In and Out of Mental States

I talked elsewhere about how the continuity of mental states not only creates mental problems, but also creates in us our sense of identity, a notion of myself as a separate entity from others, the world and even from myself. It is indeed fascinating to see how this identity actually occurs.

Without our interference mental states have their own natural duration and then they fade out on their own. We pour life into them by either participating in them or resisting them and thus give continuity and permanence to them.

Take grief, for example. Like anger, fear, depression, loneliness or boredom it is a state of mind. Left to its own devices, it is a limited life and duration. Then it fizzles away, sometimes through distraction and sometimes naturally without any effort on our part. But our past experience works on it through our thought process and interprets it as something undesirable. In that very interpretation is the process of resistance. Since I, what I think about and my thought about it are not in reality separate entities, although I might presume they are, my very thought of it and resistance to it pours life into the mental stat e, gives it a continuity and a life. In fact, we have no way of looking at it the state of mind except through our thought of it. If we could, then we wouldn’t even know we are in that state.

Thus, in my mind a duality is set up between me and my mental state (of course, through my thought process). I keep battling the state and can’t understand why it continues despite of my resistance or trying to suppress it.

The mental state does not have any strength if I don’t participate in it or resist it. Just suppose I come to some terms with it by understanding that perhaps grieving is a natural process or that death is inevitable and so on. The state will have its natural life and die its natural death. The duration of the state depends mostly on the intensity of it. Of course, as long as the perceived cause of the state remains, the state has to remain, unless one turns his or her attention away from it.

Fear is another example of a mental state: Our initial attitude to fear is that it shouldn’t be there, i.e., we should not be afraid. And then whatever we do to address it will inevitably strengthen the fear, even if the attempt is merely to accept it. You cannot will to let it be. You just let it be. This is so, because the will presupposes a duality set between yourself and your fear and as long as you operate within the duality, the fear not only persists, but is multiplied and strengthened. But suppose you surrender to it. Cease and desist from any effort to change it. On many such occasions, which generally happened in my bed, in just a few moments, the fear not only fizzled away, but my organism relaxed and I fell asleep to wake up to notice I had no problem any more.

The discussion about mental states gives the hope that we can do something to change a given mental state. But unfortunately this essay can give no such direction or instruction. Even the instruction “Do nothing about mental states” can easily be taken as a direction. Then we tend to look upon a given state with a view not to change it. That too has the motivation of wanting to change it.

The reader can always ask: “Then what to do?” “Nothing,” would be my answer.

2) But this talk may sound all too easy. Actually, it’s more difficult than it seems, because we are so used to living by the pleasure principle of enhancing what has been pleasant and avoiding what is painful. As long as we fall headlong into pleasurable experiences and want to repeat them, improve upon them and seek further pleasurable experiences, we guarantee the continuity of ourselves. It is the same attempt to preserve the self that also automatically produces the negative reaction to some other experiences calling them painful. So, the learning about inaction regarding mental states has eventually to apply to the so-called pleasant or positive or pleasurable states of mind as well as the negative painful states.

It’s of course not to say that we shouldn’t enjoy what happens in our life. This is a far cry from preserving mental states as a way of perpetuating ourselves. But this does involve a fundamental overhaul of our systems.

What is the difference between letting a state be and being in a state? We are sometime in a state struggling in it (like in a depression) and there may seem to be no end to it. This is an inevitable question to arise. The answer is that when you are struggling within a state, either you are aware of your struggling in it or you are not. If you are aware, the fact that you are aware is itself in indication that you are other than that. And that awareness also implies that there is an attempt to become free from the struggle. Thus you are back to square one. If, on the other hand, you are not aware that you are struggling, then as such there is no problem. The state will wither away, unless, of course, it is generated by body chemistry or drug-induced. The solutions for such problems (which are observed by others) are not from within. You have to get help!

If by some means you can get out of mental states, say by just letting them be and surrendering to them, there is a “neutral” zone, a zone of mere consciousness. Here you are merely aware of the innards of the body such as the throat, the stomach or the mouth, and you are not within the mental world. Thoughts may arise and pass, but you are not them or in them and there is no reaction to them. It is indeed a skill -- not a skill which you can consciously and deliberately develop, as that requires a goal of changing the given and a will to change it – to just let the state be. Once you have a clear taste of the zone, then you can move back into the “neutral” zone whenever you find yourself caught in a mental state – you just have to let be whatever the state you find yourself – if it is fear, let it be; and if it is a hurt, let it also be. It is a skill of instantly freeing yourself from any mental state by letting it be and letting it last as long as it wants to.

I can only talk about when I am out of mental states; I cannot really talk about pure consciousness as such. Hence this may not constitute enlightenment at all. (As I said, I don't care what it is called anyway.) While I have sensations such as awareness of the throat, it is followed by some self-consciousness and verbal activity. The awareness of my sensation as well as the recognition of it through my verbal activity does involve duality and yet it is subsequent to the initial awareness where there may be no subject-object division. There is also no response to the sensation. Divisions and reactions enter into the picture only within mental states. The conceptual picture of this is not terribly clear to me, but this is the best I could come up with as yet.

You can say this zone of consciousness is self-luminescent, to use a Vedanta phrase. You know it exists because there is a built in self-awareness. I think UG himself talks about consciousness knowing itself (he says, for instance, in the Mystique that life knows itself.). You could call this a temporary state of enlightenment. On the other hand, you can say it is a shift in the brain. I am not so much interested in what you call it as the fact itself. When the ‘front’ of your brain is active, you are in mental states and you struggle within them. When you shift to the ‘back’ of your brain (or ‘head’ if you prefer that word), then you are in the zone of the body and awareness of the innards. There are no values here, nothing bothers you, and you don’t have to do or strive for anything. There are no relationships, including with yourself, no emotions, no love, and no fear of death. You can’t say it is anything. It’s not a nothing either. It’s just awareness.

Reflections on Meditation

Preface: I used to define meditation to my students as having the main function of disrupting one’s thought process. This definition is consistent with the Yoga definition of meditation as cessation of the activities of the mind. But unfortunately, like many other activities carried out by means of our mind, meditation is a mental activity, although its aim is to disrupt the thought process. In other words, its aim is psychological suicide!

Unless we intend to change ourselves to become someone different or better, or be in a more peaceful or ‘enlightened’ state, we wouldn’t take up meditation. Such an activity is the product of the mind, as it is our thought process which always attempts to change the given situation and help us be somewhere else. Meditation presupposes an awareness of our condition and dissatisfaction with it, as well as an attempt to change the condition into something better. The following demonstrates the paradoxical nature of meditation and how and why it is fundamentally frustrating. I will also show some of its virtues as well as its limitations.

Then I will mention some possibilities and discuss them.

What is Meditation? In the West, meditation is used, more often than not, to relax, to gain a sense of calm and freedom from anxiety. In the form of biofeedback it has been used to control blood pressure, promote alpha rhythm in the brain or whatever. For purposes of relaxation, it is also coupled with deep breathing, differential relaxation, visual imaging and so forth. Those who use meditation for such purposes don’t have any pretense to enlightenment, liberation or whatever.

