plotted in mental time stretching from what one is to the fiction of what one ought to be, does not exist. There is no form of desire and act of will that can significantly alter the basic characteristics of the psyche. There may be a radical change possible, but definitely not through the strenuous realization of any particular idealization of the self or a particular group. The question then is not what is it that one can do to improve oneself, but rather whether this divisive and self-projecting conditioning of the human psyche can be brought to an end, not by the self, but by the sheer evidence of its danger and incompetence. The only possible change of total significance can be predicated of a silent, empty mind; a mind that is open to such a change simply because it is no longer struggling in a particular way to get out of a given psychological and cultural trap... just to find its way into another.

Intelligence has traditionally been understood as sufficient learning or special talent invested in the successful realization of particular plans and desires (as it is indeed in some realms of science and other practical matters), but this intelligence, this ability to think and implement logically correct sequential steps leading to a pre-determined goal, is not adequate when it comes to issues of mental health, relationship and significant social change. The shock of this realization marks the irruption of an unprecedented intelligence; an intelligence that being unrelated to previous experience, knowledge, fear and desire, is impersonal. (318)

The individual readily tells herself apart from others through awareness of physical difference, but also by reference to what she has experienced, her knowledge and beliefs, her opinions on different topics. We are, in fact, what we think and feel and, quite a lot of what we think and feel refers to how we value and devalue each other, (and ourselves), on the basis of our respective experience, knowledge and desire. Needless to say, this system of comparative identification and subjective psychological evaluation of others makes division, bitter disagreements and open conflict, our daily bread.

However, if every single individual conceives of herself only by reference to an evolving association with a particular set of subjective meanings and values derived from personal experience attained within the diverse but always limited possibilities provided by different cultural environments, then there is nothing substantial on which to base the separate existence of the psychological and cultural self, let alone its presumed uniqueness and value. In other words, if the self cannot possibly exist outside of some sort of determining social and cultural context and a personal experience equal in its subjectivity and limitation to that of all other individuals, then no one can claim to have a separate and unique existence.

In questioning the self's claim to uniqueness and its purported capacity to significantly change itself and its cultural circumstances, its very existence is put on the line. Then it is evident that in the very act of claiming an exclusive sense of identity and status through association with a particular and subjective idea of what is truthful and valuable, we render impossible the manifestation of whatever may be actually truthful and valuable in itself and for everyone. (319)

Is it not rather obvious that other people derive their sense of particular existence and self-importance from beliefs, traditions and future plans that are different from "ours"? And does this penchant for comparative identification not condemn everyone to lives full of fear and conflict? On the other hand, if the threat of imagined or real enemies did not exist, and if no one ever felt any need to gain advantage over others or think of himself as superior to them in any way, would we still retain the imperious need for particular identity and exclusive security we commonly feel today?

Humanity is so fractured and conflicted that there are hardly any forums to discuss with any seriousness why the world is in the terrible mess it is, and what is it that each one of us must do to deal conclusively with the general problem of human suffering and specific threats to the very survival of the species. Clearly, open dialogue leading to unity and harmonious collaboration is the only possible solution to our multiple problems at every level. But this dialogue is only possible among people who have somehow climbed out of the dark trenches of chauvinist nationalism and self-righteous dogmatic religiosity, and there do not seem to be too many of these people.

To see that there is no alternative to sustained dialogue brings to light the absolute necessity of putting aside particular traditions, opinions, beliefs and desires so that we may, together, take a fresh look at the problems confronting us. How could we possibly see things completely and accurately if not by abandoning once and for all our particular biases and ambitions?

Why would we not willingly and easily die to our own convictions and self-serving projects if what is at stake is the ability to see the actual truth of our daily life; the truth of our relationships, of our thoughts, feelings and actions; and the truth of the disorderly and suffering world they help create. It is terribly shocking to see that what generates the greed, confusion and conflict that might ultimately destroy humanity and life on Earth itself, is whatever gives each one of us a sense of separate existence and justifies our reckless ambitions and neurotic claims on others. This traumatic perception is in itself the irreversible death of the egotistical self. In the context of life as a whole to see is to die without any ulterior motive. (320)

Either there is nothing anyone can do directly to eliminate or transcend human cruelty and suffering or that is incorrect, and there are many possible actions capable of achieving that goal. In fact, there have been literally countless different reactions to the human condition and many more are possible in the future, and that is history: the inherently fragmentary and conflictive character of humanity projecting itself onto the future as the unending sequence of its multiple and contradictory attempts to improve or transcend itself.

Therefore, we cannot speak of relevant change in the context of the corrupt and chaotic society the conditioned human mind projects in mental time and creates and recreates in chronological time, unless this change involves an immediate and irreversible dissolution of some of the most basic contents of consciousness. Including-most importantly-the conception of the "me" as the independent agent of thought and action sitting at the center of the memory-based psyche and in charge of its development.

