The brain is matter, and thought, a physical and chemical process through which the brain records, stores, and projects, knowledge. And, yet, the thinking self has insistently proclaimed his higher status as knowing subject vis-à-vis the material world as inferior known object, with the voluminous body of knowledge it has gathered throughout history as proof. Human thought has also claimed that it transcends matter through its close "spiritual" kinship with the sacred which grants, among other privileges and favors, the peculiar option of a life extended beyond the death of the physical organism. Never mind that all the multiple and opposed divinities and post-mortem plans available are nothing but the creation of its own fearful and self-projective imagination. This delusional sense of alienated superiority has so corrupted the mind and so disrupted human interactions and soiled the natural environment, that we now find ourselves in a crisis that is clearly beyond thought's capacity to solve it. Those who are fully aware of the seriousness of the situation, (which includes a massive denial of its existence or seriousness by religious believers and technology enthusiasts), also realize that no traditional problem-solving method is going to get us out of it.

We live in the small and fragmented world of thought because its fruits and antics are all we know and take pride on. No matter how limited and contradictory, knowledge is the sole bullion backing up the competing mandatory currencies with which we trade mentally amongst ourselves. We are so identified with what each one of us knows, believes and longs for, that to merely raise the issue of the general ineptitude of self-centered though is commonly perceived as heresy, if not sheer stupidity or outright madness. And, yet there are those who in their simple willingness to look at the source, nature and grim consequences of our half-truths, prejudices, and misconceptions, quickly realize that this perception of the incompetence of thought challenges, not just our self-esteem, but our very (psychological) existence. There might be fear associated with an existential threat coming from this rather strange source, but not to question to the ultimate consequences the validity of our particular and general knowledge and belief (and their projections) implies, if not being already dead, a mad willingness to slip further and further into a rapidly diminishing quality of mind and life, potentially leading to the self-destruction of the species. The realization of the actual danger we are in and the responsibility we personally bear for it, wipes away with a singular shock, the exclusive beliefs, traditions, hopes and ambitions that constitute, on one hand, our very psychological being, and on the other, the ever expanding horror of totalitarianism and war; the continued economic exploitation of millions and millions of people; and the wanton destruction of the natural environment. The chaotic state of the world is but the out-picturing of the programmed alienation and corruption of the human mind; my mind, your mind.

Since the conditioned self is inseparable from the disintegrating world, just as the "me" is inseparable from the rest of the psyche, there is nothing anyone can do to resist or adequately respond to either the mental or the general social situation. And it is precisely this state of ignorance and impotence that, in eliminating psychological knowledge, ushers the mind into an entirely unfamiliar space and silence in which action in no longer the modified reiteration of memory, but the ever new creativity of insight. (341)

Thought is exclusive and, therefore fragmentary. "I" am what I am because I think, feel, experience and want in a particular way, one that seems significantly unrelated to yours, and vice versa. Thought makes us entertain the fantasy that we are insular as well as the ones who think and that our lives are, most of the time, under our control-if not actually so, at least potentially. But this is clearly not so. Secretly perhaps, we all know that we are not masters of our thoughts, nor of the actions, often terribly unwise and harmful, that result from our thoughts.

Our propensity to fall under the always deceptive power of authority, (politicians, priests and gurus, social reformers and revolutionaries, artists, technocrats, therapists, merchants-experts of every ilk), comes from naively thinking that their experience and knowledge will save the day if ours is not up to the task. Irresponsible dependency on others, of course, seldom solves problems. It compounds them since our authorities are at least as blind as all the rest of us.

Since we happen to be the present day representatives of thousands of years of mental confusion and incompetence, let us not be shy about this matter and decide once and for all whether or not we should just go on with things as they have always been assuming that they cannot be otherwise. But if dull conformity is not your option, then let us give our lives to find out if there is an entirely different mode of human existence. If the fragmented, limited and patterned knowledge that is the basis of thought has never been able to conclusively deal with the fundamental problems we suffer from as individuals and as a species, could our action be based on something else?

The tight boundaries and hyperactive defenses of thought need to be first respectively softened and slowed down with evidence of its provincial bias and limitation. The danger of the present situation must become apparent. Then, there must be the realization that traditional methods of psychological and social change do not work regardless of the energy, time and resources that may be poured into them. We have to understand that they have not worked in the past, are not working in the present, and will never work in the future. It has to become palpable that new initiatives are only revamped versions of old, failed ones and that, like their predecessors, they only manage to further fragment the field of human thought and desire, thus worsening the general confusion and conflict.

It is only the full realization of its lack of individuality and its impotence, that brings self-centered thought to an end. This does not happen gradually and incrementally, and from the inside, as it were. The ending of self-centered thought is definitely not the result of knowledge extending or expanding itself, but rather a sudden perceptual blow which fully exposes the falseness of the separation between "you" and "me", between the "I" and the rest of the psyche, and between the self and the world at large. (342)

Self-centered, time-based thought seems to be centralized in the human brain, while mind itself seems diffused in the manifest (material) and non-manifest universe. In other words, mind (the capacity for orderly, intelligent and intelligible interaction) is not something that can only be predicated of the human brain. It is rather the central characteristic of the totality as an unthinkable timeless and formless ground of which Nature is a relatively stable material manifestation.

The human psyche, what we each know as the personal mental field, is profoundly alienated from the general matrix of Nature, and almost totally disregards this diffused general mind underlying Nature. Acting out of harmony with the larger intelligence of the perceptible and imperceptible whole, the human psyche remains, at best, limited, fearful and conflicted and, at worst, insanely destructive of itself and of everything it comes in touch with.

Consider how your organs, many of your muscles and entire sub-systems of your physiology operate perfectly and independently of your knowledge and your thinking. Consider how you depend on the world of matter to make available the substances that sustain the body and within it the brain/mind. Why not then question the confines of the body and the particular mind as arbitrarily determined by culture and the experience that largely depends on the limited definitions of culture? Why not carefully open up our minds to the inconceivable, limitless, dimension of an indivisible universe, manifest and non-manifest. Is the consideration of the undivided not, by necessity, the denial of the separate and isolated? The opening of the psychic field to the mere possibility of the larger intelligence and order of the whole, helps silence the chatter of self-centered thought busily stretching itself in mental and chronological time through endless attempts to repair or transcend the self's unavoidable insecurity, anguish, egotism and suffering.

If the personal and social disorder we all suffer today is the result of thousands and thousands of years of multiple, contradictory and antagonistic actions and reactions generated by thought, what might be needed is not further plans inspired and energized by individuals and groups each armed with a different ideology and a peculiar sense of manifest destiny, but rather the irrevocable collapse of all that. And this collapse might be, in itself, the natural flowering of sensitivity, simplicity, and humility in the human mind. Natural in that, like everything else not created by thought, this flowering would be indistinguishable from the general and sacred context of the whole.

Only a mind free of egotism might be in harmony with the rest of the manifest and non-manifest Universe and, therefore, also capable of intelligent action. Clearly, the intelligence of love cannot come out of fearful selfishness and the will to power, nor co-exist with them. A keen awareness of this fact is all that is necessary, because this awareness can only occur in the silence of a mind supremely independent of the strident and violent world created by self-centered thought. (343)

The natural ways of the body are not the ways of fashion or tradition. When the body is made to adjust to social trends and lives merely to feed the habits it has adopted, it becomes deformed and ill, and the mind dull, corrupt, and violent. (344)

We all have to make a living somehow and, in this day and age, this can hardly be expected to happen without some degree of specialization. However, those interested in finding the fundamental solution to human problems would be well-advised to think twice before connecting their specialization, let alone their need to make "good" money, to the quest for a sane, holistic mind.

