Whenever Vineeto and I talk or write of becoming free of the Human Condition, we are often seen (judged?) as being judgemental or attacking and not tolerant or respectful of the other’s position. In considering this, the only sense I make of it is that we are threatening in that we are putting into practice the concept that one can become free of the Human Condition – i.e. how human beings think, feel, believe and imagine themselves to be and how they are instinctually programmed by blind nature to function. Now any sensible investigation of the Human Condition involves observation, investigation, comparison, contemplation, consideration and judgement. One has to come to a conclusion as to what is silly and what is sensible, otherwise the whole exercise is merely intellectual wanking. Having made a judgement as to what is best, then action is required – one is compelled to action, unless one wants to settle for second-best – but that’s another story. So no bleatings of ‘you’re being judgemental’ will work with me – it’s a furphy that’s been bandied around since morals and ethics were first chiselled in stone and devised to silence the sensible. ‘Judge ye not’ is a platitude invented by God-men and other charlatans in order that no one would question the rest of their inane platitudes. It is one of many dimwitticisms, passed off as Guru-wisdom, that have no other meaning or purpose than to keep their followers and disciples under control, humble, grateful, loyal and above all non-thinking.

But if anyone wants to remain as they are, second-rate, rooted in the past, or off in la-la land, then fine. Somewhere there is a Peter or a Vineeto who might appreciate a bit of ‘judgemental’ straight talking, a first hand account about becoming free of the Human Condition, what it’s like to challenge all beliefs, what it’s like to leave one’s ‘self’ behind. I strongly recommend being judgemental – making a judgement, an evaluation, a discernment, a decision, a finding, an appraisal, an assessment, a conclusion. At the very least one practices thinking, at best it may provoke action, at worst you may be inaccurate and need to re-assess. This is the process of learning called trial and error. One simply proceeds to what is sensible and what works, and one finds one has discovered a fact. And one can rely on a fact. It takes a little practice but eventually ‘you’ become redundant in the game as the facts start to speak for themselves.

Yes indeed, the English language may never be the same again – and a good thing too. I asked someone the other day ‘How are you?’ as one tends to do as an opening gambit in polite conversation and got the reply ‘Not too bad’. As you well know this is about the best that anyone can admit to in the common usage of language in the country where we live, but it is a reply that allows the conversation – or ‘sharing’ if it’s a spiritual exchange – to develop into the usual mutual exchange of problems, difficulties, worries and laments. For females the issues are often more personal, whereas males tend to be more ‘worldly’, as in work, politics and the like, but the communication is typically one of mutual agreement as to what a bitch life as a human being is. And the dimwitticisms from the dim-dark ages simply serve to give this view a divine stamp of approval. The mythical Mr. Buddha didn’t want to be here trapped in a physical body, Mr. Rajneesh ‘only visited this planet’ for a bit and couldn’t wait to get out of here, leaving only his ‘dream’ behind and Mr. Jesus was only here because he was put up to it by his father and had no choice in the matter.

Mr. Reanney – Some years ago, Stephen Hawking was elected to the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge University, the chair once occupied by Isaac Newton. Hawking’s inaugural lecture had the ambitious title ‘Is the end in sight for theoretical physics?’ That is, Hawking was suggesting that science was close to accomplishing its ultimate goal – the unification of all the laws of physics into one coherent, consistent framework which would define and encompass the whole of reality. Such a unified scheme would not just ‘represent’ truth in some abstract way, it would in an important sense be truth. By now, this should not surprise us. As we have seen, the homely metaphors of commonsense and everyday life offer us no guidance when we look at the bewildering cosmos in which we find ourselves. Only mathematics, in whose code nature writes her secrets, can tell us what is ‘real’. D. Reanney, The Death of Forever, p. 156

It comes as no surprise that science is firmly rooted in mysticism, shamanism and alchemy and steeped in the search for the meaning of life. It has been a bare few centuries since science has very hesitantly emerged from the control of the church in Europe. Galileo was forced to publicly recant his finding that the earth orbited the sun because it did not fit with the flat-earth version of the universe described in Genesis. Nowadays we have the ability to eliminate many hereditary diseases with the simple manipulation of genetic codes but research has been curtailed as ‘unethical’ – religion still reigns supreme. One should not meddle with ‘Mother Nature’ or God, or whatever – or there will be Hell to pay!

Well, I’m busy meddling with Mother Nature’s implanted instincts – and the rewards are extraordinary. Those who think genetic engineering is the answer to the human dilemma ignore the stranglehold that morals and ethics have on the Human Condition. Better to get on with the job yourself – neither God nor science will be of help.

I think I am on a rave again. So back to the BrainBomb web-site whose address you sent. It would seem that many people will use the research on instincts to justify the ‘bad’ in us and continue to flog the old ‘be good – find God’ methods that have relentlessly failed to end suffering and failed to bring peace, despite the sincere efforts of billions upon billions of people. This ‘wishful thinking’ involves nothing more than accentuating and identifying with the so-called good instincts and sublimating and dis-identifying with the ‘bad’ instincts. If one is successful in the effort one becomes totally identified with the Good and in full-blown delusion one can even become God or Cosmic Consciousness, so self-aggrandizing is the exercise in the end.

