The Courage to Stand
Alone

conversations between Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and

U.G. Krishnamurti

anticopyright

[Published in paperback by Plover Press and distributed by Autonomedia
55 South Eleventh Street, Brooklyn, New York 11211-0568]

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Part II

I Cannot Create the Hunger In You

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Q: I don't know if what happened to me one day was what I think it is or not, I don't care. But I was really afraid of dying, and also of not being able to breathe any more. As soon as I feel something coming up like that, I am scared to death.

U.G.: Yes. That prevented the possibility of the physical body going through the process of actual physical dying. The body has to go through it, because every thought that everybody felt before you, every experience that everybody experienced before you, every feeling that everybody felt before you -- all that is part of your being.

So, you can't come into your own unless the whole thing is completely and totally flushed out, if I may use that word, out of your system. That is something which you cannot do, or make happen with any effort or volition of your own. So, when the time comes, you may not have asked for it. You will never ask for the end of you as you know yourself, as you experience yourself. Sometimes it does happen, you see. So the fear of something coming to an end, the fear of what you know as yourself and as you experience yourself, prevented the possibility of the whole thing snapping out there. If you were lucky enough that would have happened and the whole thing would have fallen into its natural rhythm which is discontinuous and disconnected.

You see that is the way thought functions. There is no continuity of thought. The only way it can maintain its continuity is through the constant demand for experiencing the same thing over and over and over again. So, what is there is the knowledge you have about yourself and about the world around you. The world around you is not quite different from the world you have created for yourself inside of you. What you are frightened of (not you, but that movement of thought), is the continuity coming to an end.

Q: When I was two years old I dreamt that I couldn't get air. So, I think that's an excuse.

U.G.: True, but it is not an easy thing you know to go through that. The whole of your energy, everything that is there is being drawn into something like a vacuum cleaner. There is a tremendous effort on your part to prevent the whole thing from being sucked into a vacuum. That's a very frightening situation. So the fear is the protective mechanism.

Q: I see.

U.G.: Physical fear is altogether different. It is very simple. It is there only for the survival of the living organism. [It operates] ... through your thinking and through the experiences you have built on the foundation of that physical fear (which is essential for survival) -- what you call a psychological fear, the fear of what you know coming to an end.

The body knows that it is immortal. I very deliberately use the word immortal because nothing there comes to an end. When what you call clinical death takes place, the body breaks itself into its constituent elements. That's all that happens. It may not reconstitute again and create the same body, which you think is yours, but when it breaks itself into its constituent elements, it provides the basis for the continuity of life. It may not be of any consolation to the individual who is dying, but this body becomes food for the millions and millions of bacteria. So, even assuming for a moment that you resort to cremation, as they do in some countries, wherever you dump the ashes, the carbon which is the end result of the burned body, provides the basis for some tiny little flower coming out of the earth. So, nothing here is lost.

When there is an actual physical danger, the danger of the extinction of your physical body (which you think is yours), then everything that it has as its resource gets thrown into that situation and the body tries to survive in that particular moment. Have you ever noticed that when there is a real physical danger your thinking mechanism is never there to help you? Never there. So you can plan ahead for every possible situation and be prepared to meet every kind of situation in your life, but actually when there is a physical danger, all your planning and all that you have thought about to be prepared to meet every kind of danger and every kind of situation is just not there. The body has to fall back on its own resources. If for some reason it cannot renew itself and survive in that particular situation, it goes merrily and gracefully. It knows that nothing is lost.

This living organism is not interested in its continuity in terms of years. This is functioning from moment to moment. The sensory perceptions function from moment to moment. There is no continuity in your physical seeing, there is no continuity in your physical hearing, there is no continuity in your smelling, there is no continuity when you eat something, there is no continuity in the sense of touch -- they are all disconnected and disjointed.

But thought in its interest to maintain itself and to continue without any interruption, demands these experiences all the time. That is the only way it can maintain its continuity. The body functions in a completely different way; and it is not interested in the activity of thought. The only thought that is necessary for this body is the thought that it has to use for the survival of the living organism.

Even if you do not feed this body, it is not concerned about that. It has certain resources which you have built up through years of eating. It falls back and lives on them, and when they are finished, it goes. So, for a day or two you will feel the hunger tantrums, at the same time that you usually eat, but the body is not really concerned whether you feed it or not.

At the same time, it is foolish and perverse not to feed the body, hoping that you will attain some spiritual goals. That's what they do in India, they put the body through all kinds of stresses and strains -- torture it -- because they feel that through this endurance they will be able to achieve whatever their spiritual goals may be.

There is nothing that you can do to make that happen through any will of yours, through any effort of yours, through any volition of yours. That is the reason why I always maintain that if this kind of a thing happens, it is not something mysterious. Thought falls into its natural rhythm of discontinuous and disconnected functioning. That's all, that's all that is there.

Thought will be in harmony with the sensory perceptions and the activity of the senses. There is no conflict there; there is no struggle there; there is no pain there. There is a harmonious relationship between the two [thought and the body]. Whenever there is a need for thought, it is always there to act. The action that this body is interested in is only the action that is essential for the survival of the living organism.

The body is not interested in any ideas you have about your religious or material goals. It is not at all interested. There is always a constant battle between these two things [thought and the body].

