THERE IS NOTHING TO UNDERSTAND

 

  U.G.: You will never be free from selfishness. Q: But all the saints, saviors and religions of all times have encouraged us to be unselfish, to be self-effacing, to be meek. It must therefore be possible. How can you be so certain of such a thing? U.G.: Because it is crystal clear to me that you have invented this idea of selflessness to protect yourself from the actual -- your selfishness. In any case, whether you believe in selflessness or not, you remain at all times selfish. Your so-called selflessness exists only in the future, tomorrow. And when tomorrow comes, it is put off until the next day, or perhaps next life. Look at it this way; it is like the horizon. Actually, there is no horizon. The more you move towards the horizon, the more it moves away. It is only the limitations of the eyes that creates the horizon. But there is no such thing as the horizon. Likewise, there is no such thing as selflessness at all. Man has tortured himself for generations with this idea of selflessness, and it has only afforded a living for those who sell the idea of selflessness for a living, like the priests and moralists. I am not condemning you or anyone else, just pointing out the absurdity of what you are doing. When the energy that is spent in the pursuit of something that does not exist, like selflessness, is released, your problem becomes very simple, no matter what it is. You will cease to create problems on the material plane, and that's the only plane there is. Q: Yes, but what about those who are not searching for some illusory abstraction, but simply happiness? U.G.: Their search for happiness is no different from the spiritual pursuit. It is the pursuit of pleasure, spirituality being the greatest, ultimate pleasure. Q: So this pursuit has to go? U.G.: Don't say it should go. Wanting selfishness to go is part and parcel of the selfish pursuit of a more pleasurable state -- selflessness. Both do not exist. That is why you are eternally unhappy. Your search for happiness is making you unhappy. Both the spiritual goal and the search for happiness are the same. Both are essentially selfish, pleasurable pursuits. If that understanding is somehow there in you, then you will not use the energy in that direction at all. You know, I've been everywhere in the world, and have found that people are exactly the same. There is no difference at all. Becoming is the most important thing in the world for everybody -- to become something. They all want to become rich, whether materially or spiritually, it is exactly the same. Don't divide it; the so-called spiritual is the materialistic. You may think you are superior because you go to temple and do puja, but the woman there is doing puja in the hope of having a child. She wants something, so she goes to the temple. So do you; it is exactly the same. For sentimental reasons you go, but in time it will become routine and become abhorrent to you. What I am trying to point out is simply this: your spiritual and religious activities are basically selfish. That is all I am pointing out. You go to the temple for the same reason you go other places -- you want some result. If you don't want anything there is no reason to go to the temple. Q: But the great majority of people go to the temple ... U.G.: Why are you so concerned about what the majority does? This is your problem, and you must solve it for yourself. Don't bother about mankind and all the billions of people in the world. Q: You are ruthlessly condemning whatever people have said so far. You may, in time, also be condemned and blasted for what you are saying. U.G.: If you have the guts, I will be the very first to salute you. But you must not rely on your holy books -- the Bhagavad Gita(1) or Upanishads. You must challenge what I am saying without the help of your so-called authorities. You just don't have the guts to do that because you are relying upon the Gita, not upon yourself. That is why you will never be able to do it. If you have that courage, you are the only person who can falsify what I am saying. A great sage like Gowdapada(2) can do it, but he is not here. You are merely repeating what Gowdapada and others have said. It is a worthless statement as far as you are concerned. If there were a living Gowdapada sitting here, he would be able to blast what I am saying, but not you. So don't escape into meaningless generalizations. You must have the guts to disprove what I am saying on your own. What I am saying must be false for you. You can only agree or disagree with what I am saying according to what some joker has told you. That is not the way to go about it. I am just pointing out that there are no solutions at all, only problems. If others have said the same thing I am saying, why are you asking questions and searching for solutions here? Forget about the masses; I am talking about you. You are merely looking for new, better methods. I am not going to help you. I am saying, "Don't