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CHAPTER 2

 

HOPE IS FOR TOMORROW , NOT TODAY

 

'''Q: I would like to be able to meditate and have real peace of mind.'''

 

U.G.: Have you questioned this goal of yours, which makes ''sadhana'' necessary? Why take it for granted that there is such a thing as "peace of mind." Maybe it is a false thing. I am just asking the question to understand what particular goal you have. May I ask that question?

 

'''Q: As I said, I would like to have peace of mind.'''

 

U.G.: When do you expect to have it? It is always tomorrow, next year. Why? Why does tranquility, or quietness of the mind, or whatever you choose to call it, only happen tomorrow; why not now? Perhaps this disturbance--this absence of tranquility--is caused by the very ''sadhana'' itself.

'''Q: It MUST be possible ...'''

 

U.G.: But why are you putting it off until tomorrow? You have to face the situation NOW. What ultimately do you want?

'''Q: Whatever I do seems meaningless. There is no sense of satisfaction. I feel that there must be something higher than this.'''

 

U.G.: Suppose I say that this meaninglessness is all there is for you, all there can ever be for you. What will you do? The false and absurd goal you have before you is responsible for that dissatisfaction and meaninglessness in you. Do you think life has any meaning? Obviously you don't. You have been told that there ''is'' meaning, that there ''must'' be a meaning to life. Your notion of the "meaningful" keeps you from facing this issue, and makes you feel that life has no meaning. If the idea of the meaningful is dropped, then you will see meaning in whatever you are doing in daily life.

'''Q: But we all have to have an idea of a better, more spiritual life.'''

 

 

You have also been told that through meditation you can bring selfishness to an end. Actually, you are not meditating at all, just thinking about selflessness, and doing nothing to be selfless. I have taken that as an example, but all other examples are variations of the same thing. All activity along these lines is exactly the same. You must accept the simple fact that you do not want to be free from selfishness.

'''Q: I am making an effort to understand ...'''

 

 

The "peace of mind" you want is an extension of this war of effort and struggle. So is meditation warfare. You sit for meditation while there is a battle raging within you. The result is violent, evil thoughts welling up inside you. Next, you try to control or direct these brutal thoughts, making more effort and violence for yourself in the process.

'''Q: But there does seem to be something like peace of mind when one finishes one's prayers or meditations. How do you explain that?'''

 

U.G.: It is the result of sheer exhaustion, that's all. Your attempts to control or suppress your thoughts only tire you out, making you sort of battle-weary. That is the effortlessness and peace of mind you are experiencing. It is not peace. If you want techniques for thought control, you have come to the wrong man.

'''Q: No sir, I feel that I am benefited by talking with you. Are you saying that no religious commitment, no spiritual path, no ''sadhana'' is necessary?'''

 

 

You know. You want more knowledge so you can develop better techniques for reaching your goal. You know that there is no guarantee that more experience, more knowledge, more systems and more methods will help you reach your goal. Yet you persist; it is all you know how to do. Seeing today demands action. Seeing tomorrow involves only hope.

'''Q: What is it that we are trying to see with the help of techniques?''' 

 

 

Why should life have any meaning? Why should there be any purpose to living? Living itself is all that is there. Your search for spiritual meaning has made a problem out of living. You have been fed all this rubbish about the ideal, perfect, peaceful, purposeful way of life, and you devote your energies to thinking about that rather than living fully. In any case you are living, no matter what you are thinking about. Life has to go on.

'''Q: But isn't that the goal of culture and education, to teach us how to live?'''

 

U.G.: You are living. As soon as you introduce the question "how to live?", you have made of life a problem. "How" to live has made life meaningless. The moment you ask "how", you turn to someone for answers, becoming dependent.

'''Q: You are saying that all search is doomed because there is nothing to achieve or understand.'''

 

 

Here there is no need to sit in special postures and control your breath. Even while my eyes are open, in fact no matter what I am doing, I am in a state of ''samadhi''. The knowledge you have about ''samadhi'' is what is keeping you away from it. ''Samadhi'' comes after the ending of all you have ever known, at death. The body has to become like a corpse before that knowledge, which is locked into every cell in the body, ceases.

'''Q: You infer that a complete radical break with one's past is essential if one is to get beyond the prevalent mediocrity, if one is to live creatively. But there have been a great many intelligent, inventive people who have not undergone any death process or physiological "calamity", as you call it.'''

 

U.G.: Your highly praised inventiveness springs from your thinking, which is essentially a protective mechanism. The mind has invented both religion and dynamite to protect what it regards as its best interests. There is no good or bad in this sense. Don't you see? All these bad, brutal, terrible people, who should have been eliminated long ago, are thriving and successful. Don't think that you can get off this merry-go-round, or that by pretending to be spiritually superior you are avoiding any complicity. You are the world; you are ''that''. This is all I am pointing out.

