Endless Walk

What if you went on vacation and never went back. It doesn’t feel like vacation. It never did. It was never what they described or predicted. I remember looking down from a plane over the desert almost ten years ago, after leaving my last place of residence and putting all my belongings into storage. I was hopeful to feel some change but I felt exactly the same.

Ten years went by. A couple of months ago I landed in Italy and went by train to Southern France. I stayed there with friends for two weeks then on to work in Switzerland. That took two weeks in which time my plan for July evaporated and I scrambled for options. A friend from work helped me to find a house for the month in northern Spain down the street from his rental house in a rural farm town. I could rent a house with a pool for the same cost of a room in a shared apartment in an outer bourough of Manhattan. The house was in the countryside, yet factoring in a rental car I was still within the operating budget for a month in Manhattan. There was period of some days to fill before heading to occupy the house so I went up to visit still other friends who run a camping ground at the edge of the Black Forest. I know a lot of people, nice people. I’m a lucky fool.

On the first of the month, I moved into the house in the tiny hamlet of Voto. The house had been empty for over a year. The owner had a kind face and an easy way with his son. He said they had been happy in the house. The boy was tan and at ease at just about the age where a kid starts getting disgruntled. The fences surrounding the house were covered with a kind of astroturf bleached by the sun and the property had a neglected look. Long grass, weeds and various wild and domestic plants were sprouting from cracks everywhere, behind the house was a confusing quilt of tile asphalt and cement wrapping around the immediate property, creating a distinctly urban effect in a rural setting. It reminded me of the way the people in Queens put tile and fences all over their tiny properties. Why all the hard finish? Maybe they were city folk? A high tile patio with a ramp up was cluttered with sun busted wooden recliners and chairs, it had a brief stairway leading down to an apartment under the patio. A lack of airflow left the apartment uninhabitably moldy and past the picture window of the apartment was a big pool that had gradually turned into an algae pond. In general, the place was in need of some attention but the house OK due to the air flow system Miguel, the owner, had installed and kept running while he and his family moved further north to start a new business.

The rooms were small and dark so I swept out the sun porch behind the house that was all windows and shades. The light was great so I moved the rattan furniture around to shake up the vibe of stagnant air and used it to paint in. I could sit at a makeshift table and work while watching the clouds over the valley behind the house that changed all day.

The house next door was vacant The bank apparently handed over the keys to some local gypsies who came in and cleared out what ever they could use. The house across the street from me sat empty as well.

While allegedly writing a second book, I say allegedly because I feel it is going nowhere, I am also working on a book of watercolor paintings. It is a way to keep several balls in the air. I use photos from the front pages of major newspapers as source material, stripped of meaning, just an image that catches the eye because of colors and composition. I was first drawn to a photo of Russia’s Putin and China’s President Hu Jintau standing against a red and blue stage. It was so beautiful the content didn’t matter much to me. I wanted to steal it, so I did.

As for what I am calling this second book, I feel totally adrift. I talk about the world in the wake of UG. In the previous book he was a centerpiece, now I have nothing but my observations to occupy a so-called narrative. Since the thought mechanism is driven by a narrative anyway, this one seems to be about peeking over the edge of oblivion, like the rocky cliffs along the Atlantic coast here that drop hundreds of feet into thundering surf. If I’m honest, the narrative is about shrinking from that abyss.

When I got really sick of the noise in my head and staring at the computer screen and the walls of the house, I went down the many layers of cement yard to fiddle with some broken nets trying to clean the pool. That seemed as sensible as it was impossible. The pump motor appeared to be broken and using the garbage can as a bucket was comical enough to bring the neighbor up the hill out to watch the bald gringo scoop muck from the pool.

