Costica Bradatan on Cioran

 The Philosopher of Failure

For some, he was one of the most subversive thinkers of his time—a twentieth-century Nietzsche, only darker and with a better sense of humor. Many, especially in his youth, thought him to be a dangerous lunatic. Others saw him just as a charmingly irresponsible young man who posed no dangers to others—only to himself, perhaps. When his book on mysticism went to press, the typesetter (a good, God-fearing man), realizing how blasphemous it was, refused to touch it. The publisher washed his hands of the matter and the author had to publish his blasphemy elsewhere, at his own expense.

Emil Cioran was a Romanian-born French thinker and author of some two dozen books of savage, unsettling beauty.5 He is an essayist in the best French tradition, and though French was not his native tongue, some think him one of the finest writers in that language. His writing style is whimsical, unsystematic, fragmentary; he is celebrated as a master of aphorism. For Cioran, however, the “fragment” was more than a writing style: it was a way of life. He called himself un homme de fragment. He was deeply suspicious of systematic philosophy; to concoct “philosophical systems” was a charlatan’s job, he thought. He wanted to be a thinker pure and simple—Privatdenker, he called himself, reaching out for a better word—not “philosopher.”

Cioran often contradicts himself, but that’s the least of his worries. With him, self-contradiction is not even a weakness, but the sign of a mind alive. For writing is not about consistency, nor about persuasion or keeping the reader entertained. Writing is not even about literature. For Cioran, as for Montaigne several centuries earlier, writing has a performative function: you write to act upon yourself—to pick up the pieces after a personal disaster or to pull yourself out of a bad depression; to come to terms with a deadly disease or to mourn the loss of a close friend. You write not to go mad, not to kill yourself or others. In a conversation with the Spanish philosopher Fernando Savater, Cioran says at one point, “If I didn’t write, I could have become an assassin.”6 Human existence, at its core, is endless anguish and despair, and writing can make it a bit more bearable. One writes simply to stay alive and to stave off death: “un livre est un suicide différé,” Cioran writes in The Trouble with Being Born (De l’inconvénient d’être né), published in 1973.7Cioran wrote himself out of death over and over again. He composed his first book, On the Heights of Despair (Pe culmile disperării, published in 1934), when he was twenty-three years old, in just a few weeks, while suffering from a severe bout of insomnia. (Insomnia, he said repeatedly, was “the greatest drama of my life.”8) The book—which remains one of his finest—marked the beginning of a strong, intimate link in his life between writing and sleeplessness:

I’ve never been able to write otherwise than in the midst of the depression [cafard] brought about by my nights of insomnia. For seven years I could barely sleep. I need this depression, and even today before I sit down to write I play a disk of Gypsy music from Hungary.9That Cioran is an unsystematic thinker doesn’t mean his work lacks unity. In fact, it is kept tightly together not only by his singular writing style, but also by a distinct set of themes, motifs, and idiosyncrasies. Among them failure figures prominently. Cioran was in love with failure: its specter haunts his whole oeuvre. Throughout his life, he never strayed away from failure. He studied its many incarnations from varying angles and at different moments, as true connoisseurs do, and looked for it in the most unexpected places.

Not only individuals can end up as failures, Cioran believed, but also societies, peoples, and countries. Especially countries. “I was fascinated with Spain,” he said once, “because it offered the example of the most spectacular failure. The greatest country in the world reduced to such a state of decay!”10 Failure, for Cioran, is like the water of the Taoists: it seeps everywhere and permeates everything. Great ideas can be soaked with failure, and so can books, philosophies, institutions, and political systems.

The human condition itself is just another failed project: “No longer wanting to be a man,” he writes in The Trouble with Being Born, he is “dreaming of another form of failure.”11 The universe is one big failure, and so is life itself: “Before being a fundamental mistake,” he says, “life is a failure of taste which neither death nor even poetry succeeds in correcting.”12 Failure rules the world like the capricious God of the Old Testament. One of Cioran’s aphorisms reads, “ ‘You were wrong to count on me.’ Who can speak in such terms? God and the Failure.”13

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A Modern Gnostic

There is something distinctly Gnostic about Cioran’s thinking. Gnostic insights, images, and metaphors permeate his work, as scholars have noticed. A Short History of Decay, The Temptation to Exist, and The New Gods, writes Lacarrière, are “texts which match the loftiest flashes of Gnostic thought.”87 Like the Gnostics of old, Cioran sees the creation of the world as an act of divine failure. Human history and civilization are nothing but “the work of the devil.” In A Short History of Decay, he deems the God of this world “incompetent.”88 The French title of one of his most influential works (which in English has been published as The New Gods) says it all—Le Mauvais demiurge: “the evil demiurge.” With unconcealed sympathy, Cioran calls the Gnostics “fanatics of the divine nothingness,” and praises them for having “grasped so well the essence of the fallen world.”89 His Romanian roots continued to trouble him late in life. To have come from the Balkans was a shame nothing could diminish—except perhaps the fact that it was there that Thracians and Bogomils also lived: “I cannot forget that I have haunted the same whereabouts as they, nor that the former wept over the newborn and the latter, in order to justify God, held Satan responsible for the infamy of Creation.”90One of Cioran’s greatest obsessions is “the catastrophe of birth,” to which much of The Trouble with Being Born is dedicated. He cannot stress enough the enormity of this disaster: “We have lost, being born, as much as we shall lose, dying: Everything.” Like the Gnostics, he is convinced that “the world came about through a mistake.” Yet for him our coming into existence is more than an error: it is a metaphysical affront. Not even in old age could he come to terms with “the affront of being born.” True freedom is the freedom of the unborn. “I long to be free—desperately free. Free as the stillborn are free.” Cioran’s fascination with the unborn generates macabre aphorisms: “If I used to ask myself, over a coffin: ‘What good did it do the occupant to be born?’ I now put the same question about anyone alive.”91 This is the same man who, as a child, made friends with the village’s gravedigger, who supplied him with freshly dug skulls. He liked to play soccer with them.

In good Gnostic tradition, the cosmos is for Cioran in a “fallen” state, but so is the social and political world. Perhaps to transcend the political failures of his youth, the later Cioran sought to understand their deeper meaning, and to incorporate this understanding into the texture of his thinking. The result was a more nuanced philosophizing and a more humane thinker. His personal experiments with failure brought Cioran closer to a province of humanity to which he could not otherwise have had access: that of the ashamed and the humbled. In his French books you come across passages on failure of an inspired, drunken wisdom:

At the climax of failure, at the moment when shame is about to do us in, suddenly we are swept away by a frenzy of pride which lasts only long enough to drain us, to leave us without energy, to lower, with our powers, the intensity of our shame.92

A lifelong contemplation of his own limitations eventually changed Cioran. As he grew older, he seems to have become more tolerant, more accepting of other people’s flaws, follies, and oddities. Not, God forbid, that he ever ended up a “positive thinker.” He would remain, to the end, a prophet of decadence, a thinker of dark, apocalyptic apprehensions. In History and Utopia (Histoire et Utopie, published in 1960), he writes:

Whenever I happen to be in a city of any size, I marvel that riots do not break out every day: massacres, unspeakable carnage, a doomsday chaos. How can so many human beings coexist in a space so confined without destroying each other, without hating each other to death? As a matter of fact, they do hate each other, but they are not equal to their hatred. And it is this mediocrity, this impotence, that saves society, that assures its continuance, its stability.93

No, Cioran never became a defender of liberal democracy. But he may have learned to enjoy the comedy of the world—indeed, to take part in undermining the cosmic failure. His later thinking exhibits something that, for want of a better term, may be called joyous desperation (Cioran sees himself as un pessimiste joyeux). It’s the same pattern, over and over again: existence is found to be outrageous, plain awful, and yet somehow in that very awfulness there lies a promise of redemption. Life is unbearable, insomnia a killer, le cafard is eating at you slowly, and yet this is something that you can handle through writing. “Everything that is expressed becomes more tolerable.”94 Writing is a magnificent witchcraft that acts upon its practitioners and renders their lives a touch more livable. A catastrophe, to the extent that it is narratable, carries within itself the seeds of its own redemption.

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Failing Better

One of the most refreshing things about Cioran’s later writings is his voice as a social critic. In History and Utopia, there is a chapter called “Letter to a Faraway Friend.” The open letter was published originally in La Nouvelle revue française in 1957. The “faraway friend,” living behind the Iron Curtain, was the Romanian philosopher Constantin Noica. Like Cioran, Noica had been a protégé of Nae Ionescu, and that must have brought them close. In this text, Cioran harpoons the political regime imposed on Eastern Europe by the Red Army for making a mockery of an important philosophical idea. “The capital reproach one can address to your regime is that it has ruined Utopia, a principle of renewal in both institutions and peoples.”104 A good Gnostic, Cioran believed that all power was evil, and he had no sympathy for any political regime; but one that needed Soviet tanks and secret police for its foundation and perpetuation was beyond the pale.

In his letter, Cioran subjects the West to an almost equally severe critique. “We find ourselves dealing with two types of society—both intolerable,” he writes. “And the worst of it is that the abuses in yours permit this one to persevere in its own, to offer its own horrors as a counterpoise to those cultivated chez vous.”105 The West shouldn’t congratulate itself for “saving” civilization. The decline is already so advanced, Cioran believes, that nothing can be saved any more—except perhaps for appearances. The two types of society are not that different from one another. In the final analysis, it’s only a matter of nuance:

The difference between regimes is less important than it appears; you are alone by force, we without constraint. Is the gap so wide between an inferno and a ravaging paradise? All societies are bad; but there are degrees, I admit, and if I have chosen this one, it is because I can distinguish among the nuances of trumpery.106For all its analytical and stylistic merits, Cioran’s open letter turned out to be a major gaffe. The addressee, who was trying to keep a low profile in the Romanian countryside, was an exceedingly well-mannered man, and in the habit of answering all letters, closed or open, regardless of where they came from. A superbly naïve man as well, Noica, upon completing his essay-response, addressed it to his friend in Paris and duly dropped the envelope in a mailbox. The Romanian secret police, which had its fingers everywhere, including in all the country’s mailboxes, didn’t miss it and didn’t like the exchange, and Noica had to pay with several years of political prison.