But given the current research efforts, at very least, the ancient belief in Tabula Rasa will be harder to maintain in the face of scientific fact.

A little definition may be appropriate at this point –

Tabula Rasa – Latin: ‘scraped tablet,’ i.e., ‘clean slate’), in epistemology (theory of knowledge) and psychology, a supposed condition that empiricists attribute to the human mind before ideas have been imprinted on it by the reaction of the senses to the external world of objects. Comparison of the mind to a blank writing-tablet occurs in Aristotle’s De anima (4^th century BC), and the Stoics as well as the Aristotelian Peripatetics subsequently argued for an original state of mental blankness. Both the Aristotelians and the Stoics, however, emphasized those faculties of the mind or soul that, having been only potential or inactive before receiving ideas from the senses, respond to the ideas by an intellectual process and convert them into knowledge. A new and revolutionary emphasis on the Tabula Rasa occurred late in the 17^th century, when the English empiricist John Locke, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), argued for the mind’s initial resemblance to ‘white paper, void of all characters,’ with ‘all the materials of reason and knowledge’ derived from experience. Though Locke himself fell back on ‘reflection’ as a power of the mind for the exploitation of the given ‘materials,’ his championship of the Tabula Rasa signalled even more radical positions by later philosophers. – Encyclopedia Britannica.

If you do not like what I am saying above let us talk about it. But until then don’t give me any sermon with platitudes such as ‘tried and failed’.

I would have thought the issue was – what have you tried, is it working, has it failed, are you happy and harmless? This list offers a third alternative to becoming spiritual or staying normal. If the spiritual ‘tried and true’ is working for you – fair enough. Just don’t give me sermons about Actual Freedom while simultaneously declaring you don’t know what it is. Proudly trumpeting one’s ignorance with such platitudes as the ‘Truth cannot be spoken’, ‘Ignorance is bliss’, ‘No-mind’ ‘You are That’ and the ‘The Truth Is’ – the sermons of Ancient Wisdom are just plain silly, and totally unoriginal.

P.S. Saw a bumper sticker down town that said – ‘The earth is my church – my body is my altar.’ I guess the car belonged to one of the local Gods or, more likely, a surrendered disciple of a God.

Mind you, there are so many God-men and God-women around here, many struggle to make a living for lack of followers.

It’s becoming a very crowded market and the whole Guru-disciple business may well have reached its zenith.

Then, no matter what the result, life becomes a genuine adventure, a sincere search, as distinct from the usual wandering around in the dust and mould of the ancient temples looking for a new version of Ancient Wisdom to hang one’s hat on. One can see it in the New Dark Ages quite clearly as the ‘latest discovery’ such as Tibetan Tantric Tarot, Summerian Shamanic Shiatsu, or my personal favourite – Heliotropic Holistic Healing. To call this trolling through the trash cans of Eastern Mysticism ‘discovering’ or ‘exploring’ is a blatant abuse of the words.

If one is sincere about searching, discovering and exploring it makes scant sense to recycle the flotsam of Ancient Wisdom, but if you do dare to be different, to really question, ... be realistic about the consequences. The lot of the trail blazer is not easy or comfortable, but it is such good fun.

A little exchange from the Sannyas List will illustrate the point –

Peter: ‘I was attracted [to Sannyas] by two things –

• The promise of what I would call peace of mind, the permanent cessation of the endless self-centered churning thoughts and emotions in me.
• The promise of peace on earth, the emergence of a ‘New Man’, such as would bring an end to war, pollution, poverty, repression, violence and sorrow on this fair planet.’

Responses to the above –

1. ‘O, poor guy, who promised you all of this? I have never heard Osho promising anything to anybody, why should you be an exception?’
2. ‘Now these ‘promises’ were never made...only made up by you, and in your dreaming you chose to believe them.’
3. ‘Perhaps you still could find some benefit in taking responsibility for choice of action. No one forced you to believe anything. You made choices. You looked for and found what didn’t exist.’

The last response was a classic – it sure didn’t exist! Ah, what an amazing experience it was to have been a disciple of a living Guru, to see his dream fail, see him set up a religion to carry on his dream, see him, in person, playing the God-man to the hilt, to meet him zonked out of his mind and to be personally so blinded by trust, faith, devotion, surrender and loyalty that all of my intelligence was almost non-existent.

And it is not only Rajneesh that has left a ‘notable’ legacy. Krishnamurti has proved to be yet another of the Gurus with accounts of a vitriolic and deceitful ‘private’ life emerging after his death. And to see that all he has left behind is a residue of heady spiritualectuals willing to endlessly discuss anything, as long as it is not their feelings. Ramana Maharshi and his self-appointed disciple H.W.L Poonja has left as a legacy the unbelievably childish message of ‘You are already God – all you have to do is realize it’ that is gratefully soaked up by the laziest of the lazy – or the meekest of the mild. And the list goes on and on ...

None of them have managed to live their unliveable teachings, all of them left behind an unrealizable dream and all of them went ‘somewhere else’ after death. All in all, a deplorable legacy.

