The convergence of ideas - UG, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science and AI

UG was a ‘free man’ or a ‘natural man’, freed from the vicious grip of thought or culture thanks to his ‘death and resurrection’ (he described it as a calamity) on his 49^th birthday.

UG’s calamity was akin to the accidental pushing of a ‘reset’ button that flushed out his entire cultural past, the collective human learning from his system. This was like the strike of a lightning bolt that completely reset his life, pushing his entire physiology back into the default ‘factory mode’ or the natural mode. This involved major changes in his cognitive apparatus including vision, touch, smell etc.

Freed from the vicious grip of thought or culture, his physiology slipped into a natural rhythm resonating with life all around. For him, thought was a pure ‘on demand’ phenomenon, appearing only when there was a need, freeing him of the constant clutter or chatter that hijacks our tryst with the ‘now’ or the ‘present’.

“The only difference between you and me is that you are preoccupied (all the time) and I am not!” - UG

It took years before UG could recover from the aftershocks of the ‘calamity’ but eventually he began to settle down into the new normal. He slowly and steadily bounced back into the mainstream of life and started sharing his explosive observations on life with friends and the public.

UG’s life offers the much-needed counter factual giving us an opportunity to see the natural operation of life as opposed to life under the grip of culture.

Thought or culture has completely hijacked our lives by taking control of all our actions and behaviours. Only someone like UG functioning naturally, free from the tyranny of culture, can hold a mirror for us to really see the real, corrosive nature of thought. No other way!

Coming from the very depths of life, UG’s startling revelations are quite novel, very refreshing and invigorating. They are some of the rarest pointers to reality, life, and its workings.

UG comes across as a unique individual who spent decades travelling across the globe and speaking tirelessly to people everywhere about the many distortions, falsehoods and traps of the psychological or spiritual kind. 

He dismissed the ideas of eternal happiness, God, enlightenment etc. as pure cultural fabrications. And hammered home the truth about the utter futility of chasing after all such fictitious goals, warning us about the many threats or dangers lurking in the spiritual bazaar.

In his journey extraordinaire, UG met up with all kinds of folks – the seekers, scientists, sages, reformers, politicians, artists, technologists, philosophers etc. and held candid discussions on an array of topics.

Some of the commonly discussed subjects included the likes of human intellect, the phenomenon of understanding, the workings of life, of culture, the mechanics of thinking, the myth of mind or self or I etc.

In the unquenchable thirst of the philosopher for reality, or that of the seeker for God, or the scientist for the God-particle – we see extraordinary sincerity, intensity and commitment. Each of these journeys delights us when they throw up common truths about life or reality.

Here is an attempt to highlight some striking parallels between UG’s take on life vis-à-vis the learnings from the far-flung fields of neuroscience, cognitive science and artificial intelligence (AI).  

We shall begin with the very tool that is at play here – the human intellect. Getting a handle on intellect is to get a scoop on everything that is significant or consequential in our lives – thought, knowledge, culture etc.

UG on ‘Intellect’

UG referred to the stubborn problems of love & hate, greed, jealousy, envy, anger, fear etc. as ‘problems of living’. And repeatedly emphasized that the problems of human relationships cannot be resolved by the intellect, our ‘go to’ instrument for understanding or solving problems.

For us, intellect is the king, our de facto ‘problem solver’. It is an incredible instrument - the promoter of all knowledge and the driver of science, technology, medicine etc. All our individual accomplishments, education, career etc. are a grand testimony to its capabilities.

Then, UG comes along, faulting it, calling it futile, ineffective, and incapable of resolving human problems.

He trashes the notion of intellectual understanding, especially in dealing with problems of living or the problems of hate, jealousy, or greed.

This is where are all stuck. Our immense faith in intellectual understanding cannot be easily dismissed.

For UG, intellectual understanding of anger or jealousy is plain hogwash. Anger or hate or any other emotion is a tremendous burst of life energy. And understanding cannot capture or control life energy.

Understanding only promotes or provokes ‘thinking’, resulting in ‘knowledge dump’ adding to the existing clutter of knowledge.

UG added that intellectual understanding is useful and needed only in dealing with technical problems or transactional issues. Otherwise ‘knowledge is garbage’ and is utterly worthless in solving living problems.

UG’s exposé on intellect is indeed an eye opener and a breath of fresh air.

At first glance, UG’s dismissal of intellectual inadequacy seems incomprehensible and irreconcilable. But given his sagacity and clarity on matters of life, it merits a deep dive.

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Intelligence and Intellect

Questions on life or consciousness or intelligence continue to confound scientists, philosophers, and commoners alike.

Some form of intelligence, of course, is evident across the entire sentient kingdom. Tiny creatures including ants, worms, bees etc. exhibit extraordinarily intelligent behaviors while they hunt for food, or look for a mate, or a nest.

On the other hand, intellect, the higher form of intelligence, can be seen only in a handful of species.

Intellect, here, refers to higher order cognitive abilities like language-processing, vocabulary, logic, learning, reasoning, judgement, discretion, planning & predicting, analysis etc.

Human intellect is a social intellect or socially conditioned intellect, tailor made, culturally programmed for community living.

Social intellect, of course, is not a human legacy. Other primates, wolves, dolphins, elephants, dogs, pigs, rats, parrots, crows, and ravens etc. too display various aspects of social intellect.

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Biology of intellect

( https://embryology.ch/en/organogenesis/nervous-system/fundamentals-of-cerebral-development/histogenesis-cerebral-cortex/neocortex-and-allocortex.html) 

Firstly, is there any biological basis for the intellect? What size or complexity of the brain tissue qualifies for a true intellectual processor?

Science has no definitive answers yet on this question!

The research so far suggests that the intellectual gear in humans (all mammals) is actually a sophisticated piece of brain tissue called the new brain or the neocortex (weighing ~500 grams in humans). Some scientists humorously refer to it as the ‘VR headset’ similar to those used in games or Virtual Reality.

In ‘bird brains’ as in crows or ravens, this hardware is a teeny-weeny piece of cortical tissue, roughly the size of a nut (~8 -14 grams). But surprisingly this small tissue is capable of formidable intellectual capabilities.

Neocortex forms 90% of gray matter (cerebral cortex), about 2-4 mm thick, made of six-layers, weighing nearly half a kilo, made of nearly 10-14 billion neurons, spanning more than 70% of the entire volume of the human brain, with a surface area almost equal to that of a A3-sized paper, crumpled into the human skull (reason for wrinkles) squeezed atop the old brain as shown in the graphic.

(source: multiple internet sources)

Neocortex could very well be the seat of human intellect, thanks to various studies both by neuroscientists and the medical experts well versed in brain pathology.

Many of the neurological disorders, the likes of intellectual disability, social deficit, autism, schizophrenia etc.[1] are directly mapped on to distinct patches of flawed tissue in the neocortex.