Thought is not something mysterious, it is what the culture has put in there, which is, of course, society. They are not different -- culture and society. Society is interested in its continuity and permanence. It is interested in the status quo. It is always maintaining that status quo. That is where thought is helpful for the society. Society says, "If you don't act that way, if you don't think that way, you will become anti-social, because all your actions will become thoughtless, impulsive actions." It is interested in channelling every thought of yours in that particular direction which maintains its status quo. That's why there is basically, essentially and fundamentally a conflict between these two [society and the individual]. Culture has been adopted and accepted as a means of survival, that's all.

It [culture] has a momentum of its own, totally unrelated to it [the survival of the body]. As long as you use that [culture], so long you are not an individual at all. You can become an individual only when you break away from the totality of that wisdom.

There's no such thing as your mind or my mind. Maybe there is such a thing as the "world mind" where all the cumulative knowledge and the experiences thereof are accumulated and passed on from generation to generation. We have to use that mind to function in this world sanely and intelligently. If we don't use it, as I was saying the other day, we will end up on the funny farm singing loony tunes and merry melodies. The society is interested only in fitting every individual into its framework and maintaining its continuity.

[U.G. sighs and says quietly, "I don't want to give a talk."]

I don't know if I have made myself clear. The reason why I am emphasizing the physical aspect is not with the idea of selling something, but to emphasize and express what you call enlightenment, liberation, moksha, mutation, transformation, in pure and simple physical and physiological terms. There is absolutely no religious content to it and no mystical overtones or undertones to the functioning of the body. But unfortunately for centuries they have interpreted the whole thing in religious terms and that has created misery for us all. The more you try to revive or push it through the backdoor, when there is no interest in the religious life, you are only adding more and more to the misery.

I am not interested in propagating this. This is not something which you can make happen, nor is it possible for me to create that hunger which is essential to understand anything. I am repeating this over and over again, but repetition has its own charm.

You are assuming that you are hungering for spiritual attainments and you are reaching out for your goals. Naturally, there are so many people in the market place -- all these saints, selling all kinds of shoddy goods. For whatever reason they are doing it, it's not our concern, but they are doing it. They say it is for the welfare of mankind and that they do it out of compassion for mankind and all that kind of thing. All that is bullshit anyway. What I am trying to say is that you are satisfied with the crumbs they throw at you. And they promise that one day they are going to deliver to you a full loaf of bread. That is just a promise. They cannot deliver the goods at all. They just don't have it. They can only cut it into pieces and distribute it to the people. Jesus did not materialize loaves and loaves of bread, but he just got whatever bread was there and divided it into small bits and distributed it to everybody there. Naturally, you want to attribute it to some miracle.

What I am saying is that the hunger has got to burn itself up. Every day I am saying the same thing but using different words, you see, putting these things in different ways. That's all that I can do. My vocabulary is very, very limited; so I have to use the [same] words again and again and emphasize the same thing all over again to point out that the hunger has to burn itself up.

There is no use feeding yourself with all kinds of junk food. There is no use waiting for something to happen to satisfy your hunger. There is no point in satisfying that hunger. The hunger has to burn itself up -- literally it has to burn itself out.

Even physical hunger has to burn itself out so that a physical death can take place. Actual dehydration of the body takes place. Thank God the physical body has certain things to protect itself when the physical dehydration takes place. I don't know if you have meditated for hours and hours: the whole body reaches a point where dehydration takes place. Then you have these life- savers there in your body -- the saliva -- there is a profuse saliva coming out to quench your thirst and save you in that particular situation when you push this body to do certain things, meditation, yoga, all kinds of things people do -- overdo these things.

There is one thing that I am emphasizing all the time: it is not because of what you do or what you do not do that this kind of a thing happens. And why it happens to one individual and not another -- there is no answer to that question. I assure you that it is not the man who has prepared himself, or purified himself for whatever reason to be ready to receive that kind of a thing. It is the other way around. It hits. But it hits at random. That is the way nature operates. Lightning hits you somewhere. It is not interested in whether it is hitting a tree that is blooming or if it has fruits and is helping the people by providing shade, etc. It just strikes at random. In exactly the same way it happens to a particular individual, and that happening is acausal. It has no cause.

There are so many things happening in nature which cannot be attributed to any particular cause. So, your interest in studying the lives or the biography of some of those people whom you think were enlightened, or godmen or some such thing, is to find a clue as to how it happened to them, so that you can use whatever technique they used and make the same thing happen to you. That is your interest. Those people are giving you some techniques, some system, some methods which don't work at all. They create the hope that somehow, through some miracle, one day it is going to happen to you. But it will never happen.

I have said my piece. And I have to repeat this again and come to it from ten different angles, depending upon the nature of the questions which you throw at me.

But, as I said yesterday, all questions are exactly the same. Because the questions spring from the answers you already have, the answers given by others are not really the answers. I am not giving any answers to you. If I am foolish enough to give you the answers you have to understand that this is the very answer which is destroying the possibility of that question disappearing. You have to take my word -- I don't care if you take my word or not -- that such questions never, never, never occur to me.

I have no questions of any kind except the questions I need to ask somebody, [like] "Where can I rent a car?" "What is the quickest way to go to Brussels?" "Which way to Rotterdam -- this road or that road?" That's all. For such questions, there are always people who can help you. But these other kinds of questions have no answers.

When it dawns on you that such questions have no answers, and that those questions spring from the answers you already have, that situation is the complete and total blasting of the answers that you have. That is something which you cannot make happen. It is not in your hands.