Traditionally, however, meditation has been viewed, at least in the East, not merely as a method of relaxation but as a means to attain Nirvana or Release or enlightenment.

Forms and Methods of Meditation: There are many different forms of meditation: a) the most common form is to focus totally on whatever you are doing, not minding anything else. The traditional story of a woman going around three times with a pot on her head with nothing else in her mind, not even knowing that she was walking around, comes to mind. This is considered one of the means of transformation (mukti) traditionally recognized. That is what one might call the path of karma. You just are focused so much on what you are doing, you are not even minding what it will get you or won’t. Of course, in any skilled action, you have to constantly adjust your means to the ends, or else your actions misfire. That doesn’t mean you care about the outcome; you do care, but not about what you will or won’t get for yourself.

b) Repetition of a mantra or some sort of formula or a holy name is what comes to mind next as the most common method of meditation: Whether it is the syllable ‘Om’ or the names of gods, or a prayer, it doesn’t matter. You could help it with the counting of beads and what not. (Then you have to split your attention between the reciting and the counting – which I think becomes a chore.)

c) Or you could engage in contemplating God or having a dialogue with Him. This could also take the form of singing the praise of God, as in bhajans.

d) One frequently adopted form of meditation is self-inquiry, looking into the true nature of the self. In a contemporary version, it took the form of the well-known ‘Who am I?’ question one asks oneself constantly, as advocated by Sri Ramana Maharshi.

e) Just sitting and being aware (passively) of the mental contents is yet another form. Soto Zen and other forms advocate this meditation. Non-interference with what you observe is essential. There is and should be no goal for mediation. If there is a goal, meditation becomes contrived and you begin to interfere with the contents and generate conflict within yourself since you constantly calculate, measure and compare.

f) Many times this method is aided by focusing visually on a point on the wall, or the space between one’s eyebrows or just the breathing (watch the way breath enters the nostrils and leaves them. In some forms of meditation, being aware of your breath and counting the number of breaths constitute meditation. It has been long known in yoga practice that making exhalations slower than inhalations can indeed help one to relax.

g) Some other methods employ the instrument of thinking to create a space between oneself and one’s problem element such as a fear or depression by thinking about the whole picture, contemplate the consequences of actions, or the opposite side of an issue, or take another’s point of view and so forth. These too can result in freeing one, relatively speaking, from the problem one is currently facing and perhaps even develop detachment (Shankara’s Bhajagovindam and Buddhist descriptions of the body and prospect of the cremation ground come to mind). Some special types of meditation like Vipassana take an objective approach to one’s action and look at it as an impersonal process than done through one’s agency. The aim here, once again, is to fee one from an ego-centered point of view, thereby developing detachment. These types of meditation employ the instrument of thinking to counter or dissolve the problems created by the thinking process.

h) Also in Vipassana meditation, like in some other forms, awareness (or self-awareness, if you will) is interspersed between the perception of any part of the body or emotion of the mind, without interfering with the mind. Sweeping the floor being aware, watching how your foot step falls on the ground when you walk, being aware of how an emotion of anger rises, has its life and passes away, are some examples. This sort of awareness has not only the virtue of objectifying what one perceives, but also breaking up identification with it.

i) One frequently used form of meditation in contemporary practice is differential relaxation – focusing on each part of the body and relaxing it. In contemporary practice, one finds similar techniques to reduce pain. Focusing on one’s pain with awareness and breathing and relaxing deeply helps one being relieved from the pain.

j) Awareness in movement (much like meditation) as in Feldenkrais can be and has been used successfully in solving skeletal-muscular physical (perhaps psychological as well) problems. In some ways this is similar to practicing yoga asanas with breathing and awareness.

I can go on listing these methods.

Outcomes of Meditaton: The outcomes of meditation vary with the belief system one participates in or the method of meditation one uses: you may gain a vision of Christ or Krishna, you may experience God, you may feel oneness with the universe, you may have out-of-the-body experiences, you may lose all awareness of your body, you may feel that your head is missing, you may feel that your consciousness is expanding to encompass the whole universe, you may experience states of bliss or beatitude, or have a total sense of peace and harmony, or you may become part of the universal energy, and so on and so forth. The list is endless. Some may claim super sensual powers, peep into their past lives, have precognition, have psychic powers as well as powers to heal, not counting ability to know the internal structure of matter. Or your aim may be to simply relax and move into day-to-day chores with ease and a lightness of being.

Relaxation and Release: We need to examine the mechanisms or operation of meditation to see how it works and how it can help, if it does. In meditation you are either focusing or you are simply relaxing. In either case, you don’t interfere with the contents that show up either in the foreground or background of your consciousness. This is primarily reason why people who have been suppressing contents in their minds, or have problems facing their own undesirable thoughts, emotions or past experiences have no business meditating unless they can face up to everything that shows up in their minds when they meditate. But if you can let things go and not react as and when things show up, there is a genuine possibility of being released from the contents, particularly if you have gotten to the bottom rung of the ladder of the layers of a problem. One could term this process self-knowing or self-knowledge.

For example, fears. Normally we resist fear. But below the fear there is the threat we feel from the object of fear. And we dread the consequences of the threat. If we listen to the process of fear and all the consequences of the threat that we are afraid of, figure out what could be the worst consequence that could happen and let it be, then the object of fear will no longer pose a threat.

Or it could be frustration or conflict with another person or depression. Coming to terms with the happening which we dread or the not obtaining what we so cherish and desire, then we could obtain a release from either the fear or the frustration that is generated by the attachments, negative or positive to the objects. The same goes with attitudes, beliefs and prejudices.

In the process of meditation in terms of self-knowledge as described above, one could come to some very basic attachments, particularly to positive attachments to good health and life itself, and negative attachments to pain and to death. When we learnt to let these too go, we could arrive at a stage where nothing is important to live any more, not living or dying, and you are just plain consciousness. In that moment of consciousness or awareness, thought might appear just like sounds and experiences as mere images. You now have the ability to let them come and go. They have no longer the hold on you they had before or the charge. The emotional charge is dissipated, as it were. (Of course, this can also happen in confession or confiding with a friend.)

Self-knowledge in the sense described above implies the awareness of the contents of the self, and since the awareness is non-interfering, it could be described as an automatic process of detachment. In other words, in some way, we are shedding the contents of the self from ourselves.

Limitations: This freedom may be just momentary. You may fall headlong into a thought or an experience and react to objects of these as though they are currently happening. In other words, the attachments reassert themselves. You may have to go through the process again and again and release may only be momentary.

So the relief and release you obtain in meditation is relative and temporary. Don’t expect any permanent changes. The conditioning that generates the attachments may be too deep and perhaps even beyond the reach of your consciousness. And meditation may not be able to uproot these conditionings. You may have to accept meditation at that level; but it doesn’t mean it’s useless.

Relaxation is similar. To the degree that you are able to let things happen or go, you are able to relax. Or you might say, your ability to relax physically in the face of the various attachments or hang-ups that show up in consciousness is indeed what enables you to become released (detached) from them. This only shows that body and mind are not really two separate entities, but two aspects of the same entity (whatever that is – see my article on the mind-body problem on this blog).

