Not Knowing Is Your Natural State ..

Q: The state of not knowing you describe is related to another level of consciousness. What has it got to do with me, an ordinary neurotic person?
U.G.: What levels of consciousness? There are no levels of consciousness. Awareness is no different in the waking state than in the sleeping state. Even while you are sitting here you are dreaming. There cannot be dreaming without images. When you are lying in bed you call it dreaming, when sitting with the eyes open you call it something else, that is all. For me these images are absent, whether I am in a "waking" or a "sleeping" state. I cannot form any image at any time. It does not matter here whether the eyes are open or closed. The only thing that is there in that individualized consciousness is the sure reflection of what is presented to it. You do not name it. The movement or desire to know what it is simply is not there. I have no way of knowing or experiencing this so-called wakeful state. I can mechanically explain the wakeful state, but this does NOT imply that there is someone there who KNOWS THAT HE IS AWAKE. The explanations don't mean a thing. That is why I maintain that your natural state is one of "not knowing".
Q: Most schools of religion and psychology recommend the expansion or intensification of awareness as a means to a more fulfilled life, as, for example, through therapy. Is this what you are talking about -- some kind of awareness therapy?
U.G.: No. Awareness is a simple activity of the brain. It cannot be used to bring about any change, including a therapeutic one. We have superimposed a naming process over this natural physiological awareness, an awareness we share, incidentally, with the other animals. Awareness and the movement or tendency in you to bring about change in you are two different things entirely. That difference cannot be perceived by you, for there is no perception without the perceiver. Can you become conscious of anything except through the medium of memory and thought? Memory is knowledge. Even your feelings are memory. The stimulus and the response form one unitary movement -- they cannot be neatly separated.
In other words, you cannot even differentiate the stimulus from the response; there is no dividing line, except when thought steps in and creates one. Thought, as memory and knowledge, has created this mechanism. The only way it can perpetuate itself is to gather knowledge, to know more and more, to ask more and more questions. As long as you are seeking you will be asking questions, and the questioning mechanism only adds more momentum to the naming process.
Q: But let us not sell thought short. It can capture many wonderful things ...
U.G.: Thought can never capture the movement of life, it is much too slow. It is like lightning and thunder. They occur simultaneously, but sound, traveling slower than light, reaches you later, creating the illusion of two separate events. It is only the natural physiological sensations and perceptions that can move with the flow of life. There is no question of capturing or containing that movement. We like to use the word consciousness glibly, as if we are intimately familiar with it. Actually, consciousness is something we will never know.
Q: So attempts to suspend thought somehow hoping to be purely aware is bogus?
U.G.: As far as I am concerned we become conscious of something only through memory, knowledge. Otherwise space, and the separative consciousness it creates, are not there. There is no such thing as looking at something without the interference of knowledge. To look you need space, and thought creates that space. So space itself, as a dimension, exists only as a creation of thought. Thought has also tried to theorize about the space it has created, inventing the "time-space-continuum". Time is an independent reference or frame. There is no necessary continuity between it and space.
Thought has also invented the opposite of time, the "now", the "eternal now". The present exists only as an idea. The moment you attempt to look at the present, it has already been brought into the framework of the past.
Thought will use any trick under the sun to give momentum to its own continuity. Its essential technique is to repeat the same thing over and over again; this gives it an illusion of permanency. This permanency is shattered the moment the falseness of the past-present-future continuum is seen. The future can be nothing but the modified continuity of the past.
Q: These philosophical endeavors only seem to complicate things. Is it not possible to live simply with nature, to look at the clouds and trees ... ?
U.G.: The tree you are talking about cannot be captured by thought. If your thought structure cannot stop and frame its reflection of the tree, you have no way of looking at the tree at all. In other words, the tree is actually looking at you, not vice versa. I am not trying to mystify it. The important thing to see is the false separation between you and the tree, not who is looking at whom. Approaching the reality of the "positively" or "negatively", as the philosophers try to do, has no meaning. The gap, created by thought, remains, no matter what approach you take.
