On U.G. No Oasis Situated Yonder Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment

On U.G.

No Oasis Situated Yonder Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment Jed McKenna

People call me an enlightened man. I detest that term. They can't find any other word to describe the way I am functioning. At the same time, I point out that there is no such thing as enlightenment at all. I say that because all my life I've searched and wanted to be an enlightened man, and I discovered that there is no such thing as enlightenment at all, and so the question whether a particular person is enlightened or not doesn't arise. I don't give a hoot for the sixth-century-BC Buddha, let alone all the other claimants we have in our midst. They are a bunch of exploiters, thriving on the gullibility of the people. There is no power outside of man. Man has created God out of fear. So the problem is fear and not God.

I discovered for myself and by myself that there is no self to realize-that's the realization I am talking about. It comes as a shattering blow. It hits you like a thunderbolt. You have invested everything in one basket, self-realization, and, in the end, suddenly you discover that there is no self to discover, no self to realize-and you say to yourself, "What the hell have I been doing all of my life?!" That blasts you.

Your constant utilization of thought to give continuity to your separate self is 'you'. There is nothing there inside you other than that.

You see, the search takes you away from yourself-it is in the opposite direction-it has absolutely no relation.

My life story goes up to a point, and then it stops-there is no more biography after that.

Desirelessness, non-greed, non-anger-those things have no meaning to me; they are false, and they are not only false, they are falsifying me. I'm finished with the whole business.

The holy men are all phonies-they are telling me only what is there in the books. That I can read-'Do the same again and again'-that I don't want. Experiences I don't want. They are trying to share an experience with me. I'm not interested in experience. As far as experience goes, for me there is no difference between the religious experience and the sex experience or any other experience; the religious experience is like any other experience. I am not interested in experiencing Brahman; I am not interested in experiencing reality; I am not interested in experiencing truth. They might help others but they cannot help me. I'm not interested in doing more of the same; what I have done is enough.

Who am I to give it to you? You have what I have. We are all at 25 Sannidhi Street, and you are asking me, "Where is 25 Sannidhi Street?" I say you are there. Not that I know I am there.

The abstractions that you are throwing at me, I am not interested in. Is there anything behind the abstractions?

I had arrived at a point where I said to myself, "Buddha deluded himself and deluded others. All those teachers and saviors of mankind were damned fools-they fooled themselves-so I'm not interested in this kind of thing anymore," so it went out of my system completely.

I am not trying to sell anything here. It is impossible for you to simulate this. This is a thing that has happened outside the field, the area, in which I expected, dreamed and wanted change, so I don't call this a 'change'. I really don't know what has happened to me. What I am telling you is the way I am functioning. There seems to be some difference between the way you are functioning and the way I am functioning, but basically there can't be any difference. How can there be any difference between you and me? There can't be; but from the way we are trying to express ourselves, there seems to be. I have the feeling that there is some difference, and what that difference is is all that I am trying to understand. So, this is the way I am functioning.

You see, my difficulty with the people who come to see me is this: they don't seem to be able to understand the way I am functioning, and I don't seem to be able to understand the way they are functioning. How can we carry on a dialogue? Both of us have to stop. How can there be a dialogue between us both?

Your natural state has no relationship whatsoever with the religious states of bliss, beautitude and ecstasy; they lie within the field of experience. Those who have led man on his search for religiousness throughout the centuries have perhaps experienced those religious states. So can you. They are thought-induced states of being, and as they come, so do they go. Krishna Consciousness, Buddha Consciousness, Christ Consciousness, or what have you, are all trips in the wrong direction; they are all within the field of time. The timeless can never be experienced, can never be grasped, contained, much less given expression to, by any man. That beaten track will lead you nowhere. There is no oasis situated yonder; you are stuck with the mirage.

You see, people usually imagine that so-called enlightenment, self-realization, God-realization or what you will (I don't like to use these words) is something ecstatic, that you will be permanently happy, in a blissful state all the time-these are the images they have of those people ... There's no relationship at all between the image you have of that and what actually is the situation ... That's why I very often tell people, "If I could give you some glimpse of what this is all about, you wouldn't touch this with a barge pole, a ten foot pole." You would run away from this because this is not what you want. What you want does not exist, you see.

If somebody asks me a question suddenly, I try to answer, emphasizing and pointing out that there is no answer to that question. So, I merely rephrase, restructure and throw the same question back at you. It's not game playing, because I'm not interested in winning you over to my point of view. It's not a question of offering opinions-of course I do have my opinions on everything from disease to divinity, but they're as worthless as anybody else's.

Put it simply. I can't follow a very complex structure-I have that difficulty, you see. Probably I'm a low-grade moron or something, I don't know-I can't follow conceptual thinking. You can put it in very simple words. What exactly is the question? Because the answer is there; I don't have to give the answer. What I usually do is restructure the question, rephrase it in such a way that the question appears senseless to you.