You can re-invoke this consciousness by consciously letting go everything, even if it be for just a moment. The process can be progressive shorter, telescoping a whole lot of previous self-knowledge in just a moment, as it were. But then you are back again in the thought-game.

The primary reason why release of this sort is only relative and temporary is that underneath all conscious activity is a holding on to existence which is essential to the survival of the self, self in the psychological sense. The survival appears as physical survival – after all, the psychological is only a mental extension (or abstraction, if you will) of physical survival (that’s how it appears to the self). This holding on manifests itself as fear of death, of old age, of disease and most of all of pain, as well as the contrary side of seeking continuity through pleasure seeking (the opposite of avoiding pain. We can fool ourselves that we are totally free from all this holding, but when it comes to brass-tacks we fall headlong into these whenever the opportunity presents itself when we confront objects, persons, events or situations in life and in the world.

This is the reason why I say there is a radical difference between this relative freedom and total liberation where you are free from the will to live, free from the attachment to living or the negative attachment (fear of) to death, pain, disease and old age. You could only witness rarely among human beings. I could see that in UG at the time when he was face to face with death. From my own perception as well as a detailed account I have read by Mahesh Bhatt who was with UG until the last moment of death, I could say UG never cared whether he lived or died, never sought medical help[1] to become free from pain or sickness, I mean after he had gone through his ‘calamity’. And to me that’s radical. I don’t know if this is indeed desirable for any of us, but I do know that this is what constitutes true liberation, if there is such a thing.

Unfortunately, it is not subject to conscious choice, since, as far as the psychological self is concerned, this is tantamount to not just psychological, but actual suicide. No wonder, UG kept saying that in order for such a thing to take place there must be ‘clinical death,’ not that you can consciously choose to do that.

Feelings of Ecstasy, Energy: Once you are momentarily free from the contents of consciousness (i.e., the ego or self), at that moment, one may feel a surge of energy flowing through the body with or without the accompanying feeling of bliss. This can be (and is often) interpreted as experience of enlightenment; but tradition warns against such feelings, they are mere feelings and as such fleeting. The consequence of such feeling may well be that the person feels unburdened, lighter and refreshed for the rest of the day, unless and until some concern, worry or obsession, stemming from the past, of course, takes over.

But this is not what traditionally what liberation is supposed to be. If you are liberated, it’s final, once and for all. That I can’t see happening through conscious meditation and I give below my reasons for it. It doesn’t mean it can’t happen at all, it just means that it can’t happen through my conscious effort and will, nor by any deliberate meditation.

Critique: To repeat, meditation is an activity of the mind, although it is geared to let the mind cease its activity. It’s a suicidal process, not instantly, but as a gradual procedure. There is always hope behind this activity that it will eventually take us to our goal, namely, being free from all mental activity and the activity of seeking goals. But that’s a contradictory process. It will not succeed.

Practicing meditation is much like believing and having faith and praying. You could say that you can eventually become free from the self by keeping on practicing meditation; just like you could say if you have enough faith you can move mountains. If you haven’t succeeded, it’s your own fault. It means you haven’t done enough. This is a tautological requirement: you have meditated enough only when you have succeeded in becoming free from the self and you will succeed only if you have meditated enough.

So, you can go around, walking around, without doing any ostensive meditation. But your awareness doesn’t go away. You are stuck. You can’t go forward and you can’t go backward. Whatever is happening within you, you are still aware.

You keep going on endless loops, get more and more frustrated, and trying in various ways not to meditate, to meditate, measure results, watch the activity of the self, get frustrated again, try to let go of that activity, let go of everything, and so on and so on.

There are times when you don’t care what happens and are merely aware, but only to fall headlong into the habit of thinking and responding to the world through the self. This is an endless activity. And there is no end to it nor is there any hope.

You feel cornered.

But that too may not be a problem, given the nature of the mind – this is bound to happen. You are now declutched and then again you are clutched.

Possible Conclusions: What possible conclusions can we arrive at so far? 1) It’s a waste of time to meditate. 2) Meditation can at best help you arrive at State Zero, a neutral state of awareness, but it cannot help you stay in it, for it is an unstable state, volatile; you are back in the automatic conditioning cycle each time you have to respond to something in the world. Not only the conditioned mechanism is brought into play, but simultaneously the dualism between the self and the world comes into the picture. You cannot but respond to the world ultimately in terms of the self and its interests. (For instance, however much you are enlightened, you are back to your prejudices (caste, race and religion), and also to feelings of inferiority and superiority, seeking power, pleasure, sex, and what not.) Of course, through meditation you can work your way back to the state of pure awareness; but you have to do it again and again. It’s an endless cyclical process. Perhaps, you can telescope the process somewhat. That’s about the best you could do.

Possibility: When by some chance the mind does cease its activity, there is no meditation, and none necessary. You just are in the mode of being, not in the mode of becoming, getting somewhere, the future inviting us, haunting us. And there is tension in our minds pulling us forward toward the future. This restlessness will not cease until we give up the goal of achieving anything, including anything like self-liberation through meditation; it will not cease until the very goal to meditate ceases to be. Then there is neither meditation, nor any need to meditate.

When all activity of the mind stops, there is a respite. You are not meditating, nor are you not meditating. I used to say in my Eastern Philosophy class that you are truly meditating only when you are free from the very need to meditate. (Just as UG would say, you are truly free when you are free from the very concern to be free.)

I don’t know if I would call this liberation. It’s not liberation, if liberation implies some kind of permanent state. There are no permanent states. There is only a constant dynamic, a dynamic in which sometimes you respond to the world through the self and at other times there is no response. You just are. Nevertheless, as I discussed above, there is a radical change in oneself which called ‘true liberation’.

Question: Exactly what brings about the anchoring (I mean being ‘hooked’ to a thought or situation once again)? It’s clear that there are times when you are not anchored (UG’s ‘declutched’ state); and at other times, you are automatically connected to the mental contents and respond to the world as though you are a self. It couldn’t just be as UG says that the situation calls for it and brings it about, because there are situations in the middle of which you can ‘drop out’, declutch yourself.

Here is an answer: My mind goes out to repeating a habit pattern; in this instance, there is the urge or thought to play a computer game. Then a counter thought presents itself of how this is part of the pattern of restlessness, the chatter of the mind, and what not. The idea says that instead of going through the activity, just drop everything. Then, the thought simply drops out, at least for the moment. There is just nothing. You can say, its pure awareness; but it’s not aware of anything. Then also a jerking (like a shiver) in the body indicating an explosion of energy.

This is followed by the urge to record the event, as this gives a specific answer to the above question. Of course, this is also a mental activity. No wonder none of this lasts, because thoughts and what is generated by thinking can only last that long.

Then moments later, there is a strong urge to play a computer game once more. I being one who doesn’t fight his temptations, yield to it. I let the urge play itself through. The strength of the urge must be the force of habit, or what we might call karma. Restlessness follows. Then again a dropping of the thought processes and so on and so on. So goes the story.

And that’s about all you can do in meditation – masturbation!

Surely, there are a lot of mental contents: the head is abuzz with them. It’s not that there is any problem with them.