The desire for mental congruity and harmony often leads to the temptation of trying to integrate one's vocational calling and sense of social responsibility to what is of the utmost religious-or if you want that other even more dangerous word, spiritual-importance. So, it is essential to be clear from the very beginning that to make one's vocation (which is, by definition, limited), the path to enlightenment or, worse yet, enlightenment itself, is a terrible mistake. (345)

There is no path to enlightenment for the simple reason that enlightenment is an on/off proposition; either it is present or it is not. To be a little bit enlightened is inversely related to being a little bit pregnant. It is the notion of graduality that fallaciously opens the possibility of multiple methods leading to enlightenment. If people did not believe that there is a time interval between ignorance and enlightenment that allows for a gradual evolution between one and the other-a belief shared, incidentally, by very different religious traditions-none of these traditions would exist. In fact the very existence of the self is based on different forms of psychological sectarianism and graduality, in the sense that without a particular form engaged in a particular process of development, there is no self. And that is why, enlightenment or insight implies, not the development but the instantaneous and irreversible ending of the separate self that exists by projecting onto the future pre-determined visions of itself.

Consequently, enlightenment is not something that happens to certain people because they ardently follow the right method which ends them in the "right" place, but rather what might occur when a human psyche stops seeking a given social position, or a "spiritual" outcome of which there is already a memory, an idea. It is the death of the self that marks the irruption of enlightenment. The "enlightened self" is an oxymoron.

It is the very realization that there is no path that leads to insight, that constitutes insight because it is freedom from exclusive cultural moorings and self-serving motives that in depersonalizing the psyche, as it were, open the door to selflessness, the meditative mind. Enlightenment cannot be merited, worked for, given to another, or received from another. It can only be approached negatively; that is, by deliberately and instantly abandoning all the plans and methods that far from bringing it about, serve to strengthen the identity and continuity of the self. When all self-projection comes to an end, all that is left is the non-expectant passivity of mind that precisely because it does not know and it does not want, is impersonally open to the unprecedented: what is not and will never be within the realm of time, experience, knowledge and desire.

Again, since insight is unrelated to psychological knowledge or to the desires that are born of that knowledge, no quality or amount of information (or experience) can be expected to serve as a means leading to it. The only necessary (but not necessarily sufficient) mental state is silence; a silence that is inexpressible but that may be approached negatively by stating that it implies negating any idealization of the self that may be projected onto the future and worked for in the present.

Ending the continuity of the self-centered process of thought is the issue at hand, and not how to bring about sometime in the future a presumably more enlightened state of consciousness. Thus, any serious consideration of the possibility of enlightenment must begin by putting aside the contradictions, efforts and conflicts arising from identification with alternative paths to self-improvement. (346)

What would it be like to live without contradiction and conflict? What would it be like to be undivided and uncomplicated within and at peace with others? Would it not necessarily involve living totally in the present and, therefore, being as nothing psychologically? To be free of the mind's conditioned past and future implies not interpreting or shaping the present with the remembrance of things past, including the controlling expectations determined by memory-based desired or feared outcomes. In other words, in a free mind the present is not a mere tool for the fulfillment or the avoidance tomorrow of a predetermined desire or fear. In a free mind the present is the plenitude of life and death. Except for its occasional engagement in the practical steps necessary for interaction with others and the satisfaction of the fundamental needs of the physical organism, thought is not in operation in a mind that is free of time.

Psychological emptiness implies therefore an extraordinary autonomy, not to be confused with mere financial and logistic self-sufficiency. It requires that one be alone and sufficient onto oneself, not out of pride and a sense of achievement and superiority but, rather, from no longer being trapped with others in the habitual pursuit of particular forms of worldly or otherworldly pleasure and security. Not to seek these things is equivalent to freeing the mind from all internal and external conflict, and the absence of conflict is the first sign of an extraordinarily unattached, attentive and impersonal mind. That is, a mind that does not react to internal or external circumstance by mechanically dipping into memory to then fly off to comply with the mandates of self-serving desire and fear, but, rather, a mind that stays with fact at every moment and allows fact itself to act without recording or projecting images or ideas of anything.

The realization that there is no freedom within the reality created by the alienated and conditioned mind is, paradoxically, real freedom; freedom from the self and freedom from society. (347)

There may be nothing you can do directly for the world at large. The waves of destruction that thought and desire have created, are clearly out of the control of any particular individual and will almost inevitably crash upon all of us bringing renewed horror and pain. However, we are always in time to see in one glance who we really are and what is our part in this mess. Foolishness lies in thinking that all one has to do is work even harder on whatever plan is deemed capable of delivering some measure of cultural progress, personal development, or eternal salvation.

We may all ultimately drown, but let us not do it before our time and in the cup of tea of self-pity and fear. Once no longer ensconced within the false certainties and abhorrences of cultural tradition and personal preference, the tribal self disappears in the abyss of not knowing: the unfathomable immensity of life and death. (348)

It is absurd to think that a better social environment can be built on the basis of personal success. Does the general disorder and violence that characterize human affairs not stem from the all too common belief that things can be changed for the better (and even for the many) by striving for individual success or tribal predominance? -Are the dramas and traumas of the individual and the general social chaos of the world today not the product of all the reforms and revolutions dreamt up by different especially "gifted" individuals throughout the history of the species? -Is it not a sign of insanity to continue thinking that the awful consequences of egotism and ethnocentrism can be washed away through the implementation of more refined forms of the same thing? -Should we not go to the source of the problem instead of merely continuing to treat particular symptoms in particular places?

Does the extent and chronic nature of human conflict and suffering not indicate the urgent need for a much more fundamental change? Fundamental not only in the sense of reaching far deeper than all the preceding modifications but also, and much more importantly, fundamental in the sense of not being someone else's ideological creation imposed on, or willingly taken in by, the particular psyche. We are talking then about a total solution born simply of a direct and passive (non-reactive) confrontation with the totality of the experience, knowledge, emotion and desire that makes up the self-centered psyche and the world we live in.

Put differently, the present state of the world and the state of our own minds and lives clearly reflects the mechanical continuity of self-centered thought with all its divisions, contradictions, fixed ideas and unwise, violent, desires. It is hardly reasonable to expect, therefore, that further exercise of conditioned, fragmentary and inherently limited and conflicted thought, will ever produce the unity and the spirit of collaboration without which life conditions will continue to deteriorate, perhaps until the species as a whole perishes victim of its own insanity.

For as long as we remain incapable of simply acknowledging our biographical and historical incapacity to solve basic psychological and social problems, we condemn ourselves to endless reiterations of our personal and tribal futility. But the moment any one of us dies forever to the inflexible demands of an egotistical and provincial sense of manifest destiny, that action has a seismic impact, not just on the particular brain-mind involved, but in the consciousness of humanity as a whole from which the particular psyche is inseparable.

For each and everyone of us, this emptying of the personal content of memory, is an unprecedented event that holds within an enormously vital question: If our particular personal and cultural mental content has never and will never be able to free the human being from conflict, confusion and suffering, is there perhaps another form of intelligence that can deliver humanity from the increasingly atrocious consequences of our thoughts and actions?

Implicit in this strange and urgent question is the awareness that rushing to seek an answer to it would merely re-engage the same old conditioned mental process that, only when deactivated, allowed this radically different challenge to bloom. Thus there is now, at every instant, keen attention to the necessity of deactivating the movement of self-centered thought. And as psychological and unnecessary cultural knowledge drains out, (freeing the psyche from hurt, fear, and all forms of pre-determined and reactive hope, ambition and faith), no further experience is ever again compared, evaluated and recorded as knowledge of pain and pleasure demanding further self-projection.

Status, past, present and future-worldly or otherworldly-is no longer a consideration. Nothing matters, except seeing with clarity, that is, seeing totally and without internal contradiction, inter-personal conflict or future projection. One still lives in a given society and needs to procure one's sustenance and relate well with others, but those natural and necessary functions are never again confused with the blind urge to enjoy as much power, wealth, respectability and pleasure as it might be possible to attain.