Understanding is a state of being where the question isn't there any more; there is nothing there that says, "Now I understand!"-that's the basic difficulty between us. By understanding what I am saying, you are not going to get anywhere.

It is the questioner that creates the answer; and the questioner comes into being from the answer, otherwise there is no questioner. I am not trying to play with words. You know the answer, and you want a confirmation from me, or you want some kind of light to be thrown on your problem, or you're curious-if for any of these reasons you want to carry on a dialogue with me, you are just wasting your time; you'll have to go to a scholar, a pundit, a learned man-they can throw a lot of light on such questions. That's all that I am interested in in this kind of dialogue: to help you formulate your own question. Try and formulate a question which you can call your own.

There is no religious content, no mystical overtones at all, in what I am saying. Man has to be saved from the saviors of mankind! The religious people-they kidded themselves and fooled the whole of mankind. Throw them out!

The consciousness which is functioning in me, in you, in the garden slug and earthworm outside, is the same. In me it has no frontiers; in you there are frontiers-you are enclosed in that. Probably this unlimited consciousness pushes you, I don't know. Not me; I have nothing to do with it. It is like the water finding its own level, that's all-that is its nature. That is what is happening in you: life is trying to destroy the enclosing thing, that dead structure of thought and experience, which is not of its nature. It's trying to come out, to break open. You don't want that. As soon as you see some cracks there, you bring some plaster and fill them in and block it again. It doesn't have to be a so-called self-realized man or spiritual man or God-realized man that pushes you; anything, that leaf there, teaches you just the same if only you let it do what it can.

There is only the one thought, "How?" The one question that this organism is interested in is, "How to throw off the whole thraldom, the whole strangling influence of culture?" That question is the only question this organism has-not as a word, not as a thought-the whole human organism is that one question. I don't know whether I make myself clear. That is the one question, you see, which is throbbing, pulsating in every cell, in the very marrow of your bones, trying to free itself from this stranglehold. That is the one question, the one thought. That is the savior. That question finds that it has no way of finding an answer, that it is impossible for that question to do anything, so it explodes. When it has no way to move, no space, the 'explosion' takes place. That 'explosion' is like a nuclear explosion. That breaks the continuity of thought.

Questioning my actions before and after is over for me. The moral question-"I should have acted this way; I should have not acted that way. I should have said this"-none of that is there for me. I have no regrets, no apologies; whatever I am doing is automatic. In a given situation I am not capable of acting in any other way. I don't have to rationalize, think logically-nothing-that is the one and only action in that particular situation.

By conserving sex energy, you are not going to improve yourself in any way. It is too silly and too absurd. Why have they laid so much stress on that? Abstinence, continence, celibacy, is not going to help to put you in this state, in this situation.

We have strange ideas in the religious field-torture this body, sleep on nails, control, deny things- all kinds of funny things. What for? Why deny certain things? I don't know. What is the difference between a man going to a bar for a glass of beer, and a man going to a temple and repeating the name of Rama? I don't see any basic difference ... I am not against escapes, but whether you escape through this avenue or that avenue, an escape is an escape. You are escaping from yourself ... What you do or do not do does not matter at all. Your practice of holiness, your practice of virtue-that is socially valuable for the society, but that has nothing to do with this.

Why, I sometimes go to the limit of saying that it is possible for a rapist, for a murderer, for a thief, for a convict, for a con-man-this kind of thing can happen! That has nothing to do with it; the moral codes of conduct have no relationship whatsoever to this.

You don't know what is good; you only know what is good for you. That's all you are interested in,

that's a fact. Everything centers around that. All your art and reason centers around that. I am not being cynical. That's a fact. Nothing wrong with it. I'm not saying anything against it. The situations change, but it is that which is guiding you through all situations. I'm not saying it is wrong you see. If it is not so, something must be wrong with you. As long as you are operating in the field of what they call the 'pair of opposites', good and bad, you will always be choosy, in every situation, that is all-you cannot help doing that.

A moral man is a chicken. A moral man is a frightened man, a chicken-hearted man-that is why he practices morality and sits in judgement over others. And his righteous indignation! A moral man (if there is one) will never, never talk of morality or sit in judgement on the morals of others. Never!

You hope that you will be able to resolve the problem of desire through thinking, because of that model of a saint who you think has controlled or eliminated desire. If that man has no desire as you imagine, he is a corpse. Don't believe that man at all! Such a man builds some organization, and lives in luxury, which you pay for. You are maintaining him. He is doing it for his livelihood. There is always a fool in the world who falls for him.