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“I Used to Be Cioran”

E. M. Cioran died on June 20, 1995. In a sense, though, he had left well before then. For the last several years he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and had been interned at the Broca Hospital in Paris. Fearing precisely such an ending, he had planned to commit suicide with his longtime partner, Simone Boué. They were to die together, like the Koestlers. But the disease progressed faster than he had anticipated, and the plan failed. Cioran had to die the most humiliating of deaths, one that took several slow years to do its work.

At first, there were just some worrying signs: one day he could not find his way back home from the city, which he—a consummate walker—knew as if he had been born there. Then he started losing his memory. His fabulous sense of humor, apparently, he lost last. One day, a passerby asked him in the street, “Are you Cioran by any chance?” His answer: “I used to be.”114 When someone brought to him—and read from—the newly published English translation of The Trouble with Being Born, he listened carefully and then exclaimed, “Ce type écrit mieux que moi!” (This guy writes better than I do!).115 But the signs became too many and too serious to ignore: he started to forget at such an alarming rate that he had to be interned. Eventually, even words failed him: he could no longer name the most basic things. Then, it was the mind’s turn. In the end, he forgot who he was altogether.

At one point during his long, final suffering, in a brief moment of lucidity, Cioran whispered to himself, “C’est la démission totale!”116 It was the grand, ultimate failure, and he didn’t fail to recognize it for what it was.

IN PRAISE OF FAILURE

Four Lessons in Humility

COSTICA BRADATAN

The Gas Vans A Critical Investigation

 Preface

The present study is the result of a confluence of several coincidences. As a matter of fact, its author never intended to write a book on the topic. He merely wanted to translate the book written by another author, and maybe edit it and update it a little where required. But that was not meant to be.

At the beginning there was the idea in early 2010 of translating into English Pierre Marais’s French study Les camions à gaz en question (The Gas Vans Scrutinized), which had been published as early as 1994. This was meant to fill a gap in the series Holocaust Handbooks, which at that point did not have a monograph on the topic of the elusive “gas vans.” In 2008, Marais’s study had been translated to German by Swiss translator Jürgen Graf, who made some minor updates to the text.1 At that time, I was supplied with both Graf’s German translation as well as the French original. The text part itself had only some 100 generously formatted pages, and together with the recent updates prepared for the German edition, it looked like a project which could be wrapped up swiftly, or so I thought.

Although initially by far no expert regarding the “gas vans” of the Third Reich, I had read several papers about this issue in the past permitting me to have a fairly good grasp of the state of the art. Hence, while translating Marais’s work, I noticed numerous errors of facts, flawed and missing arguments, and, worse still, so many omissions of important documentary and anecdotal material, a great deal of which had become generally accessible only during the past 15 years, that I decided to give it a complete work over. Well, the more I worked on it, the more material turned up, so I ended up both increasing the book’s volume by at least 100%, and rewriting, replacing or even deleting sizeable sections of Pierre’s own text, which had become in need of revision and updating due to the added content and the many corrections.

At what I thought was the end of my editing efforts, I had in front of me a book that by 80% of its content was no longer Pierre’s, but mine, and in which the parts that still were Pierre’s at times read like alien remnants clearly written in the style of a different author and sometimes awkwardly misplaced by the book’s new structure. There could be no doubt that this would have to be smoothed out as well.

Under these circumstances, could the book still be presented to the original French author – or the public – as a translation of his work? Hardly. Would he accept all the changes made? Well, I was afraid to ask, and when getting in touch with Pierre’s literary agent, he balked and suggested to not even submit this typescript to the then 90-year-old Monsieur Marais, as he might have a hard time getting over this unscrupulous gutting and rewriting of his work. Therefore, the decision was made to make the rewrite complete and publish it under my name instead.

Yet in spite of all the rewriting done, this present book still owes a lot to Pierre’s original work. First it is the very reason for its existence. Next, some of the basic structure of this book still follows Pierre’s lead, and many of his arguments can still be found in it, even if they have been rearranged, rephrased, and at times reevaluated. And last but not least, Pierre’s book was a trail blazer at its time, a foundation upon which the present study erects its larger, more thoroughly argued edifice. Pierre’s book has been my stepping stone to the present study; his tome is the giant, the pioneer work of the first hour, without which this present book would not be.

Although this book may be regarded as a clear improvement in comparison to Pierre’s work – a natural progress to be expected after almost two decades have passed – it is still far from complete, as much archival material held by the Zentrale Stelle in Ludwigsburg, Germany, is currently difficult, if not impossible, to access by critical researchers due to German censorship laws. Hence any of this study’s conclusions must necessarily be considered provisional in character, and the discussion will remain open.

In addition to Pierre Marais, the present study owes much to the support by Thomas Kues, who tirelessly supplied me with all kinds of documents, some of them on my request, but also many which had been hitherto unknown to me.

Carlo Mattogno helped to improve the book as well by critically reading an earlier version of it, and indirectly by his own research for his book on the Chełmno Camp, about which I was continually informed, so that the present book could profited considerably from this.

I also thank all my other helpers, who for safety reasons will remain unnamed.

Introduction

When it comes to the “Holocaust,” the alleged mass murder of European Jews by the Third Reich, most people think they “know.” Of course we all “know” that it happened. We “know” that six million died. We “know” that the Nazis pushed the Jews into the gas chambers and gas ovens, that they burned them, dead or alive, in gigantic crematories and on huge pyres. Our knowledge is so certain that anyone uttering disbelief is swiftly ostracized. In many countries people even call the police and have doubters arrested, prosecuted, and sent to prison. He who doubts what everybody knows to be true must be evil, indeed.

Most readers perusing the above sentences might not even notice that it contains a typical error, a falsehood even acknowledged by orthodox historians. This error has to such a degree become a fixed part of the cliché which we consider to be “knowledge” that it passes unnoticed.

There were no gas ovens.

The term makes no sense.

Mainstream historians claim that there were gas chambers on the one hand, designed to quickly asphyxiate hundreds, if not thousands of people at a time within mere minutes.2 On the other hand everybody agrees that there were crematory ovens, designed to reduce deceased camp inmates to ashes (although the inmates’ cause of death and the crematories’ capacities are disputed3). In the mind of the public at large, though, gas chambers and crematory ovens have merged to some ominously sounding “gas ovens.” The public discourse about the Holocaust is replete with that nonsensical term, even though what it describes never existed.

So much about “we know.”

Listing and explaining all the false clichés prevailing in the public about the “Holocaust” would fill a separate book, so I will abstain from doing it here. The point I was trying to make is that, although we all have some basic grasp about what is meant by “the Holocaust,” most people are quite unfamiliar with even general aspects of the topic.

While gas chambers dominate the public’s mind when the specter of the “Holocaust” is raised, “gas vans” are usually absent from the discourse. What percentage of the general populace has ever heard that the Nazis are said to have deployed mobile gas chambers as well, which historians usually call “gas vans”?

This lack of knowledge is excusable, because even in orthodox historiography the “gas vans” have played only a minor role. To this date no monograph has appeared on the topic written by a mainstream historian. Mere articles published in journals or anthologies exist, and most of them do not even focus on the gas vans themselves but instead on some location like the Chełmno Camp in Poland or the Semlin Camp in Serbia, on certain German armed units, in particular the German anti-partisan Einsatzgruppen behind the Russian front, or events where they are said to have been used, like the euthanasia action, to name a few. We will encounter many of these papers in the present study. But before doing this, I want to discuss the one mainstream paper which comes closest to a study of the gas vans as such. By so doing we will recognize the dire need for a much more thorough and critical study.

In 1987 German historian Mathias Beer published a paper whose German title translates to “The development of the gas vans for the murder of the Jews.” In it he tries to describe, based on 14 documents and many more testimonies, how National Socialist Germany developed this murder weapon. Right at the beginning of his paper he admits that all extant documents are from a late phase of these vans’ deployment, hence could elucidate little about their development. To remedy this, he resorts to verbal claims made by various persons asserting to have witnessed something, most of whom were interrogated during some criminal investigation or trial. Knowing that by relying on such statements Beer enters shaky territory, he declares that “due to their peculiarities testimonies” need to always be linked to, that is to say supported by, some documents, and that those documents themselves need to be “subject to thorough source criticism” (all on p. 404).

I agree with this, as this is a standard method of historiography. Yet Beer has missed two important issues here: first of all, each testimony, whether supported by a document or not, needs to be subjected to criticism as well. A medieval testimony claiming that the devil rode by on a broom stick having sex with a witch, supported by a medieval document claiming to document that very “fact,” might fulfill Beer’s criteria, but it does not constitute truth. The creator of a document can err and lie just as much as a witness. Next, Beer completely omits the most important group of evidence: physical, tangible evidence. Where is the flying broomstick? Where is the devil? Did the devil leave his semen in the witch?, etc. are all very important questions to be asked.

In our context these questions would be: Where are the vans? Where are the corpses? Where is the poison in their body?

Beer is completely mute on all accounts: no scrutiny of the witness testimony performed, no material traces requested, no questions asked about the construction and operational mode of these vehicles. And worse still: he fails his own criterion that document criticism is pivotal, because his paper does not contain any critical discussion of any of the documents he cites or at least a reference to such a discussion (which does not exist among orthodox historians, I may add).

