To finish off I would like to ask you what qualities you see in a realized person, how should one live on this earth ideally in your view?

The main quality I see evident in a self-realized person is megalomania –

‘Delusions of grandeur or self-importance, esp. resulting from mental illness; a passion for grandiose schemes; lust for power.’ Oxford Dictionary

When full-blown, this delusion becomes the condition of theomania.

The other qualities are the full range of human passions and feelings, some of which have been subjugated to an extent that they only rarely emerge to public notice. I have personally seen and experienced many of the ‘self-realized’ being angry, pissed off, annoyed, frustrated, melancholy, feeling sorrow for themselves and others, feeling lost, feeling lonely, etc. It does make one wonder what is the substance of the psychic power they hold over people and why people surrender so willingly to their power?

To Richard: Despite the fact of having had a substantial peak experience (PCE) some 15 years ago and a substantial experience of Divine Love (ASC) some 3 years ago ...

In view of my current conversation with Richard, I am interested to hear anything you may care to contribute on the differences between the two.

What occurred to me follows on from what I have been saying about Virtual Freedom. With an Altered State of Consciousness it was always experienced as ‘I’ went Somewhere Else – a world of blissful feelings, an ‘escape’ from the world as-it-is. With a peak experience the world as-it-is, is experienced as perfect and pure, and I, this flesh and blood body, was as perfect and as pure as the actual world. The closest one can get to this, whilst remaining normal, is to live in Virtual Freedom – whereby the necessity to have a feeling or affective distance from the world as-it-is is eventually reduced to paper thinness. When someone asks me if I am free yet, I find myself raising my hand with thumb touching first finger and saying ‘that close’. It is a sign that ‘I’am doing the most ‘I’ can to precipitate it.

Another musing I had the other day concerned the common view of the word freedom as used in spiritual circles. Freedom is seen as an event, usually termed Enlightenment, whereby one miraculously escapes from the illusion of the real world, its problems, concerns and worries and is magically re-united with one’s Source from whence one came from originally. Thus ‘I’ am no longer lost, lonely and frightened for I have come Home and am overwhelmed by feelings of Divine Love. Thus one leaves the ‘real’ world and emerges into the ‘divine’ world – an illusion based on an illusion. The process usually undertaken is to devote oneself to living the ‘divine’ life, in preparation for a final ‘crossing’ over whereby one becomes Divine. This is, of course, all played out in the fantasy world of passionate feelings and has not a fig to do with the actual. Enlightenment is but a shift of identity from normal, afraid of death to Divine and believing one’s Self to be immortal.

Your conversations with Richard set me thinking about this business of self-immolation and the difference between what we are talking of and the spiritual ‘ego-death’. In my reading of the Enlightened Ones’ ‘ego death’ experiences the drama and trauma involved sounds so convincing that one would indeed give credence to a wondrous transformation such that one had found something genuine – one’s Real Self, one’s original face, the Source, Divine Love, the Truth or whatever. There is no doubt that a transformation of their identity has taken place, that they have suffered a death of their personal sense of self – ego – and as a reward have become a universal, all encompassing, glorious Self – God by whatever name. This I have understood and have personally experienced in an hour long Altered State of Consciousness, or Satori, whereby I was Love personified, and all was Glorious and Golden. Also as the result of many Pure Consciousness Experiences and some 18 months of Virtual Freedom I well know the difference between a ‘self’-less state of Actual Freedom and the ‘ego-less/glorified soul’ state of Enlightenment.

But I still had a nag, and the nag was how to explain it schematically. It must be my architectural training, but often processes can be schematically represented in a way that aids clarity. There are about 2 million words on the AF web-site and many are devoted to this very difference between Actual Freedom and the traditional Pseudo Freedom, so we have come up with two schematics that set out the difference.

The schematics are too big to post to the list, so we have put them on the AF web-site for perusal.

In order to make the differences between AF and the spiritual ‘ego-death’ clear we produced a second schematic that indicates the famed so called self-less state of the Buddhas and Enlightened Ones is but the result of a process of self-aggrandizement.