The Jehovah’s witnesses who owned the weekend house across the street leave a pet dog in the yard for weeks when they are away. Lisa looks like a bear, happy go lucky, desperately lonely bear. Automatic dispensers provide her with food and water. The witnesses came one weekend and she barked all night, every night they were there. Maybe she was telling them something. No matter what I conclude from this scenario I have no solution for it. Pets baffle me. I understand them in the abstract, but being responsible for another living creature’s food and shit is not a job I would take on as an owner. I have of course taken it on for room and board, so I have to shut my mouth here.

I was going to be alone in the house for the month. With 26 days left I went for a long ride on the bike. I picked an all uphill route to get an overview. While huffing and puffing up, up and up, with spectacular views of the valley all to myself, the thought crossed my mind that I’d been walking, riding or driving from one place to another my entire life, thinking the same unrelenting thoughts regurgitating the same memories that dredged up the same emotions over and over. “There you baptize the sensation by giving it a name.” UG said to a Dutch woman in a talk from Amsterdam in the 1980’s. Glancing into into a field from a passing car, train, plane, makes me long to be out there in it, then I get out there and its just me, standing there wondering where to go next.


More than once UG used that image of the Red Queen from Through the Looking Glass in conversation.

Prerecorded chimes from a local chapel rang into the countryside from 7 am, every 15 minutes until 10 pm every day. The noise at first reminded me of the sleepless nights in Valliecrozia I spent watching UG wither away on the couch. Many times he seemed to be communing with other spirits. There was a church in that neighborhood as well, that rang bells all night on the hour. The bell was less aggressive conjuring in my imagination, a reaper on stilts with metallic pants. By 4am I would finally drift off and get about an hour’s sleep, emerging at 5 am to a blackbird singing a spectral song just before dawn.

“You are going to be a marvelous person tomorrow, always tomorrow, and that tomorrow never comes.” UG said more than once while I sat with him. My life is a series of postponements. The idea of this all coming to an end terrifies me sufficiently to keep the train of thoughts from ever venturing to where it would necessarily stop. A physical end cannot be imagined and for sure never allowed.

1. My.

2. Self.

That’s already two.

I cannot let one minute go by without picking up a pen, or a brush, keeping the two of us up and running.

In the mornings there was a chill in the air. For days the sky was mercifully overcast, so I spent lots of time inside, writing or painting. Late in the afternoon I would go for a long bike ride when the sun wasn’t too strong. The sun would break through variously textured curtains of cloud covering the valley for a few hours every day. On Sunday morning I heard the Jehovah’s Witnesses packing their van. The resigned voice of the father needed no translation. People are doing the same thing everywhere you go, so what is the need for another language? All you need is money, the universal language, to survive. The dog stopped barking once they were gone.

I live in other people’s houses, other cities, in other countries, other continents, other cultures, to get away from the familiar, to see something new, to be alone, to exert control over my life. It works for a few days at a time but the demons I was born with follow me and wait. They always find me, they are me, a collage of demon thoughts battling for supremacy over the organism. They are without shape and not limited by time and space. No, that’s wrong, the fact is, they are space and time and sooner or later they come calling, building me a crumbling world out of my memories and there is nothing I can do about it.

I watched Escape from Alcatraz one afternoon. Frank Morris was a man of exceptional intelligence. His only hope of escape was to focus on the means of his goal. His neighbor prisoner was late on the day of the escape and missed his chance. That man was eventually released after serving his sentence and committed more crimes, spending most of his life in jail and finally dying there. This begs the question as to what he would have escaped. Frank Morris, the man who escaped, was exceptionally bright, and there is a chance that he may have survived but no one can be sure. Unless he made a radical life change, he too would have been incarcerated over and over again, as that was the pattern of his entire life so far.

Immediately I wonder what my IQ is.