bother about solutions; try to find out what the problem is." The problem is the solution; solutions just don't solve your problem. Why in the hell are you looking for another solution? Don't come to me for solutions. That is all I am saying. You will make out of what I am saying another solution, to be added to your list of solutions, which are all useless when it comes to actually solving your problems. What I am saying is valid and true for me, that is all. If I suggest anything, directly or indirectly, you will turn it into another method or technique. I would be falsifying myself if I were to make any such suggestion. If anyone says there is a way out, he is not an honest fellow. He is doing it for his own self-aggrandizement, you may be sure. He simply wants to market a product and hopes to convince you that it is superior to other products on the market. If another man comes along and says that there is no way out, you make of that another method. It is all a fruitless attempt to overtake your own shadow. And yet you can't remain where you are. That is the problem. From all this you inevitably draw the conclusion that the situation is hopeless. In reality you are creating that hopelessness because you don't really want to be free from fear, envy, jealousy, and selfishness. That is why you feel your situation to be hopeless. The only hope lies in selfishness, greed, and anger, not in its fictitious opposite, i.e., the practice of selflessness, generosity, and kindness. The problem, say selfishness, is only strengthened by the cultivation of its fictitious opposite, the so-called selflessness. Sitting here discussing these things is meaningless, useless. That is why I am always saying to my listeners, "Get lost, please!" What you want you can get elsewhere, but not here. Go to the temple, do puja, repeat mantras, put on ashes. Eventually some joker comes along and says, "Give me a week's wages and I will give you a better mantra to repeat." Then another fellow comes along and tells you not to do any of that, that it is useless, and that what he is saying is much more revolutionary. He prescribes "choiceless awareness," takes your money and builds schools, organizations, and tantric centers. Q: Why shouldn't we brush aside what you are saying, just as you brush aside the teachings and efforts of others? U.G.: You will never blast me; the attachment you have to religious authority prohibits you from questioning anything, much less a man like me. I am certain you will never challenge me. For that reason what I am saying will inevitably create an unstable, neurotic situation for you. You cannot accept what I am saying, and neither are you in any position to reject it. If it wasn't for your very thick skin, you would certainly end up in the loony bin. You simply cannot and will not question what I am saying; it is too much of a threat. Absolutely nothing is going to penetrate your defenses; Gowdapada provides the gloves, the Bhagavad Gita a snug coat jacket, and the Brahmasutra(3) a bullet-proof vest. So you are safe, and that is all you are really interested in. You can't blast what I am saying as long as you are relying upon what someone has said before. Please don't say that there are thousands of seers and sages; there are only a very few. You can count them all on your fingers. The rest are merely technocrats. The saint is a technocrat. That is what most people are. But now with the development of drugs and other techniques, the saint is dispensable. You don't any longer need a priest or saint to instruct you in meditation. If you want to control your thoughts, simply take a drug and forget them, if that is what you want. If you can't sleep, take a sleeping pill. Sleep for a while, then wake up. It is the same. Don't listen to me. It will create an unnecessary disturbance in you. It will only intensify the neurotic situation you are already caught in. Having taken for granted the validity of all this holy stuff, having never questioned, much less broken away from it, you not only have learned how to live with it, but also how to capitalize on it. It is a matter of profiteering, nothing more. Q: If all this is so, then why do you go on talking? U.G.: There is no use asking me why I talk. Am I selling or promising you anything? I am not offering you peace of mind, am I? You counter by saying that I am taking away your precious peace of mind. On the contrary, I am singing my own song, just going my own way, and you come along and attempt to disturb my peace. Q: I feel that if anybody can help us it is you. U.G.: No sir! Anything I do to help would only add to your misery -- that is all. By continuing to listen to me you merely heap one more misery upon those you already have. In that sense this discussion we are having is doing you no good whatever. You don't seem to realize that you are playing with fire here. If you really want moksha here and now, you can have it. You see, you ARE anger, selfishness, and all these