The diagram is on the same page as the other one. It’s a very glitzy diagram for a very glitzy transformation. I think it’s clear what happens – a shift in identity from mere mortal to Divine Immortal that is well documented in all the spiritual texts – it’s just that people are so seduced by the fantasy that they will live on ‘after their body dies’, that they are blinded to facts. An interesting and rarely acknowledged facet of the idea of God is that to have the Good one must still have Evil lurking somewhere, to have the Divine one needs the Diabolical, to have God one needs the Devil, by whatever name. The spiritual merely sublimates personal fear and aggression (the bad) for one becomes God (the good) and therefore protected by one’s own imaginary aura or cocoon of Divine Love. Again this is well documented in all the spiritual fables, in all the religious fairy stories – it is only passionate belief and the resulting blindness to facts that prevents the whole silly nonsense becoming apparent.

Despite the fact of having had a substantial peak experience (PCE) some 15 years ago and a substantial experience of Divine Love (ASC) some 3 years ago there was still a piece missing. It all seemed to involve either a looking back into my past or sideways to your experiences and trying to draw a parallel. The other nagging issue was a feeling of the unfairness or even perversity of being born into the Human Condition, of being who I thought and felt I was, finding out it was a pretty rotten mess and then having to die, or self-immolate in order to be free. To do that in order to become Enlightened is one thing as one gets to have worshipping disciples, psychic power, fame and wealth – ‘Money for nothing and your chicks for free’ as I cheekily put it. Becoming God seems a not to bad reward for the effort involved – well on the face of it anyway, as long as you are not too discriminating. Of course, once you see the down-sides of Enlightenment, it very rapidly loses appeal – but at least ‘I’ am around to enjoy it.<snip>

The other morning a peak experience snuck up on me – after a particularly good ‘romp’ with Vineeto. It was one of particular clarity marked by a complete absence of any sense of ‘self’ or ‘being’ within my body. All was perfect and pure with a magical intensity that was palpable. Not merely static – a sense of the whole universe happening at this moment with a vibrancy that was sensately experienced.

I was quickly able to discern the fact that, if I had launched ‘myself’ into that experience, it would have rapidly changed to ‘me’ taking on the experience for ‘myself’. ‘I’ would have become that experience, ‘I’ would have become the experiencer of that pure and perfect immediate happening-ness of it all. ‘I’ would have become the experience of the universe happening. ‘I’ would have become the Universe – or at very least, at One with it. I could have taken that experience and translated or interpreted it for myself, as I had done in the past in an ASC whereby I became Divine Love.

However, this experience was different as ‘I’ was absent and I was able to be appreciatively aware of what was occurring. I was able to clearly see that there could be an almost instinctual grab to make the experience ‘mine’. If one follows the spiritual path, I was at the point of Enlightenment – ‘I’ only needed to jump in, boots and all, and away one goes – Divinity, Immortality, Oneness, Infinite, Timeless, Spaceless, Fearless, Blissful and the rest. All this, however, was apparent afterwards, on reflection.

What was obvious at the time was that it is the physical universe that is always present, eternal, infinite, pure and perfect – exquisitely and pristinely so. And that I, this flesh and blood body, is the intelligent bit that goes ‘Wow! – how extraordinary’. And I am the universe experiencing itself as a flesh and blood human being.

It is for this that I would willingly sacrifice my grubby ‘self’ for – no matter how ‘cleaned up’, no matter how good Virtual Freedom is, there is no comparison. For this ‘I’ will depart the scene and nothing else. This is what Enlightenment merely mimics, as a feeling, but with such appalling consequences of narcissism and Self-aggrandizement. The Enlightened Ones had and have feet of clay – to claim to ‘Be the Universe itself’ is an insanity on a incredulous scale and makes clear that whole business of God and God-men is nothing more than institutionalized insanity.