So, you think the situation is hopeless, but it is not hopeless. The hope is here. The hope is not there. You are waiting for something to happen tomorrow. Tomorrow NOTHING will happen.

Whatever has to happen, that has got to happen now. The possibility of that happening now is practically and well nigh impossible, because the instrument which you are using is the past. Unless the past comes to an end, there can't be any present. And that present moment is something which cannot be captured by you, cannot be experienced by you. Even assuming for a moment that the past has come to an end, you have no way of knowing that it has come to an end. Then there is no future for you at all. Maybe tomorrow you will be the boss of your company, or the school teacher will become the head of the institution, and the professor will become the dean -- that possibility is there, but you have to put in a lot of struggle and that takes time. You are applying the same technique to realize whatever you are interested in [spiritual goals], and so it [your mind] puts it out there as a goal in the future. It has produced tremendous results in this world. So, [you ask] how can that instrument not be the instrument to achieve your spiritual goals? You have tried, you have done everything possible -- even those [of you] who are burning with hunger to find it -- [but] it's impossible.

In India everybody has tried this -- you wouldn't believe it -- not one was lucky enough. Whenever such a thing has happened, it happened to those people who had given up completely and totally all their search. That is an absolute requisite for that kind of a thing. The whole movement has to slow down and come to a stop. But anything you do to make it stop is only adding momentum to it. That's really the crux of the problem.

What you are interested in doesn't exist. It's your own imagination, based upon the knowledge you have about those things. And so, there is nothing that you can do about it. You are chasing something that does not exist at all. I can say that until the cows return home -- I don't know when they return home here -- or till the kingdom come -- but that kingdom will never come. So, you keep on going, hoping that somehow you will find some way of achieving your goals. Your interest in attaining that for the purpose of solving your day to day problems is a far-fetched idea because that cannot be of any help to you to solve your problems. "If I had that enlightenment I would be able to solve all my problems."

You cannot have all that AND enlightenment. When that comes, it wipes out everything. You want all this and heaven too. Not a chance! That is something which cannot be made to happen through your effort or through the grace of anybody, through the help of even a god walking on the face of this earth claiming that he has specially descended from wherever (from whatever heavens) for your sake and for the sake of mankind -- that is just absolute gibberish. Nobody can help you. Help you to achieve what? That is the question, you see.

As long as your goal is there, these persons, their promises and their techniques will look very, very attractive to you. They go together. There is not anything you must do. Anyway, you are already doing [many things]. Can you be without doing anything? You can't be without doing anything. Unfortunately you are doing something, and that doing has got to come to an end. In order to bring that doing to an end, you are doing something else. That is really the crux of the problem. That's the situation in which you find yourself. That's all that I can say. I point out the absurdity of what you are doing.

As I said yesterday, what brings you here will certainly take you somewhere else. You have nothing to get here, you will not get anything here. Not that I want to keep anything for myself; you can take anything you want. I have nothing to give you. I am not anything that you are not. You think that I am something different. The thought that I am different from others never enters my head. Never. Whenever they ask questions I feel, "Why are these people asking these questions? How can I make them see?" I still have some trace of illusion. Maybe I can try. [But] even that "try" has no meaning to me. There's nothing that I can do about it.

There is nothing to get. Nothing to give and nothing to get. That is the situation. In the material world, yes. We have a lot of things. There is always somebody who can help you with the knowledge, with the money, with so many things in the world. But here in this field there is nothing to give and nothing to get. As long as you want, you can be certain you ain't got a chance. You see, wanting implies that you are going to set your thinking in motion to achieve your goal. It is not a question of achieving your goal, but it is a question of this movement coming to an end here. The only thing that you can do is to set in motion this movement of thought in the direction of achieving that. How are you going to achieve this impossible task?

Wanting and thinking -- they always go together. I am not for a moment suggesting that you should suppress all your wants, or free yourself from all your wants, and control all your wants. Not at all. That's the religious game. If you want anything, the one thing that you will do is to set in motion the movement of thought to achieve your goal.

Material goals, yes, but even there it's not so easy. It is such a competitive world. Not much is left for us to share. Not enough to go around. The talk of sharing with somebody is poppycock to me. There is nothing to be shared here. This is not an experience. Even assuming for a moment that this is an experience, even then it is so difficult to share with somebody else unless the other individual has some reference point within the framework of his experiencing structure. So, then you see the whole business becomes a sort of meaningless ritual -- sitting and discussing these matters. That's all. It's not so easy for you to give up. Not at all.

Q: This thing happened to me when I didn't know anything about anything.

U.G.: Nothing, you see, it just happened.

Q: But I just was sitting down on the floor and it happened. I was scared to death about it.

U.G.: That's all right. Now you want that to happen again. No? Thank god. Your spiritual search ends that way. There is no other way. It is not that I am trying to frighten you, but how do you expect that to happen? That is how all those people who have taken drugs experience all kinds of things. Those who have not heard of anything of this kind certainly experience so many things and that puts them on this merry-go-round. India has any number of techniques, systems, and methods to give you every kind of experience you want. That is why they are doing a tremendously roaring business.

Q: But it didn't even come in my head as it did with meditation, or with this or with that, because it was something different.

U.G.: It happened -- such things happen. Some extraordinary experiences. People experience without knowing, without asking for that, without doing any such things. This was a frightening experience for you -- but you want to make other spiritual experiences happen again and again and again. Anything you make happen has no meaning at all. Then you will want more and more of those things. And then when you succeed in having more and more of those things, you will demand for some kind of a permanent situation, permanent happiness, permanent bliss. Yet there is no such thing as permanence at all. No. Probably it would have resulted in bliss, who knows.

