The Mistake of Enlightenment (2)

Matrusri, Vol. 14, No. 5, August 1979

From talks with U-G

Since his 49th birthday U-G has been in what he calls ‘the natural state’. Seeking to discover the origins of this transformation, people often ask him for biographical information. He invariably replies that the events of his life before the occurrence of what he calls ‘the calamity’ were not in any way its cause. He maintains that his present state came about, not because, but inspite of all that he had done and desired during the first 48 years of his life, and for that reason his biography, if not actually misleading is of no significance at all.

U-G: Your search for truth, reality, God or whatever it is, is going to destroy you. Look here. You have had a lot of meanings given to you. Why are you still looking for the meaning of life, or the purpose of life? Everybody has talked about the meaning of life and the purpose of life. Everybody! The answers have been given by the saviours, saints and sages of mankind – you have thousands of them in India – yet today you are still asking the same question: “Has life any meaning, any purpose?” 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, a very frightening thing. The moment you begin to question the movement of thought inside you, you'll find that you're going to end up in a very surprising situation, which is a very frightening thing for you. Is there any such thing as truth? Have you ever asked the question? Has anybody said the truth?

Q: There are so many truths?

U-G: They are all liars, fops, fakes and cheaters in the world. All right, you want to find out for yourself what this ‘truth’ is. Can you capture the truth and hold it and say, “This is truth”? Whether you accept or reject it's the same. You are not in a position to accept or reject: it depends on your personal prejudices and predilections. So if you want to discover the truth for yourself, 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's such a thing as reality, ultimate or otherwise. It is that assumption that is creating the problem and the suffering for you.

Q: We want to have the benefit of your experience.

U-G: My experience is worthless to you. You must begin to question the experiencing structure within you. I want to experience God, truth, reality or what you will – so I must first understand the nature of the experiencing structure within me. You see, you are trying to capture something which cannot be captured in terms of your experiencing structure. 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, and you can't capture or contain or express it. It is not a logically ascertained premise. It has to be your discovery. What good is my experience? We have thousands of experiences recorded and they haven't helped us. It's the hope that keeps us going – “If I follow this for another ten years, perhaps one of these days I will know.” Hope is the structure.

Q: So he spends a lifetime, finally discovering that he's discovered nothing.

U-G: Nothing! That's the discovery. So-called ‘self-realization’ is the discovery for ourself, that there's no sell to discover. That will be a very shocking thing – “Why the hell have I wasted my life?” ….

U-G: What exactly do you mean by awareness?

Q: Awareness is sensory.

U-G: You are using another word. You see there is something there ….

I don't need to tell you, you don't need to read anybody's book to understand for yourself that awareness is With relation to that. You never look at a thing, because you are always looking inside your index card system and not at the object. The sensation has hit you and so you have turned inside and are looking inside your index card system. You have no living contact with that at all. That's a living thing. So what exactly do you mean by awareness ? For goodness sake be aware of that and tell me. You can never be aware of anything. If you were aware of that flower, you wouldn't be here asking me questions about what awareness is. You hear the barking of a dog. What happens? You translate and say, “It is the barking of a dog.” But if you are aware of that, it echoes here inside of you. There's no separation from you, so the barking takes place inside you. You are barking. No the dog there. There is a sudden tug at the thymus gland and then it becomes activated. That's what you call...God knows what it is.

The moment a thought takes its birth inside you, you are born. And the thought cannot stay there for long because it is movement. You want to hold on to the thought, and thereby you give continuity to the thought. There is gap between sensations. Each sensation is different. Millions of sensations are hitting this organism, and you are responding. You don't let them alone, because you are translating each sensation in terms of your background or experiencing structure, and you are giving continuity, So we come back to the question of discovering for yourself how thought takes its birth within you. The answer to that question, the searching, the movement of thought, is itself the barrier to understanding the question. The moment thought takes its birth inside you, you are born. So there is no use you talking as if you are born. You are never born and you never die. How can hero be death when you are not born? Neither birth nor death can become part of that experiencing structure. Everyone will become a self-realized man before he dies, I can assure you, but then its too late – your body isn't in a position to take it. otherwise you won't die. Death always takes place in an unconscious state. So why do you want to wait until your body becomes useless and can't take anything?