For example, we might lose speech if the left brain (temporal lobe) is damaged (exactly what happened to my dad) or lose eyesight if the hind brain (occipital lobe) is damaged and so on.

So, when you drive out next time, don’t forget to don your helmet, or put on your seat belt!

Every inch of the brain tissue is matchless and priceless!

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Intellect and Social Environment

Yes, human intellect is right at the top of the pecking order. It is the most versatile and capable instrument on the planet.

The old brain (consisting of the limbic and reptilian brain) is hardwired by nature over millions of years to regulate all critical bodily functions and to handle various threats in the physical environment.

The new brain is more a cultural or intellectual apparatus based off the neocortex. It gets continuously wired and re-wired to enable us to live and function in a constantly changing social environment.

Yes, you heard that right!

Various neural pathways are constantly created and modified every time there is some learning or experience.

This physical flexibility of the brain to shape or reshape or make or modify neural connections or pathways is known as the plasticity of the brain.

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Neocortex & Culture

Did neocortex play a role in development of culture? Or did culture bring about the development of neocortex in the brain to facilitate cultural adaptation?

‘Which came first - culture or the neocortex?’ This is the ‘chicken or egg’ question for neuro-anthropologists.

In a way, humans are ‘sentenced’ to live, function, and die within the confines of a complex and sophisticated cultural environment.

There is no choice for the human intellect but to continually ‘learn’ and ‘adapt’ to the ever-changing landscape of culture.

Culture adds a new layer of reality during our lifetime that is forever difficult to shake off. 

“This superimposed reality is the only reality we have, and there is no other reality!” – UG

Merely possessing the best intellectual apparatus (hardware) will not be enough in this superimposed reality. We also need to invest years of ‘training’ or ‘conditioning’ (software) to build up a capable and formidable intellect with premium skillsets to adapt to, and take on the various challenges of society.

Adaptation is complex and cumbersome and there is a huge price to pay!

In the animal world, only we humans go to schools and colleges as education is the legitimized form of systematic social or cultural programming.

The early stint in school or college ‘conditions’ and ‘trains’ the intellect to a certain extent to handle a variety of complex tasks to prepare the individual to fit into society, earn a livelihood, to raise a family. The skilling includes social tasks like organizing or community service, technical tasks like programming or flying, or transactional tasks like banking or shopping etc.

Education refines and impacts the intellect and influences what we pursue or who we become.

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The Burden of Intellect

Routine or undemanding tasks like driving, cooking, washing, or shopping may not tax our brain tissue. But engaging in demanding tasks like learning, collaboration, communication, organization etc. places a huge cognitive load on the brain tissue.

Hi-tec jobs and environments cause huge stresses on the gray matter inducing disorders in the cognitive apparatus. Cyber-psychiatric disorders are common among techies or geeks. 

Brain scientists too agree:

We human mammals are the victims of a recurrent dispute: a tussle between the old reptilian brain, which unconsciously runs the survival machine, and the mammalian neocortex sitting in a kind of driver’s seat atop it.

– Jeff Hawkins (A Thousand Brains)

It is true that because of constant ‘learning’ our intellectual faculties including the sensory apparatus get culturally ‘soaked’ or ‘conditioned’ in the social environment.

The ancient Upanishads describe cultural conditioning as a kind of ‘contamination’.

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad explicates this aspect of ‘cultural conditioning’ through a wonderful story. The short summary is that all the five sense organs get ‘contaminated’ due to environmental learning or ‘acquired knowledge’ and ‘experience’. They carry the impressions left behind by the experiences of touch, sight, sound, taste, and smell. Therefore, the senses cannot simply experience anything new.

 

 “There is no such thing as a new experience” – UG.

 

The Upanishad concludes that only the “life force’ (‘Prana’) remains untouched by the environment. Life force is beyond the bounds of all experience.

 

“You cannot touch or capture life” - UG.  

 

The ‘pulse and beat’ of life is beyond any learning or knowledge or experience.

UG’s calamity rid his sensory apparatus of all cultural contamination.

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Social conditioning vs Machine Learning (AI)

Social conditioning is comparable to ‘machine learning (ML)’ in the field of artificial intelligence (AI).

AI has become ubiquitous, has been around for quite some time. When we type into our phones, the ‘next word’ suggestions pop up to auto-complete our sentences. This is the simplest form of artificial or machine intelligence.

Take the case of Conversational AI or ChatGPT. It is the ‘wordsmith’ or the ‘text master’. It makes use of powerful processors (hardware) and algorithms and statistics (software). It is then ‘exposed to’ (‘trained on’) tons of books, articles, or writings (machine learning) to acquire the knowledge about a particular language, say English.

Once the training is complete, the Chat GPT is ready to spit out essays, blogs, reports, letters, scripts etc.

A conversational (listening or talking) AI is much like Siri or Alexa. It is a game changer. It is also called the NLP or Natural Language Processor as it responds to our voice commands given in natural or day-to-day language.

Going forward, ChatGPT or NLP interfaces would eventually become the default UI (or User Interface) for all kinds of technologies. This means that today’s buttons, levers, switches, keypads, and consoles will all disappear. Instead, we could ‘speak’ into our Digital Assistants telling them to drive the car, cook food, to shop, to pull medical or legal or tax records, to build or print 3D homes etc. in the not-so-distant future.

As you can see, AI surely is a job killer. Experts believe that AI can kill all routine and replaceable jobs, in millions. Those who are skilled in AI will get to keep their jobs in the future, as there will still be a huge demand to build more and more AI interfaces, devices and apps.

Professionals like lawyers, engineers, physicians etc. get to keep their jobs and careers but will begin to use more and more AI apps to save time and effort, to stay laser-focused on core domain issues.

Yes, not in the very distant future, we may have to live with a new species of ‘bots’ all around us.

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Child, Crow, and Artificial Intelligence

At the time of this writing, AI is still a ‘single-task master’ excelling only in a single area of expertise. That’s right. Today’s AI machines can excel only in  particular task. That means we need different AI machines for doing different things - one for playing chess (ChessGPT), another to compose an image (DrawGPT), yet another to write an essay (Chat GPT) etc.

Given this serious limitation, today’s AI capabilities are no match to that of a child or a parrot or a crow.

A child or a crow can instantly tell a real pizza from a fake 3D-printed pizza. Bees will avoid plastic flowers and flock to real flowers in the garden.

Yes, today’s AI is no match to the intelligence of a child or a bird.

Even the best AI ‘image-reader’ of today using the most powerful camera, trained using hundreds of millions of objects, shapes, contours, textures, colors etc. cannot tell a real mango or a pizza or a flower from its fake. It cannot say whether the mango is sweet or sour, or the pizza is hot or cold, or the flower is fragrant or odorless.