Mr. Reanney – At this stage in the evolution of our minds, our experience of reality is like that of the shadow, a limited, impoverished ghost-image projected into the three-dimensions of our present (average) mode of consciousness by the invisible (to us) four-dimensional ‘truth structure’ that lies beyond and behind it, extended in time as we are extended in space. I cannot stress too strongly that it is this four-dimensional truth structure which is the universe’s reality. What we call objective reality, our everyday commonsense world, is but a dim phantom construct of the timeless hyperstructure that exists, in or perhaps as, the ‘mind of God’, to use religious imagery. Yet, just as our present three-dimensional state of consciousness evolved from the one dimensional mode of our remote ancestors, so there is abundant evidence that the four-dimensional mode is struggling to be born in the homo sapiens species at this human moment in the cosmic story. We are almost there.

Whether a four-dimensional state of consciousness is the ultimate truth of the universe or whether beyond this lie higher states of being that extend into an infinitely rich, multi-dimensional hyperspace and hypertime we do not know. One day our descendants may. D. Reanney, The Death of Forever, p. 205

Having ‘confirmed’ that matter, space and time are illusionary we then have to evolve to a four-dimensional state of consciousness to access the ultimate truth. This theory gels so neatly with the mystical Altered State of Consciousness or Higher Consciousness as to make a mockery of theoretical mathematics, physics and cosmology. see AF Library

It is this everyday happiness and harmlessness that gives one the confidence to pursue the unimaginable – the living of the Pure Consciousness Experience 24 hours a day, every day.

It reminds me that whenever I have written, or said to anyone, that one of the reasons I abandoned the spiritual world was ‘that I did not like how the ‘Enlightened Ones’ were with their women, I didn’t like their lifestyle, and I didn’t like how they were with each other!’ – I have had no response. Sort of a blank look, as though – ‘What is he on about?’ The Divine Status of the Gurus apparently exempts them from regarding and treating their fellow human beings as exactly that – fellow human beings. This superior and ‘Holier than thou’ attitude also permeates into the minds and hearts of their disciples as they worship, idolize and attempt to emulate the Gurus. Why do humans persistently worship the elite few God-men as having achieved the pinnacle of human achievement yet persistently ignore their ‘personal’ lives and behaviour when ‘off stage’. There is no ‘on-stage’ and ‘off-stage’ in actualism, there is no divine life and secular life, there is no other place or other life – be a past life, a next life or a life beyond physical death.

Now this is, at the moment, just the experience of a few but I would say, on the basis of the evidence so far, that in order to avoid the trap of enlightenment, one needs to dismantle the beliefs that form one’s social identity in order to avoid the trap of becoming yet another Grand and Glorious identity. I would suppose that, as more and more people become actually free, that this ‘step outside Humanity’ will become less fearful and dramatic as one will have the confidence of knowing that others have done it.

As I wrote in my Journal –

... ‘So far, only Richard had left this squabbling, sorrowful ‘Humanity’ behind but he had gone a torturous route through Enlightenment and out the other side. I saw myself as a pioneer on a new, much easier, more direct course. I am full of admiration for the Richard who did it. He likened it to discovering a new continent in the days of old, in a tiny, leaky sailing ship, taking years for the perilous journey. Once discovered it was then easier for others, and now people can fly there comfortably in hours. I likened myself similarly, knowing what I was looking for, but plotting an easier course, avoiding the ‘Rock of Enlightenment’ – the lure of the Glamour, Glory and Glitz – that had thwarted all previous attempts.’ ... Peter’s Journal, ‘God’

This avoiding the ‘Rock of Enlightenment’ is at the very crux of tackling beliefs – unless the belief in God, an after-life – any form of ‘something else’, ‘somewhere else’ or ‘sometime else’ – is fully investigated and de-bunked you could end up Enlightened. And for those who have experienced a PCE, to end up a God-man is but a piffling waste. Then once one has done one’s homework, demolished one’s social identity one takes the final step with confidence born out of surety of the many PCEs experienced in Virtual Freedom, not to mention the glimpses of ASC’s experienced as a contrast.

You are right, I have not read too much about things related to actual freedom. I read quite a bit of Richard’s web site when I got on this list in December but then I stopped reading it. I enjoyed ‘Attentiveness ...’ a lot. In fact, I got a ‘gem’ from it, and because of that I am doing new experiments.