The central problem with this proposition is, of course, that one cannot simply desire this unraveling of oneself and then carry it out as an act of will. This, because even assuming that the desire is honest, the continuity of the same mental system-and the same "me"-is implicit in the time and effort deemed necessary to realize that desire. The conflict that attains between the self that thinks that it would be a good thing to die and the same self that wants to continue no matter what the cost, is the essence of the egotistical self and its perdurability. The death of the self cannot be a process in time involving effort, will and an explicit account of the advantages motivating the pursuit of that goal. It is rather a sudden insight into the incontrovertible fact that no further evolution of the self that is in itself separation, strife and suffering, can ever transcend separation, strife and suffering. (321)

Let us imagine that you and I have managed to be rid of exclusive psychological identification with anything or anybody because we have come to see that all human problems have their roots in the divisive conditioning of the psyche and the resulting cultural atomization of the species. Does the negation of all psychological association with gender, race, country, religion, social and economic class, professional group and age group, merely imply the creation of two new and supremely isolated "free radicals" still hell-bent on avoiding suffering and gaining security through the sense of self-importance that comes from achieving something? (322)

The human condition makes us one; it is the exclusive pseudo solutions to that condition that make us many. And this splintering of the species that so many fail to even notice, is our deepest problem; a problem that demands utmost attention and complete, immediate and easy abnegation of the self. (323)

The effort thought necessary to implement psychological change implies a someone who is making this effort. Furthermore, this someone is simultaneously the agent implementing the transformation, as well as the usually quite unwilling object of it. This fundamental mental contradiction between the actual and the idealized self projected in mental and chronological time is what creates the illusion of psychological continuity: A personal life made of remembered and projected instances of effort and resistance; reward and punishment; success and failure; loss and gain; pleasure and pain; mental and inter-personal conflict, fear, love and hate.

An observation of the psyche characterized by the absence of the habitual motives and goals of the "me" may leave the crystallized contents of the psyche intact, but also without the protection and additive strengthening provided by the momentum of an assertive self. How far can thought go without the thinker as its axis and propeller? (324)

The self is an artificial entity that persists in time by extending slight alterations of its subjective narrative form into the future with scant regard for the rest of existence, (the unfathomable world regarded as "not-me"). The separate existence of the self is false in many regards, but it is especially false in the sense that nothing exists by itself outside the general context of life; a general context not reducible to thought and the image/idea-based temporal/spatial reality in which thought parents and nurtures the existence of the self. Because of its own inherent tendency to fragment and compare, thought de-contextualizes and reduces everything to symbol and image, thus disintegrating an infinity it cannot either perceive or understand.

Feeling alone and vulnerable in this broken up world that only exists in the images and metaphors crowding his mechanical little mind, the "thinker" (itself an ideational fragment deluded enough to presume being in control of consciousness and thought), then tries to attain a measure of the security it desperately covets by attaching itself to evolving sets of particular ideas, images and experiences.

Mental confusion and social chaos are then the inevitable result of us thinking of ourselves as having a separate existence granted by a particular array of memories, loyalties and ambitions; a separate existence that, among other crimes, routinely justifies the use of other human beings as though they were inanimate objects. This objectivization of others and heedless exploitation of entire species of animals, is the quintessence of human violence. An ancient and profound sense of insecurity stemming from our sustained misperception of who we are in relation to the whole, keeps us all living in a permanent state of war with ourselves and practically everything else: Reality as the violent separation between "me" and "not-me".

We are at odds with ourselves for many reasons, but primarily because we are deeply invested in false idealizations of who we think we are and ought to be. And in the very attempt to gain a measure of certainty and continuity by means of an evolving process of identification with images and ideas unrelated to who we actually are, we disregard the infinitely complex reality of the physical ground of our common existence, as well as the formless unity that might be the deeper reality or mental ground, not just of the human species, but of the ever unknowable whole.

Given the nature of this particular failure of perception and the disorder and suffering it generates, the only credible solution must lay in the possible emergence-through a literal dying of the alienated self-of a mode of partaking of existence in which neither the body nor the psyche are perceived as existing independently of the multi-dimensional and endlessly interpenetrating movement of life and death.

In our form-fixing and ever comparing minds, the timelessness and formlessness underlying every "thing" abstracted by thought, is the direst of threats. And if it happens that past, present and future images of oneself have somehow been devalued enough to consider the possibility of this unified ground of all being and non-being, one is then fulminated by the stunning impossibility of the self "finding" and appropriating this all-encompassing truth as it does find and appropriate (or reject) everything else.