The self’s agendas are not so easily understood nor dealt with. Feeling important, having power, having control and feeling that in some way that I am better than anyone whom I compare myself with is a central agenda. So is the seeking of pleasure and avoiding pain. Greed, appropriation of things and people are a third. Of course, these motivations are all just different forms of the self to continue. Hence, of course, the fear of death.

* * *

Possible Objection from UG: UG would object to this account by saying that you don’t know that you are in a state of awareness except by means of thought. So, thought must very well be present when you are aware of your awareness in order to claim that you have that awareness.

Reply: This is a debate I had with UG a long time ago. I asked him that same question, “How do you know that there is such a state as the Natural State or whatever?” (You can watch this discussion in the video “What am I Saying?”) I don’t believe he gave a satisfactory answer. The best he could come up with are these two answers: “I don’t know,” and “Life is aware of itself.”

UG is not consistent when he is asking a question about the account I have given. I am not claiming that there is knowledge when I am in the state of just being aware. I am just saying that there is awareness. The knowledge of it may come later when I start thinking about it. And you can’t say that there can be no awareness when you think of it later. The least you can say is that there is memory (or trace) of that awareness when you think about it and that you may not longer be in that state. That account does not bother me. I am not claiming that awareness is aware of itself (although I could say that) and that is turned later into knowledge.

Nevertheless, I must grant UG this much: if this awareness is only a mental state and does not last for more than a moment, it is entirely possible that it is thought-generated and that we are back to square zero. For one thing, you don’t know that it exists except by recognizing or remembering it by means of your thought process. For another, it too is a state and has its origins, time of stay and disappearance.

Objection Extended: UG’s objections can also spread to detachment and as a matter of fact any other action consciously undertaken: because they are done consciously, from his logic it should follow they are done by means of thought. Consciousness must then equal thought. For instance, you cannot consciously detach yourself from anything, especially without an ulterior motive. Just the same way, you cannot freely give anything selflessly, because that is done consciously and therefore with self-centered motivation.

* * *

Another Reason Why Meditation is Frustrating: There is another profound reason why meditation is fundamentally frustrating: Our mind, i.e., thought process, which I can also call the process of the self, is a seeking mechanism. It constantly seeks to be some other place than where we are at the moment. This tendency manifests itself in a very basic way by trying to know whatever state we are in. In our constant search for fulfillment (and permanent happiness, as UG would put it), we seek and strive for a state of unbecoming from where we don’t travel any further. This is an endless process.

Even if such a state of permanent happiness or fulfillment ever exists, we are not content merely being in that state. We want to know and cherish that we are in that state. And that’s where the seeds of becoming are sown. That very urge to know our state not only puts us outside of that state in order to cherish it, but also makes us seek further to continue or enhance or preserve that state by whatever means. This knowledge or consciousness is the curse of the human condition, because it puts us in the merry-go-round of alienating ourselves from ourselves and then again trying to unite with ourselves.

Since the urge to know or be aware of what we are or what we are experiencing is inherent in any meditation process, meditation is a fundamental failure and has to end ultimately in frustration. The ill-gotten gains are momentary!

From all this it should follow, that you have to be left with utter despair, with no hope what so ever, and nothing you can do about it either.

Alternatives? Then what are the alternatives left? Wait for the ‘Calamity’ to happen, which might never occur? Be disillusioned with the whole ‘awareness’ business and ‘jump in the lake’, or accept your fundamental state of helplessness and keep going in circles (for we are called ‘wheels!’). The end result might be shortening or telescoping the mental process one goes through to drop the motivational structure piece by piece. Or one may just keep going in the business as usual until one dies and then the story really ends! The last seems to be more likely than anything else.

Gloom and Doom! You are doomed to fail and there is no way out! As usual, UG is right! There is no way out!

* * *

P.S.: Objection from Advocates of Meditation: I hear a strong objection from the advocates of meditation: it’s not true that meditation yields mere awareness. It could lead to knowledge. There is a means of knowing which is beyond the ordinary: that’s what results in extrasensory powers, healing, knowledge of God, other lives, even atoms and their inner structure.

Here I am treading a totally unknown territory. I don’t have to deny that there are such means and types of knowledge. It’s entirely possible that meditation (or prayer) clears the way for them. But since they are not universal, we don’t know and there are no known methods of accessing or controlling them. I am sure there are some who believe that there are, but I have no answer to them. UG himself is believed to have had some of those powers, but, even if he did have them, I don’t believe they were consciously cultivated.

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[1] Except on rare occasions as when he consulted a doctor about his ‘plumbing problem’ (hiatal herinia) or when he wanted his teeth extracted by a dentist.

The Self, Meaning and the Significance of Life

The Question of Meaning or Significance of Life: My former philosophy professor who later became my friend once bemoaned the fact that in spite of carrying the Bhagavad Gita under his arm for many years he could never ‘believe’ (in religious matters). He is a well-known scholar in Indian philosophy and tradition as well as in Western philosophy and logic. I told him that he could never believe nor make himself believe because he knew too much, meaning that the knowledge prevented him from naïvely believing in anything. The knowledge would prompt him to question and doubt any belief he might entertain. The same holds true with innocence in matters of living.

The question, “What is the meaning of life?” like questions such as “Who made God?” “What was there before everything?” is a metaphysical question. It does not lend itself to any satisfactory answer, because such questions are basically paradoxes created by our reason, which is a form of thought. For instance, suppose there is some meaning to life, say, for instance, serving God or His purposes, letting alone the question of whether there is a personal God or not, one could immediately ask the question of what is God’s purpose or why should one serve God. This questioning is endless. That’s why the question has no general answer.

In order to satisfactorily answer this question, we must ask in what contexts the question of meaning of life arises. I used to point out to my students when discussing the question of meaning of life that a five year-old just doesn’t run to his or her daddy and ask him, “Daddy, daddy, what’s the meaning of life?” We don’t ask such questions when our lives are moving on smoothly. Our lives must have run into some crisis and come to a halt before we ask such a question. As UG often said, a living man never asks the question of why he should live. You don’t ask such questions until you have lost your innocence in living. You must ‘know too much’ to get to ask such questions.

Normally, when we do things, engage in various activities of life, we don’t look for any external meaning to our actions except the goals we seek. It’s natural that when we confront various frustrations in life, particularly with regard to some significant goals, be it a girlfriend or boyfriend we wanted, or a job we seek or the ill-health that we try to recover from. In striving for our goals, we make constant assessment of our status, where we are and how far we still have to go, what we have achieved and what that ‘means’ to us, and so on, by reviewing not only our present situation, but also our life, constantly and repeatedly, and the reviewing becomes a habit. It is when we face some profound failures that we tend to review our life, assess its significance and ask if there is any meaning to the whole of our life. We have to arrive at a general idea of the whole of our life, which we didn’t have earlier, (even when as young people we constantly looked forward to our future,) before we could ask such fundamental questions about life. The questioning can land us in various forms of malaise: one might lose one’s taste for life, become bored with life, and worse, become an alcoholic or workaholic, or become addicted to achievement, or become chronically depressed or even go the limits of losing one’s will to live and of committing suicide.