Q: Are you saying then that we are what we are already?

U.G.: You don't want to accept that fact, but you want to know what you are. That's the problem. You have no way of knowing it at all. Knowing what is there is impossible. That is always related to what you want to be. What you see here is the opposite of what you would like to be, what you want to be, what you ought to be, what you should be. What do you see here? You want to be happy, so you are unhappy. Wanting to be happy creates the unhappiness. What you see here is the opposite of your goal of becoming happy, of wanting to be happy. Wanting to have pleasure all the time creates the pain here. So, wanting and thinking, they always go together. They are not separate. Anything you want creates pain, because you begin to think. Wanting and thinking. If you don't want a thing in this world, there is no thinking. That does not mean thoughts are not there.

Whether you want to achieve material goals or spiritual goals, it really doesn't matter. I am not saying anything against wanting. Want means the fulfillment of the want or non-fulfillment of the want is possible only through thinking.

So, the thinking has really created the problem for you. What I am suggesting is that all the problems we have cannot be solved on psychological and ethical levels. Man has tried for centuries to solve them, but he has failed. What keeps him going is the hope that one day, by doing more and more of the same, he will achieve.

But the body, as I was saying, has a way of resolving these problems, because, you see, it cannot take them. The sensitivity of the sensory perceptions is destroyed by whatever you are doing to free yourself from whatever you want to be free from. It is destroying the sensitivity of the nervous system here.

The nervous system has to be very alert for the survival of this living organism. It has to be very sensitive. Your sensory perceptions have to be very sensitive. Instead of allowing them to be sensitive, you have invented what is called the "sensitivity" of your feelings, the sensitivity of your mind, the sensitivity towards every living thing around you, sensitivity to the feelings of everybody that is there. And this has created a neurological problem.

So all the problems are neurological. Not psychological and not ethical. That's the problem of the society.

Society is interested in the status quo, it doesn't want to change. The only way it can maintain the status quo or the continuity is through this demand, the demand that everybody should fit into this structure. Whereas every individual is unique, physically speaking.

Nature is creating something unique all the time. It is not interested in a perfect man; it is not interested in a religious man.

We have placed before man the goal or the ideal of a perfect man, a truly religious man. So anything you do to reach that goal of perfection is destroying the sensitivity of this body. It is creating violence here. It [the body] is not interested in that.

Whatever the dead man experiences -- self-awareness, self- consciousness -- he has sown the seeds of the total destruction of man. All those religions have come out of that divisive consciousness in man. All the teachings of those teachers will inevitably destroy mankind. There is no point in reviving all those things and starting revivalistic movements. That is dead, finished.

Anything that is born out of this division in your consciousness is destructive, is violence. It is so because it is trying to protect not this living organism, not life, but the continuity of thought. And through that it can maintain the status quo of your culture, or whatever you want to call it, the society. The problems are neurological. If you give a chance to the body it will handle all those problems. But if you try to solve them on a psychological level or on an ethical level, you are not going to succeed.

Q: What do you mean by "giving a chance to the body?"

UG: Where is anger? In your stomach you feel it, you see. In the base here. If you beat your husband or wife or neighbor, or beat the pillows, you are not going to solve the problem. It is already absorbed. You are only enriching these therapists who are making money out of that. You hit your wife, husband, anybody you want, and that's all that you can do, nothing else. But still it is the function of the body to handle that and absorb it. It is in here. It is something real there for the body. It doesn't want this anger, because it is destroying the sensitivity of the nervous system. So, it is absorbing the whole thing, and you don't have to do a thing.

Any energy that you create through this thinking is destructive for this body. That energy cannot be separated from life here. It is one continuous movement. So, all the energies you experience as a result of playing with all those things are not of any interest to the smooth functioning of this living organism. They are disturbing the harmonious functioning of this body -- a very, very peaceful thing.

The peace there is not this inane dead silence you experience. It's like a volcano erupting all the time. That is the silence, that is peace. The blood is flowing through your veins like a river. If you tried to magnify the sound of the flow of your blood you will be surprised -- it's like the roar of the ocean. If you put yourself in a sound proof room you will not survive even for five minutes. You will go crazy, because you can't bear the noises that are there in you. The sound of the beat of your heart is something which you cannot take. You love to surround yourself with all these sounds and then you create some funny experience called the "experience of the silent mind," which is ridiculous. Absurd. That is the silence that is there -- the roar -- the roar of an ocean. Like the roaring of the flow of blood.

That is all that it [the body] is interested in, not your state of mind nor the experience of the silent mind. It's not interested in your practice of virtues nor in the practice of your silences. The body has no interest in your moral dilemma or whatever you want to call it.

It's not interested in your virtues or vices. As long as you practice virtues, so long you will remain a man of vice. They go together. If you are lucky enough to be free from this pursuit of virtue, as a goal, along with it the vice also goes out of your system. You will not remain a man of vice. You will remain a man of violence as long as you follow some idea of becoming a non-violent, kind, soft, gentle person. A kind man, a man who is practicing kindness, a man who is practicing virtues is really a menace. Not the [so-called] violent man.

UG: Somewhere along the line culture has put the whole thing on the wrong track by placing before man the ideal of a perfect man, the ideal of a truly religious man. The religious experience is born out of this division in his consciousness, which is not its nature.