AI cannot ‘feel’ or ‘experience’ anything, it might never know what ‘thirst’ or ‘hunger’ or ‘pain’ is.

No wonder AI or machine intelligence cannot come anywhere close to human intelligence or even animal intelligence.

The artificial machine touted to mimic some form of human intelligence is AGI or artificial general intelligence, still a few technological milestones away.

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AI is only a tool, humans are the tool-users

A well-designed AI could be a ‘tool’ or even a ‘tool maker’ depending on how the programmers rig it up, but humans are the ultimate ‘tool users.’

We decide what kind of tool we wish to make; in other words, we determine the use for the AI. Herein lies too its utility or danger.

While beneficial AI technologies like Med-PaLM 2 could bring great healthcare benefits to humans, tons of addictive algorithms could turn us en masse into slaves of digital games and apps. 

AI can solve many serious humanitarian challenges or it could pose a threat to the balance, order and harmony of society.

AI has already gained enough notoriety for its potential abuse.  

AI’s content creation capability is a double-edged sword. It is easy-breezy to create misleading deepfake videos or images and plant suspicion, disbelief, dissent, or resentment in the minds of billions, instantly!

The Father of AI, Geoffrey Hinton thinks that given the current trends in technology, AI could become faster, more efficient, more powerful in processing information and therefore capable of churning out what he calls the ‘superintelligence’.

Machine Intelligence could be programmed to cheat, deceive, defraud or scam people. It beats the human hands down as a superior scammer or fraudster or manipulator.

“As soon as you manipulate (AI), then you can get done what you like.”

– Geoffrey Hinton

Through the spread of misinformation and disinformation, AI could prove a deadly tool in the hands of sinister minds to inflict cultural wars or conflicts, further dividing peoples and nations.

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UG on Artificial Intelligence

UG spoke of dangers of computers (AI was still in its infancy at the time). He cautioned against introducing cultural filters through selectivity and censorship that could bias the machine intelligence to act in a certain way dictated by vested interests. UG always warned that all cutting edge  research and development ultimately ends up with the regime or the authorities.

“We are not different from computers, but this is (human intelligence) something extraordinary, you can’t imagine the human computer.

This is what I am telling all those experts who come and brag what wonderful computers are, and how it’s going to be of great help to us all, I tell them the moment you put selectivity and censorship in the computers (cultural prejudice or bias), there usefulness will be finished.

They will be used the way society and the leaders of mankind are using our thinking mechanism which is nothing but ‘selectivity and censorship’ and destroy that or use them to destroy everything. Their usefulness will be finished.”                                                                                          - UG

AI, without proper guard rails, could disrupt or destroy long standing social systems like democracies and well-established institutions like banking etc. causing havoc.

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‘Self’ vs ‘Intellect’

Does the social intellect fall under the same rubric as the ‘self’ or ego?

Whereas intellect has the aspect of physicality, the ‘Self’ or ‘I’ is more of a socially engineered reality.

Intellect has its correlates in the cortical tissue or neural circuitry whereas ‘self’ or ‘I’ has no biological basis. It is a pure psychological identity.

But there is one thing common to both the ‘intellect’ and the ‘self’, it is the ‘knowledge and experience.’

UG often spoke of the ‘experiencing structure’, that resonates with the idea of biologically wired intellect. But he and Sri Ramana summarily dismissed the idea of ‘self’ or ‘I’ as unreal.

In one of his talks, UG tells Mahesh Bhatt,

“What you call ‘Mahesh’ is only a fictitious entity put ‘in there’ by your parents.”

A harmless name or label given by parents marks the psychological underpinning of the ‘self’. All subsequent ‘learning’ or ‘gathering of knowledge and experience’ further reinforces the idea of the ‘self’.

UG and many Eastern thinkers aver that the ‘I’ or ‘self’ is a pure psychological beast, fabricated through social and cultural algorithms.

Even the scientists completely brush aside the reality of the ‘self’ or ‘I’, or ‘ghost in the machine’. They find absolutely no basis to support this hypothesis.

The famous Cognitive Scientist Daniel Dennett ridicules the illusion of ‘self’, as a tiny human (homunculus), sitting inside the brain, acting like an ‘observer’ witnessing the ‘show of life’ projected on a screen inside the skull, dismissing it as ‘Cartesian Theatre’. 

UG relentlessly hammered home the fact that ‘there is nothing there except knowledge.’  He referred to the collective human knowledge and experience as the ‘thought sphere’.

All our knowledge is primarily siphoned off from this collective. 

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‘Self’ is the movement of knowledge 

Based on his observation, UG explicated that the ‘self’ or ‘I’ (or thinker) is just an illusion created by ‘the movement of knowledge’ (or thinking).

Tom and Jerry Spring to life only in the rapid movement of the projector but collapse into plain images upon slowing down.

Sri Ramana also spoke about slowing down of thought to expose the bluff of the ‘self’.  

UG’s position resonates with findings of some neuroscientists based on observations in the laboratory:

“Thinking is a form of moving (or movement)” – Jeff Hawkins (A Thousand Brains)

Hawkins says that thinking is movement of knowledge, a continuous process of association and prediction.

Hawkins concludes that thinking is a form of ‘movement of knowledge’ almost echoing UG’s observation about the ‘self’.

Hawkins explains that we are constantly associating objects and people in our environment (office or living room or kitchen or garden or town) with those stored memories from our past experience (past knowledge). This association helps us to make predictions about what we should see or experience in the next second or the next time frame. This is the psychological security mechanism at play. If we do not see what we expect to see, the alarm goes off that something is amiss, alerting us!

To instantiate, as soon as you reach home, thinking tells you that the family dog will be at the gate waiting for you, and as you open the door, thinking continues on to the next frame, now projecting the familiar settings or furniture in the room that you expect to see and on and on, ad infinitum. If there is a mismatch between your previous knowledge about a thing and its current status, there is an immediate alert!

Thinking is ‘analog’ or continuous in all of us. But UG spoke of his thinking as somewhat ‘digital’ i.e.  from frame to frame and complete absence of continuity.

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The ‘Binding Problem’ of Consciousness

The experience of a mango or an orange or a tennis ball involves multiple sensations or the sensory modalities of sound, color, touch, taste, smell etc.

How do these various sensations get ‘linked’ or ‘bound’ or ‘integrated’ into the unitary experience of the mango?

This is the famous binding problem (or linking problem) of consciousness of the cognitive scientist. In the absence of ‘I’ or ‘observer’ or any agency, how could all the sensory channels come together? 

The ‘binding problem’ remains the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness.

So, the question is ‘who’ really undergoes the ‘experience’? Or who is the ‘experiencer’?

The scientists aver that there is ‘no ghost in the machine.’ And UG and other sages too dismiss the existence of any ‘I’ or ‘self.’