There is nothing wrong with the employment of knowledge (or of a knowledge-infused skill) to communicate with others and render a service or create a product in exchange for one's fundamental keep, when one is not otherwise committed to anything in particular. Everything is lost and everything is gained in the direct realization that all exclusive forms of knowledge and action are, of necessity at odds, often violently, with the ideas and initiatives of others, and hence necessarily compounding the very personal and social problems they may be intending to solve. (349)

In order to directly see who I am there must be a perception not circumscribed by what I already know about myself, and what I may have already decided I want to be in the future. This implies the emergence of an impersonal, moment-to-moment, attention that is intense and precise because it is not involved in mechanical chain reactions of pursuit/avoidance, acceptance or rejection, reward or punishment. At the light of this attention the observing self is indeed exactly the same as the psyche and the world it observes.

The psyche is fundamentally altered when, beyond all words and theoretical formulations, there is the sudden perception of the fact that "I" am nothing in myself but a particular set of insubstantial memories and desires not in any significant way different from my-self and the "myself" of others. Everyone's memories and desires are firmly rooted in the accumulated experience and projection of particular cultures and, beyond that, in the entire record of the species as a whole. Thus, they can hardly be used to prove that the particular self is as independent and singularly valuable as we all like to think it is. This direct and complete perception of the common nature of the "me" conclusively ends the illusion of an independent process of psychological evolution moving through mental and chronological time, and in doing so ushers into the mind space and silence. (350)

The experience of the individual only occurs within the template provided by his insertion in the physical configuration of the human species and his indoctrination into the particular cultural forms of the society in which he was born, plus others he might subsequently adopt and inhabit. Seen from this holistic perspective, his "uniqueness" is negligible, but seen from within by the self conditioned by particular forms of identification his uniqueness is pretty much all there is and, certainly, all that matters. Evidently, this overwrought sense of personal separation and self-importance cannot help but waste the gift of life in the defense and promotion of an absurd set of psychological claims and the groups and institutions that make them possible by corroborating them to one extent or another.

Unsurprisingly, when these claims are disregarded, even temporarily, the larger fact of his total insertion, along with everyone else, in the unbroken reality of the material, biological and cultural realms becomes immediately and brutally apparent, thus destroying the illusion of autonomous and permanently evolving psychological existence. (351)

Throughout history we have attempted to solve problems that are essentially psychological, that is, inscribed within the realm of the personal, by making an externalized idea of them target of a great variety of reformist or falsely revolutionary actions, each representing the particular point of view, expertise and ambition of a leader or a relatively small group of thinkers. And so we have had no end of partial, gradual and, hence, always insufficient and incompetent personal and collective actions: legal, political, military, scientific, economic, artistic, psychotherapeutic and recreational. To be sure, none of these partial, gradual and, hence, always insufficient and incompetent personal and collective actions have been able to soften our hearts by de-conditioning our minds. After thousands of years of trying, our legal, political, military, scientific, economic, artistic, psychotherapeutic and recreational initiatives have yet to bring to us the peace, happiness or security we so yearn for. The very survival of the species is now increasingly in question, and yet we are too set in our ways or too dull and afraid to question the workings of our own minds.

Because life is something enormously complex and profound, it cannot be properly met with a fragmented and tortured mind bent on attaining at any cost some measure of exclusive mental and physical security. But if the human brain can somehow purge itself of conflicted and confused thinking, perhaps the wisdom of life itself would blossom in the space thus cleared. (352)

These are some of the social and psychological challenges confronting each one of us and the species as whole: Corrupt political and religious leaders of every stripe; cultural divisions and economic ambitions leading to war; permanent racial and ethnic tensions and conflicts; chronic gender antagonism; terrorism of clan, faith and state; the threat of nuclear and other weapons of great destructive capacity; economic exploitation and poverty; inter-generational conflict; global warming and other environmental threats; the emergence of AIDS and a host of other new diseases; increased incidence of different forms of mental illness; forced migration and massive displacement of impoverished and war-torn populations; personal alienation, fear, hatred, anxiety, depression, addiction, jealousy and abuse.

Needless to say, all of this disorder and turmoil occurs side by side with extraordinary advances in science and technology allowing some of us (a significant minority) an unprecedented standard of living, but not an exemption from vulnerability, sorrow and conflict nor the wisdom to understand that our most extravagant privileges have a catastrophic social and ecological cost. We tend to systematically forget, for example, that fifty percent of humanity lives with the equivalent of under two dollars a day, and that it would take the resources of five planets like Earth to extend our standard of living to the rest of humanity.

Any even moderately healthy, intelligent and caring human being feels compelled to respond adequately to this situation. Should one satisfy oneself with participating in the implementation of new reforms designed to replace or improve old reforms? Should we merely pray for those who suffer the most while simultaneously rejoicing in the special favors the gods have so cordially bestowed upon us? Or should we despair and then attempt to quiet our minds by praying for salvation or meditating to secure an end to our participation in the sorrowful cycle of reincarnations?

If, for obvious reasons, all these preset and functional reactions are promptly abandoned, one is confronted with the fact that the very faculty of thought that has created the dreadful circumstances in which we are presently living and dying, cannot possibly come up with a correct and complete response to all the intimately related social and psychological problems of which each one of us is both cause and effect. All we can do, then, is see ourselves as particular instances of the general conditioning and fragmentation of a common brain/mind, and that is enough. (353)

The self might be seen objectively and completely, but only if that perception is impersonal. That is, not tinged and made reactive by prejudices from the past and predetermined desires for the future. If the perception involves any intent whatsoever to change what is seen according to an idea of what the self ought to be, then that obviously mars the possibility of an objective view of what the self is at every moment. No one can significantly change or transcend the conditioning of the psyche because "one" is not in any way different from whatever attributes of this conditioning might have been chosen to undergo improvement, expansion, or eradication. The self who desires change is the same self who resists change. All that is necessary is that this profound contradiction be properly seen. Only silence is left. (354)

The first sign that one cares deeply about human suffering and is serious about the possibility of its elimination, is that the problem is no longer externalized as though it were something out there in society or in the outer fringes of the personality that needs to be modified or overcome.

The separate and self-perpetuating existence of the self is the root cause of the problem of human sorrow, thus, the pretense of attending to exterior issues that are, in reality, indistinguishable from oneself is, not just a waste of energy and a permanent source of mental obfuscation, but the very means whereby the self secures its continuity. (355)

It is by virtue of its separation from the totality, that our personal life has little meaning and is soiled throughout with the dread with which we hold its inevitable end. This, regardless of who you may happen to think you are or what you may hope to be at the culmination of an illusory process of becoming. Meaning, total meaning, lies only in life as an unbroken whole. (356)

If there is a perception of history not as a social but a mental process that endlessly accumulates and projects slightly different versions of itself, one's entire sense of the nature of human suffering and the possibility of its eradication, undergoes a radical change.

The same goes for the personal psyche and its illusions of progressive development and ultimate liberation from sorrow and death. If there is a perception that greater knowledge and experience or the adoption of a new set of beliefs, will not ever yield a radically transformed personal future (this, simply because whatever new element comes into the conditioned brain/psyche gets merely added to all the memories already there), then there is an entirely different sense of what the real challenge is.