Is it not obvious to you that the ground of all actual and potential being cannot possibly manifest to the illusory entity that might want to somehow relate to it while still clinging to its claim to a separate existence?

This is then the great religious paradox: One cannot find the truth and then use it as a permanent sanctuary for oneself and indoctrination center for others, because the truth is, if anything, an inconceivable and unattainable state of non-duality. (325)

Because you have read this far, I am quite certain that you are aware of how the increasingly violent confrontation of different religious and secular fundamentalisms is ripping our world to shreds, and how our general greed disrupts the delicate balance of life on Earth and continues to aggrieve the poorest and most vulnerable amongst us the worst. Can you see the human mind stripping itself of any remaining sense of empathy as it disassociates even further in order to psychologically survive and perhaps thrive? I hear the same refrain from many: "Don't tell me what is happening to others. I'm not responsible for it, and I don't want to be depressed by it."

Whoever is even relatively alert to human suffering in the world today, might indeed get depressed by taking in as well the full horror of our past history and of the future atrocities we are already busily preparing for. However, if allowed to unfold without indulging in any ill-conceived reaction of self-defense or social reform, this very interest in seeing the full dimension and character of the human problem, will suddenly ativate its only possible solution by bringing the process of self-centered thought to an end.

Can the mind no longer influenced by personal or sectarian experience, past, present and future, inhabit like an amphibian two different realms, the world created by thought and the realm of the ever unknown? And would this mind not be Mind itself, the unconditioned, impersonal and timeless ground beneath material manifestation and utterly beyond thought as limited experience, insufficient knowledge, and self-serving desire? (326)

Memory is the only source of desire. Nobody wants something that has not been already known in some way. So the objects of human desire are necessarily constrained by the limited dimension of human experience and the knowledge gathered from that experience. Together, memory and desire, constitute the separate observer and his mental movement in time forever intent in preserving his sense of personal existence and social status by hoarding goods, experience and knowledge, and attempting to control himself, others and his environment.

Is there such a thing as the "choice-less" observation so insistently described by J. Krishnamurti as keen attention not mediated by previous knowledge or informed by desire? Can thought find its proper place and, thus, open the mental space necessary for a state of non-duality in which there is neither observing subject nor observed object? (327)

The anxiety that comes with the obligations inherent in becoming a "somebody," is made worse by thoughts related to the possibility of not getting there. Thus, mental stress and strain is inevitable in either becoming or failing to become rich, famous, saintly, knowledgeable, or anything else. Incapable of being just who we are, (in ourselves, nothing much if anything at all), we invest and re-invest ourselves in strenuous and pretentious efforts to become, or merely appear as becoming, something more, something better, or altogether something else. And in that process we bring upon ourselves (and others) all kinds of mental and inter-personal problems.

Let us face it, the only possible solution to alienation and the inescapable grief of mental disorder and interpersonal conflict, involves an irreversible end to our interminable efforts to become what each one of us thinks we ought to become so as to feel happy, secure and fulfilled. To stop running away from the anguish that comes from merely claiming a separate existence, is already sign of a radically different mind; a mind no longer caught in the process of comparing and becoming according to the dictates of the fixed identity of a particular memory. (328)

What happens to the mind confronted with the fact that there is nothing it can do, now or in the future to improve what it, fundamentally, is? What happens to the mind that has realized that all ideas of god and life after death through fame, resurrection or re-incarnation are mere illusory escapes adopted or created by its own fear and its own greed? What happens to the mind aware that competing with others for celebrity and wealth, in any field, is not only foolish, but harmful and dangerous as well? What happens to the mind that understands, not only that the habitual, premeditated, pursuit of pleasure cheapens and reduces life when taken to be its only purpose, but also that pleasure is the flip side of pain, fear and sorrow? What happens, in other words, to the psyche that realizes that there is no mental progress within the strictures of knowledge and desire; that anything that the self can mentally forecast as a significantly better future for himself will inevitably create further isolation, and even worse conflict and suffering for everyone? (329)

The conceivable future, the sum total of all the different and contradictory versions of the future that particular human beings are planning and will ferociously fight among themselves to bring about, will not be fundamentally different from the past we are all trying so hard to escape from. Nor will it be all that different from the present we are wasting today for that foolish purpose. Is it not through acting out the irrational conviction that our separate societies and our alienated selves can be endlessly and independently improved and expanded, that we have arrived to the chaotic place we are at today. And, will today not be spent by most everybody everywhere, as countless yesterdays have, in planning new business deals, new reforms, new wars, new countries, new religions, new systems of therapy and education, new art, new fashion, and new technology-all of which will have to be revised and revamped in the future? Our isolated, confused and hostile ways, we ourselves, are the fruit of positive, self-projective thinking.