Interestingly, I have a number of friends who turned to Buddhism after the Rajneesh thing petered out. If you have to have a religion, which everyone does, Buddhism is such a ‘safe’ religion to be in – particularly the New Age version. Modern Buddhism is baby-boomer bumf.

Surely, just surely, it’s time to admit that the tried and true is but the ‘tried and failed’.

After all – the definition of a lunatic is someone who keeps does the same thing, again and again, despite the fact that it doesn’t work.

In these early pioneering days, it seems it is for the desperate and daring. Well, I tried to be a touch less iconoclastic but it never works. It’s impossible for me to pretend that God exists, that there is an after-life or that the God-men sell anything else but snake oil. Once you know it is all a fairy story, it all disappears like a puff of smoke ...

Spiritualism now does look like a snake oil to me, too. All ‘energy’ events, prophesying, channelling, gods, etc are probably just events generated by our psyche. So far, I have not come across any ‘other worldly event’ so I must admit it all seems to be just imagination supported by our culture.

Yes indeed. One of the many, many fatal flaws with the fairy-tale belief in a God or Gods is the cultural variations that are evidenced throughout the world.

A Christian always ‘sees’ and ‘feels’ love for Christ, a Hindu ... Krishna, a Buddhist ... Buddha, a Rajneeshee ... Rajneesh. The only common theme is a primitively-sourced belief in a Something, or Someone, Else and a Somewhere Else we go to after death. The human ability to think and reflect, combined with an instinctual fear-based self has led to the questions of ‘Where did we come from?’, ‘Why are we here?’ and ‘What happens after death?’ ballooning into great philosophical questions. In the ancient days of ignorance about the physical universe, the human body, reproduction, ageing and death, and most importantly, our implanted survival instincts, ensured these questions produced imaginary and fantasy answers that involved good and evil spirits, other-worlds in the sky, planets and stars as Gods, etc.

In 1999 the challenge now is to break free of the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire that are the very source of malice and sorrow. For many on the planet, life is no longer a grim business of survival and the very survival instinct, once vital to ensure the very survival of the species, now prevents us from being happy and harmless.

Just a note to follow on from my recent post.

I realized that I had posted two consecutive quotes from Mohan Rajneesh to the List and thought I would include a quote from Jiddu Krishnamurti just to indicate that the ‘I do not know – therefore I am Wise and Holy’ syndrome is endemic in all spiritual teachings –

December 20 I do not know.
‘If one can really come to that state of saying, ‘I do not know,’ it indicates an extraordinary sense of humility; there is no arrogance of knowledge; there is no self-assertive answer to make an impression. When you can actually say, ‘I do not know,’ which very few are capable of saying, then in that state all fear ceases because all sense of recognition, the search into memory, has come to an end; there is no longer inquiry into the field of the known. Then comes the extraordinary thing. If you have so far followed what I am talking about, not just verbally, but if you are actually experiencing it, you will find that when you can say, ‘I do not know,’ all conditioning has stopped. And what then is the state of the mind? ...

We are seeking something permanent – permanent in the sense of time, something enduring, everlasting. We see that everything about us is transient, in flux, being born, withering, and dying, and our search is. But that which is truly sacred is beyond the measure of time; it is not to be found within the field of the known’. The Book of Life: Daily Meditation with J. Krishnamurti

The other reason to include this quote is to indicate that I have no particular axe to grind in relation to Rajneesh – he was merely yet another in a long, long, long line of failed Gurus who promised lotus flowers and left nothing but mud, bewilderment, ignorance, unliveable teachings and shattered dreams in their wake. Krishnamurti exited quietly leaving behind stories of clandestine love affairs, intrigues and malicious legal battles. Rajneesh had the temerity to declare ‘I leave you my dream’ on his death bed. ‘His Dream’ had collapsed in tatters around him in Oregon ten years earlier while he sat in his room in Splendid Isolation, above the mundane activities of the building and running of a ‘City to Challenge God’. His dream failed, a ‘million lights’ didn’t light up the world, and peace is yet to miraculously descend on the planet, let alone in the Pune Ashram. And yet another religion is born, yet another group following their own particular dead God-man who for them was the master of masters, the only God, the beloved, the Sacred One. So ‘in love’ with their God-man, so trusting, so unquestioning loyal and devoted, that they will figuratively and literally surrender their life for Him.

The only reason I write about Mohan Rajneesh is that I know the whole Rajneesh Religion ‘inside-out’, so to speak. I participated fully in a contemporary formation of a religion – a microcosm of the founding of the thousands of religions that have been formed before and are still forming around God-men and God-women.

Yesterday someone asked me if I had had any feedback from friends to whom I had given a copy of my Journal. I said the silence had been deafening and one had even told me ‘it was good that I had got what Rajneesh had been teaching’ and wondered why I was not grateful to him. Thinking about it again, I realized that many who read the writings of Actual Freedom and its uncompromising non-spiritual stance, conveniently see it merely as Guru-bashing and miss the main point.