I headed for the river one afternoon to find the path I’d seen people coming and going to from. There were always cars parked by the side of the road beside the house. Men came and went with fishing poles. I found the path and the river and followed it. The river crashed over a dam with three curves about 2 meters high. Water striders scampered in place, four legs skittering along the current. I skitter along just like that, going nowhere. Crossing the river on rocks, I followed a path to a cow pasture. The air over the pasture swarmed with tiny insects. In the woods the air was clear of bugs. One nice thing about Spain were the abandoned and crumbling structures everywhere. In the cow pasture a crumbling stone wall stood with trees leaning into the corner of it like a Constable landscape. From that vantage point the tower of the local chapel rose from treetops beyond the meadow.

I was standing in kitsch. The electronic chime was particularly loud from there, like a timer going off over the field every fifteen minutes. Cows stood under trees in the distance, munching grass, indifferent, until one of them looked up and eyed me. For some reason my presence caused a response. She came over to where I stood, nosing at me from a close distance with her massive head that moved heavy like a bucket of slow water swinging drool from around her mouth. When I put out my hand she shied away, then again moved toward me. Another started out from the shelter of the trees, following her lead, then another. They were all young females I presumed because no horns appeared on the funny haircut mounds on their heads. Finally there were four in a row, facing me, nosing forward more bravely in the pack. I stood and watched carefully, feeling the weight and size. What little I know of their behavior made me hesitant in such close proximity. Eventually I turned to walk away and they immediately started toward me. The feel of their weight crossing the soil was a distinct physical sensation. I turned back and spread my arms.


They stopped and retreated. Again I turned and again they came toward me.


So I just stood still for a while. I had nowhere to go anyway. Finally they got bored and started munching grass creating a pleasant grinding racket among them. Eventually they forgot about me and the munching carried on as I walked away. The thought came into my head that these harmless, curious creatures are blamed for global warming, the gas caused by cows farting and shitting, the cost of water and grains to feed them, are`1` all disasterous apparently, and yet looking at these faces, who is to blame? Who should die so we can live forever? Who is wrong and right in this idiocy? Who started this mess?

The bells rang off again.

Who was running that alarm clock? The neighbors didn’t seem particularly pious. I never saw anyone come or go to that chapel for instance. It was tucked up in the curve of a road well outside the town. The chimes reminded me of what was said by the black character called ‘English’ in the library scene in Escape from Alcatraz-

Sometimes I think that’s all this place is. One… long… count. The prisoners count the hours, the bulls count the prisoners and the king bulls count the counts.”

I went back to another dirt path to a more finished road. Further on I glimpsed across the field to what my friend called “Mushrooms”, new, ugly vacation housing in the town. “Vende” signs were everywhere. Housing for sale. As I walked I was listening to the Butthole Surfer’s “Strangers die every day” on my iPhone. I kept it close to my ear to disguise myself as a productive member of society.

Crossing over one of an old bridges I passed a couple.

“Ola”, said fat guy in sweaty tee shirt.

“Ola.” I said.

“Ola” She mumbled, they were clearly bored with each other, out for a Sunday morning walk. They weren’t coming from church dressed that way. Rounding the corner was another cluster of mushrooms. Further on was the construction company. Three fat people sat at a table by a tree outside the house, tossing cold glances my way. The narrow road curved again, humped over a bridge to another curve ahead of me with a rise to the prerecorded chapel.

It was old and unoccupied. Hopping up the stone steps, I spotted two benches to the right. It was more like a park than a church, clean and empty. There were curtains on a tiny window in the locked door. The grass was worn around the back and the whole thing was Sunday morning silent as a… yes, there was the graveyard. Curious how old the graves might be, I went back to the front gate. It was unlocked, so I went inside.

The graves were disappointingly new, including eight blank squares in a house like structure, waiting for the entire Ortez family from the looks of it. The designs were all IKEA style, Mother Mary in multiple machine etched detailing on square marble slabs. Other graves had dates abbreviated, cheaply done, nothing touched by human hands. The place was dislocated from any sense of community. I left the church graveyard and headed back down to the road as the sky went darker. There was a field next to it on side of a hill. Up the hill, around the corner, a red haired woman swept the street while the wind blew her orange colored skirts around her hefty girth. I went down to my temporary house, hitting the door just as the skies opened up. Rain came in sheets, swept over swaying trees in a drunken orgy of green. From the sun porch a single red rose stood out from the tangle of weeds and grass by the side of the tiled yard. The flash of red swung useless and beautiful in the air filled with a scent of cow shit and lilies.