Luckily animals don't have this division in their consciousness, except the division that is essential for their survival. Man is worse than an animal. He has no doubt succeeded in putting man on the moon. Probably he will put men on every planet, but that achievement is of no interest to this body. That achievement is moving in the direction of progressively destroying everything, because anything that is born out of thought is destructive. Not only destructive to the body, but destructive, progressively destructive, moving in the direction of destroying everything that man has built for himself.

Q: Anything is destructive if you are hungry.

U.G.: Your body is not interested in your hunger after one day. You will be surprised if you don't feed the body. Feeding your body is your own problem. Maybe for one or two days you will feel the hunger tantrums.

Q: Well if you stop eating you'll eventually die.

U.G.: So what. The body doesn't die. It changes its form, shape, breaks itself into its constituent elements. It is not interested in that. For the body there is no death. For your thinking there is a death, because it does not want to come to an end. For thought there is a death. So, because it does not want to face that situation, it has created the life after, the lives to come. But this body is immortal in its nature, because it is part of life.

Q: Even when the body is under the ground and disintegrating?

U.G.: So what? There are so many other forms of life surviving on that body. It is of no consolation to you, but all those germs will have a heyday on your body. A feast day. A big feast. If you leave the body there in the streets, you will be surprised. They [the germs] will all have a field day, a feast. You will be doing great a service. Not for mankind, but for organisms of different kinds.

Q: It is also not advisable to be a vegetarian?

U.G.: Ah, well. (He sighs wearily.)

Q: Here we go again.

U.G.: Vegetarianism for what? For some spiritual goals? One form of life lives off another. That's a fact, whether you like it or not. If tigers practiced vegetarianism -- he [the questioner] says his cat is a vegetarian cat, it doesn't kill a fly. Because of its association with vegetarians it has become vegetarian. For health reasons maybe one should. I don't know, I don't see any adequate reason why one should be a vegetarian. Your body is not going to be any more pure than the meat eating body. You go to India, [you observe that] those that have been vegetarians, they are not kind, they are not peaceful. So it has nothing to do [with spirituality] -- what you put in there is not really the problem.

Q: What about aggression which is caused by eating meat?

U.G.: Vegetarians are more aggressive than the meat eaters. You will be surprised. Read the history of India -- [it is full of] bloodshed, massacres, and assassinations -- [all] in the name of religion.

Buddhism has not been as violent in some areas, but it was the most violent religion when it spread to Japan. Those temples maintained armies and provided armies to fight battles in Japan. That's history, not my personal opinion.

That's why I am emphasizing that the teachers and the teachings are responsible for this mess in this world. All those messiahs have created nothing but a mess in this world. And the politicians are the inheritors of that culture. There is no use blaming them and calling them corrupt. They [the spiritual teachers] were corrupted. The man who taught love was corrupt because he created a division in his consciousness. The man who spoke of "Love thy neighbor as thyself" was responsible for this horror in the world today. Don't exonerate those teachers. Their teachings have created nothing but a mess in this world, progressively moving in the direction of destroying not only man, but every species [of living beings] on this planet today.

It came out of that [ideal of love]. It's not the scientists and politicians that are responsible. They have this power in their hands, and they are going to use it -- there are enough lunatics in this world who will press the button. But it [violence] originated where?

Religion is not going to save man, neither atheism, nor communism, nor any of those systems. You can't put them on a pedestal and say that they should be exonerated. Not only the teachings but the teachers themselves have sown the seeds of this violence that we have in this world. The man who talked of love is responsible, because love and hate go together. So how can you exonerate them. Don't blame the followers, the followers have come out of that teaching. That's history, not my personal opinion. You know the history of Europe. The inquisitions. "In the name of Jesus." Why do you want to revive that religion? What for? "Back to Christianity," is the slogan now everywhere. I am not condemning any particular thing. All are responsible for that.

Talk of love is one of the most absurd things. There must be two [for there to be love]. [But] wherever there is a division there is this destruction. Kindness needs two -- you are kind to somebody, or you are kind to yourself. There is a division there in your consciousness. Anything that is born out of that division is a protective mechanism, and in the long run it is destructive.

Thought is trying to protect itself. That is why it is interested in continuity. The body is not interested in protecting itself. Whatever intelligence is necessary for the survival of the body is already there. The jungle we have created through our organization needs that intellect, the intellect that we have acquired through our studies, through our culture, through the whole lot. It has a parallel existence of its own and it is interested in a different kind of survival, because there is no end to the life here. This is only an expression of life. If you and I go, life [still] goes on. Those lights go off, but the electricity continues. Something else will come. It is not interested in man. Man, unfortunately, has such destructive powers, which have originated from the experience of man (his self-awareness).

So the talk of wanting to look at himself, to understand himself, is a divisive movement in man, born out of that self-awareness. That's the foundation upon which the whole psychological structure is built.

Q: But how can we get rid of that divisive thinking?

U.G.: You can't. It's not in your hands. Anything you do adds momentum to that. So do you want that to come to an end? No.

Q: I once felt an enormous unity . . . .

U.G.: There is a disturbance in the metabolism of the body brought about through drugs or through meditation or through any of those systems and techniques man has invented. You can experience the oneness of life, and unity of life.

Look at India, which preaches the unity of life and the oneness of life, there you have an example. They are all great metaphysicians, philosophers, everlastingly discussing these things. But it doesn't operate in the lives of the people.