It is obvious that gurus have been gleefully indulging in bashing their fellow-Gurus for millennia as a ‘device’ to collect and gather more disciples who are willing and eager to believe that they, and only they, are peddling something new and special. This is nothing more than the power battles of the God men, a Divine and psychic version of the secular, instinct-fuelled battles that rage between various groups of humans animals on the planet. The bigger slice of the market the more power for the Guru and it matters not a fig whether he or she is still alive. More often than not it is better if the Guru is dead as imagination, myth and surrender are better sustained if one’s God is ‘on the other shore’, waiting for you after death.

There is no solution to be had in spiritual or religious pursuits, in fact, any belief or faith actively supports, ‘nourishes’, enhances and embellishes the very problem – the psychological and psychic entity, the ego and the soul. It is obvious that the solution has to lie outside of the Human Condition – it is the whole of the Human Condition itself that we have to become free of in order to find an actual personal peace and facilitate an actual global peace. This mailing list offers an opportunity for those intrepid pioneers to swap stories, facts, experiences and discoveries on the wide and wondrous path to an Actual Freedom from malice and sorrow.

I understand what you have said. But I wonder why you have misunderstand what I have said.

This is but another of those useless debating ploys. It falls into the same category as ‘I agree with you, but ...’, which really means ‘I don’t agree with you’.

If you had understood what I have said you wouldn’t be concerned about your disciplehood, you would be wondering how it was that you fell for the fairy story in the first place.

In short, you have said I am on the tried and failed path as far as I am a disciple of Rajneesh because master-disciple relation prevents a person from questioning every blind belief.

Not only you. This is nothing personal.

It is writ large in the Human Condition, sub-section, ‘Religious and spiritual pursuits’, sub-section ‘Peace on Earth’...

‘Each Religion, God-man or Guru offers the promise of peace on earth in return for the follower or disciple’s love, gratitude, faith, loyalty, trust and surrender. Peace on earth will then occur when everyone (all 6 billion, at the moment) similarly ‘sees the light’ and becomes a disciple or follower of that particular religion, thus finally ending religious wars and conflicts on the planet. Until that magical event occurs, there will still be ‘pockets of resistance’ (wars) caused by the ‘others’ who dearly and stubbornly want to hold on to their religious beliefs – but one day, hopefully, one of the religions will win out and conquer the world – and peace will reign. The other common theme is one of Armageddon or the End of the World, in which case the true believers of one of the particular religions will be the sole survivors and, as such, peace on earth will ensue. The keys to maintaining this system in existence are firm belief, love, gratitude, faith, loyalty, trust and surrender of disciples and followers.’

And I have said my disciplehood is different from your definition.

Another of the ploys that fails to impress me. Alan has already posted the dictionary definition of disciplehood. For clarity in communication, can you choose a word (from the dictionary preferably) that more closely defines exactly what you mean?

Awhile ago I wrote to you of an extensive study done documenting our ‘natural’ human propensity for inflicting suffering on others. I am interested to hear what you made of the study and what your conclusions are.

Great. It is so rare for a spiritual seeker to acknowledge this simple fact. All the spiritual teachings are in complete denial of the instinctual passions imprinted by blind nature on human beings. They, in fact, teach the theory of ‘you are not the body and you are not the mind’ so as to turn away from this simple fact. Thousands of years ago these instinctual passions were seen as good spirits and bad spirits that ‘invaded’ the body but for us to continue to follow this philosophy and belief-system is to defy intelligence.

I had about 17 years of experience on the spiritual path and came to know at least four of the Gurus well enough to see that they didn’t practice what they preached. From this personal observation and a little bit of reading it is evident that the personal lives of all the Gurus are tainted by ‘normal’ emotions and behaviour despite their claims of Divineness. They get away with it because their disciples ‘turn a blind eye’ and as you said, because there has been nothing better on offer. The shenanigans and hypocrisy of the Gurus are reasonably well documented, as are those of most religious groups.

As one goes further back in time to the ancient and usually mythical God-men, such as Jesus, Buddha and Mahavira, we have to rely on the fairy stories of miracles and Divine attributes told in the Sacred texts and Holy Books. Many people attempt to claim that these Divine figures actually existed as flesh and blood human beings in some Golden Era, but an open-eyed reading of any of the texts reveals their purely mythical nature. I remember as a kid thinking what a funny idea the Western God was, and later being appalled when I read of the atrocities carried out in the name of various Gods and the churches. The war mongering – and whore mongering – of the Popes was particularly stunning. And I later found out that the Eastern Religions are no different. Modern ‘Spiritual’ belief is firmly founded on the fairy stories spun around mythical God-men and their fables, miracles and unliveable teachings. So, we are faced with the continuing failure of any spiritual or religious teachings to bring peace on earth after 5,000 years of billions of people attempting to live the unliveable and attain the unattainable – an actual innocence. An actual innocence is only attainable if one can rid oneself of the instinctual animal passions. Both the so called ‘good’ ones and the ‘bad’ ones – both have to go, for the experiment of praying to the Gods for help, living a Good life or becoming a God-man or Goddess, has clearly failed.

Is not happiness NOW more important then trying to do something, which will bring about this happiness? I am going to look into this ‘third alternative’.