You are asking me, "Has anything any purpose?" Look here, a lot of meanings and purposes have been given to you. Why are you still looking for the meaning of life, the purpose of life? Everybody has talked of the meaning of life and the purpose of life-everybody. Answers have been given by the saviours, saints and sages of mankind-you have thousands of them in India-and yet today you are still asking the same question, "Has life any purpose or meaning?" Either you are not satisfied or you are not really interested in finding out for yourself. I submit that you are not really interested, because it's a frightening thing. It's a very frightening thing. Is there any such thing as truth? Have you ever asked that question for yourself? Has anybody told the truth?

They are all liars, fops, fakes and cheaters in the world, who claim they have searched for and told the truth! Alright, you want to find out for yourself what this truth is. Can you find out? Can you capture the truth and hold it and say, "This is truth?" Whether you accept or reject, it's the same: It depends on your personal prejudices and predilections. So if you want to discover the truth for yourself, whatever it is, you are not in a position to either accept or reject. You assume that there is such a thing as truth, you assume that there is such a thing as reality (ultimate or otherwise)-it is that assumption that is creating the problem, the suffering, for you.

Look here, I want to experience God, truth, reality or what you will, so I must understand the nature of the experiencing structure inside of me before I deal with all that. I must look at the instrument I am using. You are trying to capture something that cannot be captured in terms of your experiencing structure, so this experiencing structure must not be there in order that the other thing may come in. What that is, you will never know. You will never know the truth, because it's a movement. It's a movement! You cannot capture it, you cannot contain it, you cannot express it. It's not a logically ascertained premise that we are interested in. So, it has to be your discovery. What good is my experience? We have thousands and thousands of experiences recorded-they haven't helped you. It's the hope that keeps you going-"If I follow this for another ten years, fifteen years, maybe one of these days I will..."-because hope is the structure.

Nothing. That's the discovery. So-called self-realization is the discovery for yourself and by yourself that there is no self to discover. That will be a very shocking thing-"Why the hell have I wasted all my life?" It's a shocking thing because it's going to destroy every nerve, every cell, even the cells in the marrow of your bones. I tell you, it's not going to be an easy thing, it's not going to be handed over to you on a gold platter. You have to become completely disillusioned, then the truth begins to express itself in its own way. I have discovered that it is useless to try to discover the truth. The search for truth is, I have discovered, absurd, because it's a thing which you cannot capture, contain, or give expression to.

What separates you, what isolates you, is your thought-it creates the frontiers, it creates the boundaries. And once the boundaries are not there, it is boundless, limitless.

In a way, the whole of life is like a great big dream. I am looking at you, but I really don't know anything about you-this is a dream, a dream world-there is no reality to it at all. When the experiencing structure is not manipulating consciousness (or whatever you want to call it), then the whole of life is a great big dream, from the experiential point of view-not from this point of view here; but from your point of view. You see, you give reality to things-not only to objects, but also to feelings and experiences-and think that they are real. When you don't translate them in terms of your accumulated knowledge, they are not things; you really don't know what they are.

Look here, there is no present to the structure of the 'you'; all that is there is the past, which is trying to project itself into the future. You can think about past, present, and future, but there is no future, there is no present; there is only the past. Your future is only a projection of the past. If there is a present, that present can never be experienced by you, because you experience only your knowledge about the present, and that knowledge is the past. So what is the point in trying to experience that moment which you call 'now'? The now can never be experienced by you; whatever you experience is not the now. So the now is a thing which can never become part of your conscious existence, and which you cannot give expression to. The now does not exist, as far as you are concerned, except as a concept. I don't talk about the now.

Courage is to brush aside everything that man has experienced and felt before you. You are the only one, greater than all those things. Everything is finished, the whole tradition is finished, however sacred and holy it may be-then only can you be yourself-that is individuality. For the first time you become an individual. As long as you depend on somebody, some authority, you are not an individual. Individual uniqueness cannot express itself as long as there is dependence.

I am always negating what I am saying. I make a statement, but that statement is not expressing all that is being said, so I negate it. You say I am contradicting myself. I am not contradictory at all. I negate the first statement, the second statement, and all the other statements-that is why sometimes it sounds very contradictory. I am negating it all the time, not with the idea of arriving at any point; just negating. There is no purpose in my talking.

On U.G.

The First and Last Public Talk After the Calamity Indian Institute of World Culture, Bangalore, nineteen seventy-two U.G. Krishnamurti

Let me, at the very outset, thank the authorities of the Indian Institute of World Culture for giving me this opportunity to meet you all here. I was very reluctant to accept the invitation of Mr. Venkataramaiah. But somehow, if I may use that word, I was trapped into this kind of a thing. As Mr. Kothari pointed out, I don't like to give talks at all.

You all seem to be very fond of listening to speeches, talks, lectures, discussions, discourses, conversations, and so on. I do not know if at any time you realize for yourself and by yourself that you never listen to anybody or anything in this world. You always listen to yourself. I really don't know what to say. I don't know what you want to listen to and what I am expected to do.