Can the mind confront thought and its inbred thinker without avoiding or favoring any outcome and, therefore, not knowing what to do? The capacity to look at everything holistically, involves no longer trying to attain fulfillment or attempting to avoid what is feared or found abhorrent, and in that passive and silent mind the prejudices and other limitations of thought no longer find corroboration and continuity. (357)

At this time of enormous peril, the central question is: How is humanity to unify? Or, better said, how are we all going to stop being who we think we are and who we think we would like to become in order to be, first and foremost simply human? (358)

Does it require a special gift to see that no special personal gift should ever obscure the fact that all human beings are fundamentally the same? Regardless of one's relative capacities, inborn or acquired, to compare oneself to others, psychologically, is to condemn oneself and them to the insensitivity and lack of intelligence inherent in competition, frustration, hatred, conflict and sorrow. (359)

Far from being unique and separate, I am the result of what human beings have thought, felt and done for thousands and thousands of years. And, sorry, but it looks as though the same hold true for you. Sure, we would both rather stay protected behind the separate superficialities of our respective personas, and continue to frantically extol, protect and expand whatever we may think makes us different from one another and from others. But when we are hit in the head by the enormous truth that we are both the same historical mess and the same self-centered psyche that have evolved through time by incessantly projecting illusory mental reformulations of themselves onto the future, our differences melt away to the point of psychological emptiness. There may be still differences in the talents, skills and functions that are part of our interaction with one another and society, but everything else has dropped away. Relationship with others and with the world at large will never again be the same. And it seems as though the real friendship that had evaded us until now, is now blooming one with life and death. (360)

The "I" in every one wants to be loved and respected, but for vastly different and contradictory reasons. Deep within the psyche lies the root of constant contradiction; wanting one thing that is incompatible with another and, generally, wanting both with the same urgency and at the same time. At the deepest and most general level each individual wants to be who he actually is, while simultaneously wanting to be someone else, perhaps someone better. We suffer from the incapacity to tell the difference between the actual and the ideal, the fictitious. And this conflictive division boiling in us accounts for the hidden and hypocritical agendas corrupting many of our relationships, dulling our minds and wasting much of our energy.

To disregard ideals is to remain unafraid and unhurried with the facts of every moment. It is only when the mind stops fighting itself that the brain/mind can go beyond the time structure of thought and receive the timeless energy of life. (361)

To be at odds with oneself implies an enormous contradiction: that there is not one/self, but two, or more. Yet, we have become so habituated to this contradiction, that having one layer of the psyche passing positive or negative judgment over another for doing, thinking or feeling whatever it may be doing, thinking and feeling, is practically a daily experience for most of us. It is either is true or false that the psyche is one. If it is true, then there can be no little being sitting there behind the eyes and saying: "I am one", because such assertion implies division between the unity that is affirmed and the presumed entity ("I") declaring and "owning" this unity. And if there is no "I", (if the psyche is one), then there is not either division between "different" individuals, nor between them and life as a whole.

Even more to the point, since the self from the past is no different from the self that is re-acting to the present, (and the past), on behest of a future self necessarily imagined as a reformed re-edition of the past self, there is no such a thing as relevant psychological change, nor an independent agent, (the "me"), responsible for implementing that change. There is only thought, (self-projective memory), acting in billions of human organism, and thought is no-thing in itself, just images of experiences that no longer are or have yet to be. The very perception of the self as a Gordian knot obscuring actuality, is the radical blow of Alexander's sword: a fulminating and instantaneous blow that in cutting through to the core of deception and habit, brings the conditioned process of the self-centered psyche to an end. (362)

The real issue is whether or not one can go beyond all opinion in psychological and social matters in order to take an independent and, thus, original and complete look at oneself and the world. And that possibility hinges on having understood that psychological knowledge in this context is severely limited by experience and biased by its function of buttressing and perpetuating the self. At this point, one is no longer invested in proving oneself right and better than others, simply because it has become apparent that experience, all self-projecting experience, is not only insufficient and biased, but the very root of psycho-social fragmentation and suffering. There is a silence, not necessarily silence of speech, but a deep inner silence that comes into being when all interpersonal and psychological conflict has ended and the mind, no longer attempting to be anything other than what it is, rests undistracted and unoccupied and, thus, fully attentive. (363)

In art, as in many other types of human endeavor, success lies in the creation of consensus. Thus, at its most idealistic, artistic success implies the ability to generate a particular vision around which a significant group, or even humanity as a whole, can unite. The artist, the poet, the writer, the musician, the philosopher, the politician, the reformer, the guru and the revolutionary, all aim, in one way or another, to have others congregate around the meaning they create and propagate. And, it is paradoxically through this very intent of generating unity, that different cultural expressions (cultural in the anthropological sense of the word), maintain and keep adding to the division, disorder and conflict that have characterized humanity and its history throughout the centuries.

Now, if it is critical that the tragic cultural fragmentation of the species be clearly perceived, the relative importance of art has to be assessed in relation to its capacity to uncover this very phenomenon. Are we capable of producing and being enlightened by art that does not simply echo the voice of some ideology broadcasting its neurotic appeal to the obediently faithful but, rather, the direct, precise, and succinct illustration of the enormous and common problem of human existence? -Can any form of art render visible and intelligible a problem that no particular expression of thought can tackle and solve for the simple reason that thought is, itself, this problem? In other words, can there be an art so unrelated to tradition that is capable of presenting the problem of psychological alienation and cultural fragmentation, (the problem of human suffering), in its totality and without advocating a particular solution? And, if such art were possible, would there be an audience for it? After all, if not just entertainment and cute little challenges, what we generally want from art (as from everything else) is comfort in intellectual and emotional corroboration. No one wants or expects from art a brutally accurate and complete image of oneself as an impossible problem.

Is the gift of insight is in any way transmissible to others? And, if it is, does that transmissibility not imply that the transmitting mind must be a free and enlightened being full of wisdom and love for humanity? Be that as it may, it should be clear that even if the artist is truly authentic and his representation of psychological and cultural reality, true, the possibility of insight ultimately depends on the state of the mind that comes in touch with the art. An accurate description of the human condition may be useful and necessary for insight, but it is clearly not sufficient because, in every case it is the individual who has to see-by herself-the facts beyond the words and images used to describe them, and find in this factual and direct perception of the problem, its solution. (364)

To be for or against anything in particular intra and extra-psychically is to be in conflict and, therefore, incapable of posing the only question that really matters: -Is there is a mode of human existence that having transcended all forms of petty personalism and partisanship, is beyond the disorder inherent in thought as separate being and becoming? (365)

Because it feels vulnerable in its separation, the self overcompensates by being arrogant, acquisitive, envious and hostile. It may hide this even from itself, but it is its very nature to endlessly strive to become something it is fundamentally not: intelligent, peaceful, perhaps more spiritual, even godlike, (whatever that might be).

Is there any connection possible between the alienated human mind endlessly moving towards whatever its own experience imagines to be greater than itself, and the sacred-what can only be properly addressed as the totally unknown? How could the unknowable be related to the isolated human mind with all its familiar pleasures and fears and its truculent appetite for the more and the better?

To reject all connection with whatever we think the divine might be is not, however, to deny the possibility of its existence. We simply do not know if there is or there is not such a thing as the sacred. And it is precisely because this stance does not negate outright the existence of what might be beyond the extremely experience and reach of the human brain/psyche, that it actively questions the self's peculiar characteristics and tendencies and, most of all, its claim to separate existence.

Having carefully examined the historical and biographical past, and having understood the intrinsic limitation of experience and knowledge, one comes to realize that since human consciousness split from the totality there has been no truly significant psychological progress nor, consequently, a radical social evolution in the species as a whole (beyond that experienced in the realm of science and technology). For when it comes to separation, fear, violence, cruelty and suffering, the individual human being and humanity as a whole are today essentially what they were a thousand or ten thousand years ago.

This vision of humanity caged and tormented by the inherent inadequacy of its own experience and knowledge, (past, present and future), naturally and easily terminates all idealized personal projections. The brain is now free from the unnecessary impositions of tradition, culture and the arduous mental process of becoming that characterize the self. No longer battling itself and others, the psyche quiets down and remains simply with what it is. And in the timeless and undivided mental space thus created, the unanswerable question of whether there is, or there is not, something beyond human experience and knowledge, blossoms again and with greater force. There is no one there now to mechanically dip into memory files in search for an answer. (366)

What is frustration? Is it the incapacity to see fact and therefore be fact, or is it rather injustice-not getting from others and life what is thought one is due? Clearly, frustration is blindness to fact or, rather, not wanting to see -not just the particular circumstances that may be annoying or lacerating one-but the human condition as riddled with fear and bellicosity.

And why is there so much antagonism in relationship? -Is it not due, at least in part, to each person wanting the other to be, think and act differently from what they actually are, think and act? Again, hostility, like frustration, reveals the incapacity-or, rather, the unwillingness-to see fact and in that unwillingness the insistent neurotic demand that others change their behavior to suit one's preference. A single look into one's resistance to change one's own behavior in order to suit someone else's neurotic or even rational demand, reveals the absurdity of wanting others to be what they are not and do what they do not want to do.