Thought has created all these divisions, making what you call experience possible. The man who has freed himself from all divisions in consciousness has no experiences; he does not have "loving" relationships, does not question anything, has no notions about being a self-realized man, and is not stuck on wanting to help somebody else.
What I am maintaining is that the whole problem has been created by culture. It is that that has created this neurotic division in man. Somewhere along the line man separated himself and experienced self-consciousness--which the other animals don't have--for the first time. This has created misery for man. That is the beginning of the end of man.
The individual who is able, through luck, to be free from this self-consciousness, is no longer experiencing an independent existence. He is, even to himself, like any other thing out there. What happens in the environment repeats itself within such an individual, without the knowledge. Once thought has burnt itself out, nothing that creates division can remain there.
While thought is taking birth, the disintegration or death of thought is taking place also. That is why it is not natural for thought to take root. Only by maintaining a divisive consciousness in man is thought capable of denying the harmonious functioning of the body. To cast man in religious or psychological terms is to deny the extraordinary intelligence of this wondrous body. It is the movement of thought that is constantly taking you away from your natural state and creating this division.
Is there any way for us to experience, much less share, reality? Forget about "ultimate reality"'; you have no way of experiencing the reality of anything. Experiencing reality "from moment to moment" is also a thought-induced state of mind.
Q: Listening to you is difficult for us, for what you are saying undermines the very basis of communication ...
U.G.: You cannot listen to anybody without interpretation. There is no such thing as "the art of pure listening." You can sit here talking for the rest of your life without getting anywhere. Without a common reference point--which is another invention of thought--how can you communicate and share? It is just not possible. There is nothing TO communicate anyhow.
You want to use communication to help you out of the mess you are in. That is your only interest. Getting out of your situation is your only aim. Why? Why do you want to get out of your situation? Wanting to get out of situations is what has created the problem in the first place. Wanting to free yourself from the burden is really the problem. I am not recommending anything; doing or not doing lead to the same end: misery. So doing nothing is no different from doing something. As long as you have knowledge about that burden--which I deny exists--you will have to struggle to be free of it. It cannot but do otherwise. Anything you do is part of the mechanism of thought.
Your search for happiness is prolonging your unhappiness.
Q: There is a ring of certainty and authority in what you say. We want to know ...
U.G.: From whom do you want to know? Not from me. I don't know. If you assume that I know, you are sadly mistaken. I have no way of knowing. What is there inside you is only the movement of knowledge wanting to know more and more. The "you", the separative structure can continue only as long as there is a demand to know. That is the reason why you are asking these questions, not to find out anything for yourself. Nothing you can tell yourself can change your unfortunate situation. Why should something, or nothing, happen?
The demand for freedom, whether outwardly or inwardly, has been with us for a long while. We have been told that this demand is a sacred, noble thing. Have we again been misled?
The demand to be free is the cause of your problems. You want to see yourself as free. The one that is saying, "You are not free," is the same one that is telling you that there is a state of "freedom" to be pursued. But the pursuit is slavery, the very denial of freedom. I do not know anything about freedom, because I do not know anything about myself, free, enslaved, or otherwise. Freedom and self-knowledge are linked. Since I do not know myself and have no way of seeing myself, except by the knowledge given me by my culture, the question of wanting to be free does not arise at all. The knowledge you have about freedom denies the very possibility of freedom. When you stop looking at yourself with the knowledge you have, the demand to be free from that self drops away.
Q: Our ordinary minds are too cluttered to appreciate what you are saying. Only a profoundly still mind can begin to understand you. Is this not so?
U.G.: Stillness of mind is ridiculous. There is no such thing as stillness of mind. This is another trick created by the demand to be free. What is there is the constant demand to be free. Nothing else is there. How can you, and why should you, be free from memory? Memory is absolutely essential. The problem is not having a memory, but your tendency to use memory to further your "spiritual" interests, or as a means to find happiness. To attempt to be free from memory is withdrawal, and withdrawal is death.