“I don’t want fame, I don’t want sex, and I don’t need your money.” -UG

I woke up in the morning once more to that electronic chime. According to myth a Vampires must be invited into a home before they can cross the threshhold. I think the same goes for sanyasins. I live in real estate that would otherwise go to waste while so many people on the planet live in the streets. This dynamic exists because people own things. Ownership is all about the incessant fear of falling into nothingness.

Another day wound slowly to a close as I lounged on a white plastic pool chair and a cluster of sparrows darted by, fluttering across the tile cement yard into an unending Spanish dusk, bouncing from point to point then vanishing into the green beyond the property. Another evening rain had just finished up, the clouds always fast moving in the sky. Looking up across the valley that kept reminding me of Switzerland, a bird was drifting very slowly up there. Was it a hawk? It was too far away to tell, but I could see it wasn’t an airplane by the way it drifted. The drift of nature is so pointless, a quiet drift of purposelessness. Man-made objects have a line of purpose running through them, like ideas driven from one point to another, creating an internal tension.

“That’s how I was living for some time…” he said, “like an animal. The sex drive was finished, or at least dormant for some time by then.”

He said there was nothing happening, he was ‘out of my head, I didn’t know what people were talking’.

Later he would describe his state as “A state of not-knowing.”

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40 Responses to Endless Walk

  1. Shari says:

    Thanks for your blog Louis. I don’t have much in the way of comments, except that I really enjoyed reading it and I want you to know that. It’s beautiful, poetic, humorous and true.

  2. Barry says:

    Hi Louis…..I’m sending this unfinished…I have to go do other things and if I don’t send it now….I probably wouldn’t send it at all; I know it has no importance but I wouldn’t mind a conversation with you and this is the closest I’ll get to that;

    It’s fine with me for you to not read it, or want to get to the end of it, and not post it on the blog…..it really doesn’t matter……best wishes:

    It’s quite funny reading your stuff Louis……….it seems full of struggling…..which is what happens here unceasingly…….I (thought) am always struggling, and there’s no way I could give it up…….what would I do then?

    But the fact is that I have no choice, because no such thing (as choice) exists….right? I love coming back to that obvious fact…………….what do I ‘know’ about anything? Who is ‘doing’ thinking? Seeing? hearing? feeling..etc? who decides to move the arms or any of any of it? I have no idea what any of this is………….. and I don’t know of anything separate from it….. which could be appluded for the wonderful job it’s doing of making things magically appear and disappear………… thought has no clue and is under no pressure to know anything…….in fact the opposite process seems to be what’s happening……thought is slowly coming down to earth..so to speak…..and reallizing that all it’s notions about how, why, where, when, were just hot air………. spirit…… fantasy……. stories…….. bollocks;

    What is true?

    I think the best any story has going for itself is how entertaining it is…………how can there be such a thing as a ‘true’ story……….isn’t all writing fiction…no matter what story it might be telling?

    why can there be such a fuss about whether something is ‘true’ or not………..what difference would it make………………….surely the only thing anyone can call truth is what is happening where they are right now…………….has anyone ever known anything other than their current reality………mine always seems to be made entirely out of sensations and thoughts?

    What is your like?

    If you agree with my spin on your story….. as that of someone fighting or striving against bullshit (which must be what I’m writing here…for isn’t all thinking fantasy?) wouldn’t that be the most natural activity for any human being with passion for truth……….a complete intollerance of whatever for you is unacceptable…….a hatred of nonesensical and useless belief of any kind……… other than practical? an innate need to be living out of the truest truth you can get to in any given moment……not spiritual……… but authentic…….. your very own unshakeable truth………..you give everything to it, it demands that from you and your only desire is to be with that longing and to feel it burning you up…….killing you all the time……..driving you to root out the bullshit and ‘throw it out………..’