Ah, I see you have found at least something that is of interest. In fact, Richard has some of the best descriptions of attentiveness and awareness I have ever seen. The spiritual ‘Masters’ were always so secretive and so vague in describing their experiences and deliberately so.

It is very apparent that the only danger in applying Richard’s method is that one could become Enlightened. It is such an instinctually driven act of narcissism that it takes an awareness that far exceeds the normal spiritual ‘half-baked’ efforts to avoid the entrapment. I wrote my journal largely as an expose of the fakery and fraudulence of the Master-disciple business and the blatant abuse of psychic and psychological power by the supposed God-men. The facts of following Masters as opposed to the dearly held beliefs. Richard’s Journal is an insider’s view as he was Enlightened for 11 years before finally freeing himself of the delusionary state.

You state ‘There is no Love ... no affective faculty ... spirits and other worlds are clearly seen as escapists nonsense?’ This is the other world, consciousness is not limited to our senses only, the mind in a perfectly clear state is an organ of vision, not hallucination; but inner (which is outer) vision.

I have gone to lengths to describe the difference between what I am describing – a pure consciousness experience or peak experience as it is sometimes termed – and what you are describing which is clearly an altered sate of consciousness known as a Satori or Awakening in Eastern religion or an Epiphany in Western religion

An altered sate of consciousness experience is not limited to the physical senses as the neo-cortex – the modern brain, capable of thinking, planning and reflecting – is swamped by chemicals from the ancient instinctual brain producing deep-felt euphoric emotions of salvation, gratitude, and grandeur. These feelings are usually accompanied by imaginary visions of a religious nature, dependant solely upon the person’s culture or current inclination. Thus it is that Christians can ‘hear’, ‘see’ or ‘feel’ the Lord or the white light leading to Heaven while Eastern religious followers feel Oneness, Wholeness, etc and feel Godliness, God intoxicated or whatever. The tell-tale clue of an altered state of consciousness experience is that the ‘new perception’ is always cultural or religious specific and it is always accompanied by powerful emotions triggered by chemical flows from the instinctual primitive brain.

This is not a motivated state, but actual.

Many altered states of consciousness experiences happen during a dark night of the soul when thoughts of hopelessness, depression, futility and even suicide are running. The very desperate near death thoughts can induce a near death experience that triggers a chemical flow to the body and brain that produces euphoric feelings. In this case the motivation may not have been to seek an ASC but they can occur and their nature is dependant solely upon the person’s culture or current inclination. Whenever a person is on a particular spiritual path, be it Western or Eastern they can often induce an ASC by various practices and the resultant euphoric feelings and ‘other’ worldly imaginations are most definitely motivated and indeed are eagerly sought after and highly prized.

As for actual, the definition of actual is –

active, practical, 1 Pertaining to or exhibited in acts; practical, active. 2 Existing in act or fact; real. 3 In action or existence at the time; present, current. Oxford Dictionary

An ASC is undoubtedly real to the person experiencing it is experienced as both imagination (cerebral) and emotion (affective) – a powerful combination. What is missing, however, is any evidence that what is being experienced does exist in fact. Many people recently saw a spacecraft in the tail of a comet but this vision was found not to be factual, as in actually existing. Many people have heard prophecies of Jesus’ second coming but he is yet to materialize as a flesh and blood body. Many people feel we are all one but the facts of human existence on earth belie the actuality of these visions. Many people talk to and hear answers from long dead God-men and all are culturally influenced and many are contradictory or wrong in fact.

ASCs, in whatever form they manifest, are indeed real, but they are certainly not actual – as in existing in act or fact, capable of being evidenced only by the physical senses of the human brain, practical as in being down-to-earth, active as in physically existing in this moment of time.

And other people will see the Lord, and others will see spaceships in the tails of comets and others will hear prophetic messages and others will see the fires of damnation and others will see little aliens with egg-heads and almond shaped eyes ... and all of them are real to the person experiencing them. Imagination is indeed ‘ part and parcel of the human mechanism ’ and is usually harmless enough but when combined with spiritual fervour and passion, religious fanaticism is the unfortunate and inevitable result.