The solution to the problem of meaning of life lies in the sources where it was generated, viz., in the initial frustrations regarding achieving one’s basic desires or goals. In other words, the solution to the problem is in its dissolution. If we were totally engaged in living and are not separate from it, the question of what is the meaning of life would not even arise.

Fulfillment and Frustration: Built into the activity geared toward goal-seeking are ideas of time and future. We labor under an implicit assumption that the satisfaction of each goal will somehow fulfill us. The feeling of fulfillment or the feeling that our life has been fruitful could come not only from satisfaction of goals such as money, a good family, a house, a boat, power, achievement and what not, but also from religious sources: you ardently believed in God and his grace, you feel blessed and or through your devotion and piety you feel that some day your life will be blessed or you will reach the presence of God.

When the goals are reached, when we get what we want, we do feel content and satisfied, and feel fulfilled for the moment. But the matter never ends there: the very awareness of what we have achieved turns it into a further goal, at least of preserving the status quo or continuing it in time, for we once again feel we lack it or feel uncertain about it in some other fashion (we may not have it tomorrow or there is a risk that someone or something might take it away from us, and so on). When our striving process proceeds without interruption, we normally do not tend to ask fundamental questions about living or its significance. If we happen to have religious beliefs, then as long as the beliefs are strong, they tend to give us support in tiding over our frustration: this life with its travails, for instance, might be viewed as a testing ground in which God or some other power morally and spiritually prepares us for a life of blessedness.

But when we find that the goals are not achieved and frustration is the only outcome, and when we confront several such failures, we tend to believe that our lives have been a waste and we start wondering whether life itself has any meaning. We could even lose our faith in God, particularly if the shock of frustration is too great and no amount of prayer has been answered. It is not as much that we look toward a higher meaning as wondering whether there is any meaning at all that is the crux of the issue.

The flow of life has been interrupted when we ask such questions; our naiveté and involvement in the life process have left us. When the frustrations are rather fundamental, no substitutions for the goals or simple patching will put us back on track. We have lost the taste for life. The lost belief or faith can never be regained. Is there any solution to such a problem short of getting into boredom, depression, suicide, alcohol or what not?

Once the question arises, one then asks the further question of how to become free from this separation, this alienation between ourselves and our life.

As long as we are attached to goals and something outside of us to fulfill us, frustrations are inevitable and the question of meaninglessness of life must arise, as we keep insisting that not only our desires must be satisfied, but that we must have no failures and we must be permanently happy ‘without a moment of unhappiness’. The problem of meaningless of life is intimately bound with the problem of time and our own future non-existence: for we try to fulfill ourselves only because we feel we lack all the things we desire.

If we can confront our own future non-existence (i.e. death), and emptiness, then perhaps we could see the superfluous nature of our values and goals we have been seeking all our lives. We can see then all the goals and values that have hitherto given meaning to our life are dispensable. This doesn’t mean that we do not pursue goals or have desires. Living simply requires us to. But we could see the tentativeness of goals and strive for them when one needs to and not be daunted by failures. Each thing we undertake would have value only on its own merits, but not as part of a life-project or ulterior meaning; and when we don’t succeed in our endeavor, we are flexible enough to try some more or in other ways or abandon the goal and move on to other things.

Notice that we are not talking about not having goals or not enjoying or suffering the results of our actions. Of course, we will as we currently do. Suppose we come to the realization that there is no external meaning to life, and whatever we do has to have its meaning stemming from the results of the action; and further suppose, that we realize that success and failure are equally possible outcomes of every action and that when we confront failures, we let that happen and move on to a further project, even if it is retrying the earlier project and perhaps keep working at that. If we can succeed in doing that, that means we have learned to become free from the residue of the disappointment generated from the previous failure or failures.

Each failure is an invitation to revisit our goals and assess their feasibility. Each failure is also an opportunity to become aware of our attachment to things, people or situations and question it. Each failure is also an opening to our own emptiness underneath all our goals and activities.

Then we tend to live life on its own terms, and not in terms of ulterior values we have acquired here and there.

I am not saying that there is no significance to life or meaning in life; I am saying that if you don’t ask fundamental questions about living, then each little thing we do will have its own temporary and tentative meaning. The metaphysical question of whether or not there is an ultimate, exterior meaning to life doesn’t bother us anymore, because we realize that that meaning is bound up with all the goals and values that we have so far found desirable and that our self is that meaning. The loss of that self is what we have been afraid of. Once we are free from that fear, we don’t have to look for any ulterior meaning. Life is its own meaning.

Meaning and the Self:[1]The world we build for ourselves, the world of our meaning is our self. The self is meaning. The loss of meaning is the loss of self. Our thought process puts together repeatedly various situations and events that occur in our life from time to time and assign meaning and value to it. Then we feel elated or depressed, depending on the outcome of the evaluation. Meaning and value are assigned, however, in terms of one’s past experience; that’s the measuring rod and the backdrop against which things and events acquire meaning. The meaning we assign to our world is our meaning and it defines us.

Our feeling secure is bound up with our being able to find meaning in our lives. The mind constantly tries to impose structure on any given situation. One has to find a place for oneself in the scheme of things and see how one measures up in relation to it. Not being able to do so makes one insecure, because the situation then is seen as fraught with uncertainty and one wouldn’t know where one is.

Boredom: One of the opposites of a meaningful life is boredom. If things are not interesting or meaningful, then we are bored. We constantly labor under the opposites of ‘boring’ and ‘interesting’ when we confront situations. What’s interesting and what is not are determined, of course, on the basis of comparing the current situation, action, idea, thought, conversation or whatever, with what we have experienced in our past as more or less interesting or meaningful than this. The ability of not looking for meaning in life is the ability to confront situations not on the basis of such comparisons, but just as themselves – i.e., neither interesting nor boring. You just do them because either you have to, or that’s what’s in your way. Everything you confront has its own interest.

Loneliness: One of the consequences of meaninglessness, particularly that stemming from frustrations in love, is the problem of loneliness. Unless you are, once again, comparing the present situation as lacking something you wanted, there is no room for isolation or loneliness. The world is filled with things and people – they all keep us company. You don’t get lost in them nor do you feel isolated.

Depression: Depression is another one of the consequences. Depression is considered as a malaise. Unless it is generated from some physical condition (such as gloomy weather) or chemical imbalance, it is always in relation to something we have been missing or frustrated about. Depression is a withdrawal response. You don’t reach out any more as you were frustrated earlier. Your energies, as it were, are turned inward. And depression is inevitable as long as you are still hooked to the person or thing you have been attached to and you can’t, for some reason or other, continue to strive for it. If and when you could let the person or thing go, then depression drops itself out of you “like a handkerchief from your pocket.”

Fear and Worrying about Future: We are not only proud of our past achievements, we also worry about our future – what will happen to our money, fortunes, job, health, family, house and so on. The worry is created by the thought process which also creates our future. We constantly live in hope and yet when there is some doubt about the future outcome we worry about it. The meaning structure, i.e. the self, is constantly at risk. We feel threatened. As long as you think about your future, you must worry. The mind is constantly calculating possibilities, measuring one’s progress against them and responding to them through worry and hope. We will never be free from one (fear) without being free from the other (hope). To be able to become free from both requires an overhaul our system -- our values and cherished desires. Worry is a form of fear. We cannot be free from fear until we take it all the way to its limits and accept the worst possible outcome. If we could ever get to do that, that would generate the possible required disillusionment with our desires and goals. Thus we become free from our attachments.