    I wonder if I were saying this to you in person if you’d agree, or say ‘I got no idea what you’re talking about’……

    This quote you mention from UG…… “There you baptize the sensation by giving it a name.”……………… what does he mean by that? (I have my own little understanding of that……I just wonder what it mean to anyone else?)


  3. louisbrawley says:

    Thanks Barry. I wrote it for all the reasons you mentioned. No way out. As for UG’s comment, right now it means to me this… that by naming something as jealous, angry, frustrated, depressed, I string it into the known universe of ideas that keep me going. If I were capable of seeing that process as it occurs there the matter might fizzle out. The words attached to these things seem to produce the struggle. There is a meaning given by a therapeutic theorist or a religious person or a scientist, but before that meaning, there was just a sensation. The thought attacks the sensation so fast that we cannot but keep that string of meanings going thereby. I think this is what is going on. He would say on occasion, “If you can see where the separation is taking place…” or something like that. and language seems to have a lot to do with this… the simple dynamics of attaching the sounds of word-in-head… to a meaning, which then ropes us around again into an escape pattern of digging for more and more information. There is something about “LEAVE IT ALONE SIR” that I think only occurs when you have exhausted the attempts to use meaning and words to understand. Therein maybe something happens, but I wouldn’t know since that dynamic is me… that is to say the ME, which keeps stringing the words to ‘understand’ via more and more information. Oh boy, you asked, you got… Thanks anyway Barry. Obviously I love this sort of chit chat…

  4. christna9 says:

    hi Louis, thanks for the nice write up specially about hugger.Keep on… -BG   BGkrishna  

  5. Cédric says:

    The long desciptions of nature you make in that text reminds me of J. Krishnamurti’s introductions in his books ! 😉

    He always started with a description of nature… By the way, is the word the thing ? 😉 Is nature in our words ?

    U.G. would say : “of course the word is the thing !” just to counter J.K.’s statement. Ahah

    But what do YOU think, Louis ? Is the word the thing ? And why would we ask that question ?…

    We do what we can’t help doing… that’s all what I see… till we die, we will do what we can’t help but do, like writing to you these fucking words ! 😉

    Always a pleasure to read your blog.


  6. gleemaven says:

    You might enjoy listening to Jill Bolte Taylor’s Ted talk. She had this massive stroke, has come back from it, and describes the turning off of words. It was like entering a vast silence. She could still see, but had no words for what she saw. Its on YouTube, of course. I mention this because you talk a lot about how our brain is like a thought factory. It seems we have no control of what pops up, tho some is habitual. Same with feelings. As I observe the process, it’s a lot like hunger and thirst, just another body function responding to what’s happening. If I could find an off switch, pretty sure I wouldn’t want to use it. Even tho it drives me nuts at times.

    I read your book. I like the way you can describe everything so the reader feels he was there, too. It helped me understand what it was like to hang out with UG. You are a good writer.

  7. sharbra says:

    I ran out the door this morning and this was on the iPod.
    exactly what u guys are talking about. sums it all up

    its cool to read a new post. interesting conversation.
    Im having a stroke while reading. hehe

  8. Philip says:

    I really enjoy reading your blog posts Louis, you truly have a great gift for the written word, your Endless walk words reminds me of Suzanne Vega’s great song, Toms Diner.

  9. louisbrawley says:

    Thank you Phillip.

  10. Fernando WCR says:

    Louis you are such a goner! 🙂

    But I have a serious question. Of all the people that hung around UG for all that time, is there anyone you think that actually “got it” or “made it”?