There is a great myth put about by many in the spiritual world that goes something like ‘you are already That or God, or Enlightened, you only have to realize it’. It is a prime example of being in cuckoo land as it denies the fact that, as human beings, we are born with instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. And it attempts to transcend the animal biological heritage by inventing some mythical ‘divine world’ and going off and dwelling in it ‘for eternity’. The problem in humans is a neuro-biological, not meta-physical. And only by ridding ourselves of the Ancient belief in Gods and Goddesses, can we begin to tackle the problem. Without God it is up to each of us to sort out our own ‘self’ and why not? It is such an amazing journey of discovery that it makes any normal or spiritual therapies seem like kindergarten. To find out ‘what’ you are as opposed to who you ‘think’ or ‘feel’ you are!

But what have we created? It is not a pretty picture from my perspective. The results are not what we would call ‘best.’ It is not a beautiful thing in my estimation to watch our cities destroyed by floods caused by extreme weather and higher oceans due to global warming through the destruction of our atmosphere. It is not a pretty thing to watch people starve because plants burn up and the rains don’t come.

I see you are a believer in the theory of global warming and subsequent disruptions in weather patterns. It was a debate that I followed with interest for a while to see if I could discern the facts as opposed to the media hype, the vested interests and ‘Doomsday’ beat ups. There certainly seems a great deal of disagreement in the scientific community (not an uncommon thing) with the usual competitiveness, brinkmanship, and blarney abounding. What does seem a constant thread is that it is still a theory searching for hard evidence and actual proof. The problem of such a limited time span of precise meteorological and atmospheric data – only about 100 years – has lead to nothing more than theoretical extrapolations. Still, it does suit the agenda of the extremists and ‘Doomsdayers’ to promote the worst case theories as ‘truths’ in order to promote their particular ‘truth’ as the only solution. They are also people who simply do not want to be here, they hunger for an escape from living life, here, now, on earth.

I have developed a discerning eye and ear in order to ascertain what is fact and what is merely theory, postulation, concept, truth, common agreement, belief, assumption, speculation, imagination, myth or wisdom. At the start it does take intent to dig around and it does take a bit of an effort, (like reading what I am writing, for a start). It can result in a few blows to one’s pride, but otherwise one would simply believe what everybody else tells as the Truth.

It is not an awesome thing to see some hoard that which they’ve extracted by leverage, holding it when they have that which the rest of the us need to survive because they fear the worst. It is not a pretty thing to watch weather and natural disasters blow down and burn our towns and cities due to changes in our jet-stream and tectonic changes due to general abuses of our planet.

We certainly see a lot more natural disasters and results of fierce weather now that we have such an excellent TV coverage, and I often hear that something was the worst ... in 50 years or 100 years. But I have yet to see the scientific communities agree on a link to global warming. The environmental lobby has grown to such a powerful force it is hard to discern facts from hysteria. It seems to me that it is an unproven theory and a bit of a furphy, considering that the main news items I see on TV are yet another war, another bombing, another shootout, another massacre, another famine... The murders, rapes, suicides, and domestic violence are usually too numerous and common place to even get a mention. And yet when I point out that the Human Condition is malice and sorrow and that it can be eliminated by whoever cares, no-one is interested. They would rather blame someone else and peddle another version of the old ‘tried and failed’ methods.

The other curious thing is that most of the religions have a Doomsday scenario, or a Day of Judgement. This is an essential part of any belief-system that espouses a Way or a Truth in order to ‘escape’ from evil and damnation. It has been going on for centuries and it is amazing to see the Doomsday slip back decade after decade, despite the wishes and convictions to bring it on.

When I said, ‘How would the world look if we all realized we are one’, I know that if this would happen the world would look like paradise, indeed, it would be a paradise. We are one in the real sense not if we have one god or one religion. We are one and yet we are multi-faceted’ ones. Religions, Gods and Beliefs are the reasons why we cannot realize that we are one. If the universe is one, then why is it not that humans on the universe are also one?

I did point out that humans are born with a primitive sense of ‘self’, consisting of the instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, and that this is overlaid from birth by a social identity which produces a separate self in each 5.8 billion humans.

Any amount of wishful thinking, prayer or fairy stories will not alter this fact. 3,000 years of well-meaning effort by billions of people give proof to the failure of the traditional methods to end suffering and violence in human beings. I decided to give something new a whirl and am simply reporting that it works. It is a fact that the ‘tried and true’ doesn’t work.

I did have a fascinating talk with someone who I knew as a long-time Sannyasin, who extolled to me the teachings of an Eastern Guru she was into. Basically his teachings are that ‘everything is perfectly all right as it is – nothing to do’, and certainly ‘nothing to change’ and if and when ‘something happens’ it will be ‘by Grace’. In my usual irrepressible style I said ‘oh, then you believe in God?’ She looked startled and said ‘No’. She then said the teachings (or no-teachings?) were not about God and I asked her whose Grace it was that granted whatever it was that might or might not happen. She said ‘Existence’ and when I asked her ‘is not that another name for God?’ she said ‘no, it is an energy?’ She ended up desperately pleading a case that there must be ‘something’, because she has ‘felt’ it ... so we wandered off into talking about my second favourite subject – sex.