This is supposed to be a discourse and a dialogue. I very often point out to those who come to see me and talk things over that no dialogue is possible and no dialogue is necessary. It may sound very strange to you but nevertheless the fact does remain that no dialogue is possible, and yet no dialogue is necessary.

If you will permit me, I will say a few words to set the ball rolling, as it were. That's a very hackneyed and over-worked expression but that would serve our purpose.

I am going to say a few words about the state of not knowing. How can anybody say anything about the state of not knowing? I have necessarily to use words. Can we use words without indulging in abstract concepts? I say we can. But I do not, at the same time, mean that it is a non-verbal conceptualization. That is a funny thing-there is no such thing as non-verbal conceptualization at all. But, perhaps, a few words like this will enable you to understand the methods of thought prevent you from understanding the limitations of thought as a means to directly experience life and its movements.

This state of not knowing is not my particular state. This, I call it a natural state of your being. This is as much your natural state as it is mine. It is not the state of a God-realized man. It is not the state of a self-realized man. It is not the state of a holy man. It is the natural state of every one of you here. But since you are looking to somebody else and you are reaching out for some kind of a state of liberation, freedom, or moksha-I don't know what words you want to use-you are lost.

But how can one understand the limitations of thought? Naturally, the only instrument we have is the instrument of thought. But what is thought? I can give you a lot of definitions, and you know a lot of definitions about thought. I can say that thought is just matter, thought is vibration, and we are all functioning in this sphere of thought. And we pick up these thoughts because this human organism is an electro-magnetic field. And this electro-magnetic field is the product of culture.

It may sound very inappropriate on this occasion to say that in order to be in your natural state, all that man has thought and felt before you must be swept aside and must be brushed aside. And that means the culture in which you are brought up must go down the drain or out of the window. Is it possible? It is possible. But at the same time it is so difficult because you are the product of that culture and you are that. You are not different from that. You cannot separate yourself from that culture. And yet this culture is the stumbling block for us to be in our natural state.

Can this natural state be captured, contained and expressed through words? It cannot. It is not a conscious state of your existence. It can never become part of your conscious thinking. And then why do I talk of this state of not knowing? For all practical purposes it does not exist at all. It can never become part of your conscious thinking.

Here I have to explain what I mean by the word consciousness. You and I mean two different things probably, I don't know. When do you become conscious of a thing? Only when the thought comes in between what is there in front of you and what is supposed to be there inside of you. That is consciousness. So you have to necessarily use thought to become conscious of the things around you or the persons around you. Otherwise, you are not conscious of the things at all and at the same time you are not unconscious, but there is an area where you are neither conscious nor unconscious. But that consciousness, if I may use that word, expresses itself in its own way and what prevents that consciousness to express itself in its own way is the movement of thought.

What can anyone do about this thought? It has a tremendous momentum of millions and millions of years. Can I do anything about that thought? Can I stop it? Can I mold it? Can I shape it? Can I do anything about it? But yet our culture, our civilization, our education-all these have forced us to use that instrument to get something for us. So can that instrument be used to understand its own nature? It is not possible. And yet when you see the tremendous nature of this movement of thought and that there isn't anything that you can do about it, it naturally slows down and falls in its natural pattern.

When I say that, I do not, of course, mean what these people in India talk about-that thought must be used in order to get into a thoughtless state or into a meditative state. But there is no such thing as a thoughtless state at all. Thoughts are there; they will be there all the time. Thoughts will disappear only when you become a dead corpse-let me use these two words-dead corpse. Otherwise, thoughts are there and they are going to be there. If all the religious teachers tell us that you are going into a thoughtless state, in that state of silence, in that state of quietness or in that state of a quiet mind or whatever phrase you want to use-there will be this real bliss, beatitude, love, religious joy, and ecstatic state of being-all that is balderdash. Because, that state, if there is any state like the state of bliss, it can never become part of your consciousness. It can never become part of your conscious existence. So you might as well throw the whole thing-the whole crap of these ideas, concepts and abstractions about the blissful states-into a cocked hat, if I may use that American slang.

So what is one to do? Can anybody help you? No outside agency can help you. That means a complete and total rejection, as I said in the beginning, of all that man has thought and felt before you. As long as there is any trace of knowledge, in any shape, in any form, in your consciousness, you are living in a divided state of consciousness.

Mr. Kothari referred to my coming into a state of not knowing or the calamity, as I myself refer to that. What happened? I don't know. Suddenly thought has fallen into its natural state. The continuity has come to an end. So what I am saying is not the product of thinking. It is not manufactured by my thought structure inside. Nor is it a logically ascertained premise. But what is happening here is only the expression of that state of being where you do not know what is happening. You do not know how this organism is functioning. As he (Mr. Kothari) himself referred to, this is a pure and simple physical and physiological state of being. It has no religious undertones or overtones. It has no mystical content whatsoever and at the same time this extraordinary thing, the extraordinary intelligence that is there, which is a product of centuries of human evolution, is able to express itself and deal with any problem and any situation without creating problems for us.