Good relationship implies, then, the necessity to see every person, for what they are at every instant, (and that includes oneself). And that implies, in turn, an extraordinary independence, not only from the autocratic influence of tradition and the whims of others, but primarily from all the images and ideas that have accumulated in one's own mind and that project themselves onto the future as rigidly feared or desired outcomes. Far from being unrestricted choice, freedom turns out to be -in matters of relation and self-knowledge -the absence of choice. (367)

We cannot see what is actually happening in our own lives and in the world at large without having first abandoned all the parochial dogmatisms and pie-in-the-sky projections in which we base, not just the sense that everything is either basically alright, (or in the process of becoming so), but our very identity-our psychological existence with its peculiar sense of evolving reality. Sight is death. (368)

The endless gathering of the fruit of knowledge through experience, learning and faith, and the investment and re-investment of this knowledge in the gradual solution of particular problems, consolidate the general conviction that there is nothing we cannot fix with more money, more technology, more violence, more hope and, of course, more time. Convinced that the only possible realm of human existence is the profoundly divided and chaotic world we have created, we educate our children in the same belief so that they too grow up essentially blind to the absence of unity, harmony and intelligence in the world and in their own minds and lives. Thus, the full tragedy of psychological alienation, (alienation of the "I" from what is taken to be the periphery of the psyche and from humanity and the cosmos as a whole), remains invisible.

The problem is that in order to be and remain what it thinks it is, the conditioned mind has to be highly intolerant to any personal challenge. Its indifference to anything not its pleasure detests any challenge, as does its ingrained conviction that psychological and social development in time are as inevitable as technical progress. After all, to accept that there might be something other than the provincial reality created and re-created by "our" knowledge, belief and desire, (existing in permanent tension with them and "theirs"), might be tantamount to suicide.

But if we come to see that separation and the constant implementation of superficial and false change only serve to maintain a common and nefarious status quo, then it is clear that what is needed is something unthinkably more profound, and that can only be the end of separation through the emptying of the self-centered mind. (369)

To see that with our self-isolating thought and conflictive relationships we create and recreate at every instant the habitual chaos of the world, is to see as well that nothing can be done positively to escape this predicament. Action within the world we have created and with the mind that has created it, is mere reaction forever limited to issuing and acting out reformulations of the past.

Non-action in this same world is then the only intelligent action, non-action in the sense of no longer reacting to the events and circumstances of the present with previous knowledge and the intent of attaining (or avoiding) pre-imagined events and circumstances in the future. Evidently, this passivity is not paralysis, but rather the restriction of knowledge and thought-determined action to those areas where they are appropriate. The end of self-consciousness and the absence of conditioned thought in relationship with others and the world is silence, the mental clarity without which perception of things as they are and appropriate action are impossible. (370)

We are so accustomed to think that we are different and, hence, separate from one another and the social and natural world at large, that we offhandedly reject the enormous evidence speaking to the contrary. To stay with that evidence -on the other hand -ends the conflict within oneself and with whomever and whatever might be perceived as "not-me". What is one-after all-if not a particular case of the universal separation of the "I" from the world and from its-self? -Is any isolated, tense, hyperactive and secretly violent self not a particular case of the all-pervasive phenomenon of human alienation with its ever redesigned and reconstructed trenches, and its endless offensives and counter-offensives? -And is the death of this pathetic self not perhaps the plenitude of life? (371)

A truly fundamental change-a mutation, really-could not possibly come through the self acting on himself or on the world, for that action would, of necessity, be merely a reaction away from or towards some slightly modified version of his necessarily limited previous experience. However, to see this very fact of personal impotence -the impotence of the conditioned mind -is in itself fundamental change, for it implies, also by necessity, the end of time as the mental space created by self-centered thought to "progress" from the past to a future conceived as an improved version of that same past. The ending of time is, thus, not a change in the self or by the self but, rather, the end of the personal memoir and of the memoirist along with all its possible future incarnations. (372)

Whatever it is that gets hurt (psychologically speaking) is also what seeks protection by building a wall around itself or by attempting to morph into something else. As said countless times already, the image that thought creates about the self, (the "I"), is permanently wanting to improve: to become wealthier, more widely respected, more knowledgeable, wiser, or more virtuous, perhaps saintlier. In other words, thought is protected, energized and maintained by its built-in appetite for security and fulfillment. The "I" is just a layer of thought who happens to think that he is in charge of likes and dislikes. And since the phenomenon of thought is simultaneously attempting to reach in everyone and in one way or another this same goal of exclusive security and self-fulfillment, the world remains a place of permanent disconnection and strife; a chaotic, unhappy and violent place utterly incapable of producing healthy, sane, human beings. New generations inherit the egotism and bellicosity of old generations without a break in continuity, even though this rigid uniformity is masked to the eyes of most people by the different styles and, perhaps, the improved technology distinguishing every "new wave" -and this is, in essence, the vicious cycle of human history. (373)

Science takes great strides forward and discoveries multiply; technology gets better all the time, inventions beget new inventions and new inventions, new financial fortunes. There is more and more diverse art, literature and music all the time; new religious, social, and political movements and more institutions are constantly created, and yet the human being remains essentially the same: self-centered, tribal, conflicted and confused, fearful, violent, enthralled by pleasure and power and simultaneously terrified of their possible frustration and eventual, inevitable, termination. And in a historically unending knee-jerk reaction to suffering and fear, we see no better to alleviate our suffering than to further assert ourselves; to reform old organizations or create new ones; and to harass, exploit, conquer or destroy other groups and other individuals.

Just look around yourself and see if we are not perpetually re-organizing ourselves; creating more "culture" and greater art; advancing new political reforms and revolutions; forever enjoying new forms of entertainment; trying out new therapies and new addictions; and, of course, also indulging in better violence, more effective, stealthier, deadlier: the shock and awe of civilization. (374)

I cannot have an idea of who I am and who I am in the process of becoming, without forcing all my relationships into a straightjacket of neurotic demand. Others are ranked according to how they either advance or hinder my present self-image and my projects of self-development and eventual fulfillment. The idealized self image projected onto the future makes different types of conflict unavoidable: intra-psychic conflict due to the tension between who I am actually and the idealized self I would like to become; conflict with others who are seen and treated as mere objects useful (or not) in the defense and expansion of the mercurial self; and conflict with the natural environment in so far as it might react in unexpected ways to demands implicit in the realization of my ambitions. (375)

The generally unacknowledged purpose of much of human activity is to provide particular individuals and the groups to which they subscribe with an exclusive sense of identity and security. Very little seems to be done just for the love of it. What has no pay-off in terms of money, pleasure, status and power, is generally of little interest or declared off-limits by the good authorities. And there is absolutely no pay-off in asking if there is anything beyond the reach of the mind conditioned by experience, because any preconceived answer denies the question.

Because of its very nature, the inquiry into the possibility of something utterly beyond the conditioned mind, must be posed in total ignorance5that is, outside the realm of personally and culturally ascribed value, and in the absence of any particular interest, fear, motive or goal that would place its result necessarily within what is known and what is knowable through what is known. The mind gripped by this unanswerable question has already within it the boundless silence of what lies outside the reach of our self-isolated and pre-programmed intellect. (376)

Thought is by its very nature fragmentary. It literally creates things by abstracting them out of the general context of a totality it cannot apprehend with the senses or intellectually comprehend. Over millennia the human mind has gradually gone from living in the world as it is, to living in the world as it is described and desired. Images and ideas representing parts and aspects of reality, have gradually become more important than actual reality itself.