Hence Beer’s paper is a complete failure already on formal grounds. But that is not the end. His self-defined goal to trace the development of the gas vans within the framework of documents falls flat as well. As Mattogno has shown (2017, Chapter 1), Beer’s lengthy “reconstruction” of how the gas vans allegedly came into being is not based on any documents, as Beer himself admitted. What remains are the testimonies on which Beer relies heavily. We will encounter most of them in this study, where we will subject their statements to critical scrutiny. The result is shocking: many of the important witness statements used by Beer can be demonstrated to be highly implausible (see, for instance, two of the persons allegedly responsible for the vans’ development: August Becker, Chapter 3.7.3.3., and Albert Widmann, Chapter 3.7.4.6.).

While doing his research for his own 1994 study on the gas vans, Pierre Marais had noticed Beer’s complete lack of a critical attitude, as a result of which he wrote him a letter with several questions, to which Beer responded accordingly. I have reproduced this exchange with Marais’s comments in Appendix 10 (p. 368). Although Marais’s questions to Beer weren’t as hard-hitting as I would have formulated them, Beer’s subsequent refusal to continue the exchange shows who of the two is a dogmatic ideologue and who a critical freethinker.

Any decent researcher would have taken such critical inquiry as a reason to look into his own research again and to amend it where necessary. But such an open-minded approach does not seem to be Beer’s cup of tea, for when he had a slightly abridged and updated version of his 1987 paper published in a 2011 anthology (Morsch/Perz/Ley, pp. 154-165), it exhibited the same deficiencies of superficiality. Here again, Beer’s references to documents and witness accounts serve only to once more uncritically repeat what he has read. In addition, this new version of Beer’s paper also lacks any reference to – and discussion of – any topical criticism made during the past two decades (mainly Marais 1994 and Weckert 2019). Hence Beer, like most mainstream Holocaust authors, has proved to be impervious to critique, which means that he is insusceptible to the scientific method.4In view of the total failure of orthodox historiography to appropriately address the issue of the “gas vans,” Pierre Marais 1994 monograph on the “gas vans” was a sorely needed study indeed. Unfortunately it remained without any reaction from the historiographic establishment.

The present study will start by including and summarizing what Marais has already revealed and by carrying the topic farther and deeper.

The Toxicity of Diesel Exhaust Gas

As mentioned before, it was repeatedly mentioned during Soviet show trials that in the gas vans used by German units in the East, murder was committed by means of exhaust gases from diesel engines. During this study, we will encounter this claim repeatedly. 

Before investigating the question what type of vehicles with what kind of engines are said to have been used, we need to clarify first why this matters.

Whether one can commit murder with Diesel engine exhaust within the time spans claimed is a forensic question. U.S. engineer Friedrich P. Berg has done thorough research about this, which he first published in 1984 and, in his latest revised and expanded form, in 2019. Berg also elaborated in detail about the toxic effects of carbon monoxide and other constituents of Diesel engine exhaust gases. I will not repeat any of this here, as it would be repetitive and would lead us too far afield. The interested reader might either consult Berg’s paper or any handbook of toxicology from any library directly.

Whereas gasoline engines operate with a dearth of oxygen and therefore produce rather high amounts of toxic carbon monoxide, Diesel engines always operate with a huge excess of oxygen, as a result of which its exhaust gases contain only minor amounts of carbon monoxide, the lethal compound in engine exhaust gases.13 Although not impossible, it is rather difficult to increase the amount of carbon monoxide in Diesel exhaust gases. If a Diesel engine runs idly or with only a minor load, it must even be considered impossible to produce an exhaust gas whose composition can become acutely dangerous to persons with an average health within the time span of interest here (up to half an hour).

In contrast to this stands the drastically larger carbon monoxide content in the exhaust gases of gasoline engines, which can be manipulated in various ways to increase it even more, for instance by closing the idle-mixture adjustment screw of the carburetor. For this reason gasoline engines would have been the self-evident choice for the construction of “gas vans” (as also for the generation of carbon monoxide for the stationary “gas chambers”).

Did the Germans know about the difference between Diesel and gasoline engine exhaust? Both engines had been invented in Germany,14 and the record shows that German engineers and scientists were very well aware of that difference long before World War Two. Once again it was Berg who has documented the use of Diesel engines early on in coal mines in Germany exactly because their exhaust gases were relatively harmless (Berg 2019, pp. 453-456). Mattogno and Graf have shown in turn that German scientists had made thorough exhaust gas composition analysis of a broad variety of gasoline engines, which was for instance published in a 1930 book dedicated to the toxicology of gasoline engine exhaust gases (Mattogno/Graf 2020, pp. 123-125; cf. Keeser/Froboese/Turnau 1930).

In 1994 Berg drew attention to a forensic study conducted by British scientists who had conducted a test gassing of rabbits, mice, and guinea pigs with Diesel engine exhaust gases. They “succeeded” in killing all their animals only after going to the engine’s limit and after more than three hours of exposure (Pattle et al. 1957; Berg, in Gauss 1994, p. 333; Berg 2019, pp. 458f.). In this context it deserves emphasis that Diesel exhaust gases have other features than delivering small amounts of carbon monoxide which need to be considered. In particular old engines produced a lot of smoke (particulate matter; see Berg 2019, pp. 451f.), which consisted not only of soot but also of a mixture of highly irritating, smelly chemicals. And like all exhaust gases, Diesel exhaust gases are hot when exiting the tail pipe: well beyond 100°C (200°F). Although the toxic effect of Diesel exhaust gas is moderate at worst, the combined effect of irritating chemicals, smoke, heat, noxious gases and oxygen deprivation will kill most people locked up in an enclosed space filled with such gases after an extended period of time. But as the above experiment shows, it would take hours of horrific suffering.

This proves that attempts at mass gassings with Diesel engines would have been a disaster at best.

Friedrich Paul Berg has not only pointed out that the use of Diesel engine exhaust gases for mass murder would have been absurd, but that the use of any exhaust gas is absurd when considering that the Germans, suffering from lack of petroleum during WWII, had retrofitted almost their entire truck fleet during the war, step by step, with so-called producer-gas generators. I will elaborate on this more in Chapter 2.4. when discussing wartime documents, as the extant documentation about this technology stems primarily from that era.

Surprisingly, this finding of the general unsuitability of Diesel engines for a swift and efficient mass murder was recently confirmed by an orthodox anthology on the Holocaust, where the toxicologist Achim Trunk writes in a paper entitled “The lethal gases” (Morsch/Perz/Ley 2011, pp. 35f.):

“It can be derived from the animal experiments [by Pattle et al.] that it is possible in principle to murder human beings with Diesel exhaust gases – even many simultaneously. In order to generate highly toxic exhaust gases which kill within a maximum of 20 minutes, however, Diesel engines in the facilities for gas murder would have had to be operated under heavy load, i.e., they had to be slowed down. Such a slowing, power-consuming device (such as a dynamometer) was much less simple and cheap to obtain than the large engine from a destroyed vehicle wreck. Slowing down a powerful Diesel inside a gas murder facility would have meant moreover that the engine would have become much noisier and would have vibrated much more intensively. Its exhaust gases would have contained a lot of soot. Whether such features have been observed (or whether clues to power consuming devices exist) is no longer a question to toxicology but rather to the sources and source criticism. According to this author’s knowledge, no clues in that direction exist.

A different explanation is more likely, according to which the murder weapons were all gasoline engines. […] That gasoline engines were indeed deployed in the extermination camps of the ‘Aktion Reinhardt’ derives from reliable sources. Rudolf Reder, for instance, one of the very few survivors of the Belzec extermination camp, spoke of an engine fueled with gasoline located in a small room next to the gas chamber. It is said to have consumed 80 to 100 liters of gasoline daily. For the later-day extermination camp Sobibór, where one could apply the experiences gained in Belzec, exact statements by the perpetrators exist that the murder device was a gasoline engine; […] In the case of Treblinka, which was the latest of the extermination camps of the ‘Aktion Reinhardt’ to be built (and the biggest), science has so far assumed that a Diesel engine was used. This raises the question why, from the point of view of the murdering institution, a successful method should have been replaced by a different, technically much more difficult.”It is worth noting in this context that Reder, in his testimony about Belzec, expressly and in various ways stated that the engine’s exhaust gases were not used for murdering the victims, but that it was vented directly outside (see Mattogno 2021b for details). The other star witness of orthodox historiography for the alleged exhaust gas mass murders in Belzec, the mining engineer Kurt Gerstein, speaks repeatedly of a Diesel engine providing the poisonous gas.15 He, as a mining engineer, certainly knew to tell a Diesel from a gasoline engine. However, contrary to what Trunk wants us to believe, neither Reder nor Gerstein are reliable witnesses, as both their testimonies are riddled with absurdities and impossibilities (see Mattogno 2021b).

With regard to the Sobibór Camp, the situation is by no means as clear-cut as Trunk would have his readers believe, for in this regard there are statements concerning both a gasoline and a diesel engine (see Berg 2019, pp. 439). Finally, one must not forget that in German colloquial language used by laymen, the terms “gasoline” (“Benzin”) and “gasoline engine” (“Benzinmotor”) are sometimes used summarily for all types of internal-combustion engines, regardless of whether they run on alcohol, gasoline, diesel, or kerosene, just as in English a “gas engine” certainly includes a Diesel engine. Hence, while one can be fairly certain that someone means a Diesel engine when they use the word Diesel, it is not at all clear that someone means a gasoline-fueled, spark-plug-equipped carburetor engine when they refer to a Benzin engine.

I may also mention in passing that it is not at all trivial to run a stationary gasoline engine, as they – in contrast to Diesel engines – tend to overheat quickly. They require special cooling devices to be kept operational.

Trunk’s last sentence quoted above about the anachronistic reversal to an imperfect method is of course valid. It also applies to the gas van issue. Here the first generation of gas vans consisting of a mixture of makes, models and equipment with usually undefined engine types, some of which may have been gasoline engines, are said to have been replaced with a more sophisticated “second generation” of vans which, judging by the brand, were most likely equipped with Diesel engines (more on this in the next section) This fact is glossed over by Trunk who erroneously or deceptively writes (Morsch/Perz/Ley 2011, p. 37):

“Reports about the killings with gas vans explicitly give gasoline engines as the source of the lethal gas.”

