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Others ~ Selected Correspondence Death ~ Self-immolation vs. Immortality
Hello, Four years ago my daughter died. She was 26 yo. She died from suicide, having stood bravely in front of a speeding Amtrack train in a suburb of Fresno, CA. She was identified by a single rose tattoo on her hip ... which she acquired in Georgia only a few months before. This event was preceded by a year or so of increasing depression and two unsuccessful overdoses. She was a beautiful young lady ... and before this year so filled with talent, ambition...and an outward zest for life. Deep down inside, all of us knew it was coming ... all of us: her mother (my ex wife), her brothers, sisters, other relatives and some few friends. But in the end, we were all helpless to stop this train. The shock of her passing was so strong ... I could barely hold on. I decided to comment on your post because I saw many similarities between your daughter and myself some years back. Although I was fortunately unsuccessful in my attempt to take my own life away, I still remember what I went through and so do my parents. However, as I never finished, or was never finished by, the last step…my parents never knew the likes of your grief. But I have seen enough to wish it upon no one. I also sincerely wish your daughter had not had to go through with it, and I also wish you had never felt the resulting pain because of it, and that is why I commit myself entirely to the purpose of doing something about it. I delved into spiritual sources ... and finally was lulled into a tentative resolution: I felt her to be in heaven or some such place. I felt that she had survived her mangled corpse left on the tracks ... and as one channelled being put it: ‘She is greatly loved and in the arms of Mary’. These answers consoled me greatly. I still have missed her ... and miss her to this day. What would actualism say about her life and death? ... perhaps that she is no more ... and maybe never was. This is a tough one. My grandmother has seen many people come and go, nevertheless she keeps ticking and quite well I may add, all because of her faith. She needs to believe that she will be reunited with her loved ones once she dies since the very foundation of her life has been built on love and loving others. She is undoubtedly the most devoted Catholic I have ever met and it is this faith that gives ‘zest’ to her life. She will always help when she can and when she can’t she’ll pray for ‘that’ someone/thing else to; altruism at it’s real worldly and spiritual best. Now, could you ever see my grandmother as a practicing Actualist? If your reply was no, then it is probably obvious for you why. She does not want anything to do with it … she could if she would but she wont; there are too many and too valuable interests at risk. That’s why I think the most successful people with Actualism are those who honestly realize they ‘have nothing else to lose’. Something my father said to me the other day about Actualism ‘…it would mean that the last 48 years of my life have been an illusion.’ So of course, out of pride, he cares not one bit for it. See, despite all of my grandmother’s prayers, love and support and my father’s love, romantic mysticism and cleverness … I came to the conclusion that anything after death, including nothing, had to be better than life. So I attempted suicide … and that was where I believed my peace was to be found. Having a wonderful loving family, and friends, will not end the human condition. Hoping for an afterlife will not end the human condition. Believing that there is no solution will not end the human condition. Conforming to anything within the human condition will most definitely not end the human condition. My grandmother, as well as my father, both have the best of intentions … yet they are unintentionally perpetuating the human condition, thus contributing to it, and so are you and I. Without feeling guilty it is plain for me to see, now more than ever, that I am responsible – along with every other of my species – for the misery and chaos, which interferes with actuality. So is it not just incredible that both you and I have stumbled – a good word to use from my experience – across something that says, and ultimately proves, that it is possible not only to stop suffering but start enjoying life as well? And that it assures you do everything and the only thing possible that will eventually and permanently – if due course is to be had – end further suicides like the one you experienced with your daughter. Even if I were a strong objector against Actualism, soon I would come to realize the silliness of my protests, because in the end it is no longer a matter of who is the cleverest, or most passionate, but of who cares the most. All the best to you No 47 to No 52
