" The whole of your being is that question 'how'." -UG

    

    In this intense, penetrating, high-energy audio clip, UG shines light on the very nature of inquiry, calling attention to its incredible and unfathomable depths. 

    Any serious 'inquiry' or 'search' or 'exploration', according to him, encompasses not only the intellectual (or psychological) but also the little-known physical or the biological dimension. 

    The psychological and the biological seem to be intricately intertwined, way beyond our wildest imagination, or deepest comprehension.

    All serious spiritual search revolves around the 'how'? 

    'How' to know life? 'How' to realise God? 'How' to attain enlightenment? 'How' to achieve Samadhi? 'How' to overcome anger? How, how, how?  

    We have tremendous investment in the 'how'. Why not? 'How' is the magical key of the scientist that has unlocked the myriad mysteries of nature. 

    No wonder we try to deploy the same 'how' to know or understand life, to resolve problems of living, problems of anger, of hatred, jealousy etc. 

    UG clinically and surgically dismantles the little-known aspects of 'how':

    " That question 'how' is there in every cell in your body, in every nerve in your body. 

So, the whole of your physical organism is involved. 

'How' has no answer (but) that 'how' itself is the redeemer, you understand?

So, it cannot move, it cannot split itself into two. 

That (how) is the question of all questions. 'How' can I understand, 'how' can I resolve this problem?"

    UG goes further: 

It is not just asking an intellectual question 'how'. 

The whole of your being is that question 'how'.

It is not just asking an intellectual question 'how', but that 'how' is the whole of this mechanism.

So, then it has GOT to find an answer, if there is any answer!

    It is really fascinating that the 'how', a mere thought or intellectual pursuit could penetrate biology affecting the chemistry or nature of the body. No wonder UG constantly reminds us that 'thought is nothing but matter.'

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    Knowledge, UG explicates, is not merely intellectual or physiological but visceral or physical. Knowledge or memory gets embedded into the physical cells is well known to science but is still getting explored. 

    Importantly UG explains that knowledge spawns the delusion of the 'self': 

"What you call 'self' or whatever name you give it, is created by the knowledge."

    While UG asserts that the process of 'knowledge getting embedded in the physical' is real, he maintains that its reverse process or 'the throwing away of knowledge from cells' too is a physical phenomenon. For UG, the death of cells or the death of the body is the way the organism gets to 'throw out all acquired knowledge'. 

   " So, the ending of knowledge is the 'death'. 

That is why death is a very important thing. 

Unless you die, you cannot understand anything. 

That death is not a psychological death but a physical death because the physical body is involved." - UG

  UG avers that even after physical death, (not suicide but a natural happening as in his case, not through any will or volition) there is a likely chance of 'resurrection' again as happened in his own case and other individuals like Sri Ramana etc. 

    This phenomenon is seen in only in a handful of individuals over centuries and the chance of this rare occurrence is 'one in a billion'. 

   UG maintained that there are very few 'serious' individuals who try to intensely pursue the question of 'how' to its logical end. He puts the great scientists like Einstein in that category who relentlessly explored the workings of nature. Any serious search, unbeknownst to us, could penetrate the realm of the physical and may not remain mere intellectual inquiry anymore. 

    UG, in no uncertain words, warns us that any deep inquiry could seriously affect the nature or chemistry of the body, sometimes even leading to pathological disorders. There is a clear danger in any serious search or pursuit, especially of spiritual goals: 

    "You either flip or fly, and the chance of your flipping is high." - UG.

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Audio Clip

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SetGGxUwMZA)

Audio Transcription

The 'point' ('centre' or 'I' or the 'self') is the most important thing.

Without that (the 'centre'), you see, there is no 'circumference' (there is no 'world' to experience).

You are all the time moving on the circumference, trying to reach the centre. But if this is knocked off, there is no point (or centre), there is no (more) circumference.

Say, we have lost the bearings.

So, this (the point or centre) is the most important thing!

Is the 'point' there? The 'self' or whatever you want to call it, the 'I', the mind or psyche, use whatever word you want. So, that itself is questionable. 

Because whatever you experience, what you call self or whatever name you give it, is created by the knowledge. 

So, what is there is only the knowledge and nothing else!

I am not using the word in the Vedantic sense, (but as) the knowledge about yourself and the knowledge about the world around you.

So, it is that that you are fighting, so the ending of knowledge is the 'death'.

That is why death is a very important thing. Unless you die, you cannot understand anything. 

That death is not a psychological death but a physical death because the physical body is involved.

It is not just going to happen like that.

So, the whole of your physical organism is involved.

'How' has no answer (but) that 'how' itself is the redeemer, you understand?

So, it cannot move, it cannot split itself into two. That (how) is the question of all questions. 'How' can I understand, 'how' can I resolve this problem?

So, unless you reject completely and totally any help from outside agency, however extraordinary it may be, you cannot proceed at all.

You can't say, I reject this, that is nonsense, this is nonsense, this is absurd, that is absurd. You cannot say that. 

The outside agency you are talking about, is there inside of you.