Is it not then high time to question the insistence with which we generally reject or ignore mounting evidence of the failure of this ancient mindset? What happens when, by her own sense of what is true and what is false, a human being frees herself from any type of cultural commitment and stops engaging in further personal action (except, of course, for that required to survive physically within the bounds of a given society, though unaffected by its pressures and convictions)?

What happens when a human psyche is not emotionally or intellectually identified with, (and, therefore, dependent on) anything or anybody?

What happens when a mind has shed all beliefs and no longer needs role models, nor even a trace of preconceived hope and ambition?

What happens when the psyche is no longer erected and propelled by the hot air of a predetermined personal and tribal past, present and future?

Does this person still exist as a discrete psychological entity? And how does intelligence and love manifest in this mind, if at all? Who is behind this query and why? Who will answer these questions? (330)

Just as it is impossible to separate the individual organism from the totality of the natural environment, it is impossible to conceive the psychological self outside its specific historical, cultural and ecological location, and outside the even larger contexts presented by natural evolution, the long evolutionary process of the human species itself, and the sub-atomic reality underlying everything that exists. And yet, in its relentless drive to acquire more and more pleasure, control and power, the contemporary individual finds himself increasingly alienated even from those persons with whom he shares the same general cultural moorings. At this level of alienation, people of others cultures might as well be members of other species, and other species as apparent as depressions at the bottom of the sea and as the black holes of ignorance and insensitivity in our own brains.

Sustained and skeptical questioning, preferably in friendly dialogue with others, inevitably leads to the realization that the becoming self is nothing more than a by-product of a superficially evolving cultural environment, just as all particular cultural environments have their roots in the general characteristics of a human psyche. A human psyche that after becoming self-conscious has evolved only in terms of the knowledge and the technology that, placed at the service of the fear and greed of those with exclusive access to it, has never been justly and wisely shared by everyone. Only this realization of the stagnant and primitive state of the human mind, (when it is direct and real, and not just the parroting of somebody else's words), has the power to end the self's obsession with overcoming its ordinariness through the realization of neurotic claims of exclusive superiority at the expense of the well being of others and the equilibrium of a world which, we tend to forget, is not created by thought.

If you and I are not ever separate from the general cultural context that has conditioned the particular mind, as the general conditioning of the human mind has conditioned all culture, how do I expect to be different from-let alone superior-to others equally programmed by the same (or a different) culture?

Is culture real because it is true to the impersonal and deeper facts of life and death, or is it just (and mostly) a collective illusion with many façades functionally blinding all adherents (the discontent as well as the placidly well-adjusted) to the truth? What happens to the mind/brain that discovers that culture and the psyche create and recreate each other in the intertwined processes of illusory psychological becoming and social progress? (331)

The human being is continuously engendered, both as an individual and as a species, by what appear to be two different environments: the natural world and culture. We are unthinkable outside the matrix provided by Nature and, yet, the cosmos appears indifferent to the inter-related fate of both individuals and species, (at least as that fate may be conceived by the particular imagination of different tribes and different individuals). Culture, as the second generating environment of the individual person is also common to all of us, in the sense that each and every one of us comes into being and seems to take progressively different forms only within one or a few given sets of also gradually changing cultural circumstances.

However, even though the conditioning of the brain/psyche by the physical evolution and the experience of the species is all-pervasive, the existence of superficially different historical/cultural traits characterizing different social milieus, creates in every person the powerful conviction of being significantly different from individuals belonging to other groups. Furthermore, most human beings continue to feel that their personal existence is something other than an integral part of Nature as a total ecological, biological, physical, chemical, molecular, atomic and sub-atomic context. Many of us think that our innermost (mental or "spiritual") being in some way transcends mere physical existence, which then serves to justify the wanton way in which we destroy the natural environment, and the delusional intensity with which we embrace different and contradictory religious ideologies promising an extension of personal life beyond death in order to assuage a common sense of insignificance and justify the equally common ambitions engendered by this insecurity.

At the cultural level, even those individuals who derive most of their personal identity from the groups to which they belong either by birth or choice, feel a clear sense of separation even from those others who subscribe to the same exclusive history and the same set of tribal mores, values and stories. This occurs because, even beyond the reach of cultural determination, the individual is primarily identified with the self-enclosed subjectivity of psychological memory: a sense of the past, present and future of his or her own personal history that is strong enough to occasionally override all other characteristics and external influences. And the measure in which a given traditional culture may fail to control the particular memory of an individual member, is also the measure in which that individual will be able to chose a different cultural source for his identification, thus determining the experiences, beliefs and actions deemed most desirable at every point in his life.