There is no bliss, no love, no truth – nothing of the sort – there is a pure sensation. As sensation also it is not there. If I say it is pure consciousness, where are You? You and I mean by ‘consciousness’ two different things. Consciousness and life are one and the same to me. Life has a tremendous awareness of its own – it has an incredible depth of being aware of itself. Names are for purposes of communication. I want to buy some roses, so I go to a florist and buy some roses. That's all there is. So, when I look at roses, why do I have to say to myself that it is a rose? This is a childish, immature, infantile activity we are all indulging in. What we are told as babies, we repeat every time we look at something. There's no need. But unless you capture that in terms of your experiencing structure, you come to an end. What are you? Nothing but this word ‘rose’ and the image which you build around this. It is the image that matters; the word has no meaning at all, it is not that thing. The image you create around it is the problem.

It is not ‘becoming one with the thing’. The separateness has to come to an end. There is no reason for me to recognize that it is dark or light outside, except when there is a demand for some reason outside of me to say that it is dark or light outside. So in this consciousness there are no limitations or frontiers or barriers.

“So how do you function in this world?” you may very well ask me. The walls are not there. The walls may be there, but this is just a reflection of the wall there. When there's a knock at the door, you move in that direction then you become aware (to use the word) that there's something there so it's like water coming in front of a rock – either it overflows or it takes a turn and goes. So the action takes place there – the action of opening the door, or whatever action there is to be done, takes place – otherwise it is not there. All the talk of three dimensions or four dimensions is all poppycock. There are no three dimensions here in this consciousness. The moment you begin to think, you create length, width, height and you project something else.

In this consciousness there is no division which says I am awake, or asleep, or dreaming. So there are no dreams at all. Perhaps you see the body sleeping there but not here inside this consciousness. The body is tired because the senses are functioning at peak capacity all the time. They can't go on, so every now and then, as decided by the circumstances in which you find yourself, not by any entity inside, the senses cut off from outside challenges.

You are always in a state of not knowing – not only in relationship with ultimate truth, reality, etc, but with the things that you are so familiar all your life. There must be a living contact with the object, otherwise there's only the image. You look at 2%, and 98% of what you are looking at is not observed by you, as ‘you’. You are translating and listening to only a portion. You don't experience completely and fully everything that is going on there. When your body is at rest. then the tape recorder plays itself and the camera begins to show the old film. It's like a mosaic you see – you pick something up that picks something up and creates all kinds of images, and that's your dream. Here there's no dream necessary. It leaves no residue behind – it's finished. So here the computer is registering everything, regardless of my likes and dislikes, but you are influencing what you are looking at, introducing the factor of likes and dislikes, and so you cut off most of it. So there's nothing wrong with looking at a beautiful woman. The camera is exposed; it is taking the picture. There's nothing there. You are not separate from what you're looking at, so it's finished. But it is recorded, when you meet the person next time: “Yes, I met you yesterday”. There's a demand there, and the answer has come. This is an automatic mechanical process that is going on all the time. It's a computer. You can't understand the mechanism of the computer. It's a computer whether you like it or not. It is there whether you like it or not.

Q: Who made it?

U-G: What's the good of asking that question? Any answers are speculation. So I can't – I don't know how to – separate myself from the computer and look at it. How a thought originates inside of me is a thing which I can never discover for myself. So the answer I'm looking for is not there, so the question is not there, so it's finished. Not that I've discovered how a thought takes its birth inside of me I can't because that means there must be another thought here to look at the thought and observe how it is taking its birth there inside of me.

You see, if I were to tell you that the machine is describing itself, it would sound a very mystical and mysterious statement to you. It is the machine describing itself. You ask questions. The machine isn't interested in answering any of the questions at all. It's your problem. You want to know how it is functioning. I don't want to. I don't care. You are interested, so you're questioning the machine and the answer comes. How it is coming and where from it is coming I will never know.

No outside agency can help you. So all outside agency is finished. That's a very difficult point to arrive at. So you don't go there. It's a different matter if you go just to satisfy your curiosity. So you fall on yourself, and you really don't know. “I want to find out.” You ask the question again and again. You are stuck with: “How can I understand this thing?” So the question is there. When there is no answer, you are finished with. What happens to the question when no answer is forthcoming from within? The question can't remain there. The question dissolves itself disintegration, ionization of thought takes place, because it can't escape. And that is the energy, life!

Printed and published by K. B. G. Krishnamurthy, Managing Trustee, Matrusri Publications Trust, Bapatlaat Matrusri Printers, Bapatla. Managing Editior: K. B. G. Krishnamurthy. Registered with the Registrar of Newspapers for India under Rn. No. 20919/66.