Trunk is definitely disingenuous when he writes (ibid., p. 37):

“The claim by revisionists is wrong that it is impossible in principle to commit mass murder with Diesel engines.”

Trunk, who quotes Fritz Berg’s 1984 paper on Diesel gas chambers (his footnote 27, p. 33), hence knows about Berg’s work, has used many of the sources and arguments from Berg’s various papers, yet he has failed to acknowledge that Berg’s claim is not that mass murder with Diesel exhaust engines is impossible, but rather that it is extremely cumbersome and absurd, especially when considering the available alternatives – just as Trunk has concluded.

[←1]      It was published by an Italian publisher; see Marais 2008.

[←2]      Revisionists contest that notion, though, see primarily the numerous entries for Mattogno in the bibliography.

[←3]      On the only existing scientific-technical study of the cremation furnaces at Auschwitz see Mattogno/Deana.

[←4]      Beer has added an inconspicuous deception to this paper which is common among mainstream Holocaust authors: He quoted Becker’s letter to Rauff with “since December 1941, for example, 97,000 were processed with 3 deployed vehicles” (Morsch/Perz/Ley, p. 164), i.e. with a lower case “since,” thus giving the false impression that this statement is to be found somewhere in the middle of the letter, whereas it is actually its very (absurd) beginning. See Chapter 2.2.4.1.

[←13]      It must be kept in mind that the CO contained in the exhaust gases is an incompletely combusted item resulting from a lack of oxygen.

[←14]      The four-stroke gasoline engine was first patented by the German watchmaker Christian Reithmann on 26 October 1860 (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Reithmann); today these engines are frequently called Otto engines due to the first car engine built by Nikolaus Otto of the Deutz engine factory in Cologne, employing as technical directors for engine construction Gottlieb Daimler (later of Daimler-Benz) and Wilhelm Maybach; the Diesel engine was patented in 1893 by German engineer Rudolf Diesel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_engine)

[←15]      On this see next to Mattogno 2021b also Roques’s PhD thesis 1985, two volumes, plus: Roques 1986 & 1989, Chelain 1989.

Santiago Alvarez

The Gas Vans A Critical Investigation

With major contributions by Pierre Marais

Prof. Arnold Ehret

 There is something true in the conception of "external invasion" of a disease, as well as in heredity; however, not in the sense that the invader is a spirit (demon) hostile to life, or a microscopic being (bacillus), but all diseases without exception, even the hereditary, are caused—disregarding a few other hygienic causes—by biologically wrong, "unnatural" food, and by each ounce of overnourishment, only and exclusively.

First of all, I maintain that in all diseases without exception there exists a tendency by the organism to secrete mucus, and in case of a more advanced stage—pus (decomposed blood). Of course, every healthy organism must also contain a certain mucus—lymph, a fatty substance of the bowels, etc., of a mucus nature. Every expert will admit this in all catarrhalic cases, from a harmless cold in the nose to inflammation of the lungs and consumption,  1   as well as in epilepsy (attacks showing froth at the mouth, mucus). Where this secretion of mucus does not show freely and openly, as in cases of ear, eye, skin or stomach trouble; heart diseases; rheumatism; gout; etc., even in all degrees of insanity, mucus is the main factor of the illness. The natural secretive organs unable to cope with it longer, the mucus enters the blood causing heat, inflammation, pain, and fever at the respective spot where the vessel-system is probably contracted owing to an overcooling fever (cold), heat, inflammation, pain, fever, etc.

We need only to give a patient of any kind nothing but "mucusless" food, for instance, fruit or even nothing but water or lemonade. We then find that the entire digestive energy, freed for the first time, throws itself upon the mucus-matters, accumulated since childhood and frequently hardened, as well as on the "pathologic beds" formed therefrom. And the result? With unconditional certainty, this mucus, which I mark as the common basic and main cause of all diseases, will appear in the urine and in the excrements. If the disease is already somewhat advanced so that in some spot, even in the innermost interior, there have appeared pathologic beds, i.e., decomposed cellular tissues, then pus is also being secreted. As soon as the introduction of mucus by means of "artificial food," fatty meat, bread, potatoes, farinaceous products, rice, milk, etc. ceases, the blood circulation attacks the mucus and the pus of the body themselves and secretes them through the urine; and in the case of heavily infected bodies, even through all the openings at their command, as well as through the mucus membranes.

If potatoes, grain-meal, rice, or the respective meat-materials are boiled long enough, we receive jelly-like slime (mucus) or paste used by bookbinders and carpenters. This mucus substance soon becomes sour, ferments, and forms a bed for fungi, molds, and bacilli. In the process of digestion, which is nothing else but a boiling—a combustion—this slime or paste is being secreted in the same manner, for the blood can use only the ex-digested sugar transformed from starch. The secreted matter, the superfluous product, i.e., this paste or slime, is being completely excreted in the beginning. It is, therefore, easy to understand that in the course of life the intestines and the stomach are gradually being pasted and slimed up to such an extent that this paste of floral and this slime of faunal origin turn into fermentation, clog up the blood vessels and finally decompose the stagnated blood. If figs, dates, or grapes are boiled down thick enough we also receive a pap which, however, does not turn to fermentation and never secretes slime, but which is called syrup. Fruit sugar, the most important thing for the blood, is also sticky, it is true, but is being completely used up by the body as the highest form of fuel, and leaves for excretion only traces of cellulose, which, not being sticky, is promptly excreted and does not ferment. Boiled-down sugar, owing to its resistance against fermentation, is even used for the preservation of food.

Each healthy or sick person deposits on the tongue a sticky mucus as soon as he or she fasts or reduces food. This occurs also on the mucus membrane of the stomach, of which the tongue is an exact copy. In the first stool after fasting, this mucus makes its appearance.

I recommend to my reader or to the physicians and searchers to test my claims by way of experiments, which alone are entitled to real scientific recognition. The experiment, the question put to nature, is the basis of a natural science and reveals the infallible truth, no matter whether it is stated by me or somebody else. Furthermore, I recommend the following experiments to those who are brave enough to test on their own bodies, which I undertook on mine. They will receive the same answer from nature, i.e., from their organism, provided that the latter be sound in my sense. "Exact" to a certain degree reacts only to the clean, sound, mucusless organism. After a 2-year strict fruit diet with intercalated fasting cures, I had attained a degree of health which is simply not imaginable nowadays and which allowed of my making the following experiments:

With a knife, I made an incision in my lower arm. There was no flow of blood as it thickened instantly, closing up the wound; no inflammation, no pain, no mucus and pus: healed up in 3 days, blood crust thrown off. Later, with vegetaric food, including mucus ferments (starch food) but without eggs and milk: the wound bled a little, caused some pain, and pussed slightly; a light inflammation; complete healing only after some time. After that, the same wounding with meat-food and some alcohol: longer bleeding, the blood of a light color, red and thin; inflammation; pain; pussing for several days; and healing only after a 2-day fast.

I have offered myself, of course in vain, to the Prussian Ministry of War for a repetition of this experiment. Why is it that the wounds of the Japanese healed much quicker and better in the Russo-Japanese War than those of the "meat-and-brandy Russians?" Has nobody for 2,000 years ever thought it over why the opening of the artery and even the poison cup could not kill Seneca, after he had despised meat and fasted in prison? It is said that even before that, Seneca fed on nothing but fruit and water.

All disease is finally nothing else but a clogging-up of the smallest blood vessels, the capillaries, by mucus. Nobody will want to clean the water conduit of a city, a pipe system, which is fed with soiled water by a pump, the filters of which are clogged up, without having the water supply shut off during the cleaning process. If the conduit supplies the entire city or a portion of it with unclean water, or if even the smallest branch-pipes are clogged up, there is no human in the world who would repair or improve that respective spot; everybody thinks at once of the central, of the tank, and the filters, and these together with the pumping machine can be cleaned only as long as the water supply is shut off.

"I am the Lord, thy physician"—English and modern: nature alone heals, cleans, "unmucuses" best and infallibly sure, but only if the supply, or at least the mucus supply, is stopped. Each "physiological machine," humans like animals, cleanse themselves immediately, dissolving the mucus in the clogged-up vessels, without stopping short as soon as the supply of compact food at least, is interrupted. Even in the case of the supposedly healthy person, this mucus, as already mentioned, then appears in the urine where it can be seen after cooling off in the proper glass tubes! Whoever denies, ignores, or fights this uniform fact, because perhaps it is not in accord with their teachings or is not sufficiently scientific, is jointly guilty of the impossibility of detection of the principal cause of all diseases.

Therewith, I also uncover the last secret of consumption. Or does anybody believe that this enormous quantity of mucus thrown off by a patient stricken with tuberculosis for years and years emanates only from the lung itself? Just because this patient is then almost forcibly fed on "mucus" (pap, milk, fat meats) the mucus can never cease until the lung itself decays and the "bacilli" make their appearance when death becomes inevitable. The mystery of the bacilli is solved simply thus: The gradual clogging-up of the blood vessels by mucus leads to decomposition, to fermentation of these mucus products and "boiled, dead-food" residues. These decay partially on the living body (pussy abscesses, cancer, tuberculosis, syphilis, lupus, etc.). Now everybody knows that meat, cheese, and all organic matter will again "germinate, put forth bacilli" during the process of decomposition. It is for this reason that these germs appear and are detectable only in the more advanced stage of the disease, when, however, they are not the cause but the product of the disease, and disease-furthering only in so far as the decomposition, for instance of the lung, is being hastened by them, because the excretions of the bacilli, their toxins, act poisoning. If it be correct that bacilli invade, "infect" from the exterior, then it is nothing but the mucus that makes possible their activity, and furnishes the proper soil, the "disposition."