Later on I sat by myself under the stars and mused a bit on the conversation. I thought back to the time I was passionately searching for freedom. What would I have made of some-one who said ‘You don’t have to do anything – just wait for God’s Grace’ and ‘you can’t do anything about finding freedom – and the very act of trying is a hindrance’?

It might have been a tempting cop-out, but my being ruthlessly honest with myself always prevented me from the trap of fatalism or resignation. Also, it always involved a surrendering of my will to someone or something else. To be a mere puppet in some Cosmic play, with others puling my strings, was not the freedom I sought.

It’s a tough challenge I’ve set myself here, but I am determined to be a successful author.

Best of luck! It would have been a best seller (during the dinosaur era).

No, the Ancient texts and scriptures date from the dinosaur era – well, almost! Certainly from the era when the earth was regarded as flat, when the sun, moon and stars were regarded in fear as gods, demons and spirits, and physical survival was a constant and actual desperation. The books of myths, fairy tales and wisdom from this era we still hold in sacred unquestioning esteem ... curious. But then again some people even believe, despite the lack of any historical factual evidence that way back then there existed some mythical Golden Age!

*

and I do like writing, but it seems I have picked an unpopular subject.

Try writing children’s stories or fairy tales.

The new-Age bookshop where I live offers thousands upon thousands of books – all fairy tales of Ancient healings and esoteric medicines, divinations and prophecies, energies and auras, folk tales and legends, gurus and shamans, fairies and goddesses, sacred sites and cosmic planes, chakras and levels of consciousness, telepathy and spiritualism, visions and entities, ESP and UFO’s, somas and souls, mysticism and meditation, rituals and rites, reincarnations and past lives, karmas and dharmas, devils and demons. The market for fairy tales has been well and truly flooded.

Conciseness, obviously, is not a gift derived from your philosophy.

Just a short, concise note back.

Ah, well spotted. Yes this new ‘philosophy’ has curios quality that it is so new that these are amongst the first words written on it. Richard has clocked up about 300,000 words and Vineeto and I have notched up about another 100,000. The ‘tried and true’ has billions of words and can be found in every bookshop, library, school, temple and church. It has the burden of tradition and the past. But replying to you on the net this moment is as fresh as it gets – not a scrap of Ancient Wisdom in these fingertips. Unlike the ‘energies’ and affective transmissions of the spirit-ual, the only way to describe what I am talking of is by words, so I write.

The writer 1 seems to have a different definition of Gnosis from both the Britannica and the Oxford,

True.

Maybe the writer 1 should set Britannica and Oxford straight on his ‘knowing’.

Is it necessary to set anyone straight?

Not at all, if you merely wish to blindly follow those whose knowledge is so profound, mystical and imaginary that it cannot be put into words. And anyone who tries is ‘still proud of their cleverness’. I see ample evidence in the Eastern Religions of an an over-bearing pride and arrogance in their insistence on ignorance, unquestioning obedience and acceptance. The physical conditions of suffering, poverty, disease, repression, caste structure etc. bears testimony to the inherent failure of the Guru system. Rather than being proud of their cleverness the Gurus have an enormous pride in their own ‘knowing’ and an investment in keeping others ignorant and lower. No disciples = no Gurus.

I genuinely would be interested if you have heard this elsewhere as Richard, Vineeto and I have searched high and low through a lot of the voluminous ‘New-Age’ and all of the all-encompassing Ancient Wisdom. We have found no one who has challenged the Eastern spiritual and religious texts, let alone proposed that ... EVERYONE HAS GOT IT 180 DEGREES WRONG, EVERYONE.

Have you read any writings of Yashua ben Yosef?

No, and a web search revealed nothing.

Have you read the ‘Final Secret to the Illuminati’ by Robert Anton Wilson?

Well, there are certainly some way out psychic phenomena such as out-of-body experiences, Altered States of Consciousness, near-death experiences, UFO sightings, channelling, etc. but from my study of them there appears to be ‘nothing new under the sun’. The new ones that occur seem to be only variations on Ancient beliefs. People would see chariots or horse and buggies in the sky, whereas nowadays they see space-crafts. Talking to the spirits was later called ‘seances’ and the phenomena is now called channelling. In the New Age it seems to me that there is nothing that does not fit in with ‘consensual reality’, or if it is slightly different, more obscure or more Ancient, even better, as a ‘new’ fashion is a very marketable item.

As for Robert Anton Wilson, I checked up on him on the net and found that he calls himself an ‘agnostic’ and then goes on to say ‘I don’t believe anything’. Given that an agnostic is one who believes that ‘the ultimate cause (God) and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable or that human knowledge is limited to experience’ methinks he is mightily confused. An agnostic essentially wants a bet each way – he sits straddling the fence neither committed to the metaphysical nor the physical.

And what about this for a doom and gloom belief, from his introduction on his web-site –

‘My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any need to think about anything and might be considered clinically dead under current medical standards, where absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended.’

Sort of ‘life should forever remain a mystery to be lived’, which translates as ‘seek but dare not find’ – unless you find God, of course, and then ‘thou shalt be truly blessed’

And what about this quote –

‘Most philosophers have known, at least since around 500 BC, that the world perceived by our senses is not ‘the real world’ but a construct we create – our own private work of art’.