Then how does the experiencing of the mango come about?

The jury is still out, and the problem humbles the best and the noblest of minds to this day.

In this context, sometimes we refer to yet another phenomenon of ‘awareness’.

‘Being aware’ or ‘being conscious’ sometimes reinforces the idea of ‘self’ that is ‘aware’ muddying the waters.

But UG made it clear that awareness is nothing mysterious but only a functional aspect of the brain. And he added the rider that this is not something unique to humans, “even the cow on the street looks at you with choiceless awareness.”

Some gurus and philosophers have made a big deal of it and spun this natural functionality of the brain into a technique, awareness meditation, to achieve some spiritual state.

UG rubbished the whole idea as bunkum.

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Here there is no Agent, only Action- UG

            Finally, here is UG’s masterful summary on life recorded by Dr. Ramakrishna Rao, a professor and an Advaita philosopher from Mysore:

 ‘There is nothing here called the Atman (soul), but there is Witnesshood.  Here there is no agent, but all that (there is) is action. There is no subject here, but every object creates it. There is no immortality, but nowhere there is birth or death. There is no mind, and if there is one, it is not different from the body. The mind divides life, but if it unites with life, ‘it illumines and makes it dynamic.’

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Download your PDF copy here 

“Logic and rationality are not separate from you. If that goes, you go!" - UG

Imagine taking away 'logic & reasoning' from experts, or 'belief and faith' from believers, all nothing short of a devastating body blow.

In this exposé, UG probes deeply into our lifelong investment in 'logic and reasoning' (or the 'intellect'), the be-all and end-all of rational existence.

Here, UG highlights the serious limitations and futility of logic on dealing with 'living problems' of life, the problems that we encounter on a da-to-day basis while dealing with or living with others - the problems of love, hatred, jealousy, anger etc.

UG points out that our logic could be as good or shaky as our own intellect, and therefore, could be highly flawed and limited.

Being otherwise the sole instrument behind our successes or achievements, the ending of logic or rationality could simply mean the end of 'I' or the 'self'.

“Logic and rationality are not separate from you. If that goes, you go!"

- UG

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Audio Transcription

Audio Clip

There is nothing higher, lower there. You see, your life is not run on logic. You would love to believe that life is run on logic…There is rationality, some bastard invented the word, man is a rational being, man is not a rational being, he is the most irrational being. You don’t seem to be logical…no.

The logic is good to discuss, it is a weapon, it is an instrument like an arrow, gun. Used in an argument with somebody, to win the argument, it does not help you to understand life, life is something living.

You see the problems are ‘living’ problems. Anger is something living there. Jealousy is a mighty…if somebody makes a pass at this girl of yours, what is there is something living…you understand?

The filthy culture, the human values tell you, ‘Don’t’, it’s that ‘don’t’ that is destroying the living thing there that cannot harm you.

Anything that is happening there, is a living thing. This body is not dead. All your logic is dead. All the teachings of all teachers are dead words, dead ideas. So, they can’t touch anything living there. They can’t help you to solve any problems in your life.

In exactly the same way what you are saying is not true, you may get some insight into your own problems. You may feel that you have some insight as a result of discussing things with me. But I am telling you that, that insight is yours, it is created by yourself, and so that insight, however extraordinary it may be, is not going to help you to solve your problems. No, it will not help you at all!

So, the logic has no meaning there, except as an instrument which you use to win the argument with somebody else, it’s a sharper weapon, but don’t forget this that there is always somebody in this world more intelligent that you are, you know, so when you meet that challenge, you will be surprised that the logic is not good. That’s all its useful, in that area. But if through logical thinking, you feel and think that you can solve your living problems, you are not going to succeed….

You ain’t got a chance here in the sense you can throw all that logic at me. You see, if you accept what I am saying, you are not accepting, your acceptance is to try to fit what I am saying into that logical framework so that logical framework can continue…

You see when once the logical framework there collapses, you are in trouble! So, you have necessarily fit what I am saying to fit into that framework so that you can strengthen that logical structure there. Logical structure there is worthless, its good in a certain area, in a particular field, but it’s not going to help you to understand anything and solve your living problems.

I can say that, but you have tremendous faith in logic, not only faith, but you are made up of that logic, you are made up of those experiences, you are made up of that rational thinking, so it is not going to go! All that will go once you become a dead corpse. There is no other way!

So, don’t even try! It’s not in your interest to do that kind of a thing. The end of it, is the end of you. So that is not somewhere, it is not that you are ‘logical’, you are ‘rational’, logic and rationality are not separate from you. If that goes, you go! That’s the problem there! So, you have necessarily to fight, strengthen that and fortify that.

You cannot for a moment say that logic is worthless, it is very useful, very effective in your daily life. Don’t you do that all the time? Both of you are doing the same thing …He is trying to win the argument over you…that’s a fact in your life. Or if she succeeds that’s the end…both of you can make up for all this argument in the bed, that’s all! And then it starts all over again…Everything else ends up in the bed, sorry! Ends up in the bed, making love and you forget…I am rude and crude, but that’s a fact.

The logic that you have is borrowed from somebody, that’s the logic, so what’s so marvelous about the logic? It’s not yours, there is nothing of yours there…we have learnt how to be logical, if logic fails, you become violent. That’s a fact!

If you fail to win someone over to your point of view, through every means you have, through explanation, through logic, through this, through fight, through love, (in the end ‘love’ you see), and when that fails, what you are stuck with is frustration, you are frustrated, frustration is anger.

So, you can’t deal with anger, you are not dealing with anger, frustration. You are frustrated, because you can’t have your way! You are dealing with something totally unrelated.

It’s not jealousy you are dealing with there, fear of losing, so you have taken for granted that it is yours, otherwise why should you be jealousy, somebody makes a pass at her, you possess her, can you possess a living being? You can’t even possess a dead corpse, its stinking, so you throw away it.

You can possess some filthy ideas, experiences, dead things, property, your paintings, that’s all you see!

" As long as you are looking for ‘how’, so long you are doomed." - UG

( Source for the Blog: Audio Recording. Please scroll to bottom of the page for audio and transcript)

In this deep dive, UG unravels the knotty issue of our stubborn craving for knowledge, especially of the spiritual kind.

There is the feverish drive in all of us to know more and more, we want answers for ‘who am I?’, ‘what is life, soul, consciousness?’, ‘is there life after death? what is God?’ and so on.

The tyranny of knowledge lies in its unsatiated, monstrous appetite.

People are desperate for answers of various kinds. Many feel empty, miserable, pathetic in life and seek answers or solutions for ‘problems of life and existence’.

And there are many more who enjoy a steady source of income, a decent bank balance, enough social security, or insurance. At some point they too feel bored and ‘turn spiritual’ and begin to seek answers for questions,

“Is that all that there is to life? What next?” - UG

These are the 'made-up problems' of the well-fed. They chase after some form of spiritual excitement, engagement, or entertainment to tide over their emptiness or boredom.