In the final analysis, the question of meaning in life as a blanket question is tantamount to the preparedness to let go of one’s set of values and meanings that one has acquired in the past, and that means the same as losing one self. By facing one’s annihilation, one is able to break up this total meaning structure into pieces. Then, perhaps, one is able to live without having to have an overall meaning, each life situation or event having a meaning in its own terms: I am currently writing, for instance, because there was some occasion in my previous writing where this sort of question arose, or someone raised a question regarding this. Once I finish writing this piece, its purpose is served and I move on to other things. I don’t have to have this contribute to my overall meaning of life, nor do I have to feel disappointed if people criticize it or do not understand it or agree with it. That’s their problem, not mine. As to the question of why I write at all, the answer is simply for lack of anything better to do. It is, as a matter of fact, one among the many things I do in my day-to-day life, some necessary for living or survival and some totally gratuitous. How else could it be? I can’t, at my age, make myself believe in some artificial or religious goal and go about assigning meaning to my life on its basis. But I have no disappointment in my life either. Life is what it is. You just live as best as you can, and then you go!

I know all this sounds totally counter-commonsensical and absurd as we are all so used to living on the basis of a set of values to which we feel so committed and attached. We feel that there is no point of living without such a basis (I can hear a resounding response, “Then why live?” in my ears!) This is just one possible analysis and solution and it may or may not appeal to you.

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[1] I wrote about this in my previous article, but it can bear some repetition in the present context.

Thought, Thinking and the Self

Preamble: Here I am not so much interested in what the scientists have to say about thought and thinking, their scientific studies, which generally involve establishing correlations between thought processes (or other mental phenomena like perception, feeling, emotions and dreaming) and various brain centers or electrical and chemical processes, as understanding them from my own point of view in a commonsense fashion. The problem with scientific studies is that they don’t leave us with much we can do anything about. And they eventually will lead to commercial or political exploitation.

Beginnings of Thought: We all use the words ‘thinking’ and ‘thought’ without ever being conscious of what the words mean. I think the thinking process has its roots in consciousness which in turn has origins in the very simple activities like responding to stimuli, recognition and various stages of remembering. Response is evident even in the world of inanimate matter, as for instance, when an iron filing responds to the presence of a magnet, or a gas heater or toaster responds to a set temperature in a thermostat. In the biological world, response takes place in the form of reacting to stimuli, whether internal or external, even at the level of ameba or other primitive organisms. Here we see the beginnings of what we can term as consciousness. Responses become more and more complex as life forms become more complex and heterogeneous – forming the senses and their sensations, which serve the organism’s basic survival and reproductory needs. Some animals respond to stimuli even when they do not occur in the present: an animal like an elephant is said to be able to dream. Dogs are said to be able not merely to recognize their masters but remember where their homes are and get back to them, sometimes hundreds of miles away. Whales and birds are known to migrate thousands of miles away as their instincts and other internal stimuli prompt them. And bees can communicate to other bees with precision the location of a source of nectar.

Internal stimuli too cause responses of various kinds. But most important for our discussion is the idea of image making. Images are said to exist in some primitive form in animals, particularly in elephants, chimpanzees and gorillas, and perhaps even in cats and birds. They miss their partners when they are not present for a length of time. The grieving process and dreaming through fear presuppose some sort of imagery, however primitive and isolated it might be. Images are representations of objects which are not directly present. And to that degree they do represent concepts, although only non-verbally. A concept is a mental representation of whatever kind, even if it is just a mere sensation, when it is taken to represent something other than itself, most of the time a class of objects.

Consciousness: When animals respond to images in a primitive fashion, they are conscious, but only in an incipient sense. An explicit consciousness, as when we are self-conscious, requires the division between the self and the other mediated through a thought, whether explicitly verbalized or not. Therefore, we cannot say animals are conscious of images or of their own responses to them. We too were probably like them before self-consciousness has developed in us. Words, like images, are vehicles for concepts and physiologically they exist only in the form of sounds (which we notice in our sub-vocal speech movements).

Self-Consciousness: Then what is self-consciousness? I think the roots of typical thought processes must be sought here. Self-consciousness must involve some feeling or consciousness of oneself being conscious of whatever it is that one is conscious of (say, a sensation, an object or situation in the world, a feeling or an action). Self-consciousness does not take place in a vacuum. It is not a mere nothing either, nor is it just a consciousness. It involves an object, something we are aware of, and the subject which is aware of that something. The subject is not a mere nothing, either. It is perception, thought, feelings, reactions, plans which are all based on the background knowledge one has acquired over a lifetime. It is the ground on the basis of which we are aware of the objects. All perceptions (and recognition which is implied in them) and our reactions to objects as subjects occur by means of the past knowledge concerning the object. The subject, as subject, can never be the object of attention. It is only evident indirectly through the inner dialog that goes on in the mental processes. The knowledge we have acquired represents to us the world we live in. And the knowledge reacts through its known methods. There is no perception without such reaction.[1]

Although self-consciousness is an aid in the process of learning a new skill, as it helps us in monitoring and putting together through memory various details one has to learn, it can also hinder us in the smooth performance of a skill once it is learned. Much intellectual thinking as well as problem-solving is occurs in the field of self-consciousness in the form of a dialog one carries on within oneself.

Knowledge and Valuation: Our reactions are manifold and add to the edifice of knowledge and hence of the world we make up for ourselves. Perception first of all implies recognition of objects. Recognition is an incipient thought process. And the very recognition of the object is at the same time an evaluation. Also, the reaction to the recognized object or situation or person is simultaneously an evaluation on the basis of a scale of values one has built for oneself over time. The values reinforce experiences positively or negatively. The evaluation process is simultaneously also a process of becoming something other than oneself, something which will resolve a perceived shortcoming, difficulty or problem and steer one toward goals which presumably imply an improved situation. The process of the self (which I will describe below) is a process in time. Evidently, without the movement of thought, there is no past, present or future to the conscious mind or self. Thought is very much involved in this process. Now, what is thought?

Recognition and Judgment: Thought is not only the process of recognition, but of judgment. More often than not, the judgment implies an evaluation and a projection into the future. Images, concepts as well as language are implicated in the mental processes of judging, evaluating and projecting into the future. Some process of creative problem-solving, particularly those that involve creativity are beyond the reach of thought, or, at any rate, best carried out when conscious thinking is not present. Once the problem is solved, then it is thrown into the realm of conscious thinking and then the thought process can work out the details of the solution.

Intelligence: Intelligence has many skills such as problem-solving, scanning, assessing, evaluating, estimating, hypothesizing, drawing consequences from an idea, systematizing, comparing, organizing, analyzing, synthesizing, abstracting, projecting into the future, and so forth. Thinking is one of the functions of intelligence. Animals, of course, have a lower level of intelligence as they lack the capacity to envisage in thought (or even imagery) a situation in its absence and manipulate it consciously.