Q: The understanding that there is that dualism, the coming of that understanding. . . .

U.G.: Understanding is dualism. If that division is not there, there is nothing to understand. So the instrument which you are using to understand something is the only instrument you have. There is no other instrument. You can talk of intuition, you can talk of a thousand other things. They are all sensitized thoughts. Intuition is nothing but a sensitized thought -- but still it is a thought.

So, anything you understand through the help of that instrument has not helped you to understand anything. That is not the instrument, and there is no other instrument. If that is the case, is there anything to understand? Your understanding of anything is only for the purpose of changing what is there. Whatever is there, you want to change. You want to bring about a change in the structure of your thinking. So, you begin to think differently, and you begin to experience differently. But basically there is no change there.

So, your wanting to understand anything is only for the purpose of bringing about a change there, and at the same time you do not want the change. That has created the neurotic situation in man, wanting two things, change and no change. That is the conflict that is there all the time.

Q: Possibly we have to see that conflict.

U.G.: The seeing itself is a divisive movement. There are two things. You know, the Indians are past masters in this game -- the seer and the seen, the observer and the observed. They are great experts in this kind of a game. But what is there to see? Who is it that is seeing? Are there two things? What do you do when you see? You are back again to the same thought.

It is absurd to ask yourself the question "Who am I?" That has become the basic teaching of Ramana Maharshi. "Who am I?" Why do you ask that question? That means there is some other I there you want to know. That question to me has no meaning at all. The very fact that you ask that question implies that there are two things. The "I" you know, and there is another "I" the nature of which you do not know. The question "Who am I" implies that there is some other I, the nature of which you really do not know and you want to know. I don't know if I make myself clear. Do you know anything about yourself, first of all? What do you know? Tell me. Hm?

Q: What he knows.

U.G.: What he has been told: where he lives, what his name is; how much money he is drawing every month, his telephone number, people he has met, how many experiences he has gathered during the course of his 30 years, and all the books he has read. That's all that he can tell you. He can repeat mechanically, all the information he has gathered and all the experiences he has collected. And so that is all that is there. Why are you dissatisfied with it, and why are you searching for something other than that? Can you tell me something about yourself other than the information that you gathered, what you know?

Q: What I found there is not the answer. Otherwise the questions would not persist.

U.G.: What did you find there?

Q: Just knowledge.

U.G.: So that question, that idiotic question, is born out of the knowledge you already have. It is the knowledge that is there that has thrown out [asked] this question, "Who am I?" So you want to know, and through that knowing the knowledge you have gathers momentum. You are adding more and more and more [to the knowledge]. If there is anything to be known there, all you know should comes to an end. So, by this pursuit or the demand to get an answer for that question you are adding more and more to the knowledge.

So, don't you see the absurdity of the question, "Who am I?" It doesn't matter who suggested that, who threw that question at you, who recommended that question. There is nothing there to know. What is there is all of what you know. When that is not there, there is no need for you to know anything, and there is no way of knowing anything about what is there.

Q: But "Who am I" is not really a question. "Who am I" is a pointer.

U.G.: Yes. Where does the point lead you? All right, if it is a pointer, what do you do? You stay put there and instead of following that, you suck your finger. What do you do with that pointer?

Q: The pointer points to where there is nothing to be pointed. It takes you to where these are all nonsensical words.

U.G.: That's all right, the question itself is a nonsensical question.

Q: Yes. But it is only so if you use it as a question.

U.G.: All right. Even if you use it as a pointer, the very direction is wrong.

Q: It's not even a pointer.

U.G.: All right, what is it then?

Q: It shows you that you are. It shows you that I am. "I am" is the basis.

U.G.: What I am is the knowledge I have about myself.

Q: "I am" is what I am.

U.G.: But what does it mean, what I am?

Q: It doesn't mean anything . . . .

U.G.: Yes.

Q: "I am" is not knowledge.

U.G.: There is nothing there, no existence there independent of the question.

Q: So it is the end of knowledge.

U.G.: So the question should end. Because the question itself -- listen -- the question itself is born out of the answer. Otherwise, there is no place for any question of any kind. All questions are born out of the answers you already have. So, it is idiotic even to ask a question for which you already have an answer. Because there can't be any question without an answer, the question implies that there is something about that "I" you do not know, but want to know -- something other than the "I" that is already there; it implies that there is another "I" there.

Q: On a certain level, yes. You can also say if you ask a question it means that you know the answer.

U.G.: That's right. There's no question at all. There can't be any question without knowledge. All questions are born out of the answers you already have. So, that is the reason why a question of that kind, whether it is posed by yourself or somebody else, does not want an answer. The answer for any question is the end of the question. The end of the question means the end of the answer that you already have. Not only your answer, but the answers that have been accumulating for centuries must not be there. The demand for an answer to that question, on any level (there is only one level, there are no other levels), implies that the questioner does not want the knowledge to come to an end.

Q: That's true. But of course in the process of this. . . .

U.G.: It has to happen now, not in the end, because there is no time. The instrument which you are using, which is this process of knowledge, does not want to come to an end. That is why it is posing the question to itself, knowing very well that the question is bound to carry on until it gets an answer.