There is nothing to know. The statement that there is nothing to know is an abstraction to you, because you know. To you not knowing is a myth. What is there is not not-knowing but knowing projecting the state of freeing yourself from the known. Your demand to be free from the known is the one that is creating the problem. As long as the notion of "I ought to be this" is there, so long will that which I actually am be there.
Q: So it is the fantasizing about a non-existent ideal person, society, or state that dooms and fixes me where I am. My belief in what I am not determines what I in fact am. Is that it?
That's it. And the greatest ideal, the most imposing, perfect and powerful, is, of course, God. It is an invention of frightened minds. The human mind has many destructive inventions to its credit. The most destructive one, and the one that has corrupted you, is the invention of God. The history of human thinking has produced saints, teachers, gurus, Bhagavans, but God is the most corrupt of them all. Man has already messed up his life, and religion has made it worse. It is religion that really made a mess of man's life.
Q: One parallel I have noticed between your message and other teachings, especially that of J. Krishnamurti, is the stress on the thought structure and its ability to blind us. Why is thought so important?
U.G.: It is important that although thought controls and determines your every action, it, at the same time, cannot itself be seen by consciousness. You can think and theorize about thought but cannot perceive or appreciate thought itself. Are you and thought two separate things? You know about thought, not thought itself. Does thought exist apart from the knowledge you have about thought? About all you can say is, "I know, I have knowledge about my thoughts, about my experiences, about this or that," that is all you can do. Independent of that, is there thought? Your knowing about thought is the only thing there is.
So all that is there is the knowledge you have accumulated about thought. Nothing else is there. All the things observed, as well as the observer himself, is part of this knowledge about thought. They are thoughts, and the "I" is another thought. But there is no individual value in thought; it is not yours, it belongs to everyone, like the atmosphere. Knowledge is common property.
What I am trying to say is that there is no individual there at all. There is only a certain gathering of knowledge--which is thought--but no individuality there. The knowledge you have of things is all that you are capable of experiencing. Without knowledge no experience of any kind is possible. You cannot separate experience and knowledge. The "I" is nothing sacred; it is the totality of your knowledge, and you are, unfortunately, stuck with it. Why are you interested in separating the knowledge you have about yourself--whatever you call yourself? Knowledge is all that is there. Where is the "I"? You have separated the "I" from the knowledge it has of the things about you. It is an illusion.
Similarly, enlightenment has no independent existence of its own apart from your knowledge about it. There is no enlightenment at all. The idea of illumination is tied up with change, but there is nothing TO change. Change admits of time; change ALWAYS takes time. To change, to eliminate one thing and replace it with another, takes time. What you are now and what you ought to be are linked together by time. You are going to be enlightened TOMORROW ...
Let us take this as an example. You want to be enlightened, you want to be "selfless"; you are this, you want to be that. The gap between the two is filled with time, put there to ask the repetitive question, "How?" Your enlightenment or selflessness is always tomorrow, not now. So time is essential, and time is thought. Thinking is not action, not taking, but merely wanting. You are not ready to do a thing, only meditate, which is just thinking about it. Your thought structure, which is you, can't conceive of the possibility of anything happening except in time. This escapist logic is also applied by everyone to spiritual matters, only the time frame is larger. It happens in a future life or perhaps in heaven; at any rate, tomorrow. And just as there is no tomorrow in these matters, so its reference point, the present, does not exist. Where does it not exist? In thought, which is the past. There is no question of enlightenment and selfless "now", because there is no "now", only the projection of the present into the past.
You have never seen a tree, only your knowledge you have about trees. You see the knowledge, not the tree. Your whole interest in selflessness is motivated by the past. As long as there is motivation, it is a self-centered activity. The more you do, the more selfish you become. Your wanting to be enlightened or selfless is a very selfish thing. You don't want freedom, nor do you want everyone to be free, you want "freedom" for you. With an approach like that, how the hell are you going to be free? You are not going to be free.

MIND IS A MYTH:

Disquieting Conversations with the Man Called U.G.

Edited by: Terry Newland

Originally Published by: Dinesh Publications, Goa, 403 101 INDIA. 1988

 

When the questions you have resolve themselves into just one question, your question, then that question must detonate, explode and disappear entirely, leaving behind a smoothly functioning biological organism, free of the distortion and interference of the separative thinking structure. -- U.G.