This capacity for imagination is imbibed with mother’s milk – the first stories we are told and the first view we have is of an ‘other-world’ of fairy stories, fictionary romance, heroism, tales of good and evil – all totally imaginary and having no relevance to the physical, actual world of people, things and events in which we live.

We are, in fact, inducted into believing the imaginary world being primary and real, and subsequently to regard the physical, actual world as secondary and illusionary. This primary imaginary world includes both a ‘real’ world-view and its associated ‘spiritual’ world-view, neither of which are actual. This obsession with imagination, belief, trust, faith and hope offers a continuing haven of denial of the facts of the Human Condition and prevents us from getting up off our bums, or up from our lotus position, and taking the necessary action that will lead to the eventual elimination of malice and sorrow from this fair planet.

I think Mr. Siddhartha Gautama has a lot to answer for in his teachings of sorrow. Pity he is long dead for I wouldn’t mind asking him a few questions as to why he believes ‘Life is fundamentally disappointment and suffering’ – the first and fundamental principle of his Four Noble Truths. It is from this belief that suffering is necessary in the human condition that the feeling of compassion arises – the agreement to mutual suffering that prevents anyone from breaking out of the cycle, even when they enter into the imaginary meta-physical world of religious belief and all that entails.

No. 11, I have no doubt at all that your experiences are real and convincing for I have had many spiritual experiences myself. It is just that I have headed off in the opposite direction to tackle the illusion of darkness and Evil rather than settle for transcendence into light and God. The only reason I was able to do this was because I acknowledged the failure of any form of transcendence to bring peace on earth ... and I found something that works in that it confronts and eliminates all illusion.

What you are pointing to is the fact that the psychological and psychic entity that dwells within each human flesh and blood body has three ways to experience the world – cerebrally, affectively and sensately. In the spiritual world, primary emphasis is placed on affective experience – feelings, emotions and the tender instinctual passions – while common sense thinking and actual sensate experience are actively denigrated. By solely identifying with one’s feelings and passions, a potpourri of psychological imaginations and psychic experiences are available to the spiritual seeker, the nature of which will be dependent upon the culture and religious tradition one is immersed in. These traditional psychic experiences, visions, transmissions and the like, are atavistic in nature – so ancient and so deeply ingrained as to be overwhelmingly convincing

Someone else wrote to me from the mailing list talking of psychic experiences, and I will post my reply as it relevant to your experience –

I would hazard a guess that you are picking up on the psychic ‘energy’, or ‘vibes’, of others in these situations. I have had many similar situations whilst in groups and there is an overwhelming surge of chemicals that emanates when one feels safe and assured in the company of others. There is an instinctual gratitude that one feels protected, sheltered, included, wanted, loved. This can even manifest itself as a deep feeling of ‘coming home’, of having found one’s true self and having found one’s true friends. Collectively, this is discernible as a fierce group loyalty and a feeling of ‘we are the chosen ones’. The opposite feeling, when picking up on the psychic energy of others, is to feel isolated, an outsider, under suspicion, unwanted and unloved. These feelings, however, are usually quickly dismissed for they lead down the path of loneliness, sorrow, depression and despair. Many people simply hang around in spiritual groups for the feel-good psychic energy rather than risk abandoning the group entirely for that would mean having to face and deal with the unwanted or undesirable emotions.

When exploring emotions and feelings it is quite extraordinary to discover how much of what we think and feel is influenced by others. The bottom line that always drove me into this investigation was the evidence of the harm this collective psychic energy can manifest in the world. Mass hysteria, be it for good or evil, has produced some of the most horrendous acts of violence and brutality – all committed by normally peace-loving people who are overcome with the extreme passion generated by what is known as a group high.

The psychological and psychic entity within us is driven by the body’s survival program to be psychically on-guard, continually searching for who is friend to love and who is foe to hate, but even with friends our suspicion, intuition or gut feelings will never let us drop our guard completely.