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Questions are born of answers

All topical questions on life, God etc. look alike. But the context, content, intent, interest, and intensity of inquiry varies vastly from individual to individual.

Every inquiry is unique based on one’s cultural background and individual journey of life.

The fact is many of our questions are triggered off by what others have said or written. UG spotlights this irony in his remarkable observation,

“All your questions are born out of (other’s) answers” - UG

Though each of us carry unique questions, as we begin to dig deeper, we stumble into answers or solutions given by others. All too often, these ‘borrowed answers’ fall short, and fail to address the real issue behind our burning problems.

Cure, sometimes, is worse than the disease. And incomplete or incompatible answers by others could cause havoc in our lives, raising more dust and doubt, triggering off an avalanche of new questions, completely muddying the waters.

Not getting the right answer or solution, or far worse, getting stuck with a wrong solution, could easily push us into the quagmire of desperation, despondence, and delusion.

Also, there is the clear danger of walking into a trap of relationship with some self-serving guru or conman selling some cheap solution. Once we are in, it is never going to be easy to wriggle out of such exploitative relationships.

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What & How

UG says that all our inquiry revolves around two fundamental questions of ‘what’ and ‘how’?

“So, ‘what do you want (in life)?’

And then, how you can get what you want? “- UG

UG delivered a ‘knockout punch’ to all wobblers and shallow-minded questioners with this single most important counter-question,

“What is it that you want? What is that single thing that you want in your life?” - UG

At any given time, we are all chasing a dozen different goals. We lack clarity and our priorities are utterly skewed.

“The problem with you is that you want ‘this’, ‘that’ and the ‘other’.

But, if you really know what you want, there is no way you can’t get it!” - UG

None of us seem to really know what we want in our life; we simply indulge in ‘window shopping’ or ‘guru hopping’ in the bylanes of the spiritual bazaar because we have nothing else to do and nowhere to go.

Many of us squander our whole lives without knowing what we really want. With the simple ‘what’ question, UG makes us stop in our tracks and reflect on this serious screwup on our part , to grow up and act more firmly and responsibly. 

Apart from the ‘what’ question, UG also points to the dangers of yet another rogue question, the ‘how’,

“The trickiest of all questions is the ‘how’?

As long as you are looking for ‘how’, so long you are doomed…you know.

So, how to live? That’s the thing bothering people for centuries, so every religion, every teacher says, ‘This is how you should live”. So how can I be free of that? That’s the one question that transforms into millions and millions of questions, that’s all” - UG

Like greed for money, the greed for knowledge is endless. And the ‘how’ is a handy tool, the ‘master key’ to unlock the floodgates of knowledge.

Whenever we seek any answer or solution, we inevitably invoke the ‘how’ to tap into the vast reservoir of knowledge. The ‘how’ triggers the ‘movement of knowledge’ or the ‘continuity of knowledge’,

The 'how' feeding the 'you'

“What you call the ‘you’ is the ‘continuity of that knowledge’ that is put in there. “- UG

This ‘movement of knowledge’ is essentially the process of ‘thinking’. UG avers that as long as there is the ‘movement of knowledge’ (or as long as there is thinking), so long there is the illusion of the ‘you’ or the ‘self’ or the ‘thinker’.

Tom and Jerry spring to life only in movement or animation. Else they are mere drawings on paper.

The still images or drawings, rolling at twenty-four frames per second create the illusion of the ‘motion picture’.

“So, if that (movement of knowledge) is not there, ‘you’ are coming to an end, what you call ‘yourself’, that ‘you’, is coming to an end.

So, you do not want to come to an end. You want that ‘you’ to be transformed, changed into something else, into a loving (being), and you want to function on a different level, or different dimension but you do not want ‘that’ to come to an end.

You see the only way that it (the ‘you’) can maintain its continuity is through this constant demand for knowing more and more and more.

The only way it can add more and more to that knowledge is by asking this question, ‘how?’ “- UG

****

The past and its tyranny

The intellect is rooted in the ‘past’ which is the sum and substance of all ‘knowledge and experience’.

Any attempt to deal with spiritual or psychological problems, all rooted in the past, with the help of intellect, that is a product of the past, is an utterly flawed exercise.

Therefore, we are all stuck and there is no way out.

“Even if you (want to) suppress your wants, the ‘past’ has to come to your help, and tell you, ‘How to suppress your wants’.

If you try to suppress that past, and try to be in the present, it will drive you crazy. You will flip.

Because you are trying to control something you see which you cannot control, you have no control over that, it a has tremendous momentum, it is not your past of thirty or forty years, but the past of the entire existence of every human being and other forms of life too.[1]

If you try to suppress that past, and try to be ‘in the present’, it will drive you crazy. You will flip.

See, it is part of your past, you know, it’s not such an easy thing and you have no way of controlling that at all.” – UG.

UG warns us not to use any force or restraint or control over thoughts as all such attempts are wrought with serious psychological and pathological consequences (‘you will flip’).

“So, if you try to control or stop the flow of a river through all these artificial means like putting a dam, and all that, then it will inundate the whole thing.

That’s why every time you control your thoughts, to watch your thoughts, to observe your thoughts, to be aware of your thoughts, you find that the thoughts are welling there all the time.” - UG

Controlling ‘thought’ with the help of ‘thought’ will multiply ‘thought’ making the problem much worse. It is like pouring gasoline over the fire to quench fire.

“Problems created by thought can never be solved by thought.” - UG

All our ‘problems of living’ including the day-to-day problems of love, resentment, hatred, jealousy, greed, fear (of the past or future), anger ( not getting what we want) etc. belong to the domain of thought and cannot be resolved by any technique using thought or thinking.

UG raises a red flag warning us against all attempts at ‘thought control’ to attain a ‘thoughtless state’ by giving us a glimpse of his own state,

‘This state’ is not in your interest. You are only interested in continuity. You want to continue, probably on a different level, and to function in a different dimension, but you want to continue somehow.

You wouldn't touch this with a barge pole. This is going to liquidate what you call "you," all of you - higher self, lower self, soul, Atman, conscious, subconscious - all of that.

(The Mystique of Enlightenment)

****

World Mind (or Thought-o-sphere)

Like our biological past, inherited from other forms of life, our psychological ‘past’ too is the contribution of countless humans who have journeyed across the planet from time immemorial.

UG calls the collective past as the ‘world mind’ and refers to it in many of his talks. The ‘world mind’ or the ‘thought-o-sphere’ (rhyming with stratosphere) surrounds us on all sides like the air we breathe.

Every thought, every word from every individual, every speaker, ideologue, writer, poet, inventor, leader, saint, or sage from millennia is lodged into the ‘collective consciousness’.