The fact that the relative capacity for autonomous decision of individuals living in so-called "developed" societies is often cancelled out by ever renewed bondage to new forms of attachment and dependency, may serve us here to reiterate a point of great importance: Ultimately, it is not culture that generates the structure, contents and dynamics of the human psyche, but just the other way around. Culture, in all its diverse and conflictive manifestations, is but the out-picturing of the quintessential human brain/psyche conditioned by the entire experience of the species in a way that results in the divisive pursuit at every level (personal and collective) of exclusive identity and security.

Thought which like blood in the body, flows throughout the labyrinthine mind of every human being, is then both cause and effect, creator and product, of all the extraordinary cultural fragmentation and personal alienation that has characterized the human world from very early on. To say: "I think", is to say, "I am". "I am who I am because I am not who you are, and I am not who you are because I don't think either with or like you". To be sure, this profound sense of interpersonal separation that exists even between mother and child and between lovers, certainly does not come from agreeing to a joint and deep comparison of mental content utilizing a commonly agreed set of objective criteria and a shared love of the truth. It comes, rather, from the rather simplistic assertion that since "I" cannot easily see what another is thinking and feeling, and since that other person seems to be in the same blind spot in relation to my own mental activity, then we must be radically different from one another. Mind you that "different" in this context means much more than mere diversity of personal characteristics and experiences, it means that we are existentially different; that our particular mental characteristics are significant enough to warrant granting ourselves entirely separate acts of existence.

We blind ourselves with this common affirmation of radical psychological difference and existential separation based on a shared assumption of exclusive thought and feeling. We blind ourselves, first, to the fact that since the source of thought is not accessible to the self it must be common to all; and, second, we blind ourselves to the further fact that the basic content and general drift of all thought/feeling is fundamentally the same in everyone. Thirdly, we blind ourselves to the fact that thinking, the capacity to make distinctions, compare and control-all of which is fine when trying to build a machine or to move in space from point A to point B-is terribly counterproductive when it comes to see and understand our place and participation in the general context of life, and to relate and cooperate with others within the general context provided by common challenges.

Because we generally do not acknowledge our common dependency on a particular cultural matrix for our sense of psychological existence, (who would any one of us be without recourse to language and common arithmetic, for example?), we also fail to see how hard we work to differentiate and disassociate ourselves from others through the claim to particular status in the ever shrinking section of the fragmenting social universe to which we may decide to attach ourselves.

And since every separate act of psychological/cultural existence is also closely identified with the particular physical body, then death-the unavoidable end of both the physical and the psychological self-is perceived as the most terrifying of all events. In fact, a common fear of psychological death, informs the prescriptions for life of every particular culture by, in one way or another, reducing every act of individual perception, thought and affection, thus progressively impairing the mind's ability to make correct and independent decisions in matters of singular importance to everyone.

If this whole argument seems unreal to you, just take a good look at all the contradictory fantasies that the mind has over the ages created to shield itself, (pseudo) religiously or not, from the facts of the unavoidable death of a self perceived as existing in relative separation from its social and physical environment. See by yourself the effects of religious separation and religious persecution and war throughout the ages. And if that sight is convincing enough, then take a look also at the seamless connection between the body (including the brain and its all important thoughts and emotions) and the manifest natural world, (let us leave the non-manifest still aside for the time being), for if at all perceived, the inter-penetration of every thing with every thing else also makes abundantly clear how absurd and dangerous our sense of separate existence is.

The notion of being a discrete self existing independently from, but nevertheless living within a given cultural enclave and a larger physical environment, puts the individual at odds with these externalized contexts evidently larger and more powerful than himself. Each one of us is matter-of-factly brainwashed from childhood on into believing that the only relevant measure of security and certitude needed to offset the vulnerability inherent in separation, can and must be found by asserting and expanding a strong sense of self based on exclusive association with things larger than himself and an open-ended process of personal becoming. Never mind that this continuous process of evolving and dependent self-assertion necessarily creates conflict with others and a mind permanently at odds with itself.

Mental disorder and interpersonal conflict are, indeed, unavoidable when the self struggles to independently assert and expand herself by becoming something other than what she intrinsically and actually is. Conflicted identification with the concentric rings of the immediate and not so immediate cultural environment-the nuclear and the extended family, the neighborhood, the social and economic class, race, ethnic group, gender, age group, political party and sports club-all exacerbate the feeling that the "I" exists as a separate entity. But because this feeling is almost permanently one of frustration and ever renewing insecurity, it inevitably creates acts of self-assertion leading to new instances of conflict and insecurity leading, in turn, to further acts of self-assertion in an unstoppable vicious cycle that for some strange reason we like to call personal development and social progress.