So, this knowledge, the instrument which you are using, does not know, and cannot conceive of, the possibility of anything happening except in time, because it's born in time and it functions in time. Although it projects a state of timelessness, it is not interested in accepting the fact that nothing can happen except in the field of time. The question implies that there is a demand for an answer and that the answer can come only in time. And during that time this knowledge has a chance of surviving.

Q: It's true what you say. However, the answer to the question "Who am I" does not fall in time.

U.G.: Yes. But anything that is born . . . .

Q: It is only a device. I agree with you.

U.G.: That is true. Anything that is born in the field of time is time. The question is time.

Q: The question is not born in time.

U.G.: Where does it come from?

Q: It comes from "I am."

U.G.: That assumption itself is time -- that "I am". Of course, it is an assumption -- that there is something there other than this knowledge. What is there is only the knowledge.

Q: If, as you say, you ask questions born out of the answers you already have, do you mean that the "answers that you already have" is the same as perhaps what psychology means by the "mind"?

U.G.: I don't know . . . To me there is no mind at all. The mind is the totality (it's not that I am giving a peculiar definition of mind), the totality of your experiences and the totality of your thoughts. As I was saying yesterday, there are no thoughts which you can call your own. There is no experience which you can call your own. Without knowledge you cannot have any experience. I don't know if I make myself clear. Every time you experience, through the help of this experience the knowledge is strengthened and fortified. This is a vicious circle. It goes on and on and on. The knowledge gives you experiences and the experiences fortify the knowledge you have.

The questions which you are asking are very frivolous questions, because the questions are born out of the knowledge. If there is any answer to that question, it is not necessarily your answer. All answers are the answers that have been accumulating through centuries. There is a totality of the knowledge that has been accumulating. Accumulated knowledge, accumulated experiences are there. You are using them to communicate to yourself and to communicate to others. So, there is no such thing as your mind and my mind. But there is a mind which is the totality of all the thoughts and experiences of all that has existed up to this point.

So, any answer that anybody gives for that question should put an end to that question. The fact is that the answers given by others, the answers that you have manufactured for yourself, and the answers given by these wise men we have in the market place today and those who existed in the past, are not really the answers. Any answer I give to your question cannot be the answer for that question, because the answer should put an end to the question. If the question is shattered there, along with it all the knowledge that is responsible for that question has also got to go. The questioner is not interested in any answer, because the answer has to blow up the whole thing, not only what little you have known in these 30 or 40 years, but all that has accumulated up to that point, everything that every man thought and felt and experienced before, up to the point where the question is thrown out. I don't think I make myself clear. But anyway, you see, the answer, if there is any answer, should wipe out the whole thing.

Q: I was thinking of the despair that occurs when the vacuum is on the brink of becoming a reality, or seemingly near.

U.G.: Yes, but, assuming for a moment that there is despair there (you say you are in great despair), have you given up trying to free yourself from despair? You call it despair in the same way you are using the word vacuum or emptiness. But there is no despair there.

The existentialist philosophers have built up a tremendous philosophical structure on what they call despair, religious people call it the divine despair -- these are all meaningless phrases.

You have never really come to grips with what you call despair, because there is only a movement in the direction of wanting somehow to free yourself from the situation which you call despair. So you don't let that despair act. That is the action that I am talking about. You are still thinking about that, you know. Where is that despair? It is not in the area of your thinking. It should be here in the framework of your body. Where is that despair you are talking about. As long as you are trying to run away, move away from the despair, there is no despair there.

So, wanting to be free from despair is all that you are interested in. Because you think, it is not choking you, it is not killing you. The despair should destroy this movement for freeing yourself from this. You are not giving the despair a chance to act. You are interested in finding out a solution, a way out of this impasse. That's all that is there. And you give it a name and call it "despair." You are not in despair. You don't act like a person in despair. You just talk about despair, you talk about vacuum, you talk about emptiness. It's not really emptiness. If there is emptiness, that's the action of life.

Next you will ask me "What is life?" If I define life, we are lost. It's one definition against life. What I mean by life is that which makes it possible for the whole of your being to respond. Not react, [but] respond. Respond to the stimuli around you. If there is no life there you become a corpse. A dead corpse is still responding, but in a different way. That is why you call this life. Life, in other words, is nothing but the pulse and the beat and the breath of life. That's also a definition. There is a pulse, there is breathing, there is a throb of life. It is throbbing all over, everywhere, every cell in your body is throbbing. That's all that is life. But we are not really talking about that life, because nobody can say anything about that life, except to give definitions. You can call it life-force, this, that and the other, but living implies all the other problems that the so-called life creates.

So, there is a demand for "how." How to live. That is really the problem. The problem of all problems is how to live. And for centuries we have been brainwashed to believe that "This is how you should live." If that is not satisfactory, you find another way and call that, "How to live." And it goes on and on and on and on. All that is nonsense, because it has not given you peace. There is a constant battle going on inside of you, a war going on inside of you. As long as there is a war inside of you, there isn't going to be a peaceful world at all. Even assuming for a moment that war has come to an end, and you are at peace with yourself, that will not change anything, because, you see, a man who is at peace with himself will be a threat to his neighbor. So, there is a danger that he will liquidate you.

The important problem is, can you bring this war to an end within yourself. Is there any way? All the solutions that you have, are the ones that are responsible for this battle -- that is, "How to live." The "how" has to go. Then you ask me, "How can that `how' go?" "Can you help me?"

First of all, you are not sure of that. You have not even come to that point of despair. Only then can you deal with the despair. As long as you are running in the direction of wanting to be free from despair, it is just not possible for you to handle that despair.