There is no entity here. There is no center here. There is no self here. There is no atman here, there is no soul here at all. You may not agree. You may not accept it but that unfortunately happens to be a fact. The totality of thoughts and feelings is not there. But there is an illusion that there is a totality of your feelings and thoughts. This human organism is responding to the challenges from outside. You are functioning in the sphere-so thousands and thousands, perhaps millions and millions of sensations are bombarding this body. Since there is no center here, since there is no mind here, since there is nothing here, what is it that is happening? What is happening here this human organism is responding to the challenges, or to the stimuli, if I may put it that way.

So there is nobody here who is translating these sensations in terms of past experiences but there is a living contact with the things around, that is all that is there. One sensation after another is hitting this organism and at the same time there is no coordinator here. This state of not knowing is not in relationship to your brahman, or your nirguna brahman or saguna brahman or any such thing. This state of not knowing is in its relationship to the things that are there around you.

You may be looking at a flower. You may think that it is a crazy state. Perhaps it is, I don't know. You do not know what you are looking at. But when there is a demand for that-and that demand always comes from outside. "What is that?" And then the knowledge, the information that is there locked up in this organism comes and says that it is a rose, that this is a microphone, that's a man, that's a woman and so on and so forth. This is not because there is a drive from inside but the outside challenge brings out this answer. So I say that this action is always taking place outside of this organism, not inside.

How do I know that these sensations are bombarding or hitting this organism all the time? It is only because there is a consciousness which is conscious of itself and there is nobody who is conscious of the things that are happening. This is a living organism and that living state is functioning in its own way, in its natural way.

What do you want me to say? (Laughter) If they have understood what there is they wouldn't be here. They wouldn't go to anybody. They wouldn't ask these questions at all. If they translate what I am saying in terms of their particular fancy or their particular background, that's their tragedy, it would be their misery. It hasn't helped them. This is my question, "Has it helped you?" Why are you hung up on these phrases? They are after all phrases.

When once you realize, when once this is understood-how this mechanism is operating, how automatic it is, how mechanical it is-you will realize that all these phrases have no meaning at all. You may very well ask me why I am using these phrases. Because you and I have created this unfortunate situation where you have put me here on the dais and asked me to talk and naturally, as I said in the beginning, I have to use words. So the moment I stop talking the whole thing has come to a stop inside. Is that so? It is so here in my case because there is no continuity of thought.

We go back to the thing he (Mr. Kothari) referred to about the things around me. Here there is a table. I don't know what it is. And at the same time, if you ask me, "What is that?" I would immediately say, "It's a chair." It is there in the background. It comes automatically, like an arrow. But otherwise, this is just a reflection of this. I don't translate this as bimbavatu at all. But I have to use that word-this is reflecting the thing exactly the way it is. I don't want to use these metaphysical phrases because you will immediately translate them in terms of your particular parallel.

There is no subject here independent of the object at all. So there is nothing here. What is there is all that is there and you do not know what it is. So now you turn there and this object has just disappeared, there is something else. This has completely and totally disappeared from here and then what is there is a thing that is there in front of me and it is just like this object, exactly the way it is. But you do not know what it is. That is why I say it is a state of not knowing. Probably you will find parallels to these things. What I am trying to point out is the absence of what you are all doing at this moment is the state that I am describing and it is not my state, that is the way you are functioning.

May I give an example of what is happening in the field of spectroscopy? I don't read books but sometimes I read magazines. I get interested in these things. They have developed very powerful lenses to take photos of objects. They have developed micro-seconds, nanoseconds and picoseconds. It doesn't mean anything to you and me, it's all technical language. Now they are able to take pictures of objects, say for instance, of this table, every pico second. Every picture is different. In exactly the same way, the reflection of that object is once now; another time, you turn this side, you are back again-it's again you. But don't translate this in terms of newness and oldness. It cannot be communicated to you at all. This can never become part of your experiencing structure.

I am throwing a lot of conclusions at you but even a thing like this cannot be experienced by you at all. I don't know if you understand this. You have necessarily to abstract this in order to experience a thing. So what I am trying to say is that you can never experience your own natural state. This can never become part of your experiencing structure. And what you are all trying to do all the time is to make that-whatever you want to realize or discover-part of this experiencing structure. So your experiencing structure and your natural state cannot co-exist at the same time.

This I must stress, that the need for the operation of thought or the movements of thought to come into being is decided by factors outside of this organism. When and why and how this translation is to come into being is decided by an action outside. The actions are always taking place outside. When there is a demand, the movement of thought probably separates itself for a while to meet the demands of the situation and then it is back again in the movement of life. So thought is only functional in value and it has no other value at all.

