Your experiencing structure cannot conceive of any event that it will not experience. It even expects to preside over its own dissolution, and so it wonders what death will feel like, it tries to project the feeling of what it will be like not to feel. But in order to anticipate a future experience, your structure needs knowledge, a similar past experience it can call upon for reference. You cannot remember what it felt like not to exist before you were born, and you cannot remember your own birth, so you have no basis for projecting your future non-existence.
U.G. also repudiates many of the assumptions of the philosophers of Reason. He has Aristotle in mind when he declares that "Whoever said that man was a rational being deluded himself and deluded us all." U.G. maintains that the driving force of human action is power and not rationality. In fact he holds that rationality is itself an instrument of power. The rationalist approach is based on faith in the ability of thought to transform the human condition. U.G. contends that this faith in thought is misplaced. According to him, thought is a divisive and ultimately a destructive instrument. It is only interested in its own continuity and turns everything into a means of its own perpetuation. It can only function in terms of a division between the so-called self or ego and the world. And this division between an illusory self and an opposed world is ultimately destructive because it results in the aggrandizement of the "self" at the expense of everything else. That is why everything born of thought is harmful in one way or another. So thought is not the instrument which can transform our condition. But neither does U.G. point to some spiritual faculty such as intuition or faith as the saving instrument. He dismisses intuition as nothing more than a form of subtle and refined thought. As for faith, it is just a form of hope without any foundation.
But U.G. does speak of something like a native or natural intelligence of the living organism. The acquired "intelligence" of the intellect is no match to the native intelligence of the body. It is this intelligence which is operative in the extraordinarily complex systems of the body. One has only to examine the immune system to comprehend the nature of this innate intelligence of the living body. U.G. maintains that this native intelligence of the body is unrelated to the intellect. Therefore it cannot be used or directed to solve the problems created by thought. It is not interested in the machinations of thought.
Thought is the enemy of this innate intelligence of the body. Thought is inimical to the harmonious functioning of the body because it turns everything into a movement of pleasure. This is the way it ensures its own continuity. The pursuit of permanence is also another way in which thought becomes inimical to the harmonious functioning of the body. According to U.G., the demand for pleasure and permanence destroys, in the long run, the sensitivity of the body. The body is not interested in permanence. Its nervous system cannot handle permanent states, pleasurable or painful. But thought has projected the existence of permanent states of peace, bliss, or ecstasy in order to maintain its continuity. There is thus a fundamental conflict between the demands of the "mind" or thought and the functioning of the body.
This conflict between thought and the body cannot be resolved by thought. Any attempt by thought to deal with this conflict only aggravates the problem. What must come to an end is the distorting interference of the self-perpetuating mechanism of thought. And this cannot, obviously, be achieved by that very mechanism. U.G. maintains that all techniques and practices to end or control thought are futile because they are themselves the products of thought and the means of its perpetuation.
The rationalist approach is also committed to the concept of causality. U.G. rejects causality as a shibboleth. He maintains that events are actually disconnected, and it is thought which connects them by means of the concept of causality. But there is no way of knowing whether there are actually causal relationships in nature. This leads him to reject not only the notion of a creator of the universe, but also the hypothesis of a Big Bang. He maintains that the universe has no cause, no beginning, and no end.
There seems to be some similarity with the Buddhist approach on this issue. The Buddhists also rejected the notion that the world had a beginning. But they still subscribed to the view that all phenomena had causes. U.G., by contrast, rejects this view. He has no problems with the idea of acausal phenomena. Of course, U.G. is not a Buddhist. He rejects the four noble truths, the eight-fold path, the goal of Nirvana, and the methods of Buddhist meditation. He even considers the Buddha as a foolish man because he enjoined his followers to propagate the "Dhamma" to the four corners of the earth. The mischief of the missionaries thus originated with the "Mindless One"!
U.G. also argues that there is no entity called "self" independent of the thought process. There is no thinker, but only thinking. We think that there must be a "thinker", an entity that is thinking, but we have no way of knowing this. There is only a movement of thought. U.G. does not acknowledge a sharp distinction between feeling or emotion and thought. Even perception and sensation are permeated by thought. His use of the phrase "movement of thought" is thus quite extensive in its meaning. U.G. accords a central role to memory, which conditions the movement of thought. In fact, he maintains that thought is a movement of memory. He also has no place for an independent consciousness, or the "vijnana skandha" of the Buddhists.
In a masterly stroke of negative dialectic, U.G. points out that there is nothing like observation or understanding of thought because there is no subject or observer independent of it. The division between thought and an independent subject or observer is an illusion created by that very thought. What we have is just another process of thought about "thought". U.G. therefore dismisses all talk of observation, or awareness, of one's own thought process as absolute balderdash! He thus takes away the very floor from beneath those who practice Vipassana meditation!
In U.G.'s ontology there are no entities like "mind", "soul", "psyche", and "self". "The `I' has no other status than the grammatical," insists U.G. It is just a first-person singular pronoun, a convention and convenience of speech. "The question, `Who am I?' is an idiotic question," remarks U.G. apropos Ramana Maharshi's method of self-inquiry. It is worth noting here that U.G. had visited Ramana in 1939 or so. To the young U.G.'s query, "Can you give enlightenment to me?", the sage of Arunachala replied, "I can give it, but can you take it?" U.G., full of youthful self-assurance, said to himself, "If there is anyone who can take it, it is I," and walked out! He says that Ramana's answer was a traditional one and did not impress him. On the contrary, he was put off by what he describes as the Maharshi's "unblinking arrogance"! U.G. never visited him again. Regarding the Maharshi's terribly painful death by cancer, U.G. curtly observes that "cancer treats saints and sinners in the same way." This seems to be true, but the interesting question is whether saints and sinners treat cancer in the same way.
According to U.G., the question, "Who am I?" presupposes the existence of some unknown "I" other than the "I" which was born in some place to some parents, is married or unmarried, and which has picked up this question from some book. U.G. denies that this assumption makes sense. There is an unceasing but ever-changing process of thought. The so-called "I" is born anew each moment with the birth of each thought. The notion of an enduring or permanent psyche or self is merely a concept thrown up by thought. U.G., therefore, asserts that spiritual and psychological goals have really no basis or foundation. What is it that attains the so-called enlightenment? What is it that realizes or transforms itself? What is it that attains happiness? "Absolutely nothing!" is U.G.'s reply. These goals have been projected by thought to keep itself going. That's all there is to it.
U.G. claims that this self-perpetuating process of thought can come to an end. However, he points out that this does not imply a state totally bereft of thoughts. According to him, the ideal of a thoughtless state is one of the many hoaxes to which Hindus have fallen victim. He claims that when the self-perpetuating mechanism of thought collapses, what is left is a harmonious mode of functioning of the living organism in which thoughts arise and disappear in accordance with a natural rhythm and in response to a challenge. Thus the problem is thought as a self-perpetuating process and not the occurrence of thoughts per se. In the "natural state", as U.G. describes, the state of functioning of the body free of the interference of thought, thoughts are not a problem. It is not that there are no sensual thoughts, for example, in this state. But they do not constitute a problem. One