There may be a hundred and fifty solutions, but you can't try all of them. Obviously all that you have tried has failed, and so you say you are in despair. That despair will act.

What is the action? That action can never be within the framework of your thinking. Any action that is within the framework or the product of your thinking will inevitably create despair. It may give you a reason or a certain experience for a while, but you always demand more and more and more of the same. This keeps the whole thing going, and that gives you hope.

The hope is here, and you say the situation is hopeless. The situation is not hopeless. The hope is here now because, as you say, the despair is there. And so you hope to resolve that, to solve that, to handle that, to come to grips with it, and find out if there is any way of freeing yourself from the despair. Instead of letting that despair act, you are running away from it and still trying to find out if there is any way that you can be free from the despair.

That applies to all the situations in life. Either you are stuck with your frustration, which is despair, or something else. What do you want to do in such a situation? You have to find the solution for yourself. If I give you another solution it will be like the hundreds of solutions that you already have. You will add this to your list of solutions. This is not going to help you solve your problem. It makes it more difficult. Now you have one more solution. If there is any solution, that solution has to come from that which you are trying to be free from, and not from any outside agency. That action is something extraordinary.

If once that problem of despair is solved, all the others are solved, because every other problem is a variation of the same. So you never want to solve the problem. You are more interested in solutions. That's why I am repeating the same thing over and over in ten different ways. (My vocabulary is limited so I have to use the same words. You can increase your vocabulary and find new phrases, but it doesn't serve any purpose.)

The instrument which you are using, which is thinking, can never accept the fact that these problems can be solved here and now, because it has taken so much time for you to be what you are. You are living in a world of your experiences and it has taken so many years for you to be what you are. That is the only instrument you have. You have no other way of handling these problems. That cannot conceive of the possibility of finding out the solution here and now. It is always interested in pushing it further and further and further away. There is always tomorrow.

There is always this time. Because this [your thinking] functions in the field of time, it cannot conceive of the possibility of anything else happening, of any action other than the action in the field of time. This is not metaphysics that I am discussing.

The solution, if there is any, has to be here and now. If you are hungry, hunger must be satisfied. If the hunger cannot be satisfied, it will burn you up. This is a frightening situation for you, so you are satisfied with the crumbs which are the solutions that people throw at you. You are waiting for somebody to give you a full loaf of bread or some miracle man to multiply the loaves of bread.

But that's not going to happen. There is no real hunger there. You don't want to solve this problem, because then you will find yourself without a problem. So, that which gives you strength and energy is trying to solve your problem. When once you achieve your goal, what you have there is frustration.

Even in the sex act, which is so powerful in the life of an individual, it is the preparation, it is the build-up, it is the tension that is the attractive part of it. When once the tension is built up there, this body is demanding release from the tension which you call pleasure -- release. It wants to be released from the tension which you have built up. It wants a release, which you call the orgasm, or whatever you want to call it. So there is a tremendous relief.

So, what is there now? A vacuum. So in exactly the same way, all actions are functioning in the same field. You build up, build up, build up tension, and then you see it [the tension] demands a release.

The other day I was reading an article in Playboy. "How to Keep The Orgasm Going for Half an Hour." My God! They are doing experiments. You know they have succeeded. There was one doctor in California who has succeeded in it through artificial means, with the help of gadgets. They have established that a woman can have an orgasm for half an hour. All the other specialists say it's only for a few seconds. It is the demand for the extension of that agony which you call pleasure -- it is not pleasure, it's release of tension.

You work hard to achieve your goal, and once you achieve the goal you are exhausted, you are finished, the charm is lost for you. Working for it, building up all these tensions -- that is all that you are interested in. When once you are there, it's finished for you. You have lost it. So you start all over again.

You don't want to be without any problems. You are yourself the problem. If you don't have any problems, you create problems. The end of the problem is the end of you. So these problems will remain until the end. You go, then the problems go. Seventy, eighty, ninety, a hundred years -- it depends upon how long you are going to live -- [so long] the hope remains. It's not a pessimistic situation, it is a realistic situation. I am not giving you any solutions. Please, for goodness sake, look at your problem, if you can. You can't separate yourself from the problem. The problem is created by the opposite of it.

Why do you feel unhappy, first of all? Why do feel this feeling of unkindness in you? Because of the goal. It is that which creates the opposite. You can see for yourself, I don't have to tell you. You are always thinking, "I should be like that, I ought to be that, I must be like that, and I am not that." It is that thought that has created the opposite of it. If that is gone, this also is gone. This man cannot be a career man. This man cannot be a sensitive man, not sensitive within the framework of your cultural mores.

But this is a different kind of sensitivity. As long as you are pursuing those ideals that the society or the culture has placed before you, you will remain the opposite of it. And you hope that one day, through some miracle or through the help of somebody, some god, some guru, you will be able to resolve the problem -- NOT A CHANCE! [U.G. shouts dramatically.]

I cannot create the hunger in you. How can I create the hunger in you? If you have the hunger, you will look around and you will find that whatever is offered to you is not satisfying. If you are satisfied with the crumbs, all right. That's what the gurus are doing, throwing some crumbs at you, like [they do to] the dog on a leash. Humans are like animals, no different. If we accept the fact that we are not different, then there is a better chance that we will act as humans.

Q: When will they act as humans?

U.G.: When man ceases to pursue the goal of a perfect man.

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