As this investigation proceeds there comes a stage when it becomes so obvious that everyone has got it wrong, and always has got it wrong, that one begins to lose interest in, and emotional contact with, where one has come from and starts to more and more wonder and delight at the perfect peacefulness and peerless purity of this paradisiacal planet we humans live on. The habitual feelings of malice and sorrow together with their panaceas, love and compassion, eventually loose their tenacious grip in the face of a fascinated awareness of being here. As one’s awareness of this awareness becomes increasingly ‘self’-less, there is less experience of ‘me’ being aware, and more and more a bare and pure sensuous discernment of the universe happening at this very moment. The pristine purity and perfection of the physical universe becomes more and more evident as one becomes increasingly ‘self’-less. The senses become remarkably alert and exquisitely sensitive. Each happening, even the most mundane things, are experienced for the delight that they are, without a sorrowful, resentful, anxious, or malicious ‘me’ occupying ‘my’ attention. The sheer delight of simply being alive at this moment in time seems to become more and more a steady feature of one’s present functioning. Given that there has been no final, momentous elimination of the instinctual self as far as ‘self-immolation’ occurring, there is still plenty of ‘me’ around to mess up the experience of this perfection, whether through feelings of boredom, anxiety and angst, or resentment. These ‘self’-centred, affective experiences are increasingly experienced as something potentially instructive and fascinating to look into, as their continued rigorous investigation and scrutiny is what eventually eliminates ‘me’ in my entirety. This is much more than a hope or a belief that this is going to happen. It is a certainty and an assurance built upon the simple fact that the method works to eliminate the blind instincts that every human being seems to be clinging to. In hindsight, this stage represents a point of no return on the path to freedom as the emotional ties that bind you to humanity – the feelings of malice and sorrow together with their antidotal feelings of love and compassion – are so weakened as to be ineffectual. I once experienced these ties as long tentacles stretching way into the distance behind me – tentacles that stopped me from being free. I also realized that if these tentacles were broken then ‘I’ would be no more. And not only would ‘I’ cease to exist – but even more shocking – nobody would miss ‘me’. Nobody would grieve ‘my’ passing, for no one really can know ‘me’ because ‘I’ am non-physical and non-substantive. They may think and feel they know ‘me’, as ‘I’ think and feel ‘I’ know other ‘me’s’, but because ‘I’ have no substance in actuality, then it would be impossible for others to even notice ‘my’ demise. If these emotional ties or tentacles were to be broken, ‘my’ final demise would be a very private and solitary experience – followed by oblivion. What became apparent from this experience was that if these tentacles no longer existed I, this flesh and blood body, would be irrevocably alone in the world. While a feeling of fear arose, there was also an acknowledgement of the fact that I have always been alone in the world in terms of being autonomous and free. Because of my numerous pure consciousness experiences combined with a substantial period of living virtually ‘self’-less, I knew that after ‘my’ demise what I am, this flesh and blood body, would continue on doing what I have always done ... get up in the morning, have breakfast, do whatever I do in the day, and go to bed at night. Since this experience these tentacles have become even weaker, as is evidenced by an almost total disappearance of the normal emotional ties that bind ‘me’ to the other ‘me’s’ and the lack of any emotional memories that give substance to a ‘me’ having a past or a future. But the experience did remind me of the fact that ‘I’ have to die, as in experience death, if these bonds are to be completely broken ... and that these bonds have to be completely broken if ‘I’ am to die. I wonder sometimes if the affective, painful emotions that I have eluded to from time to time, for instance, bouts of ‘self’-pity and sorrow, or bouts of resentment, are the death throes of the instinctual ‘self’, ‘me’ raging in all ‘my’ glory, desiring to continue, craving to live, and that ‘I’, on some level, sense my demise and make a desperate grab for attention and succourance. Since ‘I’ am entirely illusory, all these emotions and feelings that arise from the instinctual part of the brain are similarly illusory (although they are experienced as real enough), and ‘I’ only think and feel in ‘my’ bosom that this death of ‘me’ is going to be a painful passage. The awareness that the emotional ties or tentacles that you referred to that bind me to humanity are being weakened and demolished has occasionally filled me with an existential dread. I have found myself wondering if this dread, as it seems to be a by-product of the method, is in some way a sure sign that one is utilizing the method to maximal effect? Perhaps, though, the only real thing that shows that the method is working is one’s own quotient of happiness and harmlessness – is one’s stock on the rise, so to speak? Is one increasingly happy and harmless in all one’s affairs? Since ‘I’ crave immortality, ‘I’ can only regard ‘my’ death with the utmost horror, as I cling passionately to survival at all costs. Perhaps that is why death has almost universally been regarded as a tragedy (?) I sometimes find my mind lingering on the thought of death with something like abhorrence or dread, so there must still be an instinctual self, a core ‘self’ dreading the experience and passionately clinging to life. As I have to die, as you say in ‘experience death’, does one go then through the entire range of affective experiences related to death? Is it in other words, although not an actual physical death, a death nevertheless of that which wishes to live forever? This is the ‘main event’ (death) before one’s time is up, isn’t it? Just a couple of questions that occurred. Gary to Peter
No. 39 : I’m not clear as to how one eliminates the instincts after one has become intimate with them and then has a 100% commitment. Does this happen on its own or is there something that I need to do? It happens on its own in that, as ‘I’ am the instinctual passions and the instinctual passions are ‘me’, there is no way that ‘I’ can end ‘me’. What ‘I’ do is that ‘I’ deliberately and consciously and with knowledge aforethought set in motion a ‘process’ that will ensure ‘my’ demise. What ‘I’ do, voluntarily and willingly, is to press the button – which is to acquiesce – which precipitates an oft-times alarming but always thrilling momentum that will result in ‘my’ inevitable self-immolation. The acquiescing is that one thus dedicates oneself to being here as the universe’s experience of itself now ... it is the unreserved !YES! to being alive as this flesh and blood body. Peace-on-earth is the inevitable result of such devotion because it is already here ... it is always here now. ‘I’ and/or ‘me’ was merely standing in the way of the always already existing perfect purity from becoming apparent by sitting back and moaning and groaning about the inequity of it all (as epitomized in ‘I didn’t ask to be born’). How can one be forever sticking one’s toe in and testing out the waters and yet expect to be able to look at oneself in the mirror each morning with dignity. The act of initiating this ‘process’ – acquiescence – is to embrace death. At this point I am curious about what you mean by ‘embracing death’. In the context where one unreservedly says !YES! to being alive as this flesh and blood body I am referring to physical death. If it were not for physical death one could not be happy ... let alone harmless. So, from what you are saying here, I take it that embracing death and embracing life are part, perhaps I should not say ‘part’, but rather they are the same. It seems there is no difference. If one embraces death, I mean accepts it totally, not on a superficial level, but realizes the impermanence of ‘me’ and ‘mine’, then one is free to live totally in the present. By refusing to accept the fact of death, the inevitable end of ‘me’, by positing notions of eternal life, reincarnation, etc. one is simply postponing living life fully in the now, one is actually resisting life, clinging to the ‘me’ and one’s survival as a biological or spiritual entity. It actually does not matter – one has a notion of oneself as actually continuing in the future, whether through the Christian notion of the resurrection of the physical body at the Final Judgement, or an imagined continuance of a spiritual entity through reincarnation, etc. When one is concerned about one’s survival as a biological or spiritual entity, harm arises as one is clinging to life not surrendering to the inevitable demise of ‘me’. And you are saying the demise of ‘me’ (from your perspective) is an accomplished fact? * Krishnamurti talks about a lot about dying to self, dying to your thoughts, your name, etc. It sounds pretty much like a comprehensive dying to everything. But this is not what most of us are doing – quite the opposite, we are cultivating a continuity, craving a permanency. I have found that when I experiment with this death, embrace death as you say, there is a profound disorientation that sets in followed by an exhilarating feeling of freedom. Now, this is not an actual physical death that you are talking about, is it? Elsewhere you talk about one’s demise, one’s self-immolation. So could you say more about what it means to you to embrace death? Death is a fact to be embraced while alive or it will never be known. To not ‘be’ is inconceivable; it is impossible to imagine not ‘being’ because all one has ever known is ‘being’. What does it mean to not ‘be’? One has always been busy with ‘being’ ... being ‘me’ as ‘being’ itself. What is it to not exist? It is indeed incomprehensible. There seems to be a general consensus among human beings that death is a mystery that one cannot penetrate, and that the ‘Mystery of Life’ will be revealed only after death. There, they say, lies Peace and Ultimate Fulfilment. It all appears to be an exercise in futility to think about what is entailed in death (which is the end of ‘being’) ... and it is. The end of ‘being’, at physical death, can only ever be a speculation; it has to be experienced to know it. Just