'''Q: Are you also brushing aside the concern for what might happen to one in a future life? If, in a later life, I shall reap what I have sown, should I not be concerned with how to be moral?'''

 

U.G.: Past lives, future lives, ''karma'' -- these things are emphasized in this so-called "spiritual" country. It is a total failure! They say that they will have to suffer for their bad actions in the future, tomorrow. But what about now? Why is he getting away with it now? Why is he so successful right now?

'''Q: Despite the obvious chaos and brutality in the world, most of us find that hope springs eternal and that love must ultimately rule the world ...'''

 

U.G.: There is no love in the world. Everybody wants the same thing. Whosoever is the most ruthless gets it -- as long as he can get away with it. Getting what you want in this world is a relatively easy thing, if you are ruthless enough. I had everything a man could want, every kind of desirable experience, and it all failed me. Therefore, I can never recommend my "path" to anyone, having eventually faced the falseness of that path myself and rejected it. I would never even hint that there was any validity in all those experiences and practices.

'''Q: Contrary to what you have said, the great saviors and leaders of mankind have agreed that ...'''

 

 

When you see all this for yourself for the first time, you explode. That explosion hits life at a point that has never been touched before. It is absolutely unique. So whatever I may be saying cannot be true for you. The moment you see it for yourself you make what I am saying obsolete and false. All that came before is negated in that fire. You can't come into your own uniqueness unless the whole of human experience is thrown out of your system. It cannot be done through any volition or the help of anything. Then you are on your own.

'''Q: It seems to me that a special sort of valor is necessary for what you are describing. Am I right?'''

 

U.G.: Yes. But it is not courage in the usual sense. It is not the courage you associate with struggle or overcoming. The valor I am talking about is the courage that is naturally there when all this authority and fear is thrown out of the system. Courage is not an instrument or quality you can use to get somewhere. The stopping of doing is courage. The ending of tradition in you is courage.

'''Q: Even with courage there is no guarantee that one isn't wrong about life, or that one is not mistaken about the important things.'''

 

U.G.: When once you are freed from the pairs of opposites -- right and wrong, good and bad -- you will never be wrong. But until then the problem will be there.

'''Q: Reaching the end of opposites has rather frightening implications ...'''

 

U.G.: It is like accidentally touching a live wire. You are much too frightened to touch it through your own volition. By sheer accident this thing touches you, burning everything ...

'''Q: Including the search for God and freedom?'''

 

 

U.G.: You are incapable of listening to anyone. You are the medium of my expression. I respond to your questions; I have nothing of my own. The expression of what is here occurs because of you, not me. That medium -- you -- is corrupt. The medium is only interested in maintaining its own continuity. So anything that happens there is already dead.

'''Q: You seem bent upon demolishing everything other teachers have taught ...'''

 

 

You sense a freshness, a living quality to what is being said here. That is so, but this cannot be used for anything. It cannot be repeated. It is worthless. All you can do with it is to try to organize it; create organizations, open schools, publish holy books, celebrate birthdays, sanctify holy temples, and the like, thus destroying any life it may have had in it. No individual can be helped by such things. They only help those who would live by the gullibility of others.

'''Q: How exactly did the system free itself from tradition in your case?'''

 

 

My mission, if there is any, should be, from now on, to debunk every statement I have made. If you take seriously and try to use or apply what I have said, you will be in danger.

'''Q: Great teachers and seers in the Eastern tradition have at least attempted to convey some idea of higher states, while you insist they are incommunicable. Why?'''

 

 

If you are lucky enough to have this dawn on you, you will die. It is the continuity of thought that dies. The body has no death, it only changes form. The ending of thought is the beginning of physical death. What you experience is the emptiness of the void. But there is no death for the body at all. I am sure this is of little consolation to you, though. Just wanting to be free of egoism is insufficient; you must go through a clinical death to be free from thought and egoism. The body will actually get stiff, the heartbeat slows, and you will become corpse-like.

'''Q: The theory of reincarnation also denies death, but in a different way. They speak of an eternal ''atma'' or soul which outlives the physical death ...'''

 

U.G.: Whatever answers are given regarding death, you are not satisfied with them, and so you must invent theories about reincarnation. What is it that will reincarnate? Even while you are alive, what is there? Is there anything beyond the totality of the knowledge which existed inside you now? So, is there death at all, and if there is, can it be experienced?

'''Q: So you will only confirm the existence of a natural state, is that it?'''

 

U.G.: The ideas you have about that natural state are totally unrelated to what it actually is. You are trying to capture and give expression to what you hope is that state. It is an absurd exercise. What is there is only the movement to capture, nothing else. All the rest is speculation.

 

 

 

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