Let us say that the absurdity of this general situation is evident to us now. Let us assume that we now realize that there is no such a thing as a self existing in separation from a particular cultural environment that is, in itself, but a particular manifestation of the deeply conditioned and fragmented human mind. If it is true that we are all, fundamentally, what our suffering and chaotic human world is, is there still a particular individuality to be claimed and further intra-psychic and interpersonal conflict to be suffered on its behalf?

What others and I, myself, have construed as "I", is a permanently changing set of mostly useless mental constructs, images and ideas referred to an illusory past, present and future. There is nothing there, in the psyche or the brain that is in itself intrinsically "me"; there are only mental traces of a limited past, mostly subjective and incomplete evaluations of the present, and self-serving projections of the future. Again, please do not take my word for it, look at it yourself. -What could you possibly be outside the context of culture and the common and ever evolving desire to contribute to it, to resist it or to abandon it for something better? -What would you be if suddenly freed from the "right" to struggle and presumably evolve to find finite or infinite fulfillment within that same blasted mental context? -If cleansed of all cultural influences and expectations would not the human being, any human being, be just the more primitive experience of the species that is uniformly stored in every brain without much of a trace of individuality? -Is not the cultural and biographical content of the human mind just the pretense of separate individuality erected and sheepishly or brutally maintained to keep avoiding coming face to face with the ugly and uncomfortable reality of the species, and the overwhelming scale and apathy of the cosmos?

If quarrel or conformity with the immediate cultural environment subsides and then completely disappears, then the character of conflict itself (conflict in all other contexts) becomes apparent. One (the self) is nothing but these cultural contexts and one's losing or winning conflict with them. Therefore, adopting what at first sight might appear to be an entirely different set of cultural identifications, will not significantly change or solve anything, as the problem is not what one is, but rather the fact that one thinks oneself to be anything at all: either a traditional being or the more modern (or post-modern) model, the ever self-modifying, itinerant, arrogant and eternally dissatisfied "me".

When conflict ceases, it is only because the boundaries and sense of unique existence of the particular self have started to dissolve. In a nutshell: conflict is separate existence and vice-versa. And when conflict at the intra-psychic and interpersonal levels comes to an end, the inextricable participation of the human form in the natural world comes sharply into focus to finally extinguish the agonies of personal separation, threatened manifest destiny and self-pitying death.

At this level of merging with the material world, does the immaterial, non-manifest substrate of life-what for lack of a better way we may momentarily chose to call the morphogenetic field of energy underlying every-thing that exist in time and place-not emerge as the only proper realm, no longer of any particular, personal mind or body, but of everything in no-thing; the unimaginable presence of the unknowable whole? (332)

What occurs when the mental and social consequences of the traditional struggle for power, pleasure and security become evident? What happens to you and I when we begin to see that others are getting hit hard by our flying elbows-and not quite unintentionally-as we rush up the ladder presumably leading to security in higher social or spiritual status? -What happens when it becomes obvious that we are striving, in one way or another, to get what we consciously or subconsciously desire and that, in the process, we often manipulate and mistreat not just strangers, but partners, parents, children, and friends as well? -Does this perception put an immediate end to all identification and all ambition in us, or do we jump right back under the multiple layers of personal and cultural deception with which the sheer madness of the "evolving" status quo of humanity has for millennia maintained itself?

Being nothing but the talking head of the conditioned mind, the self cannot solve the problems this mind has created, but that very realization, if profound and direct enough, is what ends all the reflexive jumping through the well worn pleasure/pain hoops of an illusory sense of personal being and becoming. Then the mind can be quiet, not because of any external imposition or personal ulterior motive, but simply because it is now aware that whatever plans are made to attain tomorrow what is lacking today, are but a useless regurgitation of a million yesterdays wasted in implementing reforms to previous failed or insufficient reforms. And when there is full moment by moment awareness of the inadequacy of any action based on previous experience and pre-determined desired, the unselfconscious mind can look at everything without restriction, listen to everyone without selfish interference, feel for everything with great intensity and act appropriately. (333)

What is it that compels us to seek whatever we feel will provide a semblance of mental certainty and security; a sense of having arrived, and so a quenching of our intense thirst for self-fulfillment, even if only relative and temporary? Everyone feels this basic need because it stems from practically universal feelings of insignificance and vulnerability, but not everyone has the same idea about how it ought to be satisfied or with what. The goals and the methods of personal fulfillment are multiple and contradictory even within the same mind. And each human being believes with such intense righteousness that what he knows is correct and what he wants merited, that there is generally no time or energy left to see that our actions and omissions in pursuit of excessive material advantage and exclusive self importance can only result in further global chaos. This is the general character of the blinding egotism that from birth to death encapsulates the belligerent sovereignty of the psyche and its institutions of reference, rendering impossible rational and, therefore, caring collaboration-domestic, local and global-among human beings.