What is more is that the continuity of thought is destroying the sensitivity of your senses. When the movement of thought is not continuous, the senses begin to function in an extraordinarily sensitive way. When I use the word sensitivity, I mean the sensitivity of the senses and not the sensitivity of the mind. The sensitivity of the mind is a trick of your mind and you can create a state of mind where you feel sensitive to the feelings of everybody, to the things around you, and wallow in that sickly state of mind and think you are getting somewhere. This is a thing that is there all the time.

There is nothing to achieve, there is nothing to accomplish, nothing to attain and no destination to arrive at. And what prevents what is there, this living state, from expressing itself in its own way is the movement of thought, which is there only for the purposes of functioning in this world. When the movement of thought is not there ... I have to use the clauses in terms of time, but time is thought. When thought is there, time is there. When thought is there, sex is there. When thought is there, God is there. When thought is not there, there is no God, there is no sex, nothing is there. It may sound objectionable to you to accept my statement ... but the drug of virtues you practice, the practice of virtues, is not a foundation for it at all. And the practice of abstinence, continence and celibacy is not the path to it. But if you want to indulge in them and feel greatly superior it's your own business.

I am not here to reform you. I am not here to lead you anywhere. But this is a fact. You have to understand a fact as a fact. It is not a logically ascertained thing, it is not a rational thing to understand it rationally. A fact is a movement. Truth is movement. Reality is movement. But I don't want to use these words because they are all loaded words. You know all about them. The unfortunate thing about the whole business is that you know a lot about these things and that is the misery of you all. This is a thing which you do not know at all. I am not claiming that I know it. I myself don't know. That is why I say I don't know. It's a state of not knowing.

Let alone God, let alone reality, ultimate or otherwise, I don't know what I am looking at-the very person who has been with me all the time, day and night. That is my situation. If I tell this to a psychiatrist, he will probably put me on a couch and say something is radically wrong with me. Probably, I am functioning like any other human being. He doesn't understand that. That's his problem, it is not my problem anymore. So all your search-for truth, God, reality-you use any phrase you like, is a false thing. You are all on a merry-go-round, and you want to go round and round and round.

How can you ask for a thing which you do not know? How can you search for a thing which you do not know? You all seem to know. You have an image of this state from the description of this state probably you have already created. What state? Somebody asked me: "What is the state you are in?" "What State? Mysore State or Tamil Nadu State? What state are you talking about?" This is my response. What is the state you are talking about? This is your natural state. You don't want to understand that. You don't want to be in your natural state. It requires an extraordinary intelligence to be in your natural state, to be yourself.

You always want to be somebody else, you want to imitate the life of somebody else-you want to imitate the life of Jesus, you want to imitate the life of Buddha, you want to imitate the life of Shankara. You can't do it because you don't know what is there behind. You will end up changing your robes from rose to saffron, saffron to yellow or from yellow to rose, depending upon your particular fancy. How can you ask for a thing which you do not know? How can you search for a thing which you do not know? That is my question. So search has no meaning at all. Only when the search comes to an end what there is will express itself in its own way. You cannot tamper with that. You cannot manipulate that. You cannot manipulate the action of the thing which is there, which has an extraordinary intelligence.

To be yourself is the easiest thing. And you don't want to be in your state. You'd rather be somebody else, imitate the life of somebody else. That's your problem. To be yourself doesn't need any time at all. But you talk of timelessness, which is a mockery. To be yourself, do you need time. To be a good man, to be a marvelously religious man, to be in a state of peace, to be in a state bliss, naturally you need time. That will always be tomorrow. When tomorrow arrives, you say, "All right, day after tomorrow." That is time, not this metaphysical or philosophical thing, I am not talking about metaphysical time and timeless. There is no such thing as the timeless.

I am making assertions, statements and conclusions-you will object to them. Take it or leave it. I don't expect you to accept anything that I am saying. You are not in a position to accept or reject it. You can reject it because it does not fit into the particular framework of your philosophy-Shankara, Gaudapada, Ramanuja, Madhvacharya, God-knows-what-we have too many of them here. So how can you understand this? The only thing to do is to throw in the towel. Turn your back on the whole business. That is why it takes extraordinary courage, not the courage or the bravado of these people who climb Mount Everest or try to swim across the English Channel, or cross the Pacific or Atlantic, whatever their fancy, on a raft-that is not what I mean. What I mean is the courage ...

You quote your Bhagavad Gita or your Brahma Sutras, kaschid dhirah. All these phrases, what do they mean? Abhayam brahma-why do you all repeat these phrases? It has no meaning. It's a mechanical thing. "How are you?" "I am all right, I am fine. Just fine. I couldn't be better." In America, you know ... "How are you this morning?" "I am just fine. I couldn't be better." In exactly the same way, you throw these phrases at everybody. If you understand the way this mechanical structure is functioning inside of you, you see the absurdity of the whole business of discussing these matters everlastingly. Can you throw the whole business out of the window and walk out?