like one cannot know the taste of something until one eats it ... so too is it with death as the end of ‘being’. Yet to wait for death will be leaving it too late to find out what it is to not ‘be’ ... as death is oblivion of consciousness there will be no awareness of not ‘being’. The question is: can one experience the end of ‘being’ before this body dies and therefore penetrate into the ‘Mystery of Life’, in full awareness, and find ultimate fulfilment ... here on earth? And that’s quite a question. Should one ‘self-immolate’ and extinguish the ‘me’, is there consciousness of being? I would think not – then there would be no ‘me’ and hence no consciousness of myself as separate observer. What I did was embrace mortality. ‘Life’ and ‘Death’ are not an opposite ... there is simply birth and death happening as matter arranges and rearranges itself as the infinitude of this material universe. Life is what happens in between each arrangement and rearrangement as animate matter, and as sensate animate matter. Before I was born, I was not here. Now that I am alive, I am here. After death I will not be here ... just like before birth. Where is the problem? The problem was in the brain-stem, of course. It is the instinct to survive at any cost that was the problem ... backed up by the full gamut of the emotions born out of the basic instinctual passions of fear and aggression and nurture and desire. The rudimentary animal ‘self’, transformed into an identity in the human animal, must be extinguished in order for one to be here, in this actual world of the senses, bereft of this identity. Extinction releases one into actuality ... as this flesh and blood body only one is living in the paradisiacal garden that this verdant planet earth is. We are all simply floating in the infinitude of this perfect and pure universe ... coming from nowhere and having nowhere to go to we find ourselves here at this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space. I am this very material universe experiencing its own infinitude as a sensate and reflective human. One is reluctant to let go of the basic instinctual passions as they seem, at least in their less violent manifestations, to be the source of earthly and fleshly pleasures, for instance, the pleasure of sex, the pleasure of a good meal ... the sense of power and competency one derives through keeping the physical body fit through exercise, etc.. I’m having a hard time drawing the line, so to speak. Your words imply a strong position of no-compromise, extinction of basic instinctual passions, period. Am I misunderstanding what you are saying? When ‘I’ self-immolate in ‘my’ entirety the separative entity’s isolation disappears too – along with all craving, all desire for a spiritual continuity, a mystic permanency – and an actual intimacy emerges that beggars comparison. This is because a person’s isolation is formed by the essence of their ‘being’... and ‘being’ itself is the root-cause of all the ills of humankind. One has ‘been’ in the past, one is ‘being’ in the present, and one will ‘be’ in the future. That ‘being’ is what one calls ‘me’, taking it to be me as-I-am. ‘I’ was, ‘I’ am, ‘I’ will be ... this feeling of continuity, an instinctual entity called ‘me’ existing over time, is not me as-I-am. I do not exist over time; I exist only as this moment exists, and now has no duration here. Therefore I am never alone for there is no ‘being’ to be separate ... let alone to crave a continuity, a permanency. One is always here and it is already now ... there can be nothing more permanent, more perpetual a continuity, than this very place here in infinite space at this very moment in eternal time. What ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul was searching for in the ‘timeless and spaceless and formless’ dimension was already always here in time and space as form ... for there is nothing else than this actual world. And this actual world is an ambrosial paradise. So, it is futile to search for the timeless, the spaceless, the formless. This search is an illusion, as our happiness is here, right now, not in some imagined afterlife. There is something about your words which have a strong ring of truth to me right now, at this time. Perhaps it is a wish to find that ‘ambrosial paradise’ you talk of, I don’t know. I seriously doubt that I have ‘self-immolated’ and, I must say, I doubt that you have either. I think others have raised these doubts as well. In some respects, to extinguish the in-born, genetically programmed survival responses of the organism to danger seems insane and incredible. Yet, I see what you are saying about harm arising from these same instinctual passions. I am having a hard time reconciling these things. Can you comment? Gary to Richard, List B