If you look at the phenomenon of self-centeredness very intimately, (that is, in yourself), you see that, more often than not, one tries to attain multiple and contradictory goals (consciously or unconsciously desired) employing in the process methods that are also different and contradictory. Thus, the violence and sorrow of interpersonal conflict is compounded by intra-psychic conflict and confusion-as they might be experienced, for example, by someone bent on becoming rich and famous while simultaneously attempting to develop "spiritually" and be more responsive to other people's needs.

Let us assume for a moment that all human beings are trying to move away from a common source of uncertainty and insecurity, and towards something that lies well beyond their reach and understanding. Let us imagine further that our multiple and contradictory goals of self-fulfillment are incorrect stand-ins or simulacra of a state of non-duality. In other words, let us for a second and only tentatively consider the possibility that nothing that thought can conceive of and desire, and that emotion and will can propel us towards, is adequate to fulfill this deepest inclination of our most basic and impersonal mental energy. In regarding this possibility, would the first step of honest skepticism not be the instantaneous negation of experience-based identity and all the cravings that the fulfillment of that identity generates?

Seeing that the chaotic state of the world and our own floundering and sorrowful lives cannot possibly be resolved by the same mental processes that brought them into being, would it not be a sign of an intelligence utterly beyond thought to stop fighting ourselves and others in the chronically misguided attempt to escape a common suffering through exclusive goals and means? It is really quite simple. To directly perceive that all attempts to enhance our social standing and sense of security by accumulating money, power, prestige and unnecessary knowledge and experience are counterproductive and ultimately bound to fail-puts an end to all those attempts. It is extraordinary to realize that whatever it is that we are all profoundly moving towards is already present everywhere and at every moment, but rendered invisible by the willful stubbornness with which we continue to pursue different, contradictory, and utterly irrelevant personal and tribal goals.

Let us consider this matter one more. If what truly matters is already given but remains invisible to our minds, it might well be because it is unrelated to the character, affairs, and desires of the self; a self that is chronically overburdened and disoriented by the permanent wild chase after illusory goals. -Is it at this point that everything we think we know and want to accomplish psychologically and socially dissolves? -Is it here and now that everything personal and cultural, anything that divides us within and that separates and creates antagonism between us, disappears? -Is it here and now that an unprecedented quietness irrupts allowing the mind to rest untroubled and unoccupied, except for the procurement of whatever may be necessary for the sustenance and basic security of the physical organism?

Can the powerful impersonal force in us that seeks certainty and security be allowed to be, but unhitched to any action, or pointed to any particular goal that thought may project? Can the imperatives and instructions issued by limited knowledge and faith be wholly disregarded so that the mind may remain passive and silent, free of the agitation inherent in any form of fear or hope? (334) - Can the self and humanity be seen, not through the eyes of memory and self-serving personal and tribal desire and fear, but through the all-encompassing eyes of life, as it were? (335)

We have seen how the personal/tribal mind has been conditioned by tradition, personal experience, accumulated knowledge of every kind, and the narrow projections with which memory formulates and constructs its own future. And we have also seen that the social reality of humanity (including its sense of the rest of existence), is the extremely limited creation of this fragmented mind mechanically programmed to covet its own fulfillment. So, let us now consider what occurs when what is at issue is no longer the protracted development of the self or the presumed evolution of its social context, but the truth; the truth as something totally unrelated to the never ending toil and strife of the human mind ensnared in the limited realm of the known, the knowable and the desirable.

According to the argument laid out in these pages whatever is within the ever expanding reach of psychological knowledge, (we are not talking here of our knowledge of material "things" and processes), is either extremely limited or false. This leaves us in the paradoxical position of having to affirm (quite hesitantly) that, if there is such a thing as the truth, it is likely to manifest only if and when the mind/brain is no longer occupied, that is, whenever it is free of the stress and turmoil of self-projective craving for status, pleasure and security. So, when the issue of the truth comes up what must be discussed is not what its nature might be, but whether or not self-centered thought can ever stop moving from a remembered past, through an interpreted and instrumental present, and onto a presumably better personal and tribal future?

What occurs in the psychic field of a human being in which the process of thought with the "me" as the thinker comes to an irreversible end? Is that selfless and, therefore, acutely attentive mind, the portal to truth? Needless to say, no one can provide himself or anyone else with valid answers to these questions because, among other reasons, whatever is identified, compared and otherwise evaluated by the word/image categories of thought, is clearly unrelated to the matter at hand.

