INTRODUCTION

When visitors come to see me, the first thing I tell them is that whatever I say is a “concept” – not the truth. I add that anything any sage has ever said at any time in history is a concept, that whatever any scripture of any religion has ever said is a concept. A “concept” is something that is liable to interpretation and therefore acceptable to some people and not acceptable to others. The “truth” is that which no one can deny.

Most visitors, when asked if they think there is something they know which is the truth and not a concept, have no reply. My answer then is that there indeed is ONE truth that no one can deny. An atheist may come to me and assert that he has studied the subject deeply for twenty years, and has a doctorate in ‘Comparative Religions’, and he is totally convinced that ‘God’ does not exist. I would tell him that he is entitled to his view because ‘God’ is a concept. I would then ask him: God may or may not exist, but can you deny that you yourself do exist? This impersonal awareness of BEING, of existing, which no one can deny, is the only TRUTH. It is not capable of any interpretation. In other words, ‘I AM’ is the only truth. “I am Tom, Dick or Harry” is not the truth. The truth ‘I AM’ is covered or hidden by the personal ego of the individual.

It is this individual ego who is the spiritual seeker. And the ‘ego’ really does not exist. When someone tells me that he has come to me in order to have his ego destroyed so that he can be ‘Self-realized’ or ‘enlightened’, I would ask him to produce his ego and I would smash him out of existence before his very eyes!

What then is the ‘ego’? When I ask this question: what do you understand by the word ‘ego’, the answer from most people is that the ego is the “identification with a body as an entity separate from the other people, and that this separation is what makes people unhappy.” But mere identification with a name and form (naama, roopa) cannot really constitute the ego because even a sage who is supposed to have had his ego destroyed also responds to his name being called, exactly like the ordinary person. In other words, the ordinary person considers himself as an entity with a body and name, separate from others, exactly as the sage does! Then what is it that distinguishes the sage from the ordinary person? What is it that makes a sage a sage? The answer is that the sage has the total understanding without the slightest doubt that, in the words of the Buddha, “Events happen, deeds are done, but there is no individual doer thereof.” In other words, the ordinary person considers that he or she is the doer of his or her actions and is responsible for those actions: and that, similarly, every person is responsible for his or her actions. On the other hand, the sage has the total, absolute conviction that neither he nor anyone else is the doer of any action, that all action is the divine happening through some body-mind organism and not anything “done” by anyone.

At this stage, the question arises: If no one is the “doer” of any action, who lives his life in this world? Who is it that experiences happiness or unhappiness? Who is it that seeks ‘Self-realization’ or ‘enlightenment’ or whatever? The straight answer is that we think we live our lives, but in reality, life is being lived through the billions of body-mind organisms. It is the ego who thinks he is the doer, and experiences happiness or unhappiness. So, in this matter, the basic concept is that ever since a baby is born and seeks its mother’s breast intuitively, life has been nothing but seeking, and it is the ego who thinks he is the seeker, the doer, responsible for his actions.

The basis of this concept is that the human being is really nothing more than a uniquely programmed instrument or computer through which the Source or Primal Energy or Consciousness or God (or whatever label you give to the Source – the ONE without a second) functions and brings about actions. In other words, the Source uses the billions of uniquely programmed human computers exactly as you use your computer. You put in an input in your programmed computer and the computer has no choice but to produce the output for which it has been programmed. You could, of course, say that the computer has the “right” to produce the output just as you think it is your “right” to produce your action!

So, what is the programming in “your” body-mind organism, and how does the Source (or God) use the human computer? You had no choice about your parents and therefore about the genes or the unique DNA in your body-mind organism; nor did you have any choice about the environment in which you were born and in which your body-mind organism has been receiving its conditioning from day one. The unique DNA and the environmental conditioning together form the “programming” in your body-mind computer.

It may seem shocking that the human being, who is supposed to have been created “in the image of God”, is being reduced to a programmed computer. But let us not forget that the human being is basically an object – a species of object that, together with thousands of other species of objects, form the totality of manifestation. And what functions through the billions of human computers is the Source or God or primal energy, producing through each human computer exactly that output or action that is supposed to happen according to the Will of God (or Source) or according to, let us say, Natural Law or Cosmic Law. This is not unlike the fact that electricity, an aspect of the primal energy, functioning through each electrical gadget produces that which the particular gadget has been designed to produce.

How does the Source (or God) use the human computer? According to my concept, the input is a thought that comes from Consciousness, the Source; the brain responds to this input and out comes the output in the form of a reaction in the human body-mind organism. Research has proved that the thought input occurs half-a-second before the ego’s reaction. It is therefore obvious that the individual ego has no control over the input, and, of course, the ego has had no control over the programming in the body-mind organism. In other words, the ego has no control over the input and has certainly had no control over the programming that dictates the reaction, which is obviously a biological or mechanical reaction. And yet the ego calls this reaction its own action! Thought is one input; the other inputs are based on the objects to which the senses respond – what is seen or heard or tasted or smelt or touched – over which also the ego has no control. In other words, what happens is that the brain reacts to an input in the body-mind organism strictly according to the programming over neither of which did the ego have any control. And yet the ego says that this mechanical reaction is his action!

An important point is that the biological or mechanical reaction in the body-mind computer is exactly the same whether it is that of an ordinary person or of a sage. If the input is the same and the programming is similar, then the output is most likely to be the same. If the two persons see the same thing or hear the same thing, the output would be the same, e.g. anger or amusement or fear or pity or whatever. There is a great misconception that the Self-realization or enlightenment brings about such a tremendous transformation that the sage becomes a perfect human being: no anger, no regrets and no fear. Then the question arises: if the reaction in the programmed computer of the body-mind organism is more or less the same, what is the difference between a sage and an ordinary man? The answer lies in what happens after the initial reaction happens.

In the case of the ordinary person when a negative reaction happens – anger arises – the ego takes over the situation. The ego says “I am angry; I should not be angry, I am told by the doctor that if I do not control my anger, I shall have high blood pressure and that could lead to a heart attack or a stroke.” This is the involvement of the ego in horizontal time whereas the reaction in the body-mind computer is only in the present moment. In the case of a sage, anger arises and may take the form of shouting against the person who caused it. But there the reaction ends and the sage is open to whatever might happen in the next moment. I remember a particular incident when I was visiting my Guru, Nisargadatta Maharaj. Someone asked a question, and anger arose. Maharaj shouted at him, “You have been coming here for six years and you ask a stupid question like that?” The visitor concerned knew Maharaj well enough and he gave a witty answer; everyone laughed and Maharaj’s laughter was the loudest: one moment anger, the next moment “amusement”! In the case of the ordinary person, there would have been the identification of the ego with that anger as “I am angry and that man made me angry; therefore, I shall not laugh at that man’s wit.” In other words, in the case of the ordinary man, the involvement of the ego would have taken place horizontally in time and he would not have been open to what happened in the next moment. The sage lives from moment to moment, the body-mind organism responding to whatever happens from moment to moment, whereas the ego of the ordinary man reacts to the natural, biological reaction of the body-mind organism, and gets involved in horizontal time and is not open to what happens from moment to moment. The ego of the ordinary man is therefore sometimes happy and most times unhappy because of the involvement in horizontal time.