    • louisbrawley says:

      Hi Fernando,

      As to your comment about God, clearly that is a conclusion you have already reached. I have read a lot of material about Anandamai Ma, she was amazing and UG had a lot of respect for her. As for those who got it or didn’t get it, I have no idea.



      • Fernando WCR says:

        yes maybe my comment was pointless (probably), but its just because UG blasted all the other teachers except her, and her way of teaching was i think completely different to his. I just had this idea that he was handing out some hope, or advise to those who got totally stuck with him. But ok.

    • Barry says:

      Hi Fernando, may I ask “got” what? and/or “made” what?
      What are you referring to?

      • Fernando WCR says:


        Well like has anyone of them reached the non dual-state, or ” stumbled into the natural state”.. get enlightened.. (if you get what i mean)
        I mean, clearly there is something, something that can happen. I mean seriously, he had lots of people around him, at least someone must have gotten it no… but maybe i am thinking wrongly, too conditioned..

    • Cédric says:

      Get what ?

      You are a living human being, that’s it. Period.

      Don’t you get it ? 😉

      You could only “get” words or thoughts. And words and thoughts are all bullshit ! 😉

  11. Fernando WCR says:

    Also in UG’s swan song he makes a direct reference to Anandamayi ma. Isn’t it almost like he is hinting.. take a look at that.. And what is the main thing she always talks about? Isn’t it God? Or the devotion we should have for God?

    You see. That is the very thing that was absent in UG’s talking. But I know for sure, he was as religious, as connected, as devoted to “him” as it can get.


  12. louisbrawley says:

    UG talked to people from 1967 until he died in 2007 and most of that time people came around him to get what you’re talking about. I have listened to hours and hours of his talks, and most of the response to what he was saying was met with resistance, bafflement, rage or denial. What I witnessed around him when I knew him were a lot of quiet people, taking it in, wondering what the hell was going on… He kept talking to people and I think made a diligent attempt to communicate this one simple thing and in all that time not that many people showed up, and the ones who did were affected in very personal ways, but you can’t really explain that to others, it sounds silly when you do. I have read a lot about Anandamai since UG mentioned her. No where do I see that someone “Got it” from her. … do you know of anyone who ‘got it’ from her? I haven’t heard of any. Papaji told a bunch of people they were enlightened, and so far as I can make out, the ones who took him seriously are deluded manipulators. Same for Osho. Then there was another real MCoy, a guy called Nityananda. A certain Muktananda was by his side for years, and that guy went out and partied and screwed around for the rest of his life..Then there was Nisargadatta… people sat in there for decades and not one of them is for real as far as I can tell. That joker Balsakar was screwing around with people for years. Just because one person ‘had’ something it seems to me he could communicate a lot to other people, but whether or not they got that same thing seems to be highly unlikely. The only reason to claim it would be to go out and set up a holy business as far as I can tell. That’s what all the claimants have done from Papaji, Osho, etc… As far as I can make out, the thing is so personal you won’t find someone out there trumpeting their achievements on the internet. What I see now are a lot of people sitting around discussing what UG meant by this that and the other, but none of it adds up to what it was like to listen to him. He said what he had to say so clearly. What I”m going on about here has to do with some sort of what he would probably call, “Poetic nonsense” Doesn’t matter. He encouraged me to write and I like writing, so i write here and you guys come and read it and maybe some of that flavor I tasted around him comes through.

  13. louisbrawley says:

    One other thing… if you want to know anything about what he meant, seriously, what UG meant, not what I have to say, there are endless countless hours of videotape and books and stuff for free on the internet… so enjoy that. its as close to the real thing as you can get..!! And its FREE! (Which is another reason I think people don’t take him seriously.)