things; if they go, you go. There is a physical going -- not in the abstract, but actual physical death. Q:You are saying that that can happen now? Others have said ... U.G.: I don't give a hoot what others have said. It can happen now. You simply don't want it. You would not touch it with a ten-foot barge pole. If anger and selfishness, which is YOU go, moksha is now, not tomorrow. Your own anger will burn you, not the electric heater. So the religious man has invented selflessness. If that selflessness goes, you go, that is all. So, freeing yourself from any one of these things (i.e., greed, selfishness, etc.,) implies that you, as you know and experience yourself, are coming to an end NOW. Please, in your interest and out of compassion I am telling you, this is not what you want. This is not a thing you can make happen. It is not in your hands at all. It hits whomsoever it chooses. You are out of the picture altogether. All that poetry and romanticism about "dying to all your yesterdays" is not going to help you, or anybody. Nothing can come out of it. They may hold forth on platforms, but they themselves don't want it. It is just words. Eventually people settle for that (viz., temples, mantras, scriptures). It is all too absurd and childish. Q: Then how can we find out for ourselves and not just repeat the words of the so-called experts? U.G.: You have to actually touch life at a point where nobody has touched it before. Nobody can teach you that. As long as you continue to repeat what others have said before, you are lost, and nothing good can come of it. Listening to and believing what others have said is not the way to find out for yourself, and there is no other way. Q: So you are saying that we must get rid of our belief that.... U.G.: Don't bother. You will replace one belief with another. You are nothing but belief, and when it dies, you are dead. What I am trying to tell you is this: don't try to be free from selfishness, greed, anger, envy, desire, and fear. You will only create its opposites, which are, unfortunately, fictitious. If desire dies, you die. The black van comes and carts you away, that's it! Even if you should somehow miraculously survive such a shock, it will be of no use to you, or to others. You prefer to toy with things, asking absurd questions like, "What happens to my body after death? Will the body be strong enough to take it?" What the hell are you talking about? You are asking me what will happen to you if you touch that live electrical wire there. That is the kind of pointless question you are asking. You are not really interested at all. Perhaps after touching this you will be completely burnt and have to be thrown away. Perhaps others will get a shock themselves upon touching you, and you will become an untouchable! Look at what is implied by what I am saying. If you have the courage to touch life for the first time, you will never know what hit you. Everything man has taught, felt, and experienced is gone, and nothing is put in its place. Such a person becomes the living authority by virtue of his freedom from the past, culture, and he will remain so until someone else who has discovered this for himself blasts it. Until you have the courage to blast me, all that I am saying, and all the gurus, you will remain a cultist with photographs, rituals, birthday celebrations, and the like. I am sorry. I sing my song and go. Q: But we are lost, and so we need gurus, sadhana, and scriptures or guidance. U.G.: You can go back to your gurus. Do what you like. The thing I am talking about happens to the lucky; if you are lucky, you are lucky. That is all. I have nothing to do with it. It is in no one's hands. Q: Lucky or unlucky, our tradition tells us that life is transient, that all is in flux, that.... U.G.: That is the tradition of India I am talking about -- change, not the tradition you talk about, which is no change. Your whole life is a denial of the reality of change. You only wish to continue, somehow, then revive, only to continue. That is not the great tradition of India I am talking of. You think you are asking a profound question when you ask, "What is death?" You presume to ask Gowdapada's question before you have asked the more fundamental question, "Am I born?" Instead of tackling this basic question on your own, you quote and write commentaries upon Gowdapada, then take the easy way out, and simply equate what I am saying with what he said. That is your cop out. In any event, all you can do is to speculate about death and reincarnation. Only dead people ask about death. Those who are really living would never ask such a question. That memory in you--which is dead--wants to know if it will continue even after what it imagines to be death. That is why it is asking such silly questions. Death is finality; you are dead only once. When once the questions and ideas you have have died, then you will never ask about death again.


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.