As already stated, I have repeatedly (once for 2 years) lived mucusless, i.e., on fruit exclusively. I was no longer in need of a handkerchief, which product of civilization I hardly need even up to this date. Has anyone ever seen a healthy animal living in freedom expectorate or blow its nose? A chronic inflammation of the kidneys, considered deadly, which I was stricken with, was not only healed, but I am enjoying a degree of health and efficiency that by far surpasses even that of my healthiest youth. I want to see the person who, being sick unto death at 31, can run for 2 hours and a quarter without a stop or make an endurance march of 56 hours' duration—8 years later.

It is surely theoretically correct that humans were mere fruit eaters in times gone by, and biologically correct that they can be it even today. Or can the horse sense of humans not conceive without any direct proofs of the fact that humans, before becoming hunters, lived on fruits only? I even maintain that humans lived in absolute health, beauty, and strength without pain and grief, just the way the Bible says. Fruit only, the sole "mucusless" food, is natural. Everything prepared by humans, or supposedly improved by them, are evil. The arguments regarding fruit are scientifically exact; in the apple or banana, for instance, everything can be found contained what humans need. Humans are so perfect that they can live on one kind of fruit only, at least for quite some time. This has been conclusively proven by the mono-diet system of August Engelhardt who solved by his great philosophy and practice of natural life all problems of humankind. But a self-evident truth preached by nature must not be discarded just because no one has been able to apply it in actual practice on account of civilizational considerations. From the eating of fruit only, one gets first a crisis, i.e., cleansing. No human would have ever believed me that it is possible to live without food for 126 days, in which 49 were undertaken at a stretch, during a period covering 14 months. Now I have done it, and yet this truth is not being understood. Hitherto I state and will teach only this fact, that fruit is the most natural "healing remedy." Whether my calculation is correct will be proven by the next epidemic. I take, however, this opportunity to uncover the reasons why the self-evident is not believed in. When in the previous century someone talked about the possibility of phoning from London to Paris, everybody laughed because there had never been such a thing. Natural food is not being believed in anymore, because almost no one practices it and living in today's civilization, we cannot easily practice it. It must also be considered that contra-interests fear that the prices of other, artificial foodstuffs may drop, and others fear that the food physiology may receive a shock and physicians become unnecessary. But, it is just this fasting and fruit cure, which requires very strict observation and instruction—therefore, more doctors and less patients who, however, will gladly pay more if they get well. Thus, the social question regarding doctors is solved—an assertion already made by me publicly in Zurich several years ago.

Almost all fasting attempts fail through ignorance of the fact that with the beginning of the mucusless diet, the old mucus is being excreted so much more forcibly until that person is absolutely clean and healthy. THUS, THE SEEMINGLY HEALTHIEST PERSON HAS FIRST TO PASS THROUGH A CONDITION OF SICKNESS (CLEANSING) or go through an intermediate stage of illness to a higher level of health.

This is the "great-cliff" around which so few vegetarians have failed to go—discarding the basic truth just like the mass of people are doing. I have proven this fact in the "Vegetarische Warte," completely on the basis of experiments and facts; and refuting their greatest objection, that of undernourishment, by an actual fasting experiment of 49 days with a preceding fruit diet. My state of health was greatly improved through this radical excretion of mucus, disregarding a few unhygienic circumstances during the test. I received numerous letters of appreciation, especially from the educated classes. The mass of adherents of vegetarianism "mucuses" gaily ahead. Contrasting herewith, it can only be said that the poisons (so-called by them)—meat, alcohol, coffee, and tobacco—are in the long run comparatively harmless, AS LONG AS THEY ARE USED MODERATELY.

In order to avoid misunderstanding on the part of teetotalers and vegetarians, I must insert here a few explanations. Meat is not a foodstuff but only a stimulant that ferments, decays in the stomach. The process of decay, however, does not begin in the stomach, but at once after the slaughtering. This has already been proven on living persons by Prof. Dr. S. Graham, and I complete this fact by saying that meat acts as a stimulant just by means of these poisons of decay, and therefore is being erroneously regarded as a strengthening foodstuff. Or is there anyone who can show me chemico-physiologically that the albumen molecule going through the process of decay is being newly reformed in the stomach and celebrates its resurrection in some muscle of the human body? Like alcohol, the meat produces in the beginning stimulating strength and energy until the entire organism is penetrated by it and the breakdown inevitable. All the other stimulants act likewise. This, therefore, is a false delusion.

The fundamental evil of all non-vegetaric forms of diet consist always in the overeating of meat, as it is the origin of all the other evils, especially in the craving for alcohol. If fruit is eaten almost exclusively, the eagerness for cup or glass loses itself to chastise against it, simply because meat produces the demon thirst. Alcohol is a proven kind of antidote for meat, and the gourmand of the big city, who eats practically nothing but meat, must therefore have wines, mocha, and Havana in order to at least in some way counteract the heavy meat poisoning. It is a well-known fact that, after an opulent dinner, one feels decidedly fresher, physically and mentally, if the stimulants, poisonous in themselves, are taken moderately rather than to stuff one's self full with the "good-eating" to the very fatigue.

I ABSOLUTELY DECLARE WAR ON MEAT AND ALCOHOL; through fruit and moderate eating, these great evils are radically diminished. But whoever finds it impossible to entirely give up meat and alcohol is, if he or she takes them moderately, still far ahead of the vegetaric "over or excess eater." The American, Fletcher, proved this most evidently by his tremendous success, and his secret is explained by my experiments, which show that a person becomes most efficient and develops best in health if he or she eats as little as possible! Are not the oldest people as a rule the poorest? Have not the greatest discoverers and inventors sprung from poverty, i.e., been "little eaters"? Were not the greatest of humankind—the prophets, founders of religions, etc.—ascetics? Is that culture to dine excellently thrice a day, and is it social progress that each working man and woman eats five times a day and then pumps themselves full with beer or wine at night? If the sick organism can regenerate by eating nothing, I think the logical consequence is that a healthy organism needs but little food in order to remain healthy, strong, and persevering.

Prof. Arnold Ehret's

RATIONAL FASTING

For Physical, Mental, and Spiritual Rejuvenation

The world is in your mind

REFRAMING EXPERIENCE

When we experience the ordinary flow of activity – walking from one place to another, talking with a colleague, checking the time – we can notice and reframe experience. Instead of, ‘I am walking. I am talking. I am checking the time,’ we can change the framework to, ‘There is walking. There is talking.

There is checking the time.’ In a sense, we can retrain the mind to see the experience of the world in a different way. As we sit down for lunch, lunch is happening in our mind. We might think, ‘I’m putting food in my mouth,’ but our mouth is ‘in’ our mind. We might think, ‘I am sitting in a room,’ but the room is in the mind.

Our inner world includes thoughts and emotions, liking and disliking, approval and disapproval. Rather than getting caught up in these experiences, there can be the bare awareness: ‘This is a perception of liking,’ ‘This is a perception of disliking.’ This reframed perception can be applied to seeing, tasting, feeling, hearing ... the whole gamut of experiences: ‘This is hearing. This is seeing. This is ref l ecting. This is what’s going on.’ We also habitually perceive what we experience as ‘wanted/unwanted’, ‘liked/ disliked’, ‘good/bad.’ Instead, we can take a step back and cultivate a different framework. For example, when we get something we want, we can ref l ect: ‘I was anticipating this. Now I’ve got it.’ We can notice anticipation changing to gratif i cation. Then we can notice the experience of change itself rather than getting lost in the experience of, ‘Hey, I got what I wanted! Hooray!’

The world is happening in our mind. This is not just a mind game; it is a reframing of experience. So, what is the effect of that? How does that change the way the world is felt? How does that change the way the world is appreciated?

This reframing is not just a matter of learning behaviours or obeying instructions. The whole point of following instructions or advice is the internal effect it might have. What really matters is the change of heart. When there is this shift of view, this change of perspective, how is it felt? 

Let that really soak in – the world is happening here, in the mind. We recognize the world as patterns of perception. Arising and passing. What is the felt sense of that in the heart? Is there a quality of freedom? A quality of ease? Is there a way that the sense of stress (dukkha) ends? 

Experiment with this and see if it can be sustained. Of course, we may forget or become distracted. It is natural to get lost. We may realize that an hour has gone by and that we were completely absorbed in our own projections, our loves and hates and dramas. But then there is the reframing: ‘Oh yes, this is the experience of getting lost in a drama. It feels like this. This is the mind getting lost in stories. Aha!’

NOBODY GOING ANYWHERE

Ajahn Sumedho used to talk about this theme frequently. He would say, ‘The world is in your mind.’ While on one level it is true that the world is ‘out there’ and we’re moving around in it, on another level the world is experienced only in our minds. Similarly, as Ajahn Sumedho reminded me when I’d once become caught up in planning a tudong walk: ‘In actual fact, there is nobody going anywhere, there are just conditions changing.’9 That was a really wonderful ref l ection for me. On my journey, I noticed a series of perceptions: a perception of putting on a rucksack, a perception of waving goodbye, a perception of the rain falling down, a perception of walking along the country lanes. And, when I remembered, I saw that all of those perceptions happened ‘here’.

Whenever we are travelling or moving from one place to another, it’s just a perception happening in the moment: a perception of the car, a perception of the motorway, a perception of the towns passing by, or a perception of arriving somewhere. But wherever we go, it is always ‘here’. Have any of us ever been in a place that was not ‘here’? Wherever we’ve been during our entire life, it has always been exactly ‘here’.

Therefore, when we remember that there is really nobody going anywhere – that there are only changing conditions of mind – it shifts our perspective on life. Even though we may be moving vigorously, driving or walking or running, when the mind remembers that it’s all just happening ‘here’, there is a profound restfulness within the movement. A peacefulness. A sense of ‘nobody going anywhere.’ The heart is freed from urgency. This spaciousness is what we call ‘freedom from becoming’.