That question 'how' is there in every cell in your body, in every nerve in your body. 

This is all the time trying to say that how is not going to disappear just like that. When that how disappears, it blocks every gland, every nerve, every cell in your body.

It is not just asking an intellectual question 'how'. 

The whole of your being is that question 'how'.

It is not just asking an intellectual question 'how', but that 'how' is the whole of this mechanism.

So, then it has GOT to find an answer, if there is any answer!

" If the thought remains one, without splitting into two, that does the trick! " - UG

    The question of 'how' has been instrumental in plumbing the depths of nature and revealing to us the many secrets, giving us science, technology and also driving the human progress. 

    'How' propagates reductionism and science, is the golden key to all our knowledge. 

    UG in this penetrating discussion (see the audio clip below) points out that the same 'how' is also responsible for creating the illusion of 'duality', the artificial division between the 'question' and 'questioner'. 

    " The question you are asking 'how' is NOT separate from the questioner when the question 'how' remains as one, without splitting itself into two, splitting itself into two means - 'the questioner' and 'the question'. "- UG

   As the instrument of inquiry, the 'how' fabricates the artificial division or split in the inquiry (thinking) by creating the 'questioner' (thinker) as an illusory entity different from the 'question'(thought). 

   "So, when once it dies to this duality (thought splitting into question and the questioner), what is there is an immortal thing, not that there is something which becomes immortal, but life is immortal because it has no beginning, it has no end." - UG 

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Audio Clip (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SetGGxUwMZA)

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Audio Transcription

    UG: This body is not an isolated point in the totality of the electromagnetic field.

    What creates or what gives you the impression that it is an isolated point is because the thought is creating an isolated point there (as the ‘I’ or the ‘self’). It is separating, you see, from the totality of the things.

    And so, the idea of integrating these two things, to me, has no meaning, you see. It is already an integrated unit.

    So, what you are trying to do is to separate yourself from that (thanks to culture that brands ‘you’ and maintains ‘you’ throughout as an independent identity) and then try to integrate these two things.

    Q:  No, no. You see, the gist of what all I have understood is, our thoughts, our knowledge, our trying to do certain things in some beliefs is the one that is causing the separation, and we have to do away with it. No, but the thing is, how to go about it? You see, that is where...

    UG: The question ‘how’ is the stumbling block, you see, that is a very, very clever thing, you know. It is only interested in continuity.

    So, when you come to a point where you think there is an impasse, you ask the question, ‘how can I break through this impasse?’

    So, the how implies continuity, that is the basic question, the how, the why and what.

    These are the three basic questions. You always put these questions to yourself, how, why and what.

    And wait for an answer for these questions, either from within or from outside.

    So, when this ‘realization’ or whatever you want to call it, dawns on you that no outside agency can be of any help to find an answer for your questions, the helplessness that you feel because of your dependence on outside agency also goes with it.

    Q:  I was only thinking, you see, when the child just has to know how to step, you are going to give that free wheeler. Once it starts walking it has no use. (UG:  I know all the similes.) So, I was thinking, you see, maybe there are certain things which are means to an end, but if you entirely depend on that, you would really depend on that totally and you can never depend on it.

    UG: The very question which you are asking, ‘how’ means time, you see, I don't know. 

    The time, because the questioning mechanism there has come into being in the course of time, you know, in the course of time. So that cannot conceive of the possibility of finding an answer or a solution for the question except in terms of time, you know. 

    If there is no answer to that question ‘how’ then the how cannot stay there.

    It is that how I was talking about that one thought, if it remains as one, without splitting itself into two, then that does the trick.

    Nobody has any answer for that question.

    You have to come to that point, the outside agency cannot help at all because the answers given by others or by me or by anybody, those are not the answers. Otherwise, the question wouldn't be there.

    This is what I am trying to emphasize.

    So, they are not the answers. When they are not the answers, how can this question remain there?

    So, you don't brush aside those answers, reject those answers because you are rejecting the man (or guru or guide or scripture) who has given the answers, you see.

    The authority of some scriptures which you have taken for granted is in jeopardy.

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    The question you are asking 'how' is not separate from the questioner when the question 'how' remains as one, (that's all that I am talking about) without splitting itself into two, splitting itself into two means - 'the questioner' and 'the question'.

    So, the how demands time.

    Because you don't know, if you knew you wouldn't ask that question. They are so interrelated. 

    So, is there anything that you can do to prevent this separation and the isolation?

    There isn't anything that you can do through any volition of yours, that's all that I am saying.

    So, it is there that the 'luck', I use the word luck not in the general sense of the word, some strange chance.

    That is the duality that I am talking about, not the soul and the other.

    So, when this comes to an end, that is the end.

    The immortality that those Upanishads talked about, I don't want to use it because you think that I am interpreting.

    So, when once it dies to this duality (thought splitting into question and the questioner), what is there is an immortal thing, not that there is something which becomes immortal, but life is immortal because it has no beginning, it has no end.

    But the thought has a beginning, and it has an end.

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