Or this one –

‘Personally I also suspect, or guess, or intuit, that the more unconventional of my models here – the ones involving Higher Intelligence, such as the Cabbalistic Holy Guardian Angel or the extraterrestrial from Sirius – are necessary working tools at certain stages of the meta-programming process’.

I think he is a prime candidate for the ‘sticky tape on the mouth’ test. What he writes of is just another version of ‘consensual reality’ – enshrined in the concepts of Eastern religion as – ‘the physical world is an illusion and the inner (imaginary) world is real’

So, it’s been good to dig a little deeper into life after death, it’s such a good subject to discuss.

Are you denying the technological and physical changes that have occurred this century in medicine, transport, science, communications, agriculture, etc. The very computer you sit at now is a marvellous new thing, an amazing machine linked to a communication network the likes of which would have astounded anyone a mere century ago.

Only on this planet. On other planets, with higher technological understanding, we are still quite primitive.

In the interests of brevity and an attempt to keep our conversation on this planet and about us human beings – I’ll pass on that one. I wave the white flag in surrender.

Have you read any writings of Yashua ben Yosef?

No, and a web search revealed nothing.

It just goes to show you the shortcomings of technology. In the world of mystics there is much known of this adept.

Well, as you may have gathered, I am not a fan of mysticism but I’m not going to surrender so easily on this one. I’ll have a few guesses and you can let me know if I’m close –

Is he:

• a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, or of the Great White Lodge?
• from Earth or from Sirius, is he of human form, is he alive, or was he ever alive, is he dead or did he never die?
• a famous Jewish channeller,
• or does he sell massage tables in MG road?
• was he the secretary of Crowley’s Argenteum Astrum,
• or the guy on the left of Brian when he first preached to the crowd after the balcony collapsed?
• did he get thrown out of Eleusis for knocking back too much ergot,
• or is he the barman at the London Spiritualists Alliance?
• Jesus Christ in the disguise of his second (or first) father’s name Joseph.

Look, I guess you can tell I am out of my depth a bit here and floundering badly. I’ll hoist the white flag and we can call it 2-nil.

Have you read the ‘Final Secret to the Illuminati’ by Robert Anton Wilson? <Snip>
Your lengthy response on Mr. Wilson is like the blind man who touches the tail of an elephant and proclaims it is just like a rope.

I guess you want to call it 3-nil, but for me that was more like the goose in the bottle, who, while watching the grass grow by itself, got distracted by the finger pointing to the moon.

But I am on a ‘try to be brief’ promise, so I think I’ll say goodnight.

It’s been fun, wiz No. 11, but it is becoming very clear that our interests are on different planets.

Something I am curious about is that you stated that – ‘I, too, have seen the madness of believing in gods, heaven worlds and all that’ and yet you continued on following Eastern religion and philosophy. Did you not see the madness in Eastern religion or was your seeing based on a rejection of the Western religious world-view and the adoption of the Eastern religious world-view? Many spiritual seekers tend to wear rose coloured glasses when looking at the East and fail to see the appalling ignorance, arrogance, oppression, poverty, class structure and religious persecutions that is the result of thousands of years of intense devotion and practice of Eastern religions and philosophy. It is only now that some brave scholars are beginning to question, investigate and document the Eastern religious ‘madness of believing in gods, heaven worlds and all that’. Two of the studies that I found particularly revealing about the Zen tradition is ‘Zen at War’ by Brian Victoria Weatherhill, 1997 and ‘The Rape Of Nanking’ (The Forgotten Holocaust of World War I) – Iris Chang, Basic Books, 1997.

Methinks the next generation may not be so blindly infatuated with the East as ours was.

I agree with most of what you have posted.

It does seem that your agreement is very selective, as is your view of what constitutes religion. The root of the word is the Latin religio meaning ‘obligation, bond, scruple, reverence’, and its definition is – 1 A state of life bound by religious vows; the condition of belonging to a religious order. 2 Belief in or sensing of some superhuman controlling power or powers, entitled to obedience, reverence, and worship, or in a system defining a code of living, esp. as a means to achieve spiritual or material improvement; acceptance of such belief as a standard of spiritual and practical life; the expression of this in worship etc. 3 A particular system of such belief. 4 Devotion, fidelity; conscientiousness; pious attachment. Oxford Dictionary

Most spiritual seekers pursuing Eastern Religion and philosophy are extremely loath to acknowledge the fact that they are followers of, and deeply immersed in, a religion. It was only that I had a flash one night that I was deeply involved in the ‘madness of believing in gods, heaven worlds and all that’ that helped me to pull out before it was too late. Mind you, it took another 3 years and the blatant ‘other’-worldliness of a major Satori experience before I began to really come to my senses.

You are on record as saying –

‘I sometimes feel like not ever writing or saying another word, but I am grateful for all those who went before us and did speak to help point us in the right direction.’

– which does seem to me that you are following an ancient tradition of spiritualism. Could I stretch my assumption to say you are a follower of Eastern religion and philosophy or would this be too presumptuous?

