Once the mind has seen through all fear and all hope, it finds peace within itself, in a state of awareness beyond thought. - Alan Watts

The transformation of human consciousness through meditation is frustrated, as long as we think of it in terms as something that I, my self can bring about. because it leads to endless games of spiritual oneupmanship, and Guru competitions.

At about the age of eleven, I was reading the thrillers of Sax Rohmer and Edgar Wallace concerning Dr. Fu Manchu and other sophisticated Chinese villains, nurturing a secret admiration for these gentlemen because of their opposition to the suet-pudding heroism of our own culture, and because of their refined and mysterious style of life. While other boys dreamed of becoming generals, cowboys, mountain climbers, explorers, and engineers, I wanted to be a Chinese villain. I wanted servants carrying knives in their sleeves, appearing or vanishing without the slightest sound. I wanted a house with secret doors and passages, with Coromandel screens, with ancient scrolls, with ivory and lacquer boxes of exotic poisons, with exquisite brands of tea, with delicate blue porcelain, with jade idols and joss-sticks, and with sonorous gongs.

Now let us suppose that we are going to try to do the impossible and become, as it were, completely transparent to ourselves. What happens when we entirely understand the organization or the mechanics of our own brains? Well, you are again back in the situation of God, and when you are God what are you going to do? If you are God you know what you are going to do: you are going to say to yourself, “Get lost.” What you want is a surprise, and when you have figured everything out there will be no more surprises, and then you will be completely bored. But on the other hand, a person