The undeniable scientific and technological progress of the species is eloquent proof that thought can be correct, and essential, when applied to the solution of logistic and technical problems. In these areas the intellect can operate quite efficiently by isolating and naming particular entities and intervening variables; by surveying and evaluating the contents of already existing knowledge in order to understand new discoveries; and by projecting into the future logically-sequenced sets of steps or events intending to reach through their completion desirable (pre-determined) goals. However, when this very same mode of cognitive operation is applied in the realm of personal and social psychology, (intra-psychic knowledge and relationship), the result is barely managed chaos. No one can seriously assert that our psychological and social progress is even comparable to the extraordinary progress in science and technology. The fact is that, fundamentally, we are as primitive and violent today as we have been at every stage of our tragic history.

The human psyche at its pre-personal and impersonal core and up through its multiple and more modern layers of "civilized" cover-up, remains fundamentally the same: insensitive, fearful, ambitious and cruel; permanently suffering and permanently creating suffering for others. And, yet, we do not generally see this, for we remain convinced, first, that things are gradually improving or will eventually improve and, second that, in one way or another, "one" is different and better than others -perhaps only not as bad as most of them, but definitely and permanently having the option of becoming better.

This entrenched and totally unfounded belief in the fundamental goodness and open-ended perfectibility of the human being is cause and effect of multiple and opposed ideological projects through which the antagonistic cultural and psychological fragmentation of humanity continues to lurch forward in historical time in its illusory search for unity, progress, peace, truth, liberation and salvation. (377)

To say that the good guys, bad guys representation of human reality is false may come as a terrible disappointment to some but, there it is, it has just been blurted out. The world is in the mess it is simply because we all are what we are and relate with one another the way we do. And because the self is what the world is and vise-versa, it is also largely incorrect to assume that anyone can gradually and independently transit from being "bad" to being "good", or the other way around.

Morality, any system of morality, is just a pretentious hoax, because barring an extraordinary awakening allowing the mind to overcome its experiential limitations, no one has the inherent capacity to act from anything other than what is already known and believed which is always partial and biased, if not outright false. No particular individual or set of individuals can ever rightfully claim, therefore, the power, privilege or capacity to ethically "improve" another human being or a different cultural group. And yet, as we all know, moralistic bullying is one of the most constants variables of war, international politics, organizational dynamics, domestic life and our very divided interiority: "Just listen to me: I' m telling you what is the right thing to do."

When all the presently and potentially available ethical systems and projects are seen for the chauvinistic mental traps they are and dismissed accordingly, the seemingly intractable problem of being human is perceived at a much deeper and impersonal level. Because the elimination of all possible systems of ethical diagnosis and treatment cannot be survived by the active "good" agent presumably in charge of transforming or altogether disposing of what within the realm of the psyche may be considered "bad" and, thus, deserving to be changed, eliminated or transcended. When it is clear that the "I" does not stand outside psychological, interpersonal and social problems, there is no further menu-picked moral or immoral action possible. Greed or violence are not attributes of the self liable to be changed or eliminated by a simple act of will. The self is greed and violence. The self is its problems; the self is the problem.

Because the human condition is, regardless of time and space considerations, nothing if not the out-picturing of who we have been, are, and are planning to become, any attempt made to fix or transcend this condition will invariably multiply, exacerbate and extend in time already existing divisions and conflicts, thus worsening what is already great personal and collective disorder.

That no one can directly dissolve essential and chronic psychological problems with all their complex social ramifications does not mean, however, that the species is condemned forever to its characteristic violent and sorrowful ways. It means rather that if there is a real and complete solution at all to this immense problem, it must involve a radical break in continuity. That is, not the improvement of the separate and egotistical self, but its annihilation. -Is it reasonable to expect the elimination of the suffering caused by egotism and ethnocentrism to come from the implementation of new and revamped forms of the same old brutal things? If not, then one must admit that there is, indeed, no significant solution that can be expected from anything other than the irreversible termination of the self-centered process of thought, even though we absolutely abhor the fact that such termination could not possible be preceded and motivated by any image or idea regarding what, if anything, would follow it.

Let us take yet another look at this perplexing argument. Presently, there are literally thousands of contradictory and often openly conflictive ethical schemes -from post-modern capitalism to radical Islam -all claiming the capacity to bring about order to the world and happiness to the individual human being. And at the personal level, (and beyond our insertion in this shooting flotilla of opposed moral and religious programs), we seem generally content with attempting to realize ourselves without paying too much attention to the extent to which our minds are muddled by contradictory and dangerous desires and by a general resistance to similar desires driving the conduct of other individuals. It is not surprising then that throughout entire lifetimes of moral and extra-moral actions, all we humans manage to achieve is an extension and worsening of the disorder reigning within the human mind and shaping the only pathetic relational world this mind can create and recreate at every point in history.

The chronic incompetence of moralistic (secular and religious) "solutions", does scream for an entirely different approach to the problem of suffering, one that begins with the realization that since one is, fundamentally, what every other human being and the general human situation are, it is absurd to think of oneself as capable of significantly altering the social or psychological state of affairs. The general characteristics of the human being and of the society created by the inadequacy of his relationship with others, cannot be even perceived accurately, let alone changed or eradicated, through actions that are, by definition, narrowly self-serving and culture bound.

Although it is probably obvious to you by know, please allow me to re-state that we are not concerned here with quarter measures or diversionary tactics. We are not interested in gradually becoming, let us say, a bit less fearful or a bit less violent in convenient comparison with others who are more (perhaps only overtly) fearful and violent than ourselves. We are interested, instead, in the possibility of fear and violence coming totally to an end. For the same reason, we are not interested in becoming a little less small-minded or a little less prone to addiction; or a little less depressed, greedy, corrupt, or confused. Because what matters is the possibility of a total and immediate solution -in oneself -to the problem of human suffering as a whole, one puts aside self protection in ideological pseudo-solutions, and it is in that very action that the real character and depth of the problem becomes totally apparent: We are, psychologically, what we suffer from and thus can hardly be the ones in charge of putting an end to this suffering; especially if so much of what ails us stems directly from our dysfunctional attempts to fix ourselves and our relationships.

To block the projection of wishful fantasies rehashed from previous experience and knowledge eliminates self-consciousness and conflict, and that is already a profound change opening up unprecedented space in the mind. Such a mind is no longer the individual/tribal mind, and only this immeasurably more sensitive and alert mind is capable of seeing and conclusively dealing with the immensely complex problem of suffering.

As we said at the beginning, there are no good or bad individuals or cultures and, most of all -as the persistence of our multiple problems widely demonstrates -there are no particular ideologies or methods capable of gradually moving anyone from being bad to being good. Goodness cannot co-exist with evil, and because it has no opposite there is no transition to or away from goodness. Because goodness does not exist in mental time, it can only be approached negatively. We can say that goodness is what comes into being when the conditioned self no longer has its separate being and its restless becoming riding on the parallel, good/evil, tracks of moralistic thought. (378)

You and I are not what we think we are; nor are we what others, in their persuasive praise or hurtful criticism, may have led us to believe we are. Like most everyone else, we are foolishly convinced of inhabiting a psychologically unique form existing in separation from everything else. Yet what would either one of us possibly be outside the context of the manifest and non-manifest Universe (material form and energetic formlessness)? What would we be outside the context provided by the experience of the species hardwired in each and every brain? And, finally, who would either one of us be without the particular cultural context that to the greatest extent defines who we have been, who we presently are, and who we might become?

The most common reaction to the pain or discomfort created by the particular strictures of any given cultural identity is to look for a new one. However, adopting what may at first appear to be a very different set of cultural identifications will not significantly change anything, because the problem of alienation and suffering does not lie in what one is, but rather in the fact that one is anything at all. To see this, to see that there is no point in struggling to defend or significantly change or improve oneself, dissolves the self's peculiar claim to a unique existence maintained through the everlasting pursuit of privilege through merit or grace. There is no longer ground, then, for intra-psychic and interpersonal conflict. And as the energy previously wasted in conflict gathers uncommitted, one's inextricable participation in the material world with its unfathomable roots in the non-manifest realm of nature becomes increasingly apparent, further dissolving the sense we have, (rather claustrophobic for some of us), of a personal existence protected by particular cultural moorings and sustained in motion by the attraction of some form of manifest destiny.