The Notion of the ‘I’: Thought implying the division between the subject and object already implies the subject as the self. When one becomes conscious of one’s thought, one automatically has the notion of the ‘I’ or the self. The notion of the self becomes enriched and filled with content through further thinking and experience, as one’s knowledge grows with experience and is added to the content of the subject. In the division between the subject and the object, as one’s attitude is determined by one’s past pleasant or unpleasant experience (i.e., knowledge), one either desires or tries to avoid the object. In the process of desiring what a person feels he or she lacks, she creates for herself the need for fulfillment which is really a filling the need or lack. However, once this need is fulfilled, other take its place, for as long as in the thinking process we are aware of things in our world, desires, needs or wants are automatically created. Thus the person is set on an endless travel to realize the ultimate -- ultimate happiness, pleasure, meaning or resting place. The self is also a process to seek permanence and security, and this is where the self-protectiveness of thought comes in. While every thought we think is geared to reinforce the self in some fashion or other, it is doing so by means of the structure it has already built for itself.

While on the one hand thought seems to seek something other than itself, on the other, its search is always limited to the known. We have no clue as to what we seek if we don’t have any idea of it. The seeking serves to further strengthen the self that is already there.

The self is not only the world we built in, but also a fictitious center which holds the world together and acts as its center. All the feelings, experiences and thoughts as well as achievements, worries and projects are referred to this center. We feel as if there is a unitary entity that acts through all these mental processes and governs the body as well as our dealings with the world.

Mental States: The awareness of an object, a sensation, an image, a feeling or a thought is simultaneously a reaction to it. We hardly are ever aware of something without reacting to it. But then the reaction itself becomes an object of awareness and of further reaction. This happens particularly when we rehash an issue out from different points of view.

This constant action and reaction process linked through memory creates what we might call mental ‘states’. A state is something we ascribe to ourselves as, for instance, when we say to ourselves, “I am angry; I am depressed,” and so on. This ascription is itself a thought and is more often than not mediated by body awareness. Notice how we reinforce this feeling or awareness by beating our chest and by being aware of our speech muscles or of other parts of the head or the rest of the body. In this ascription to ourselves of a thought or a state or a feeling, associated with a certain body awareness, is what generates the illusion of the ‘I’. In each of the specifics (thoughts, body sensations, for instance) there is no ‘I’. But through the process I mentioned above, you get the feeling of ‘I’, the feeling that ‘you’ are thinking, ‘you’ have pain, ‘you’ are the agent of your actions, or ‘you’ are what is referred by other people as ‘great’, and so on. This illusion is perpetuated through repeated ascriptions linked through memory. (In other words, I remember, say two such ascriptions from my past, and in that very recollection, a feeling is generated that I have such a quality – there is an implicit feeling ‘That’s me’ in each one of these recollections.)

Mental States have continuity. And we contribute to the continuity of mental states by reacting to them either positively or negatively. You are strengthening your state through your reaction. If you stop reacting, the state ceases to be when it loses its momentum. Thus states have inertia of their own, and they tend to persist because of our participation in them. When we participate in a state, we are within a tunnel as it were. This inertia resists change, indeed even any interference from outside. And within the ‘tunnel’ the states have a tendency to perpetuate themselves either by building on themselves or keeping a fight for or against something going. These states or what I might also call ‘tracks’ include fear, loneliness, depression, pride, inferiority, superiority, and such. For instance, when we are watching a movie, we are ‘within’ the track of watching the movie, and as such, we are identified with the characters and situations and so experience the joys and sorrows expected (or not expected) of us as spectators. You can only stop the process of involvement by stepping out of it, snapping out, as it were. Then you don’t have the illusion. Then reality is reality; the movie reality has becomes a mere show without any effect on you.

Our normal states of mind are similar. We are within a tunnel and we labor hard trying to get out of it, particularly when we feel they are undesirable. But that’s a futile struggle for we labor on the basis of a certain base identification (even if it is only a negative one) and cannot extricate ourselves from it. When we can get down from outside, as it were, to the base identification and question it, then there is a chance of truly distancing ourselves from it and eventually becoming free from the entire state.

We must think about something: Without something to think about, the mind (or consciousness) in an unstable state. It keeps wanting to chew something. It tries to achieve the stability and grounding, if necessary by harping on the negative, as when the negative memories impinge upon our consciousness and we react to them by building on them, just as we react to positive memories by building on them. We try to think of the worst when we are in an uncertain situation, as that gives us more grounding and security, than the positive which can always be questionable. One way to solve the problem of sinking deeper and deeper in a negative state is to let the negative state be and if necessary focus on something innocuous, as they do in meditation, and ‘rise above’ the state. Or one could break up a mental state by interspersing it with self-consciousness, i.e. being aware of what we are doing as frequently as possible and breaking it into pieces. By ‘pulverizing’ the state, the continuity of the state is broken up and the state loses its hold on us. This will at least temporarily remove one from that state of mind. Habits are like states of mind and they too will tend to become weaker by the same processes. More lasting freedom, however, can only be found in becoming free from the source identification.

We can superimpose states upon states, say, guilt upon anger and so forth and make them multi-layered. Also, we can suppress them to a subterranean level beyond the reach of the conscious mind. You can become conscious of states, but as I said, such consciousness only reacts to the state from a point of view, generally the point of view of identification with something and tends to reinforce the state. We cannot just let the state run its course, say just be afraid and let the fear run its course and die its natural death.

States add to the notion of the continuing self: Go through a few of these states, you get the feeling that there is one constant ‘I’ running through them all. The more organized my memory is, the stronger is my sense of ‘I’, or you can say, the bigger is my ego!

To repeat: states of mind continue through memory. Each thought or feeling we have is ‘linked’ to other thoughts or feelings relevant to it – it may be the same or similar thought or feeling we have had in the past or something connected to it. This connectivity, association or linking is what gives rise to the notion of the continuing ‘I’.

Once the notion of the continuing ‘I’ is established, every thought we think is used to reconnect to the relevant past and further support the continuity. Although we can never find the specific beginnings of the ‘I’, we believe in the history of the ‘I’ with a beginning, its current life and an end.

In the process of organizing our world we arrange our goals and look for ultimate goals. And when these are not fulfilled repeatedly and we confront frustration we struggle hard to find meaning in life. Until we become involved in some other goal we become bored with life, having lost the significance in our lives.

Whenever we perceive and relate to anything in the world, we do so by placing it in this mental world of ours, this world of the ‘I’, the ‘I’ being at the center of the world. The world of the ‘I’ is intimately bound with ourselves, because it is nothing but a multitude of identifications interconnected. Whatever happens to each of these things in the world we feel happens to us. Our interests, values and goals are bound with these identifications, determined, of course, by our earlier exposure to them.

Psychological Survival: Our instinctive biological struggle for survival is now translated into the mental world. But these are not identical because our biological survival is embellished by our imagination, which is one of the functions of thought. It can imagine a fictitious future and fear for its non-continuance. Each thought thinking thus about the future is my future that I think about and fear. Our mind can thus generate insecurity and fear of death even when our physical survival is presently not threatened.