Part of the great religious paradox is that the truth is not an experience; it is not something that anyone can posses, define in words or images and then give to another. The truth is not knowledge that may be learnt or believed. Nor is it something that can be merited, experienced, or transmitted by anyone. All that can be said is that the truth, in so far as it may not be apprehended by anything outside of it, is a state of non-duality and, as such, not subject to speculation or desire. Or, in a different but also tentative and negative formulation, it could be said that the truth is "what is", obvious and immediate but undetectable to the self because of his constant preoccupation and occupation with whatever is thought ought to be. (336)

Being that the problem is oneself-the "me" in everyone-it is absurd to merely re-act to this problem with information and motivation constitutive of the "me" and intended to produce an improved version of the same thing. It must be clear then that the solution to the problem of suffering as the outcome of social fragmentation and mental conditioning cannot possibly lay in finding one more series of steps in the long succession of parallel series of sequential steps that spell out personal biography and the cultural history of humanity. The solution lies rather in the shocking realization that since the human mind is atomized and utterly corrupted by divisive experience, biased and insufficient knowledge, and self-serving and contradictory desire, any further effort will merely compound and prolong what is already a terrible mess. In other words, the fact that the solution cannot possibly come from an action born of experience, knowledge, desire and will, implies the necessity of a sudden break in continuity, a radical and abrupt end of all psychological knowledge and desire.

This break in the continuity of psychological time characterized by mental silence and a certain passivity, is the inevitable outcome of directly seeing the nature and magnitude of the human problem, as well as the impossibility of having the cause of the problem be its solution. And this quality of mind is, in itself, the end of separation and the suffering that separation entails. (337)

Science is largely concerned with the accumulation of ever insufficient knowledge fragmented along the high ridges of different disciplines and different times. Beyond the intellectual rigor essential to its proper task, science has traditionally been, and still largely is, unconcerned with the nature and quality of human consciousness and, especially, with the possibility of radical mental change. Thus, one can hardly turn to science when attempting to adequately address the central issues of human existence such as personal alienation, cultural fragmentation, psychological suffering, interpersonal and international conflict, and the immense global crisis being rapidly generated by all these factors together.

Although science has an essential role to play in the open-ended exploration of the material universe and the creation of the tools needed for the on-going adaptation of the species to changing circumstances, the healing of humanity's multiple psychological and social ills is clearly not within its capacity, nor its traditional mandate. And we all shall be much better off when we all understand its specific role and its intrinsic virtues and limitations and, consequently, stop demanding oranges from the apple tree.

The task of finding the truth beyond thought belongs solely to the responsible individual able to stand alone and, therefore, able to look at himself and life as a whole uninfluenced by the limited demarcations of thought. (338)

The sum total of all the personal and tribal efforts made to attain security determines everyone's real insecurity, and makes each one of us equally responsible for the totality of suffering experienced by the species today and in the future. Does the elimination of violence, pain and sorrow from the face of the Earth, not depend strictly on each one of us ending our past, present and future identification with anything perceived as greater than ourselves and used to justify our violence against others? (339)

The realm of thought is the realm of experience and knowledge, and vice versa. What does not have a foothold on experience or on knowledge derived from experience or from learning, cannot be thought about, it cannot even be imagined. (When the fruits of the imagination are closely examined, they reveal their source on experience and knowledge; they are re-mixes.). Whatever lies beyond the reach of thought must then be unrecognizable, what is not liable to be experienced or known and, therefore, nothing that can be possessed in any way by anyone.

Knowledge has three evident subjects of interest and application, the natural world, the human body/psyche, and the social world that is both source and result-cause and effect-of the conditioned human psyche. Regarding our relationship with the material world it can be said:

First, that despite our rather obvious participation and dependence on it, we know relatively little about its infinitely complex and ever-changing multi-dimensionality and interconnectedness.

Second, that given the scale, complexity, and creative, ever-flowing nature of the world of matter, we cannot expect to ever fully "know" it by simply adding more and more information to the knowledge we already posses about certain aspects of it, nor by continuing to extrapolate successive new theories from this ever growing body of empirical knowledge.

And third, and perhaps most important of all, that since "the map is not the territory", (the description not the described), knowledge cannot ever possibly bridge, and much less dissolve, our painful alienation from the material world, known, yet to be known, and unknowable.

The non-material, un-manifest, energetic reality that underlies the material world beyond elemental particles, poses a different and even more formidable challenge to the knowledge-based human presence and enterprise. We may sense or feel that this immeasurable, formless, immensity is the ground from which every perceivable form-including our own-arises and to which all falls back. But, for obvious reasons, we have no idea as to how it may relate to our own existence and its multiple problems. This impasse, in turn, poses the question of whether there might be a connection between the human brain/mind and this undivided and timeless ground; a connection not mediated by experience, knowledge and the cumulative and self-serving process of thought determining our separation from everything. (340)