First of all, there is no hunger at all in the sense in which we use the word. It's pure and simple chemistry. And then there is what you call hunger which is like any other sensation, you understand. The consciousness or life, or whatever you want to call it, becomes conscious of that thing and it is gone, it is not there. It does not push you to reach out for food. And so the next sensation is coming. It's a continuous movement. You are looking at something and this is finished. Probably your body will become weaker and weaker if you don't eat food.

People give me food, so I eat food. Otherwise, there is no such thing as hunger at all. And the pain, there is physical pain-since there is no continuity of thought, as I pointed out, there is no continuity of pain. It comes in impulses like that, just the way you are throwing out words. There is no continuity of the pain. I don't want to use the word psychological pain because it gets us involved in ... because we will begin to tie things in knots. There is only physical pain and there is no other pain but even that physical pain is not continuous and so it is not much of a pain in the sense in which we use the word.

When the movement in the direction of wanting to be into your own natural state or in the state of God-knows-whom you want to be-your idol or your hero or your master-it is there, this movement in any direction is taking you away from yourself. That is all that I am pointing out. When the movement is not there you are your natural state. So the sadhana, the method or system or the technique is taking you away from yourself in the direction of the state you want to be in and that is the state of somebody else. As I pointed out, you have the knowledge about this state. Unfortunately, so many people have talked about it. I am already doing mischief, perhaps. Kick them all out on their backs.

Yes, throw stones at me and walk out. My interest is to send you packing, as the expression has it. If you can do that you will never go to listen to anybody.

I will not take you to jail. That's a problem with the society in which you are caught. I can't help you. I will not be the first one to complain about it.

I haven't said anything. What all you think I have said is a bag; you think it makes sense. How can it make sense? If you think that it makes sense, you haven't understood a thing. If you think that it doesn't make any sense, you haven't understood it either. It's just words, listening to this noise- words, words, words-mechanically coming out of this organism. I don't know how they are coming. I wish I knew. I wish I knew how I got into ... What state? It always irritates me when people ask me, "You tell us something ... " About what state? What state are you talking about? I know Mysore. I am in the Mysore State. How do I know that I am in the Mysore State? Because people tell me that I am in Mysore. So what state you want to get into? That is your natural state, I am saying.

What takes you away from your state is this movement in the direction of wanting to be in some state other than yourself. To be yourself doesn't need time. If I am a village idiot, I remain a village idiot. Finish. I don't want to be an intelligent man. Even if my neighbor takes advantage of his extraordinary intelligence and exploits, good luck. What can I do? To accept the reality, this is the reality of the world. There is no other world. There is no other reality, ultimate reality. This is the only reality. You have to function in this world. You can't run away from this world. How can you run away from this world, because you are that world? Where can you go? Hide yourself in a cave?

Yes, you are taking your thoughts wherever you go. You cannot run away from your shadow. It's there all the time. So you can't do a thing about thought, that's all that I am saying. When you realize the absurdity of all your effort to do something about the thought, it's creating the problem, it's misery for you, you can't do anything. When you can't do anything, when you realize that you can't do a thing about it, it's not there. You are not using it as a means to get something for you.

I want to say this again. You desire. If you do not want anything, there is no thought at all. You understand? Wanting is thinking, it doesn't matter what you want-want self-realization, want God-realization-you want anything, that means you have to use this instrument. These are not your thoughts, these are not your feelings. You may not like it. They belong to somebody else. You want to make them your own. You have unfortunately made them your own. That's why you ask all these questions. Why do you ask all these questions?

These questions have been put before to so many people-all the sages, saints and saviors of mankind, the holy men dead and alive. They are all ready to answer. They have composed a lot of lullabies. You go and listen to them and go to sleep, if you want to. That's what you are interested in. You want somebody else to pat on your back and say, "Oh, fine, just fine, you are doing very well. Do more and more of the same and you will reach the destination you want to arrive at." What is the destination you want to arrive at? To be gentle, meek, to be soft, to talk and whisper. You know if you go to some of these monasteries in the West, the Trappist, they talk and whisper. They don't even understand what the other man is saying. That's the secret to the spiritual path.

You want to reassure your partner that you are in love with that person. It isn't worth a tinker's damn, that love. That's not love at all. You can call it love. I don't want to go into that. It's a forbidden subject. They ask me, "Do you have anything to say about ...? " It's a four letter word. It's like any other word-dog, pig, love. In love, can there be any relationship at all? Can you have any relationship?

