Now, as long as there is the thinker separate from thought, there must be conflict, the process of duality, there must be this gap between action and idea. But cannot the mind actually experience that extraordinary state when there is only thinking, and not the thinker, when there is only an awareness in which there is no condemnation or comparison? The condemnatory and comparative process is the way of the thinker separate from thought. There is only thinking, and thinking is impermanent. Realizing the impermanency of thinking, the mind creates the permanent as the atma, the higher self, and all the rest of it, but it is still the process of thinking. Thinking is conditioned; it is the result of the past, of accumulated experience, knowledge, so it can never lead to the unknown, the timeless. After all, the self, the 'me', is nothing but a bundle of memories, and even though you give it a spiritual quality, a permanent value, it is still within the area of thought and, therefore, impermanent.

The difficulty for most people is to let go of this ''permanent'' quality of the mind, which is its own invention. Most of us want permanency in one form or another, and so the mind has given a quality of permanency to what it calls reality, God. Surely, there is nothing permanent. Reality is not continuous, not permanent, but something to be discovered from moment to moment. When the mind has a momentary experience of something real, it desires to make that reality permanent, and the permanent becomes the past; it is held within the field of time, but the new can exist only when the past is dead. That is why one must die to every experience. It is only when the mind is simple, fresh, innocent, unburdened with knowledge, that it is capable of immediate perception.