The actualism writings have broadened in scope somewhat to now include the recent scientific discoveries about the instinctual passions and we have even presented these schematically to make the neurobiological processes even clearer. However there is no reason why the whole approach could not be slanted in terms of freeing oneself from the normal neurotic and psychotic conditions that result from being an instinctually-driven socially- subjugated ‘self’. This is, of course, what is meant by ‘self’-immolation and the resulting elimination of instinctual malice and sorrow. I remember when I approached actualism Richards talk of ‘self-immolation’, extirpation, elimination, sacrificial offerings and such scared me out of my wits. It reminded me of the Nazi’s talk of the Final Solution and I would picture flaming bodies and torched cities. Gradually, I came to understand what was being talked about and the words began to lose some of their emotional charge. In actualism, self-immolation occurs as an actual brain event in which something turns over in the base of the brain and the entire psyche, with its’ affective and imaginative faculty, is deleted. Not physically of course, the physiological structures still remain but perhaps the neuronal pathways are in some way obliterated. I am speculating here. Gary to Peter
There is something here that I am not sure about. You said that ‘fear can only be tackled by removing the causes of why I am fearful.’ This doesn’t make sense to me because there are certain causes of fear that one can’t remove such as death so that is why I am thinking that fear itself needs to be removed instead of the causes of fear. I don’t have much fear of death itself as I have already experienced that but there is still fear. In other words, I still have it wired up that the way to remove fear is to face it instead of removing the causes of it or avoiding the causes of it. You say that death is a cause of fear. Is this so? If so, I wonder why you say that. If death is a fact and is faced squarely as inevitable, why should there be any fear in it? I am questioning the conclusion that you seem to be reaching that death is a cause of fear. It seems to me that only if I refuse to see a fact and really take it in am I filled with fear about it. You also say that you don’t have much fear of death as you have already experienced that. What? Death? Obviously you have not experienced death, have you? Then what have you experienced – the fear of death? Even if you have really experienced the fear of death at rock-bottom, and then still have the fear, then this seems like convincing evidence that something else is causing the fear, not the fact of death. See what I mean? So where does this leave us? If I can’t obviously change death – death is a fact – something else is causing the fear – and that something can be looked into to and discovered as the real cause of the fear. Just a few thoughts. * Yes, I had an experience earlier this year in which I actually died and stopped breathing for an unknown period of time. I then came back to life with a gasp of air and started breathing again. I might as well tell you that I have a bit of trouble with the kind of near-death experiences that you describe. The fact of the matter is that you did not die. If you had died, you would not be writing these words. Death is not reversible. It is final, finito, endgültig, the finish, the last act. ‘Tis the same, by way of comparison, with self-immolation, which is why it is death of ‘me’ – the passionate entity residing in this flesh-and-blood body. Near-death experiences are often used to demonstrate that there is life after death. Those who pass through the white-light experience ‘on the other side’ and meet with ‘loved ones’ who had ‘gone before’ seem to have confirmed that there is a flip side of life beyond the grave. I would contend that this is ludicrous and that such experiences, aberrations of a brain deprived of oxygen, fuel the most ardent desires of humanity: to find a way to cheat death and live forever. This is why they are so popular in spiritual circles and are taken for granted without much thought or critical examination. I would be very careful when you say that you ‘actually died’. Come with me to the local morgue and I’ll show you some people who actually died, and they don’t look at all like you, I bet, a living, breathing, flesh-and-blood body. * I didn’t say anything about any near death experience or any other side or any white light or spiritual circles. All I said was that I stopped breathing and then started breathing again and then you added all the other to what I said. I find most every time I come to this list that someone here adds to what I actually said to prove that I am spiritual to suit their own agenda and this time is no different. I regret coming here as usual. You may regret or not regret as you so choose. That is nothing to do with me. But please tell me: if all you did was to ‘stop breathing’ and then ‘start breathing again’, how does that equate with having ‘actually died’? Incidentally, that has happened a few times to me, to the point I spoke with a doctor about it, but neither I nor the doctor consider that I actually died when this happened. Gary to No 16
The process of actualism is chock-a-block full of realizations. However, it is important to make a distinction between the realizations that happen in the process of actualism and the traditional Spiritual Realizations, which are better termed Revelations.