At this depth it is tempting to think, (still "think"), that the immaterial substrate of what little we see of the visible universe-(the morphogenetic field of energy underlying every-thing that having come into existence in time and space, is in the process of de-forming back into it) -will somehow manifest not just as the only proper realm of the human mind, but as Mind itself, the ultimate timeless and formless ground of all existence. But is this imperceptible and unthinkable ground an actuality, or merely another illusory mental carrot after which one would feel compelled to run, literally, for dear life?

As everywhere else, honesty must prevail here as well to determine beyond a shadow of a doubt whether or not the mind is still heavily constrained by what one has already seen and learned and, therefore, by what might be desired. Has the mind been actually emptied of its unnecessary psycho-cultural contents or is this reference to the ground of all being just another pie-in-the-sky creation of the same fearful and isolated mind that has forever desperately tried to escape psychological and social circumstances, (himself), it cannot bear?

If the alienated and suffering mind cannot think its way out of the problems it embodies and thus achieve some preconceived religious or materialistic Nirvana, is it all lost then? -Are we, by virtue of this insight into the barrenness of our psychological existence and action in the world, locked within ourselves in permanent exclusion from anything that would relieve the grief we engender and suffer? -Having given up all subterfuge and all fraudulent escape routes, is there a chance that something utterly beyond the puny reach of our conditioned minds may break through our defenses and directly change the physical and chemical programming of our brains?

The answer to this last and perhaps most pertinent of all questions, is obviously not discernible to thought. It is not a question that can be even rightfully posed by a mind/self still strained by its resistance to suffering and its desire for fulfillment and, therefore, permanently occupied with itself. A hope-less mind, a mind no longer capable of self-projection based on modified versions of previous experience is an empty, silent, mind. In this mind alone might rightfully nest the unanswerable question of whether there is or there is not an entirely different mode of human existence. (379)

Enlightenment as the complete abnegation of the self is not what anyone might think and declare it is. Naturally, authorities of every stripe abhor this assertion for their power and privilege depends on the fear and gullibility of followers begging for simplistic methods and clearly specified instructions to carry them out. The mediation of authority and method implies psychological time and, thus, the continuity of the self, while what is necessary is to instantly see oneself independently, completely and correctly; oneself as one actually is and not as the enlightened being oneself or anyone else might think one ought to become.

Whatever might be the result of external leadership and personal effort, you can be sure it is not enlightenment but, rather, double proof of sustained duality. First, in that it is "me", essence of non-enlightenment, who wants to be enlightened and, second, in that I expect this to happen in retribution for the time and effort considered necessary for my realization of some pre-conceived idea of what that enlightenment might be. How crazy does one have to be to believe that at the tail end a predetermined and gradual process there will still be an "I" -the one who knows he has now achieved enlightenment?

If enlightenment is the unconditioned, unselfconscious mind, then there can be no possible means to reach that end. The mind is either full of the particular memories and desires that constitute the self, or it is not. Let us consider then the possibility of a state of mind supremely interested in the possibility of enlightenment and, therefore, fully attentive to the fact and circumstances of its absence, but entirely free of any image or idea of what it might be. And that is enough. (380)

Why are we so prone to feeling hurt with the slightest of slights or disagreements? Why are we so willing to build material and psychological barriers around ourselves to prevent being hurt or annoyed by others pressing on with their own particular opinions, beliefs, attitudes, ambitions and peculiarities-their own barriers? Could all memory of previous hurt disappear? Could all the walls of psycho-cultural separation with all their fear, indifference and hostility come down?

The self is this defensive wall and it is built around a very small mental space. Our interiority is a place of needy isolation built on conscious and unconscious memory that mechanically assesses and reacts to actual experience with a selfish eye for the future. Needless to say, because all our perceptions, judgments, expectations, fears and desires are based on previous experience, they are always limited and limiting. They obscure and distort perception of what is actually occurring and, hence, alienate the perceiver and impede correct and complete action.

When one is first confronted with the fact that psychological experience and desire create self-isolation, inform perception and degrade action, a very common reaction goes something like this: "Well, even if this were so, what else could one be and do? -What could possibly substitute experience and knowledge as the bases for action?" The whole notion of questioning the self is seen by most people as a mortal threat, and rightly so, for it poses the possibility of a mode of being in the world devoid of a familiar self-conscious interiority moving in mental time from a subjectively remembered past and towards a future projected by this same past.

Only those who are relatively aware of the chaotic state of the world and of the painful confusion and uncertainty in their own minds and who are, therefore, profoundly discontent, seem willing to face and overcome this fear. They can see that because knowledge and desire can never solve the problem of suffering, the only possibility of freedom resides in the mind somehow suddenly going beyond self-centered thought without even an inkling of what could possibly take its place. The very inconsolable discontent of the mind fully aware of disorder and suffering is the realization that any act of self-projection merely guarantees the continued operation of a mental setup that is hopelessly defective. This awareness that is already something other than habitual thought, is then capable of intercepting-at every moment -any and all possible psychological action and projection based on self-serving memory. The simple realization of the reductive and distorting impact that basic sources of biographic identification such as gender, race, age, religion, class and nationality have on the perception of oneself, others, and the world as a whole is, then, the essence of natural and easy self-abnegation.

In dissolving the hard and restrictive boundaries of the self, the unreserved dissolution of allegiance to particular traditional components of the general content of memory, also reveals the totality of the fragmentation of humanity along the fault lines of opposing personal and cultural myopias, habits and unwise plans for the future. This insight also makes evident the immense amount of suffering generated, everywhere and throughout time, by the indifference or antagonism that typifies the interaction among different national, religious, political, cultural, professional, age, racial, ethnic and gender groups -all simultaneously identifying with particular knowledge and belief and striving for exclusive goals.

In shedding its most obvious sources of identification, the self may feel more vulnerable than usual, but only for as long as this fear is not perceived as yet another trick of mechanical psychological preservation. Then, there comes an instant in which the impersonal clarity that irrupts into the unattached mind is no longer blocked by anything, and it is then free to inquire into the unthinkable general context of manifest and non-manifest.

What is the self as we know it? Who am I? Who are you? Do we exist as anything other than the mental dregs of previous personal and cultural experience and of the experience of humanity as a whole? If all unnecessary cultural allegiances were to collapse, the psyche would still be crowded with all the circus of biographical memory as well as with the pre-personal memory of the species present in every brain for the simple reasons of belonging to it. Under the light of impersonal attention the personal minutiae would probably evaporate from its own intrinsic lack of weight. But the other, the heavy transpersonal or pre-personal sediment of consciousness, would remain as the common essence of what it is to be human. But, what would the movement of memory (thought) be without its biographical axis, tip and projection? Would the pre-personal ballast of human experience continue to act out once deprived of an ego center doing the heavy lifting of experiencing, learning, remembering, controlling and projecting?

Evidently, any theoretical answer to this question would, of necessity, be incorrect. A real answer to it could only emerge in a mind (or be the state of a mind) that is timeless, boundless and silent, because it has actually abandoned all cultural and personal means to preserve psychological being and becoming. (381)

Awareness of the depth and breadth of a shared material existence, itself held within the shore-less and bottomless ocean of lively and intelligent non-manifest existence, is totally other than the dangerous shallow waters of ideological dead ends like patriotism and doctrinal religiosity. It really does not take much to see that intelligence and love can only be present in minds not held captive by commitment to organizations and causes providing them with a particular sense of psychological identity and importance based on the exclusion or diminishment of others. Which is to say that in intelligence and love there is no need or time for any prolonged effort to become better or something else altogether. It only takes an instant to take a good look at the cosmos and oneself and see this. Is it clear now? (382)

I am what I think I am, therefore I do not exist as anything other than an appallingly limited set of autonomously moving images and ideas about myself, others and the world. Psychologically, in and by myself I am nothing actual and substantial.