Whenever there is a demand, the intellect taps into the collective past and siphons off huge chunks of knowledge from the ‘world mind’.

UG denounced thought as our enemy for a reason. Perverted thought acting out as an idea, ideology, strategy, plan or intent has immense potential for large scale death and destruction. The multitude of factions, movements, conflicts, clashes and wars we see in the world were set into motion by some perverted thought or idea or ideology. 

Nevertheless, UG highlights the benign role of thought in our day-to-day life, in the social or transactional world.

Without the help of thought or social conditioning, it is impossible to function ‘sanely and intelligently’ in this complex, complicated, conflict-ridden social world,

“That’s the purpose of thought, you see! To help, to keep this organism going, so it (thought) is bound to be there, whether you like it or not.” – UG

****

The last word - taking care of basic needs

Assuming that we decide to let go of all wants so as to lead a conflict-free and peaceful life, there is still no way we can avoid the physical needs of food, clothing and shelter. They remain a concern.

“If you don’t want a thing, you (still) have to want to take care of physical needs (basic necessities of life), if you don’t do that, it’s a perverse way of living.” - UG

To ignore basic needs of life is to be socially irresponsible. We become a burden or liability to others. It is a perverse way of living.

UG decried all manipulative, self-serving gurus as freeloaders who exploit the gullible to enjoy an opulent lifestyle themselves.

UG walked the talk, remained fiercely independent till the very end,  

“I will dig trenches, if I have to.”

He abhorred any idea of dependence on others. His credo for life was,

“Uncomplaining, uncompromising self-reliance.”   

****

Audio Clip

Transcription of the audio clip:

The ‘past’ will always be there as long as you want something. Even if you (want to) suppress your wants (or to do anything with motive or purpose), the past has to come to your help, and tell you, ‘How to suppress your wants’.

So, if you differentiate the wants, as they do in India, as the spiritual wants as highly desirable, the be all and end all of your existence, and that want (spiritual) is no different from any other want.

But in that particular (Indian) culture, the emphasis is laid on the spiritual wants as the most desirable wants in contradistinction to all the other wants.

So, that ‘past’ is bound to be there as long as you want, doesn’t matter what you want.

So, if you don’t want a thing in this world, it (the past or the thought) is not there. 

Whether it’s there or not is of no importance, you see. Because you have no way of finding out whether it is there or not, then if you say, ‘it is there, it isn’t there’, that means you have to necessarily to use the past, (even) to find out ‘if it is there or not?’ It is not the question at all.

The situation is very clear. If you don’t want a thing, you (still) have to want to take care of (basic necessities or) physical needs, if you don’t do that, it’s a perverse way of living. Sure, so you have to draw a line, what your needs are?

My needs are not quite different from your needs, so I can’t dictate that these needs should be everybody’s. So, that’s not it. So, that ‘want’ (basic necessities) is essential whether you like it or not, it is there! That’s the purpose of thought, you see.

To help, to keep this organism going, (so) it (want) is bound to be there, whether you like it or not.

So, that (the past or thought) cannot be used for any other purpose other than that, (the past cannot be used, say, for) understanding yourself, reaching your spiritual goals, and all that sort of a thing.

So, how not to be without wants?

The most...trickiest of all questions is the ‘how’?

As long as you are looking for ‘how’, so long you are doomed…you know.

So, how to live? That’s the thing bothering people for centuries, so every religion, every teacher says, ‘This is how you should live”. So how can I be free from of that? That’s the one question that transforms into millions and millions of questions, that’s all!

So, ‘what do you want?’ And then ‘how you can get what you want?’ It is very simple thing.

If you try to suppress that past, and try to be in the present, it will drive you crazy. You will flip. 

Because you are trying to control something you see which you cannot control, you have no control over that, it a has tremendous momentum, it is not your past of thirty or forty years, but the past of the entire existence of every human being and other forms of life too, see its part of your past, you know, it’s not such an easy thing and you have no way of controlling that at all.

So, if you try to control or stop the flow of a river through all these artificial means like putting a dam and all that, then it will inundate the whole thing.

That’s why every time you try to control your thoughts, to watch your thoughts, to observe your thoughts, to be aware of your thoughts, you find that the thoughts are welling there all the time.

When you are not concerned about that (thought), whether it is there or not, it’s not important to you. It(thought) is there when there is a need for it, and not there when there is no need for it.

If it is there or not, you have no way of knowing it. But you are constantly using it. So, that, you see, you can maintain the continuity, that’s ‘you’. There is nothing there other than ‘that’.

What you call ‘you’ is the ‘continuity of that knowledge’ that is put in there. 

So, if that is not there, ‘you’ are coming to an end, what you call ‘yourself’, that ‘you’ is coming to an end. So, you do not want to come to an end. You want that ‘you’ to be transformed, changed into something else, into loving (being), and you want to function on a different level, or different dimension but you do not want that to come to an end.

You see the only way that it (you) can maintain its continuity is through this constant demand for knowing more and more and more. The only way it can add more and more to that knowledge is by asking this question, ‘how?’

 

---

[1] Science corroborates this crucial fact.

There is nothing unique about human biology that is millions of years old. Its primal building block is the gene. The gene has its origins in the likes of bacteria, viruses or other single-cell organisms.

“You're not completely human, at least when it comes to the genetic material inside your cells. You and everyone else may harbor as many as 145 genes that have jumped from bacteria, other single-celled organisms, and viruses and made themselves at home in the human genome.” 

(https://www.science.org/content/article/humans-may-harbor-more-100-genes-other-organisms))

 

" Do for others what you think I did for you " - UG to Mahesh Bhat

  There are many known, unknown and hidden dangers and traps in the shady bylanes of the spiritual bazaar.

There are plenty of impostors in the garb of gurus and swamis, and multitudes more of unsuspecting and gullible followers.

In this treacherous spiritual milieu, a naïve, blind follower could easily end up as a ‘sitting duck’ for spiritual predators.

In what could be described as the case of ‘misplaced trust’, oftentimes faithfuls get stripped of everything they possess - dignity, property, and sanity by unscrupulous conmen.

In this clip, UG debunks any show of gratitude using a parody (of a follower’s expression of gratitude),

“My encounter with you has helped me to come into my own, (you helped me) to become me.”

These words capture the sentiments of a typical follower or devotee.

Yes, there is nothing wrong per se about being grateful to those who genuinely care for us or help us or benefit us. Gratitude is considered as a virtue and being grateful, a noble act of civility and refinement. 

Remember, gratitude is not an artifact of human value system but natural instinct common among sentient beings. We witness its operation in mother nature, in birds and animals too.

However, things are highly distorted in the spiritual marketplace. It is an extremely treacherous transactional world where gurus are salesmen selling ‘cheap and shoddy piece of goods’, where bogus spiritual help carries a hefty price tag, and seekers end up being at the receiving end, relegated to the role of hapless customers.