Ajahn Sumedho also frequently pointed out that if we start out with the view that we are an unenlightened person who has to do something now in order to become enlightened in the future, then we are starting out with ignorance (avijjā) and will end up with suffering (dukkha). But if we begin with awareness (vijjā), then we will end up with peacefulness (Nibbāna).

Of course, we might think, ‘But I am an unenlightened person! And I do want to take action to reach enlightenment. After all, isn’t Buddhism about doing spiritual practices to make ourselves better?’ But we must pay close attention to the phrasing ‘I am an unenlightened person who has to do something now in order to become enlightened in the future.’ In that phrasing, in the forming of that attitude, a ‘person’ is being created and ‘time’ is being created. We are unconsciously approaching the practice of Dhamma from the position of self-view: ‘I am a person.’ Right there the mind is grasping self (attā).

If we change our view from ‘I am an unenlightened person who needs to do something now to become enlightened in the future’ to ‘Be awake now,’ then we use the capacity of the mind to be aware and awake without creating any position of self-view, without establishing notions of ‘I, Me and Mine’. The more the mind is awake, the more we then recognize that awareness is not a person, the mind is not a person. We also see that the personal qualities being a woman or man, old or young, healthy or sick – arise and pass away. Those qualities are known by awareness, which is not itself male or female, old or young, tall or short. It has no nationality, no shape, no age.

That which is true with respect to ‘time’ and ‘self’ is also true for ‘location’ – awareness is unlocated – so when Ajahn Sumedho said, ‘In actual fact there is nobody going anywhere, there are just conditions changing,’ it punctured the self-based attitude of ‘me going somewhere.’ Furthermore, even though what we experience is ‘this mind’s version of the world,’ it is never truly ‘I’ or ‘me’ or ‘mine’. When fi gures of speech are used, such as ‘The world that we experience is our version of the world,’ (as above) they should always be understood in the light of this insight into ‘not-self’ (anattā).

IDENTITY , TIME AND LOCATION

The mind creates images of past and future, perceptions of ‘me’ passing through time and space. I have been ‘here’ for the past week; I will go ‘there’ in the future. Past, present, and future – the sense of ‘I’, the sense of place or location – the more we reflect on the nature of experience, of the arising and passing of the world as it happens (sights, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings, thoughts, imaginings), the more clearly we see that it all happens HERE and NOW.

Where is the past? Where is the present? Where is the future? Where is ‘here’? They all take shape within the space of awareness. Wherever we have been throughout our whole life, it has always been exactly ‘here’ – whether it was Malaysia, Sri Lanka, America, England, Thailand. Wherever we have been, whatever the date was on the calendar, it was always ‘now’ as it was being experienced. This mind is the nexus, the centre of experience. The universe is known in the mind; this mind is intrinsically the centre of the universe. There are perceptions of a ‘me’ passing through time and space but those perceptions arise, take shape, and are known here and now.

Memories, ideas, emotions, decisions – they are all known here and now. But, most of the time, we don’t realize that all our everyday assumptions, all our ideas about where we are and where we are going, are based upon habits of perception, self-view, attachment to experience, identif i cation with the body and personality: with identity, time and location.

Ajahn Chah used to present people with the riddle: ‘If you can’t go forward, can’t go back, and can’t stand still, where can you go?’ People would be a bit bewildered, their thinking minds frustrated: ‘What a weird question!’ As long as the mind identif i es with the body, with the personality, with time and space as absolute realities, there is no solution to the puzzle. But when the mind lets go of identif i cation with individuality, with time, with place, then the puzzle solves itself. When the mind awakens to its own quality of self l ess, timeless, unlocated awareness, then that knowing – the awakened awareness – is clarif i ed. The conundrum is solved as the mind stops identifying with time, individual identity and three-dimensional space – it is simply awakened knowing, buddho. As Ajahn Chah would explain:

The Buddha-Dhamma is not to be found in moving forwards, nor in moving backwards, nor in standing still. This … is your place of non-abiding.

AJAHN CHAH, QUOTED IN THE ISLAND, P 164, (2020)

In the collection of Suttas called the Udāna, the Buddha likewise says:

There is that āyatana, that sphere of being, where there is … neither a moving forwards, nor a moving backwards, nor a standing still. Neither an arising, nor a disappearance .... This, indeed, is the end of suffering.

(UD 8.1)10

This is the principle Ajahn Chah was pointing to.

The mind is present, it is awake, it knows. This knowing is profound, immeasurable, unfathomable, and aware, but it is not a person, not within a realm of time, not situated in a location. This awake, aware quality is an attribute of Dhamma. As is recounted in the daily reflections on Dhamma:

Sabbe dhamma anattā (Both the created and the Uncreated are not-self); the Dhamma is sandiṭṭhiko (apparent here now), and akāliko (timeless).

The mind, in its essence, is Dhamma. It is not a person, although it knows personality, and all personal qualities, as they arise and pass. It is not female or male, although it knows femininity and masculinity. It is neither agitated nor calm, although it knows those feelings. It is not outside or inside, liking or disliking, but it knows those perceptions. The mind is Dhamma, aware, awake.
The Buddha arises from the Dhamma. If Dhamma is the substance of mind then Buddha, awakened awareness, is its function. Ajahn Chah also described the relationship thus:

At present, the Buddha, the real Buddha, is still living, for he is the Dhamma itself, the ‘saccadhamma’. And ‘saccadhamma’, that which enables one to become Buddha, still exists. It hasn’t fled anywhere! It gives rise to two Buddhas: one in body and the other in mind.

‘The real Dhamma,’ the Buddha told Ānanda, ‘can only be realized through practice.’ Whoever sees the Buddha, sees the Dhamma. And how is this? Previously, no Buddha existed; it was only when Siddhattha Gotama realized the Dhamma that he became the Buddha, if we explain it in this way, then he is the same as us. If we realize the Dhamma, then we will likewise be the Buddha. This is called the Buddha in mind or ‘nāma dhamma’.11

THE INTERSECTION OF TIMELESSNESS AND TIME

When the mind, the heart, awakens and embodies its own nature, then there is a profound peace. This peace does not arise from ‘something’ that has been agitated and then stops being agitated. This peace is of a whole different order – a peace based on self l essness, timelessness, freedom from location. The Buddha taught, ‘Bhavanirodho nibbānaṃ’ (A 10.7), which means, ‘The cessation of becoming is Nibbāna.’ Or as Hui Neng said:

In this moment, there is nothing that comes to be.
In this moment, there is nothing that ceases to be.
Thus, in this moment, there is no birth and death to be brought to an end.12

‘Cessation of becoming’ doesn’t mean stopping in our tracks. It doesn’t mean that we stop breathing or that we freeze while moving, as if we were playing ‘grandmother’s footsteps’. This ‘cessation’ doesn’t mean the ceasing of something that exists in time. Rather, it is the recognition of the timeless presence, the suchness (tathatā), that underlies the flow of perceptions, the recognition of the space within which all perception, feeling, thought, choice and action take place.

Even as the body breathes, that which knows the breath is not moving. Even as the body moves, that which knows the body is ever-present, totally ‘here’, outside of the world of movement and time. The ‘cessation of becoming’ is the heart attuning to the ever-present, selfless, timeless, non-located quality of Dhamma. In his Four Quartets, TS Eliot called it ‘the point of intersection of the timeless with time.’13 This is what the Buddhist meditator is doing, attending to the point of intersection of the timeless with time.

As the body moves, there is a stillness.
As thoughts and words arise and pass, there is a stillness.
As sounds are heard, there is a silence behind them.
As forms arise and pass away, there is a space in which those forms appear.

That said, it should be understood that this kind of stillness is not just referring to a moving thing that has frozen in its tracks; this silence is not merely an absence of noise; this spaciousness is not simply a gap between objects – rather these are figures of speech to indicate qualities of the Dhamma, which is Unborn, Unoriginated, Uncreated, Unformed.14 It is the noumenal, transcendent reality that is the integrative principle underpinning the experience of all phenomena. Dipping back into the realm of theoretical physics for a moment, I feel this timeless, measureless reality is exactly what David Bohm is referring to when he spoke of ‘the implicate order’ and when he wrote: (...)

Conversely, the unawake mind chases after likes and dislikes. It identifies with self and other, gets caught up in wanting, fearing, hating, hoping. The degree to which the mind is unawake is the degree to which peace is obscured and inaccessible to the heart. The unawake mind ties itself to the agitated, the turbulent, the divisive.

So we’re invited to open our heart to the world and realize the quality of awakened awareness and timeless presence. Even as we go places, take on personæ, engage in activities, and make choices, the mind, the heart, doesn’t need to be doing these things in order to be fulfilled, complete or actualized.

Fulfilment comes from the mind knowing its own nature. The heart is already the Dhamma, so what more is there to get or to do in order to complete the Dhamma? The only truly desirable thing is to be what we are already.

During each day, as the minutes tick by and the sun rises, peaks and descends, the moon comes and goes, we can explore the feelings of becoming someone, going somewhere, doing something. We can awaken to the stillness within which all movement occurs, hear the silence that permeates all sound, be aware of the space within which all forms take shape. There is movement but nobody going anywhere. There is action, but no ‘thing’ being done, no ‘one’ who is doing it. There are choices and decisions, but no person who is deciding. There is the heart, responsive to time, place, situation; there is the ease of peacefulness embodied in awareness.

Mind Is What Matters
The Phenomenological Approach of the Buddha
Ajahn Amaro

On ignorance and being

 

I am. This certainty of being (bhava) if not examined, forces me to create more or less precise self-image of what I am. Without information from outside (parato ca ghoso) there is no escape from suffering, since these both levels of ignorance - conceit "I am" - ( ignorance on pre-reflexive level) and self-image, personal view -sakkayaditthi - (ignorance on reflexive level) supporting each other imprison puthujjana in dialectics "to be or not to be?"