Thoughts are memories from a past that no longer exists projecting a future that does not yet exist and that may never come to be as intended. A future that in any form it would take, intended or not, would still be nothing but a slight modification of, (and addition to), the past that desired or feared it. (383)

We all react to others on the basis of particular prejudice; a prejudice determined by accumulated experience and knowledge. This mental programming constantly reinforces our general predisposition to stick to particular groups in which we share with peers more or less the same political, religious, class, age, race and gender beliefs, values and goals. The relative cohesiveness of a group is generally indifferent, if not openly hostile, to other groups upholding the value of their own separate consensus. And yet, even within the sense of security granted by a group's ideological identity, the divisive nature of the individual psyche inevitably creates tensions and dissension as some always jockey for greater security, status and power than initially or habitually granted. If ambitious or disillusioned enough, rebels and dissidents may go beyond their attempt to change the tradition of their group, in order to adopt that of another or to create a separate group. And a new group will with time inevitably repeat the same old stunt of exclusive identification within its traditional ideological domain, and generate its own rules and regulations, heroes and leaders, rebels and dissidents.

Let us now for a minute consider a human being who, somehow able to see and understand this general context of ever-fragmenting fragmentation, has instantly abandoned the limitations and prejudices of his own particular group (or groups) and will never again consider joining or forming any other social unit of separation. -How would this person regard other people, and how would they regard her? -What does it mean to live, not isolated, but alone in the sense of being free of prejudice, fear and other sentiments of separation? -What action would stem from this particular frame of mind -a mind without frame, really? (384)

If I am moving (psychologically) in pursuit of any particular goal, I am incapable of seeing what is happening at every instant. Within the realm of the psyche and human interaction, sensitivity is systematically destroyed by the predominance and myopic linearity of self-serving motives and goals. (385)

The possibility of relationship with another person is destroyed the moment he or she is reduced to knowledge, because then one is no longer relating to a living, ever-changing person, but to a fixed image that only exists in a self-enclosed and self-serving mind. And in the process of distorting another and ossifying the distortion, one distorts and ossifies oneself as these images only serve to re-enforce and defend the rigidly idealized prejudice one holds about oneself.

We do not know what love, intelligence and sensitivity are but we have a fairly good sense of what they are not. They are not what we know, believe and desire. They are not particular loves co-existing with hate, prejudice, fixed knowledge about oneself and others. They are not self-enclosed images and ideas about "my" life, yesterday, today and tomorrow. (386)

Human sensory perception is limited and, consequently, the great edifice of ever expanding knowledge that is based on it, and that at every moment creates and re-creates our notion of reality, is also limited. Knowledge was limited in the past, is limited now, and will be forever limited in the future, for it can endlessly rectify and enhance itself with better and greater knowledge without ever reaching completion. Certainly without ever bridging the immeasurable distances stretching between itself and the essence of what it attempts to explain; between the knower and the known; and between the knowable and the unknowable. The question then is, might there be something to our lives and our minds other than the knowledge and belief that circumscribe and condition the brain?

Can the sensory limitations of the human organism and the multiple cognitive provincialisms built into the psyche ever come to the truth, to the whole? And, if not, is a direct connection between the unknowable truth and the human mind/brain, possible? And does the very posing of this question not pose yet another: -Is there a timeless and unconditioned universal mind, banned from the human psychic field by the raucous presence of alienated self-centeredness? (387)

What engenders history? Is it the particular power of certain individual men and women over all the rest? Is it the up swelling of the masses in certain directions? Or is it the manner in which a common psyche-a psyche shared by all-plays out its contradictory characteristics at every period of time?

The first two possibilities allow any particular individual to escape responsibility either through blame or through righteousness. The third puts the responsibility for everything squarely on the shoulders of each and every one of us.

The world is what we are; history is the reiterative and tragic out-picturing of the self-centered human psyche. -Seeing this, why should this psyche not continue to live in chronological time but without a trace of psychological time enfolded within itself. Why should the human mind, not just survive its de-conditioning, but enter through it the plenitude of life? (388)

Just as one act of cruelty engenders others like it in revenge, an act of generosity often inspires further kind gestures. Yet, since the incidence of kindness and generosity has never eliminated that of cruelty, it may be safe to say that they both belong to a mind fundamentally incapable of solving the personal, interpersonal and social problems it permanently generates. And if this is so, if we are incapable of effecting profound change of any kind, then all psychological comparison and subsequent ranking of people are off the table.

A deep enough look at the nature of the psyche and the social reality created by it reveals, indeed, that comparisons in this context are not only largely beside the point, but perversely functional in hiding from view the fact of a single differentially conditioned but equally insufficient and incompetent human mind.

The very fact that there is no perfectly "right" action capable of healing the self and saving the world, demands the possibility of an intra-psychic condition of passive emptiness -a non-assuming and non-striving mind-as the only possibility, not of further exploration, (which would imply the continuity of the same useless self), but of an entirely different -in fact, unknowable -mode of existence. (389)

Improbable as it is, most human beings seem content with believing in their existence as something quite independent from the air they breathe, the food and water that nourishes their bodies, and the language and culturally determined images and ideas permeating and terminally dulling their mental operation. This naiveté is killing us. (390)

There is a deeper reality to behold in the fact that everyone creates his own reality. There is no clear and profound seeing without a radical skepticism about one own perceptions, assumptions and beliefs. (391)

On top of our considerable and shared lack of vision, we humans have the audacity to value differentially what little we see. Thus, the self-righteous myopia of prejudice compounds the poverty of our perception. Add to this the distortions and fantasies brought about by faith and an escapist imagination driven by fear and greed, and you have a good sense of what the human condition is and why the suffering and sorrow that are inseparable from it, persist. (392)

In the solution of fundamental human problems, half measures will never work. Our mental and social suffering is the result of millennia of half-measures. Therefore, all that matters is a radical and irreversible rupture with the past and with any version of the future that might be imagined and constructed, today, by that same past. The ever present and, therefore, ever unprecedented attention that results from the movement of memory coming to an end is, itself, the only solution. It cannot be postponed. It must be now or never. (393)

Over the years I have endeavored to inspect many of the many fields of human endeavor with their nearly countless divisions and subdivisions. And I have come to see at the end that they are all essentially the same. They all have their histories, traditions, regulations and future plans. They all have heroes to revere and traitors to revile. In all of them elected or self-appointed authorities make sure that laggards go down the proper failure chutes, and eager-beavers ascend through the proper ladders to sit in reputable pedestals and receive stupendous rewards, even if their lateral vision and reach is scant. Generally proud of the independence from which their sense of identity and importance flows, the interaction between different realms of human endeavor is usually infrequent and not all that relevant.

You can find proof of this by looking at what, for some strange reason, is still called, the university. A modern university, which is in many ways an excellent scale model of human society as a whole, is made up of fairly autonomous educational factories in which promising and unsuspecting youngsters have their minds crammed with the acutely specialized knowledge and skills deemed necessary to spend the rest of their lives "making a living" in different realms of human endeavor. These schools function side by side but without much significant interaction amongst them and, most of all, without caring much about their students' ability to meet life as a whole and, therefore, wisely.

Universities, like the fragmented societies they feed with new personnel, care much more about specialized knowledge, money, power, particular cultural traditions and particular innovations, than they do about the possible emergence of what I will be naive enough to call a "good" human being: Someone who, being fully aware of the tragic division and suffering of humanity, is also prepared -and not just academically, but deeply -to change all that.

Beyond all our multiple religious, political and occupational divisions and antagonisms, do we humans have a common ground? Is there a mental place where we could all abide in harmony and peace? Does not the sacredness of life itself, our obvious common ground, demand that we abandon the mental garrisons and ghettoes to which we cling to preserve the suffering absurdity of our separate personal and tribal identities? (394)

The Truth

It can't be experienced

It can't be learned

It can't be purchased

It can't be received

It can't be given

I don't have it

I've never had it

I'll never have it...

The Truth. (395)