    • Barry says:

      ‘Getting-it’ can be just like mist evaporating………..very quiet and simple……..

      something is always present and unchanging……..find that and you have it……….or ‘know’ that…. and you have it………

      things are always exactly as they should be……

      it’s all yours to play with as you wish………….. there is only complete freedom…..unless thought makes it seem not to be so………… but thought can question itself, and discover first hand that all concepts are limited, and all else is limitless;

    • Patrick J. Muller says:

      Hi Louis,

      I think you are right about all these ‘teachers’. While I think there are ‘masters’, I just don’t think there is a teaching that can bring about any transformation. It is like trying to talk the seed out of the shell. The only way it is going to come out (and grow) is when the shell breaks. Put it in an environment that breaks down the shell and can support the seed (these can be numerous). When it happens, *that* is really all that can be said about it. What follows next is the mastering or denying of it which expresses itself in totally unique ways. The teaching/guru role can be assumed by the ‘unenlightened’ as well as the ‘enlightened’. Just like you can learn to work wood from anyone, but your own intent and desires manifests unique woodwork.

      Jed Mckenna (are you familiar with his writing?) describes the state thus:

      “I look upon children’s burn wards and civil war hospitals and Nazi death camps, with the same eye with which I look upon bursting gardens and stars-swept nights and laughing babies. They’re just the opposite poles of the film’s emotional spectrum. They don’t make me forget my reality. ** Nothing is so grotesquely horrible, or so heart-wrenchingly beautiful that it transcends my transcendence. ** Nothing trumps truth. I know what man is, and I know what life is. If you look at these statements and decide I’m a bad guy, then you’re short-changing yourself. ** The prize to be won in this battle is not wealth or fame or power, but the transition from untrue to true, from dream to awake, from illusion to reality. ** Truth is beyond opposites. Duality is a dream. It’s not a yin-yang relationship. It’s one or the other. ** The truth contains no element of the false and the false contains no truth. There is only truth and illusion, and within illusion there is only fear and denial. ** Denial of fear is the motivation underlying all activities in which humans engage. This is vanity in the biblical sense: ‘I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a chasing after wind’. ** I’m asking you, now: it it possible that everything’s going to be alright? This is a harsh piece of business we’re discussing; you won’t solve it on this level. You have to step up to the next one. ** We must constantly project the illusion of self, because if we don’t, we aren’t. ** Fear. It’s all about fear. Don’t you ever get tired of being afraid? Of struggling? The answer is to stop struggling. ** The cause of the unhappiness isn’t the situation, but the resistance. You’re making disease and decay and death evil, but they’re not evil. They just are. ** The clinging is the cause of the unhappiness. Release is the answer. ** We might equate surrender with abdication of self-responsibility, but it’s really just the opposite. It’s where we dispense with intermediaries like priests and doctors and government, and take our own lives into our own hands. **”

      What you are more or less doing with your writing here is a process he would describe as Spiritual Autolysis. His first books gave me the kick in the pants I needed to get ‘IT’ and they are really the only writings that compliment UG’s message I’ve seen.

      I really enjoy the fact that you are blogging on UG and your own stuff. I’ll be buying your book to read on my next trip.

      Cheers man.

      • louisbrawley says:

        Hello Patrick,
        Sorry but I can’t read Jed McKenna. If it works for you I salute you. What you have to say about these things is a lot more interesting to me somehow. Thanks man. Hope you still buy the book!!

        Take care,


      • Patrick J. Muller says:

        Fair enough Louis. I think I would have thrown the first book against the wall a lot of times if I didn’t ultimately got hold of the audio version, it is a complete one man performance in its own right. But to each his own.

        My story is not that interesting from where (I can only guess) you are standing, I started out as a 9 to 5 escape artist and one thing led to another and I guess I slipped under the ice so to speak. I spend a lot of time looking for bits and pieces of myself afterwards but it soon dawned on me that all there was left about that was (initially hysterical) laughter; That particular life was nothing more then a performance.