I would like to be clear about what it is you are agreeing with and what you are not agreeing with. Simply avoiding, feinting agreement or dismissing my questions is no answer.

*

In order to keep this discussion simple and on-track, I’ll summarize your position to date, as you have recently posted it on this list:

‘The development of the ego has caused untold suffering for all creatures on this planet. But it, seen from a different perspective, has also done something that could not have happened without it.’

Thus it is our personal identification (ego) which has caused the untold suffering on the planet, but the suffering is necessary (‘could not have happened without it’) in order that a few people can realize this and undergo an ego-death.

‘All we can do is go as deeply into the whole process of how the mind is identifying with beliefs, images, fear, suffering, hatred, etc., etc.,’

Thus the suffering is endemic, cannot be stopped – and is indeed necessary – and all we can do is go deeply into a process of dis-identifying with the suffering on earth.

So you propose that human suffering on earth is not a problem, but the mind’s identifying with it is. From where I live that sounds awfully like a process of denial and dissociation – the essential process espoused by all Eastern religion and philosophy.

I have never followed any Eastern religion or philosophy. I have never had a guru, teacher, or any guides. I have read what many had to say and after I awakened it became easy to see who was awake and who wasn’t. To those who were awake and doing the best to express the inexpressible to others I am grateful.

You do seem to be desperate to dissociate your present state of ‘being consciously aware of the Wholeness of Being’ from the long Eastern religious tradition of altered states of consciousness because that would not sit at all well with your previous realization – ‘that religion has failed to bring about anything close to peace, and in fact has caused far more suffering than any other system in the world...’

However, you are also on record on this list as saying –

‘Some of the Zen teachers were very clear in what they had to say. It is not their fault if the people they tried to awaken didn’t understand them. It clearly didn’t do lot to change the world, but their understanding was right on in many cases’.

... and yet you quote Eastern Religion and philosophy in support of your case and trot out the hoary old argument that it is not the teacher’s fault but always the fault of those who follow the teachings. Being an awakened teacher yourself this does seem to be a self-serving argument and a classic way of denying any responsibility for the fact ‘that religion has failed to bring about anything close to peace, and in fact has caused far more suffering than any other system in the world’ ...as you yourself originally said.

‘I sometimes feel like not ever writing or saying another word, but I am grateful for all those who went before us and did speak to help point us in the right direction’.

I can only assume that ‘all those who went before us’ refers to all the awakened/Enlightened ones who helped to point you in the right direction. So you say ‘I have never had a guru, teacher, or any guides’ but you have had ‘all those who went before us’ to ‘help point us in the right direction’. Are you not splitting hairs just a wee bit too fine, or does the word ‘us’ not refer to you?

‘I had been teaching before this and after it became very difficult to find anyone who would listen because I no longer talked in religious or spiritual terms.’

Again it does seem that, at least prior to your latest realization, that you were immersed in the religious/spiritual world that ‘has failed to bring about anything close to peace, and in fact has caused far more suffering than any other system in the world’... to use your words. It must be such a relief to have to not be a part of that tradition anymore and to have moved on or ‘gone beyond’ ...to use your term.

*

Over these many years, things have become ever clearer. I have seen that it isn’t so much that we are acting from our animal instinctual conditioning as it is what took place as we developed the ability to abstract life into words, pictures, concepts, etc. As that process developed what had been our instinct to protect our bodies was carried over into feeling a need to protect the images we had of ourselves. The ego has always been just conditioned thought that formed as a sense of personal identity.

This is the old-fashioned out-dated Eastern philosophical view of human existence on earth. The East has always seen the physical world as a dream, an illusion, Samsara, Maya, etc., and thinking was seen as the link to suffering in this dream world. Basically the idea is if you stop thinking about the suffering in the physical world it will go away.

Where I am coming from will never be out-dated. It has been around forever because it is real. But few have seen it. You must have been into a Hindu spiritual teaching. They are always talking about this sort of thing, the higher teachings of Buddhists see the wonder and beauty in this world. It is not that the world is not real, it is the images that separate the human mind from that reality are illusion. No one I respect says to stop thinking. Just watch it and see what it tells you about the way you see the world and how the mind works. When one is just simply aware in the moment thinking can stop by itself. It is in those moments one can awaken to the real.

In other words, when thinking stops, awareness happens and one can awaken to the real. Therefore it is thinking that stands in the way of what is real being revealed. All Eastern spiritual practices, that ‘have been around forever’, point to this way of awakening to what is real, hence the emphasis on meditation, stilling the mind, practicing ‘right’ thinking and ‘right’ awareness to steer you away from the illusionary dreamlike, abstract images as well as the seductions of earthy sensual pleasure. Or, as you put it –

But by opening up to a far more subtle view of what is happening will bring them to a point that the thinking mind will just drop away and What Is will be clear.

This ‘far more subtle view of the world’ does require that one shuts down or distorts sensible thinking and sensate perception in order to see ‘all wars, all hatred, all suffering’ that are actually happening to flesh and blood human beings as only images or believe that they are only caused by conditioned thoughts of the thinking mind.

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