One of the clearest distinctions between the two is that for an actualist, at some stage, there is a realization that there is no life after death, that the belief is nought but a gigantic multifaceted fairy-story, whereas for a Spiritualist, at some stage, the realization is a heart-felt embrace of the belief in a spirit-world life after death for ‘me’ as a spirit-being, i.e. only ‘my’ body dies and ‘I’ am immortal. Death has lost most of its terrifying aspect to me. I would not say that there is absolutely no fear of death, but if there is, it is scarcely conscious. One can, I think, relate one’s own fear of dying to the fear of losing ‘loved ones’, people who one is close to. For instance, at times I realize I am quite attached to my partner and I would be utterly bereft were she to die and leave me ‘alone’. Then I realize that I am emotionally dependent on her, through the ties of love or sympathy, and that I don’t want her to die and that I could not bear to see her get ill or suffer. This then seems like an important realization for I am looking at what I am in relation to the people around me, and looking at what they mean to me. It is a rather sobering sort of reflection. There is that connection, I don’t know what to call it, ‘bond’ I suppose is a good word, that one forms to people throughout life – one’s parents, one’s children, one’s husband or wife. I think for me I fear their demise more than I fear my own. Picturing my own demise has little effect on me but sometimes I am filled with fear for the demise of these ‘loved ones’. In this connection, I am reminded of the important question that Richard posed in his Journal to himself of ‘What am I in relation to the people around me’ and how he kept this question burning in his consciousness for a long time. That question has repeatedly occurred to me over the course of looking at these emotional dependencies, these emotional ties of love or sympathy, even ties of antipathy or hatred, to family or ‘loved ones’. Could you perhaps explore with me what it has been like for you to examine your ties to people in your life through running this question? Do you find yourself forming ties to others? How can I use this question ‘What am I in relation...’ to further important understandings of ‘me’ so that ‘me’ can be ended? I think at this point I am going to end. I really would like to pursue this issue of one’s relationship with other people in one’s life. It may be interesting the kinds of fears that crop up as one begins the process of dismantling one’s identity. The fear, indeed the dread, of leaving everything and everyone, all the comfortable and familiar things that inhabit one’s ‘normal’ world is an interesting subject in its own right. Gary to Peter
As I remember it, the reason I started my Journal with the chapter on death is that the realization that physical death is the end – dead, finished, finito, kaput, no more –was the beginning of my being interested in being here. I’ll just post a bit to give the flavour of what this realization meant at the time –
What this realization meant was that I was no longer interested in the escapist, ‘let me out of here’, fantasies of the revered spiritual teachings and I began to be interested in how I was experiencing being here in the physical world – the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are, right here in the place I am in now, right now in this moment which is the only moment I can ever physically experience. This starting to be interested in being here is the beginning of attentiveness because the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ comes naturally when one is sincerely interested in being here. From this interest then comes a fascination with being here which, over the course of time, inevitably leads to the lived experience of not being able to be anywhere but here, and it never being any other time but now. Contemplation of one’s demise can lead directly to this fascination with being here, because it makes no sense to squander the precious moments of being alive by living a second-rate life. Contemplation of the fact that life ends at some indeterminate point is not the same as a morbid dread of death. I don’t think there is anything to dread in death. Besides, any such dread is not based in actuality – it is based in fantasy and imagination. The longer I have been using the actualism method, the more I have demolished the ‘me’ that was spiritually and religiously conditioned, and an alert attentiveness has become instantly aware of any flights of fancy, imaginings, anxieties, dreads, resentments, and any other feeling-fed experiences, so that I can immediately recognize what is getting in the way of my being here and can get myself back on track in the present moment. To dwell on one’s demise and anxiously ruminate on what might happen in the future is tantamount to not being here but being somewhere else. Gary to Peter
So before I go ... some rather black humour... Quasimodo has quit his job at Notre Dame cathedral and identical twins have come to apply for the position of bell ringers. They are having a lesson atop the bell tower – Quasi is demonstrating... ‘you push – then you duck (as the bell swings back toward him) you push – then you duck, ok’. So the first twin has a go – he pushes but forgets to duck, the bell hits him in the face and he plummets 160 feet to his demise below just as the head priest is showing a visitor around the place – the visitor looks at the body and says to the priest ‘who is THAT?’ The priest replies ‘I don’t know but his face rings a bell’. Meanwhile the other twin is trying his hand at the top of the tower Quasi shows him again the push and then duck method – the twin takes the bell and pushes hard but, like his brother he forgets to duck and he too plummets to earth. The visitor looks to the priest again, ‘so who is that?’ the priest replies ‘I don’t know but he’s a dead ringer for the other one’. Mark Web page designed by The Actual Freedom Trust |