When the source of spiritual help itself becomes suspect or spurious or untrustworthy, one must be extremely watchful. In this context, any show of gratitude could be misplaced. 

When trust and gratitude are carried to extreme forms like blind loyalty or unquestioning servility, one is stepping into the danger zone of abuse or exploitation by conmen.

****

UG always downplayed his role or influence in the success of people whom he touched. And there are many beneficiaries.

The young and incredibly talented Mahesh Bhat initially met UG during his days of struggle in the film industry as a flop director, but later went on to scale dizzy heights in Bollywood, winning several national and international awards in his career.

Here is UG’s plain talk to Mahesh on expressing heartfelt gratitude for everything that he had received from the master,  

“Mahesh, if you think whatever you are today is because of me, which I don’t think so, then do for others what you think I did for you.”

Decades later, Mahesh Bhat still recalls every word of what UG said that day. This has gone deep into his bones and become the credo of his life,

“That has become my Dharma, my Kashi, my Mecca, that is what I do, I live my master’s words.”

****

UG vehemently rejects all attempts to put him on a pedestal, or enshrine him into a guru or guide,

“Nor will I be fooled by what you are saying (your sweet words of gratitude). That is the end of it.”

UG raises a red flag not to be fooled or emotionally blackmailed by any speeches or acts of gratitude and not to be led up the garden path by one’s own followers, a great caveat for all wannabe gurus.

Even the best and the noblest among men meekly succumb to sentiments of gratitude, praise, and adulation and fall into the trap of gurudom and followership.

****

But first, why this thirst for spiritual experiences? Why this craze for gurus?

The reason is not far to seek.

The emptiness or meaninglessness of life, the daily grind, the misery, the harsh realities of life could all be so overwhelming that even the bravest of hearts crumble under the pressure and seek for an escape route or even an alternate reality.

The desperate search for peace, fulfilment, and happiness leads seekers inevitably to the doorsteps of ashrams or spiritual gurus.

The lure of spiritual life makes even the best and finest minds to abandon all caution, give up all elemental reasoning and discrimination, and walk into the snare of unscrupulous gurus.

Like drugs, the lure of spiritual goals is extremely seductive.

The spiritual bazaar is abuzz with all kinds of fly-by-night operators - godmen, conmen, peddlers and scamsters.

There is a huge demand for spiritual services and a plethora of spiritual goodies are on offer including ‘enlightenment’, ‘awakened state’, ‘blissful state’ or ‘eternal happiness’ and, what have you!

****

UG offers us a simple ‘safety net’ against all spiritual cons.

Firstly, he asks us to STOP in our tracks RIGHT NOW and stop chasing after fictitious goals.

And here are his pointers to stay safe from all kinds of con artists,

“What is a good man good for? Only for the bad man to exploit.” (To be good in a treacherous world, is to be vulnerable to predators)

“Stop looking for roses and there will be no thorns” (Stop chasing after spiritual goodies, and you are insured against all threats or traps of the spiritual kind).

“There is no such thing as ‘enlightenment’ or eternal happiness…” (All spiritual goals are mental abstractions, the conjectures of rich, productive minds).

“You don’t need crutches (gurus) of any kind.  You can walk alone without crutches. If you still fall, your knees and elbows will put you back on your two feet. You will get up and walk…” (Your single decision to walk alone is your ticket to freedom from all kinds of harmful dependencies, spiritual or otherwise).

“This body is designed to handle any crisis, physical or psychological, even when hit with the worst psychological trauma in life, the body knows how to handle it, the consciousness cuts off for some time, you fall asleep, and when you wake up, you are once again fully charged and ready to move on with your life” (Stop looking for all outside help, your natural built-in resources are enough to handle any crisis in life).  

Then UG goes on to offer us an invaluable tip in identifying the real guru (‘if there is one’),

“The real guru is one who frees you from himself.”  

And finally, here a golden rule to avoid all kinds of spiritual traps,

“Test every word of what I say, or someone else says, find out for yourself and by yourself whether it is true or not, else reject.” - UG

****

UG not only cautions the followers, but also points to the dangers and traps awaiting even the well-meaning gurus.

"If anyone thinks he can help you, he will inevitably mislead you. And the less phony he is, the more enlightened he is, the more misery and mischief he will create for you!” - UG

UG does acknowledge here that not all wannabe gurus are conmen, there could be some fine men and women with right intentions but still deluded (‘do-gooders’).

But the decision to go public, to gather followers (loka sangraham, लोक संग्रहं), to form spiritual groups, to build ashrams, is fraught with great danger and is extremely risky. Here, even the noble ones, well-intentioned ones could go astray.

Many are initially reluctant to go public, to start ashrams or organisations but eventually they succumb to the sentiments of followers.

Many gurus lack the clarity and courage to say ‘NO’! They turn into puppets in the hands of followers.

“You (seekers) are the ones who put them(gurus) on the pedestal giving them their power, without you, they are nobodies” - UG

Playing guru or influencer is narcotizing, giving a spiritual ‘high’.

Also, when the guru goes public, he or she could easily become the target of sinister machinations by phonies and flunkies masquerading as followers.

The gurus are completely trapped in their own game and get dragged into cults and movements.

****

Spiritual land is a tantalizing minefield.

Spiritual circus is all about gurus and seekers, about mutual exploitation. It is a deadly interplay of authority, power, and control.  

The real courage is to refuse to play god, or seek one!

****

 Video Transcription:

Nobody like that (you) anywhere, on this planet, unique, unparalleled…It will express itself, but then you don’t go around the world telling people ‘I am unique, there is no one like me, I am the one and the only one’. No, not at all!

You are calling me unique; I will never tell myself that I am a unique being. I can tell you, but you will not come to me and thank me, ‘my encounter with you has helped me to come into my own, to become me’, no!

Nor will I be fooled by what you are saying. That is the end of it.

You will not go anywhere and ask anyone, THAT’S THE ONLY ACID TEST!

_________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

Hacking the ‘self’ – the UG way!

UG on ‘self’ or ‘I’:

‘Self’ is the ‘movement of knowledge’ - UG

This video clip is ‘Quintessential UG’. Here, in the very beginning, UG knocks off the ‘self’, ‘I’, ‘soul’ etc., dismissing them as pure fabrications of the psychological kind, with no reality or basis whatsoever.

UG offers a whole new rationale for the appearance of the ‘self’. He maintains that the virtual ‘self’ or ‘agent’ comes into play when there is a need or demand for knowledge.

Knowledge is put into motion when there is a need, say, while planning a trip or seeking a job or finding a solution to a problem.

‘UG’ appears whenever there is a need or demand.’ – UG

Knowledge in motion is ‘thinking’ and thinking gives rise to the illusion of the ‘thinker’ or the ‘self’ or the ‘doer’. It is all a unitary process.