        For the longest time I constantly felt like an idiot because ‘I’ couldn’t convince people from something that is so close to their day to day functioning and at the same time so far away from the world of concepts they inhabit. Besides realising the complete nonsense of whatever culture you are engaged in, You’re also walking around with astonishment and a strange sense of intimacy. Of course you’re going to go looking for someone with some clarity as to how this fucker actually works. But these are all seen as being distractions eventually. Besides realising the complete nonsense of whatever culture you are engaged in, You’re also walking around with astonishment and a strange sense of intimacy. ofcourse youre going to go looking for someone whit some clarity as to how this fucker actually works. Anyway …thanks for luring me out with that UG trick btw.

        As for UG, he left the world as he had entered it. Naked and worthless. Which is pretty fucking glorious if you think about it.

        You know the man said to hope is to create another hopeless situation :p, but yeah, I will be buying your book for sure and when you’re ever in Amsterdam again know you have an empty headed friend here too.


      • Patrick J. Muller says:

        I did not mean to repeat myself there. But then again.. 😉

  14. louisbrawley says:

    Barry, I really don’t know why you talk that way. Are you making a joke? It comes of as a joke. I hear this sort of hackneyed talk all the time on Advaita Vedanta web sites and it strikes me as a gimmick. Its so easy to throw that sort of thing around but it means nothing. Sorry.

  15. Barry says:

    Ok, so give me critique…..anyone can react emotionally and start heckling……… but what about something a little more intelligent……tell me where I’m wrong?

  16. Barry says:

    How about this then……………

    take your experience of being…….just as it is…………..sensations and perceptions…….drop the labels…………voila!………….do you know of anything else?………….. is ‘it’ not this simple?
    What else could there be to be ‘got’


  17. philip says:

    Just watched Jill Bolte Taylor’s Ted talk, fascinating video, one wonders if for whatever reason U.G. was operating in the right hemisphere of his brain all the time, as what she describes about the right hemisphere of the brain would appear to coincide with what some of U.G. would describe about how he saw the world. hmmm

  18. Philip says:

    An exert of Some of Jean-Michel Terdjman writings that I thought maybe some might find interesting, it would seem to me that this would perhaps be a good description of how J.K Krisnamuri possibly saw/experienced things.

    The end of selfishness is not the end of the self, in other words, being unselfish and being selfless (in a state of no self) are two radically different conditions. In the unitive state, one may be unselfish, but there is still a person, an individual, a self, even if it is an exalted self. The self sincerely believes in being one with god, or any other exalted principle, in loving god and experiencing the love of god. The truth is, the self continues to love itself through god (through the idea, or even the intuition of god) the truth is the self continues to be. This state is a state of experience, different indeed from our normal consciousness, but experience all the same. The fact is, that experience is possible only if somebody, something, some entity is there to have the experience. The self is still there, but in a different and more exalted form. U.G. maintains that “the real thing” is not the mystical experience, the union with god, but the disappearance, forever of the sense of a personal self, whether individual or identified with god. The union with god is no longer possible, because there is nothing to unite with god. Bliss is not there, because there is nothing or nobody to experience bliss, the annihilation of the sense of self, not bliss or mystical union, are the real mark of the end of the change in consciousness. The end is nothingness or at least from the point of view of our normal consciousness, centered on the I –self, no wonder U.G. calls it a calamity.

  19. Anonymous says:

    Very wise words from Mr. Terdjman. The description of an exalted self is no small matter. This itself is a radical change ‘within’ consciousness and is synonymous with ego-death. There are those that would argue that this is a necessary ‘step’ and a precursor to the ‘end of self’ or ‘calamity’, as UG called it. All is turned to the divine. It could be that ‘lights out’ may only be in the hands of the divine and not in any way dependent on the self’s state. Certainly UG was already an unusual man, pre-calamity, by the testimony of those that knew him then. I would add that those who seek an end to themselves have not yet embraced their humanity. It is the first real act of love and a powerful change in the dynamics of how we function.

  20. Iron Devil says:

    Charles Bukowski probably wasn’t in his natural state. . .but he was direct, refreshingly so!

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