Dialogue within Ourselves: The constant dialogue within ourselves is what provides us with the illusion that the ‘I’ exists at the center of all my thoughts. I wonder if we would have this idea of the ‘I’ without the inner dialogue. What does the dialogue imply? When the sounds (thoughts) go on in my head, there are subtle speech movements. I am always aware of myself as thinking these thoughts, and also the person who has experiences, feelings and is the author of his actions. With each such awareness, there is a feeling that ‘I’ am thinking those thoughts. With this feeling I link those thoughts and memories. Hence the feeling that there is the ever-present ‘I’ behind all my thoughts and experiences that I remember.

The same is true of our memories: as memories impinge on our consciousness we become aware of them and in that very process is generated a reaction to them and then a response to the reaction and so on and so forth. That’s partly how the inner dialogue is generated.

The self has many features: 1) It is the center, it is as the self that we try to fulfill ourselves as, it is our world, it is our self-image or self-esteem which is a result of the process of constant evaluation. We are quite sensitive when a remark is passed about us as we are constantly on guard as to how others look at us. We worry about ourselves, worrying about every little things that happens to us; we evaluate it; relate it to the rest of our lives and react to it until we are satisfied that the problem is solved. Notice how the same problem-solving skills of intelligence are exercised here to work out the problems of the self; only this time it is done through the medium of thought. Of course, the worry can easily turn into an obsession or a phobia and we can create a literal panic and hell for ourselves as we continually build on our worries. This is evident even when we notice a slight change or ache or pain in our body and react to it by panicking.

We divide our world into the positive and the negative, into right and wrong and good and bad, pleasant and painful, happy and miserable. We pursue the positive and try to avoid the negative. We constantly reflect and evaluate our lives, figuring out the direction in which it is going, and being satisfied with its progress or disappointed with the lack of it or its failures. We have now a life of constant becoming where there is no rest or peace.

2) The self is meaning: what we experience is interpreted through our past experience and it acquires meaning through it. When it acquires meaning, it becomes part of the world. The world we make up for ourselves is not just our world, but in some sense I am the world, because the things, people and situations in my world are things I am identified with, either positively or negatively. In fact, language itself, the words and sentences we hear, have meaning to us only because of the associations they have with our past experiences. They, as well as anything else that has meaning for us, must invoke our past in some sense in order for them to have meaning for us. Or else, they would remain as mere noises or marks on paper, or, if they are things, as mere non-descript objects which have no interest or meaning to us.

The process of self-evaluation is mediated often through comparison – comparison of ourselves with others, our present state with a future possible state, our actions with our own scales of values or others’ values, and so on. The process of evaluation creates feelings of elation, depression, self-congratulation, pride, inferiority, superiority, sense of power, dominion over others as well as anxiety and fear about the outcome of a given situation. Insecurity is built into this process. The uncertainty generates the anxiety and creates the unending search for security.

3) Our self-image is something we build on the foundation of our notion of the self. We fill it with various projects we have, our desire structure, our estimates about ourselves, our achievements and failures, our sentiments and beliefs and so on. This structure is held together by the center of the self. Not only each thing that occurs in our world is related to the self via the self-image, but interpreted and reacted to by means the image. The reaction in turn reinforces the self and its image of itself.

We constantly build and rebuild our self-image by feeding it with various reinforcements, particularly those stemming from not just our opinions about ourselves, our qualities and actions, but from what we hear from other people, and also from what we think other people think about us. This is a constant process which keeps building and revising our idea of ourselves.

4) This indeed is where we can notice the self-protectiveness of thought. Thinking does not take place in a vacuum. It takes places within the process of the self, within the context of the self maintaining and continuing its self-image. In fact, we are only interested in those things (in fact, even our physical perceptions not only select but seek those that are relevant to our interests) that are directly or indirectly connected to the self and its image of itself, and our perceptions are indeed limited by these interests. We seek those things and consciously or unconsciously ignore the rest of what is given in the field of our perception. (As they say, “We only hear what we want to hear.”) Our reactions to what we perceive reinforce our self-structure. We become sensitive to anything that is seen even as remotely threatening to this structure, and we not only take a mental note of it, but do everything to eliminate it, fight it off, erase it or diminish its strength.

Anything that’s seen as possibly threatening, say, a disease symptom, a pain, an insult, or something which could possibly hurt our self, raises a minor disturbance, if not a storm, in the mind. We don’t rest until the storm is quelled and equilibrium is restored. All our thinking and emotional process is utilized in this direction. When we say we want peace, normally, it’s this kind of peace we seek.

Many mental processes are carried out by means of thought and all have the self at the center. A) Desiring, striving, goal-seeking and pleasure-seeking: Anything which is perceived as attractive or desirable or pleasurable on the basis of one’s background experience is automatically turned into a goal that one seeks and becomes part of the desire process. B) Emotions and feelings: in response to the various situations, including successes and failures in our attempts to deal with the world, as well as to the self-evaluation that one constantly makes, we undergo many emotions and feelings. More often than not, these emotions and feelings are verbalized and as such exist in the form of thought – for instance, thought of envy, jealousy, anger, fear, elation, depression and so on. Without the verbalization or thinking these emotions and feelings lose their identity and reduce themselves to diffuse energy.

5) In the process of seeking our sense of time is created. There is no time without thinking. Although our striving implies time, with its future, past and present, there is something interesting about our dealings with our self. When we seek or avoid, of course, there is time, because the distance between what we seek and avoid and ourselves, implies time. However, within the structure of the self there is no time. It’s as if everything is frozen there in time. Take for instance, our memories. I have been in love with a girl say forty years ago. But my fantasies or reliving my past experiences with the girl hardly ever take into consideration the changes in time that have probably taken place in the girl over the last forty years – perhaps she is an old hag by now, or even dead, for all I know. I myself have become old and perhaps have no ability even to perform sex! But my mind knows no such age. In some sense, it acts as if it is ageless. It’s immortal!

What’s interesting is that our dealings with life are based on this notion of our ‘frozen’ self. We act, strive, accumulate wealth, and protect ourselves and our health, or good name, as though there will be never an end to us. At the same time, time is very real to us as that’s what is implied in our striving for our goals and whenever we are involved in the thinking consciously about anything. Although in some sense time is frozen in individual experiences, as a continuing self I am very much aware of time and in spite of the fact that I know of no beginning to myself in time (I cannot even imagine except through concepts and someone telling me so), I am mortally afraid of the continuity of my life ending. In fact, it’s impossible for me to imagine myself ending. No wonder as human beings we create all these fancy notions such as Kingdom of Happiness, Immortality and living after death as pure Consciousness and so forth. Those are all our lame attempts to combat our fear of death. None of that, of course, will succeed in the face of a seed of doubt!

Combine this with our constant attempt to seek our goals and our striving to restore our mental equilibrium; you will then understand what UG says about man seeking only one thing, namely, permanent happiness. This indeed is what counts for man as permanent happiness.

6) Thought processes don’t always take place at a very conscious level. We are not always aware of what goes on. Whe