"I can assert my existence or I can deny it, but in order to do either I must exist; for it is I myself who assert it or deny it. Any attempt I may make to abolish my existence tacitly confirms it; for it is my existence that I am seeking to abolish."

"The faculty of self-observation or reflexion is inherent in the structure of our experience. Some degree of reflexion is almost never entirely absent in our waking life, and in the practice of mindfulness it is deliberately cultivated. To describe it simply, we may say that one part of our experience is immediately concerned with the world as its object, while at the same time another part of our experience is concerned with the immediate experience as its object. This second part we may call reflexive experience. It will be clear that when there is avijjā there is avijjā in both parts of our experience (...) Simply by reflexion the puthujjana can never observe avijjā and at the same time recognize it as avijjā; for in reflexion avijjā is the Judge as well as the Accused, and the verdict is always ‘Not Guilty’. In order to put an end to avijjā, which is a matter of recognizing avijjā as avijjā, it is necessary to accept on trust from the Buddha a Teaching that contradicts the direct evidence of the puthujjana’s reflexion. This is why the Dhamma is patisotagāmī (Majjhima iii,6 <M.i,168>), or ‘going against the stream’. The Dhamma gives the puthujjana the outside view of avijjā, which is inherently unobtainable for him by unaided reflexion (in the ariyasāvaka this view has, as it were, ‘taken’ like a graft, and is perpetually available)."

Nanavira Thera

“Bhikkhus, there are these two views: the view of being and the view of non-being. Any recluses or brahmins who rely on the view of being, adopt the view of being, accept the view of being, are opposed to the view of non-being. Any recluses or brahmins who rely on the view of non-being, adopt the view of non-being, accept the view of non-being, are opposed to the view of being.

Any recluses or brahmins who do not understand as they actually are the origin, the disappearance, the gratification, the danger, and the escape in the case of these two views are affected by lust, affected by hate, affected by delusion, affected by craving, affected by clinging, without vision, given to favouring and opposing, and they delight in and enjoy proliferation. They are not freed from birth, ageing, and death; from sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair; they are not freed from suffering, I say". MN 11

The two most fundamental attitudes towards one's own existence which puthujjana can adopt are as follows:

Deities and human beings love being, delight in being, enjoy being; when the Dhamma is expounded to them for the ending of being, their hearts do not go out to it or acquire confidence, steadiness and decision. So some hang back. And how do some overreach? Some are ashamed, humiliated and disgusted by that same being, and they look forward to non-being in this way: ‘Sirs, when with the dissolution of the body this self is cut off, annihilated and accordingly after death no longer is, that is the most peaceful, that is the goal superior to all, that is reality.’ So some overreach. Itv 49

Unlike puthujjana, ariya savaka understand puthujja's experience and sees direct, immediate relationship between ignorance and the state of being and precisely the very knowledge about dependently arisen nature of one's own existence (bhava) provides escape from the dialectic "to be or not to be?".

In short, the five aggregates affected by clinging are suffering. (...) Now this has been said by the Blessed One: “One who sees dependent origination sees the Dhamma; one who sees the Dhamma sees dependent origination.” And these five aggregates affected by clinging are dependently arisen. MN 28

And how do those with vision see? Here a bhikkhu sees whatever has come to being as come to being. By seeing it thus he has entered upon the way to dispassion for it, to the fading and ceasing of lust for it. That is how one with vision sees.”
Iti. 49

It is important to understand that the idea "there is no self" is merely the opposite side of affirming "self". People are selfish and this is a problem which has to be solved. Puthujjana identifies himself with certain aspects of experience (body and so on) and  the teaching "all things are not self", tells him that he is a victim of wrong self-identification.

Understanding Dhamma with the help of God  (escape from affirmation/negation of dependently arisen thing.

And what, then, about the Buddha’s Teaching—how does it tell us to deal with the question whether or not God exists? The first thing is to refuse to be bullied into giving a categorical answer, yes or no, to such a treacherous question. The second thing is to see that the answer to this question will depend on the answer to a more immediate question: ‘Do I myself exist? Is my self in fact eternal, or is it something that perishes with the body?’ And it is here that the difficulties begin. The Buddha says that the world is divided, for the most part, between the Yeas and the Nays, between the eternalists and the annihilationists, and that they are forever at each other’s throats. But these are two extremes, and the Buddha’s Teaching goes in between.

So long as we have experience of our selves, the question ‘Does my self exist?’ will thrust itself upon us: if we answer in the affirmative we shall tend to affirm the existence of God, and if we answer in the negative we shall deny the existence of God. But what if we have ceased to have experience of ourselves? (I do not mean reflexive experience as such, but experience of our selves as an ego or a person.

This is a hard distinction to see, but I must refer you to the Notes for further discussion.) If this were to happen—and it is the specific aim of the Buddha’s Teaching (and of no other teaching) to arrange for it to happen—then not only should we stop questioning about our existence and the existence of God, but the whole of Jaspers system, and with it the doctrine of ciphers, would collapse. Nanavira Thera

"The argument that God cannot have created the world because of the suffering, misery and ugliness in it (or some similar form) has always seemed to me as inconclusive for proof that there is no god as the opposite argument that ‘God must have created the world because of the order, joy and beauty in it’ (or some similar form) seemed for proof that there is a god. In either case it is presumed that one knows, can distinguish, what god ought to be. Both alike imply that the holders of each view will only believe in what they approve of, i.e., in what pleases them.

Now, surely, is it not that assumption, that growth or surcease in one’s subjective self, that ought to be understood and faith in its subsidence cultivated?"

Ignorance screens the truth. It is on that screen that people paint pictures and write underneath their labels “god” and “not-god” and “theism” and “atheism.” Nanamoli Thera

But, Udāyi, let be the past, let be the future, I shall set you forth the Teaching: When there is this this is, with arising of this this arises; when there is not this this is not, with cessation of this this ceases.

Dependent arising is a part of structure known as a the Four Noble Truth. We define the attitude "I am" as a core of suffering and so cessation of the conceit "I am" as the end of suffering, or in the positive terms:

Pleasurable is dispassion in the world,
The getting beyond sensuality.
But the putting away of the conceit ‘I am’
—this is the highest pleasure.

Udàna 11

Since the very puthujja's being is the state of suffering, it has to be understood as such. And this is precisely what the aim of dependent arising is: to point out to puthujjana an escape from dialectic "to be or not to be?", (see MN 11) by undermining his certainty of being through the insight  into immediate connection between ignorance and being (bhava). This is precisely the reason why thinking about dependent arising or the Second Noble Truth in terms of three, two, one existence, or existence from moment to moment is not only mistaken, but by ignoring structural and atemporal relatinship between the present  ignorance and the present state  of being, effectively  prevents puthujjana to understand the nature of his own existence.

Nanamoli Thera: To the question: “What are these sets of terms intended to describe?” we may answer tentatively that they are intended to describe experience of any possible kind where ignorance (that is lack of personal realization of the Truths) is present. (...)

Disregarding the numerous and strange European interpretations, logical, symbolic, historical, etc., of the P/S the best approach to it from the European position is probably from Descartes’ Cogito ergo sum. That famous formula, which still guides European Ontology, is not a logical (syllogistic) proposition; nor is the P/S. ... one can hardly fail to notice the parallel between cogito and viññāṇa on the one hand and sum and bhava on the other. What is common to both is the interdependence of the terms. Instead of falling back upon unverifiable hypostasis to support the formula, the P/S pursues the element of interdependence by successive links between the two, each pair being open to introspection.

And

Hence, I argue, to translate (even to interpret to oneself) bhava by ‘becoming’ is an opiate that leaves the illusion of ‘being’ untreated. I doubt if that is what the Buddha intended.

Nanavira Thera: The puthujjana sees neither a task to be performed that can justify his existence(...)—nor a way to bring his unjustifiable existence to an end. The ariyasāvaka, on the other hand, does see the way to bring his existence to an end, and he sees that it is this very task that justifies his existence.

Quotes on direct relationship between ignorance and being

To be is to suffer. The narrower the circle of my self-identification, the more acute the suffering caused by desire and fear. Nisargadatta Maharaj

What I am (what I identify my self-myself with) that I am for ever. But at another time I am similarly something else. There is no conscious transition. Moments of reflexion discover this contradiction, which is disconcerting and so covered up by forgetting it. I am this body when I leap back to avoid treading on a deadly venomous snake or when I am (or have the sensation of being) discovered by another in some discreditable act. I own this body of mine when I examine a pimple on it or take it to a dentist or a doctor for treatment. I disown it (i.e., its acts) when I am accused of some crime and decide to lie it out. I am not it when sitting quiet face to face with what seems certain death.

Bhava which is positive, describes the constitution of the moving spatio-temporal contingency which is (a) possible in virtue of the negation consisting in consciousness, and is (b) factual in virtue of the limitations of viewing things imposed by ignorance, and limitations of time/action imposed by craving/clinging.

As I see it, the Buddha’s treatment of Ontology is most clearly set out, according to right view, in MN 38, which, yathābhūtaṃ, sets out how the illusion of ‘being’ (both in positive and negative forms—with the bhavataṇhā and vibhavataṇhā of DN 9, 22, and the anurodha and paṭivirodha of MN 1), can and should be treated and eliminated. MN 1 and MN 49 are complementary: MN 1 describes the modes of asmi-māna (which is pre-logical) and MN 49 presents the same situation in ‘ontological’ terms, i.e., in the functioning of a logically formulated wrong view (while MN1 describes the prelogical and prereflexive asmimāna—the mānānusaya, the fundamental wrong attitude), MN 44 & MN 109 describe the logically formulated views which arise out of and are built upon the prelogical tendency—the connexion between these is shown briefly in MN 1 and forms the subject matter of MN 49.

Nibbāna is the cessation of ontology: bhava-nirodho nibbānaṃ. It is not, however, the ‘abyss of non-being’, since that requires consciousness to cognize it as such. It is ‘absolute cessation,’ which includes the non-ascription, of either being or non-being: nāpahosiṃ.