This is your problem. You are all the time trying to have relationship with people. You cannot have any relationship with people at all. "Love is relationship. Life is relationship." All that guff, trite crap. You memorize and repeat them. They all become fancy phrases these days. "Freedom," "first and last freedom" and the freedoms that come in between-what is this nonsense? This is like any other trite ... any other crap that these people are repeating. You have memorized a new set of phrases, that's all you are doing.

You sit and discuss everlastingly all this awareness. What is that awareness you are talking about? How can you be aware of this? Can you at any time be aware of it? If you are aware of this once in your lifetime, the whole structure has collapsed, it has fallen in its proper place. You don't have to do a thing about it. So it doesn't mean a thing at all. You can talk of awareness, choiceless or otherwise, or conditioning.

Conditioning, what can you do about it? Conditioning is intelligence. You can't do a damn thing about it. You can't free yourself. If you want to free yourself from your conditioning or uncondition yourself and all that nonsense that is going on ... How are you going to uncondition yourself? You create another conditioning, instead of repeating Upanishads you will repeat some other thing, the fancy books.

There is no mind. Where is the mind? Is the mind separate from the body? Distinguished from the body? Apart from the body? These questions have no meaning at all. You have no way of separating yourself from what is going on. The moment you separate yourself means you have a knowledge about it-the knowledge given by either the biologists, the physiologists, the psychologists or the religious people. So through that you are looking at it. You cannot experience anything without knowledge. You cannot experience this at all, let alone Brahman or reality.

You cannot experience this at all. Only through an abstraction. And what is that abstraction? The knowledge you have about it. This has been put there. Your mother told you, or your neighbor or friend told you that this is a table. What the hell is that, you don't know, apart from what you have been told. Every time you look at this, you have to repeat to yourself that it is a table. What are you doing that for? This is my question. This is the continuity I am talking about. You want to reassure yourself that you are there. The "I" is nothing but this word. There is no "I" independent of this word. Maybe you find some parallel in Shankara or God-knows-what.

The consciousness I am talking about is a state where there is no division which says that you are asleep, that you are awake, that you are dreaming ... There is no division at all. I don't even know if I am alive or dead. This is my state. I have no way of knowing for myself. The doctor can come and say that I want to examine your lung, your lung is functioning alright, there is heartbeat, there is this, that and the other. You are alive. That's alright. I am delighted. You reassure me that I am a living being but ...

What I mean by action is the action is taking place always outside. The senses are working at their peak capacity all the time. It's not because you want to look at a particular thing. There is no time even for the eyelids to blink for a second. They have to stay open all the time. And when they are tired, it has its own naturally built-in mechanism which cuts off the sensation. And then it's back again.

Supposing somebody gives you an answer. So where are you? Can you separate yourself from that mechanism? This is what I am saying. You can separate yourself from the mechanism and look at it only through the knowledge, whether the knowledge is provided by a physician or by a saint or by a sage. And that is worthless because you are projecting this knowledge on what you are looking at, and that knowledge is creating or producing these experiences. That can never become part of that experiencing structure. That's the trouble.

You want to experience this. You can't experience this at all, whether it is the consciousness that I am talking of or the living state or the state of not knowing or the things that are there around. How is it expressing itself? It is expressing itself as energy, it is expressing itself as action, in its own way. If I use some words, "It is aware of itself, it is aware of its own incredible death, it is conscious of itself"- all these phrases may sound very mystical to you-but you cannot. The brain physiologists, if I may quote somebody-they are trying to understand the brain and they have to find some means to define ... They have defined the brain as an instrument with which we think. They are not so sure.

You cannot separate yourself from the brain and its activity and look at the brain. Can you look at your back and tell me something about your back? Somebody else must come and tell you. And he has his own ideas, fancy ideas. "You have a straight back." The doctor always observes people and from his point of view he would say that that man is sick, this man's back is not correct and so forth. Or if I see a painter, his description is something else. So this is a thing which you cannot communicate to somebody else. Can you communicate your sex experience to somebody else?

I don't bother. Do I exist in this world? Does the world exist for me? Where is the world? I am not trying to be clever with all these phrases. I don't know a thing about it. Am I talking, am I saying anything? This is like the howling of a jackal, barking of a dog or the braying of an ass. If you can put this on that level and just listen to this vibration, you are out, you will walk out, and you will never listen to anybody in your lifetime. Finish. It doesn't have to be the talk of a self-realized man. You will realize that there is no self to realize. That's all. There is no center there. It is working in an extraordinary way.

There is no death. You are never born. You are not born at all. (Laughter) I am not trying to mystify. Because life has no beginning, it has no end. Has it a beginning, has it an end? What creates the beginning is your thought. Why are you concerned about death? There is no such as death at all. Your birth and your death can never become part of that experiencing structure. If you want to experience death, you are not going to be there. (Laughter) Somebody else will be there. It will be somebody else's misery.