Even the very thought that there is a ‘thinker’ does not occur while there is thinking going on.

Thinker is a logical conclusion, a ‘post hoc’ illusion, an after-effect of thinking.

The entire structure of Western Philosophy is premised upon a single sentence, “Cogito ergo sum” – “I think, therefore I am”. This logical, verbal assertion single-handedly legitimizes the ‘thinker’ or ‘self’ making it into a reality for the philosophers.

The suggestion here is that as long as there is thinking, there is bound to be an agent or thinker associated with it. Corollaries of this statement include - one, no thinking is possible without a thinker and two, there is no thinker without thinking.

Contrast this with the Eastern traditions including observation of UG,

“There is only thought but no thinker.”

To borrow words of UG, the truth about the thinker is only a logically ascertained premise.

Thinker is a stubborn illusion like that of a shadow. As long as there is light, there is the shadow, as long as there is ‘thinking’ there is the ‘thinker’.

While there exists a physiological entity, biologically programmed to survive and operate independently in nature, the psychological agent or the ‘self’ is purely incidental and is born during every social transaction as the ‘agent’ of such transaction.

While banking, one is a 'customer', while paying tax, one is a citizen etc.

‘Self’ is therefore necessitated by the social demand or need.

****
UG on 'intellect':

Let us now de-construct the ‘intellect’ in light of UG’s many utterings.

Intellect is the psychological power-center and the de-facto ‘decision maker’ birthed and shaped by culture, honed by education, experience and knowledge over the years.

Intellect is actually a formidable instrument, the tool of discretion and discrimination, of refined thought, of reasoning and logic. The accumulated, curated ‘knowledge and experience’ forms the basis for ‘intellect’.

Intellect empowers the individual to live sanely and intelligently in society and guarantees livelihood and sustenance. The key to good living is the way the intellect gets deployed. It could make for either great fortune or grave calamity.

Intellect plays a huge role in our day-to-day living.

It is a fact that every physical sensation gets filtered by the intellect.
Intellect turns physical ‘sensations’ into psychological ‘perceptions.’

The raw sensations of stimuli (‘qualia’ of philosophers) like heat, cold, soft, hard etc. are handled by biology, while ‘perceptions’ are acts of interpretations by the intellect.

Every sensation is translated, recorded and gets stored as ‘experience’ by the intellect for its future use, for its perpetuation and continuity.

The mere biological ‘sensation’ of ‘heat’ gets smeared with a psychological ‘layering’ by the intellect and gets perceived as either ‘pleasant’ or ‘moderate’ or ‘unbearable’.

This is true of everything that we see, hear or experience.

Every experience or perception is therefore a smearing act by the intellect.

UG makes this distinction clear as daylight, “There is no experience without knowledge.”

Here is an interesting observation by Sage Vasishta about perception:

“ चेत्येना रहिता यैशा चित्तंब्रह्म सनातनं ...”

‘Awareness without perception’ is the eternal principle of primordial Life…
(Upashama Prakaranam, Yoga Vaasishta)

****
UG on ‘understanding’:

“Understanding is nothing but hashing and rehashing of thoughts” - UG

UG maintains that ‘understanding’ is an act of the intellect, an act of clarification, an act of hashing or rehashing, ordering or reordering of thoughts, to look out for any confirming patterns. This act then throws up different and new forms of the same old knowledge and experience like the old wine in a new bottle.

Superior intellect facilitates superior understanding to form educated, informed inferences or postulates or surmises. All concepts, theories, doctrines take birth in such ‘understandings ’.

Oftentimes, simple but extraordinary outcomes born of such understanding are mistaken for flashes of ‘creativity.’

UG totally debunks human creativity,

“The fact is nature is truly creative. Every leaf, every flower, every plant, every animal and individual, is utterly unique and unparalleled. It never repeats or reproduces one like the other.”

All human imagination, invention, innovation and creativity is nothing but the ingenious ability of the intellect to recast old forms of 'knowledge and experience' into their new forms. Everything here is just a modified continuity of the old stock.

“Nothing or no one is original.” - UG

****
Finally, UG on ‘insight’:

‘Intuition’ or ‘insight’ is yet another highly convoluted and misunderstood term in the psychological jargon.

It is conceived as a rare form of ‘direct perception’ beyond thought or intellect. This misconception is widespread. Insight is held to be independent, subtler and far superior to intellect, and capable of providing direct, magical results.

For UG, insight is just another piece of fabrication,

“Intellect has created what we call the 'insight'.”

The idea of insight is deeply entrenched in our minds.

One becomes an expert in any field of knowledge after putting in dozens of years of single-minded, relentless, dedicated hard work.

When the expert employs his or her ‘understanding’ (‘the lens of knowledge and experience’) to discover or uncover some hitherto unknown facet or fact in his or her particular area of work, we tend to think of it as an act of great ‘intuition’ or ‘insight.’

UG dismissed insight as nothing special but merely the outcome of constant churning of thoughts. He explained that any expert in his or her own field of expertise who spends all waking hours on solving some problem or the other is bound to discover some pattern or solution or answer.

But UG maintains that all ‘insights’ are restricted only to a particular domain of expertise, and not beyond. He concludes,

“Intellect is the only instrument we have, and there is no other instrument” - UG.

****

Video Transcription

UG:  There is no self,

there is no ‘I’, there is no spirit, there is no soul, there is no mind, there is no psyche, so that knocks off the whole list…

There is no way of finding out what you are left with.

The instrument which we are using, has, in a very ingenuous way invented all kinds of things like intuition, like insight and like this, that and the other and through this very insight that we think we have come to understand something, without the help of this intellect, without the help of our thinking, is the stumbling block.

All insights, however extraordinary they may be, are worthless because it is that (intellect) that has created what we call the insight, and through that it is maintaining its continuity, it is maintaining its status quo.

Q: I think, I might understand that but what I am still trying to pursue is the physical side of this, if I could, which is this – that clearly it is observable– the human organs and their interrelated functions all work harmoniously into an integrated healthy body.

UG: They messed up even that…it is not possible to experience and understand except through the knowledge that is given to us by the physiologists.

Q: Not by our own observation? There is no experience?

UG: There is no such thing as your own observation. Your own observation is born out of the knowledge you have.

This knowledge comes from the physiologists, this knowledge comes from those who have been involved in this medical technology, trying to find out how this is functioning, how the heart is functioning, before lot of things that we have become familiar with, through the help of what they have discovered, is something which cannot be experienced by us.

Q: Then you are really saying that there is no such thing as direct, immediate experience.

UG: No experience at all without knowledge, that’s all that I am saying. There is no way you can experience reality of anything except with the help of this knowledge.

So, what I am saying is what you do not know, you cannot experience.

****