To be is to be contingent: nothing, of which it can be said that ‘it is,’ can be said to be alone and independent. But being is a member of the paṭicca-samuppāda as arising which contains ignorance. Being is only invertible by ignorance. The destruction of ignorance destroys the illusion of being. When ignorance is no more, then consciousness no longer can attribute being (pahoti) at all. But that is not all; for when consciousness is predicated of one who has no more ignorance then it is no more indicatable (as it was indicated in MN 22).

Nanamoli Thera

Upādānapaccayā bhavo; bhavapaccayā jāti; jātipaccayā jarāmaranam... ('With holding as condition, being; with being as condition, birth; with birth as condition, ageing-&-death...') The fundamental upādāna or 'holding' is attavāda (see Majjhima ii,1 <M.i,67>), which is holding a belief in 'self'. The puthujjana takes what appears to be his 'self' at its face value; and so long as this goes on he continues to be a 'self', at least in his own eyes (and in those of others like him). This is bhava or 'being'. The puthujjana knows that people are born and die; and since he thinks 'my self exists' so he also thinks 'my self was born' and 'my self will die'. The puthujjana sees a 'self' to whom the words birth and death apply.[d] In contrast to the puthujjana, the arahat has altogether got rid of asmimāna (not to speak of attavāda—see MAMA), and does not even think 'I am'. This is bhavanirodha, cessation of being. And since he does not think 'I am' he also does not think 'I was born' or 'I shall die'. In other words, he sees no 'self' or even 'I' for the words birth and death to apply to. This is jātinirodha and jarāmarananirodha. (...) The puthujjana, taking his apparent 'self' at face value, does not see that he is a victim of upādāna; he does not see that 'being a self' depends upon 'holding a belief in self' (upādānapaccayā bhavo); and he does not see that birth and death depend upon his 'being a self' (bhavapaccayā jāti, and so on)*. The ariyasāvaka, on the other hand, does see these things, and he sees also their cessation  (even though he may not yet have fully realized it); and his seeing of these things is direct. Quite clearly, the idea of rebirth is totally irrelevant here.

*

All being is limited and particularized—if I am at all, I am in a spatial world.

Nanavira Thera

It has to be understood that mere presence of the body in the field of consciousness (in spacial world) doesn't constitute the state of bhava -being- what requires one additional factor, namely self-identification with the body or generally with things in a spatial world. Arahat is free from any kind of self-identification.

Q: Do you mean to say you are quite unconscious of having a body?
M: On the contrary, I am conscious of not having a body.

Nisargadatta Maharaj 

“Now, Aggivessana, this body that has material form consists of the four great entities (of earth, water, fire, and air); it is procreated by a mother and father and built up out of rice and bread; it is subject to impermanence, to anointing and rubbing, to dissolution and disintegration. It must be regarded as impermanent, as suffering, as a boil, as a dart, as a calamity, as an affliction, as alien, as disintegrating, as void, as not self. When he regards it so, he abandons his desire and affection for it and his habit of treating it as the necessary basis for all his inferences.*

* Habit of treating it (the physical body) as the basis for all his inferences” (k±yanvayat±) refers to the way of thinking which assumes the physical body as the basic reality, the empirical truth, and builds its system upon that (materialism, in fact, the physiological view of mind, or the view of consciousness as an “epiphenomenon” upon matter). Both this standpoint and the opposite, which treats matter as subordinate to mind, are discussed at the beginning of M. 36.

Nanamoli Thera

“He understands thus: ‘Whatever disturbances there might be dependent on the taint of sensual desire, those are not present here; whatever disturbances there might be dependent on the taint of being, those are not present here; whatever disturbances there might be dependent on the taint of ignorance, those are not present here. There is present only this amount of disturbance, namely, that connected with the six bases that are dependent on this body and conditioned by life.’ He understands: ‘This field of perception is void of the taint of sensual desire; this field of perception is void of the taint of being; this field of perception is void of the taint of ignorance. There is present only this non-voidness, namely, that connected with the six bases that are dependent on this body and conditioned by life.’ Thus he regards it as void of what is not there, but as to what remains there he understands that which is present thus: ‘This is present.’ Thus, Ānanda, this is his genuine,  undistorted, pure descent into voidness, supreme and unsurpassed.

MN 121

Summarise, in the Dhamma consciousness is a decisive factor:

Wisdom and consciousness, friend—these states are conjoined, not disjoined, and it is impossible to separate each of these states from the other in order to describe the difference between them. For what one wisely understands, that one cognizes, and what one cognizes, that one wisely understands. That is why these states are conjoined, not disjoined, and it is impossible to separate each of these states from the other in order to describe the difference between them.”

“What is the difference, friend, between wisdom and consciousness, these states that are conjoined, not disjoined?”
“The difference, friend, between wisdom and consciousness, these states that are conjoined, not disjoined, is this: wisdom is to be developed, consciousness is to be fully understood.” MN 43

But while puthujjana consciousness is established on the namarupa, consciousness of liberated from any self-identification whatsoever, free from the state of bhava, is not to be found:

Bhikkhus, when the gods with Indra, with Brahmā and with Pajāpati seek a bhikkhu who is thus liberated in mind, they do not find [anything of which they could say]: ‘The consciousness of one thus gone is supported by this.’ Why is that? One thus gone, I say, is not to be found here and now.

“So saying, bhikkhus, so proclaiming, I have been baselessly, vainly, falsely, and wrongly misrepresented by some recluses and brahmins thus: ‘The recluse Gotama is one who leads astray; he teaches the annihilation, the destruction, the extermination of an existing being.’ As I am not, as I do not proclaim, so have I been baselessly, vainly, falsely, and wrongly misrepres ented by some recluses and brahmins thus: ‘The recluse Gotama is one who leads astray; he teaches the annihilation, the destruction, the extermination of an existing being.’

“Bhikkhus, both formerly and now what I teach is suffering and the cessation of suffering. MN 22

Nanavira Thera: The reason why the Tathāgata is not to be found (even here and now) is that he is rūpa-, vedanā-, saññā-, sankhāra-, and viññāna-sankhāya vimutto (ibid. 1 <S.iv,378-9>), i.e. free from reckoning as matter, feeling, perception, determinations, or consciousness. This is precisely not the case with the puthujjana, who, in this sense, actually and in truth is to be found.

Puthujjana doesn't see that sakkayaditthi, conviction of being something, of having duration, depends on self-identification with things which have duration:

“If, Ānanda, they were to ask you: ‘Friend Ānanda, what are the things of which an arising is discerned, a vanishing is discerned, an alteration of that which stands is discerned?’—being asked thus, how would you answer?”

“Venerable sir, if they were to ask me this, I would answer thus: ‘Friends, with form an arising is discerned, a vanishing is discerned, an alteration of that which stands is discerned. With feeling … perception … determinations … consciousness an arising is discerned, a vanishing is discerned, an alteration of that which stands is discerned. These, friends, are the things of which an arising is discerned, a vanishing is discerned, an alteration of that which stands is discerned.’ Being asked thus, venerable sir, I would answer in such a way.”

“Good, good, Ānanda! (...) SN 22 : 37

Now, perhaps there is something wrong even with time, as the Sutta seems to suggest:

Bhikkhus, these are the three times. What three? Past time, future time, and present time. These, bhikkhus are the three times.

Perceiving what can be expressed through concepts,
Creatures take their stand on what is expressed.
Not fully understanding the expressed,
They come under the bandage of Death.

But by fully understanding what is expressed
One does not misconceive the speaker.
His mind has attained to freedom,
The unsurpassed state of peace.

Understanding what is expressed,
The peaceful one delights in the peaceful state.
Standing on Dhamma, perfect in knowledge,
He freely makes use of concepts
But no more enters into concept's range.

Itv Āddhā Sutta

But asankhata dhatu is a synonym for nibbāna, and so, arahat as well.

‘I was’ is not for me, not for me is ‘I shall be’;
Determinations will un-be: therein what place for sighs?
Pure arising of things, pure series of determinants –
For one who sees this as it is, chieftain, there is no fear.

Theragāthā 715, 716

All your problems arise because you have defined and therefore limited yourself. When you do not think yourself to be this or that, all conflict ceases. Any attempt to do something about your problems is bound to fail, for what is caused by desire can be undone only in freedom from desire. You have enclosed yourself in time and space, squeezed yourself into the span of a lifetime and the volume of a body and thus created the innumerable conflicts of life and death, pleasure and pain, hope and fear. You cannot be rid of problems without abandoning illusions. (...)
See that you are not what you believe yourself to be. Fight with all the strength at your disposal against the idea that you are nameable and describable. You are not. Refuse to think of yourself in terms of this or that. There is no other way out of misery, which you have created for yourself through blind acceptance without investigation. Suffering is a call for enquiry, all pain needs investigation. Don't be too lazy to think.

Or:

M: What makes you believe that you are a separate individual?

Q: I behave as an individual. I function on my own. I consider myself primarily, and others only in relation to myself. In short, I am busy with myself.

M: Well, go on being busy with yourself. On what business have you come here?

Q: On my old business of making myself safe and happy. I confess I have not been too successful. I am neither safe nor happy. Therefore, you find me here. This place is new to me, but my reason for coming here is old: the search for safe happiness, happy safety. So far I did not find it. Can you help me?

M: What was never lost can never be found. Your very search for safety and joy keeps you away from them. Stop searching, cease losing. The disease is simple and the remedy equally simple. It is your mind only that makes you insecure and unhappy. Anticipation makes you insecure, memory — unhappy. Stop misusing your mind and all will be well with you. You need not set it right — it will set itself right, as soon as you give up all concern with the past and the future and live entirely in the now.

Q: But the now has no dimension. I shall become a nobody, a nothing!

M: Exactly. As nothing and nobody you are safe and happy. You can have the experience for the asking. Just try.

M - Nisargadatta Maharaj