No Program

No Program

Yes, as you indicated; the end of the road for all spiritual teachings is the absence of teachings. For that matter, the end of the road for spiritual teachings is the absence of everything. It is difficult for those who are looking at these matters to comprehend the full import of what “oneness” means. Where there is only one thing—which is what “oneness” means—there cannot possibly be any distinctions, under any circumstances. Therefore, given that situation, no word, concept or idea has any validity whatsoever: all that requires multiplicity. Consider: when you die, this is exactly the circumstance which likely prevails. Fortunately, we have the capacity to realize, while we are alive, that ultimately nothing really matters. Considering that, ultimately nothing really matters, how much anguish should we invest in our temporal, impermanent, “relative” fixations in the meantime?

One of the reasons I highly regard Ramana as exemplary is that he lived his life as an instructive answer to that question. If one puts as little energy into relating to this world as he did, would one be unwise? In my estimation, any teaching which assists one to connect with the reality of the sheer emptiness of their existence— in life or death—is a practical teaching.

When this connection to the impersonal noumenon is made, “you” evaporate, teachers evaporate, teaching evaporates. Not anything can remain, not even that which points to That.

Krishnamurti stated that his imperative—the role of the true spiritual exponent—was “to set man absolutely, unconditionally free.” Would a person who is “absolutely, unconditionally free” not be free of an attachment to the teacher, and free ultimately of any bondage to the teachings which connected that person to a teacher? The object of truly spiritual teachings, surely, is not to create a follower of orthodoxy, whose behavior is predictably mechanical or reactive. Robotic compulsion can in no fashion be equated with freedom. Spiritual freedom would suggest an atmosphere for creative, spontaneous action, rather than attachment to patterns and traditions and a program of “do’s” and “don’ts.” In other words, consider that the essence of spiritual teachings is not founded upon an intention to instruct one in how to comport oneself in the future, but rather in the necessity of one’s total attention in this unending moment that is the present. This is what it means to be unconditioned, to be deprogrammed, or—at the very least, to be “programmatically divergent.” You are the teacher; you are your teaching; and you are the taught. The ultimate teaching is that, ultimately, there is no teaching. Therefore, from the standpoint of this understanding, no teachings are indispensable: all that any of them can tell you is that, in the comprehension of “oneness,” there is no “individual” remaining who needs to be taught.