Thus, actual intimacy with other human beings can only occur in a ‘self’-less state, either temporarily in a PCE, or permanently in actual freedom. Peter, List B, No 10

The psychic world of communication between people is a fascinating, bizarre and bewildering phenomenon that acts to bind human beings into fearful groups, forever in competition with other groups on the basis of imaginary morality of good and evil and arbitrary values of right and wrong. This form of psychic radar, communication, intuition, transmission, or whatever other name, while appearing very real to those indulging in it, is not actual.

As for ‘and if the experience is Real then to deny it is an expression of fear’ – all these experiences are indeed very real, and sometimes very Real, but they are not actual. The only thing that traps people in this psychic spiritual world is fear of their deep-seated fears. Rather than dare to explore these psychic fears and our dark side, the traditional path has been one of transcendence into the psychic world of good, God and Light.

Was this merely a poet writing poetry or talking of his on-going experience? I have yet to see any evidence that relationships between spiritual people are fundamentally different to those between ordinary people, while any relationships that the theomaniacal Enlightened Ones have with other human beings is decidedly inequitable, undignified and bizarre. As for peace within spiritual communities, the facts speak for themselves as to the endemic covert kowtowing infighting, jockeying, cronyism, power battles, etc. that lay beneath the surface of all communities. And when the Master dies, as he / she inevitably does, overt feuding factionism always erupts.

Yes, you have got it. The fact that the last century was the bloodiest to date proves that the traditional solutions of instilling morals, ethics and values into humans by carrot and stick, or the spiritual solutions of praying to mythical gods for salvation or humbling ourselves before deluded God-men are clearly not working. We need to do something radical different, something that acknowledges and addresses the essential issue – that human malice and sorrow is the direct result of genetically-encoded animal instinctual passions. If this daring to tackle the problem head-on is seen as ‘throwing the baby out with the bath water’, then so be it.

I too am new to the list and was impressed with the clarity of your post and the fact that you wrote of a personal experience, as opposed to the usual parroting of the words of others.

I have been studying Andrew’s teaching for three years. I tend to approach life in a very intellectual way, so I was literally studying like at a university: reading, listening, and thinking. I thought about enlightenment and its implications. I never understood what the word ‘enlightenment’ meant. So I thought, ‘mmmm, yes! Enlightenment is a secret indeed. Studying the implications of enlightenment always made me very excited. After scrutinizing Andrew’s teaching for three years, I concluded: ‘these implications all make perfect sense, they are all very coherent and consistent, and they all come from something I don’t understand, that secret’. My intellectual approach resulted in many things. To mention two, I scrutinized the implications of enlightenment and concluded that they make perfect sense.

As a radical proposition, I would offer that the secret lure of enlightenment is in its seductive and instinctual appeal – the opportunity to feel Oneness, Timeless and Spaceless, a chance to leave the ‘real’ world behind and the promise of immortality, the continuation of one’s self or soul, after physical death. This seductive appeal gives rise to the feeling that enlightenment – literally becoming a God-on-earth – makes perfect sense, yet it is, in fact, an utterly non-sensical, purely-imaginary delusion. This utterly selfish feeling causes otherwise reasonably intelligent human beings to abandon any common sense and fervently accept the ancient myths and puerile beliefs in Gods and Goddesses, good and evil spirits, ‘other’ worlds, and ‘other’ lives.

Secondly, I started to think about thinking. That thinking lead to the understanding why enlightenment is a secret, why it cannot be understood by my mind.

Indeed, the Ancient Ones were right about this. Enlightenment is beyond the mind, for enlightenment is a feeling-only state, a product of impassioned imagination given a seeming credence by thousands of years of mythical tales, shamanistic rituals and practices and fearful isolation. Enlightenment is an altered state of consciousness whereby one’s normal consciousness – ‘who’ one thinks and feels one is – is permanently replaced by a new and deliberately cultivated identity – one that feels Divine, Timeless, Spaceless and Immortal. The small self becomes the grand Self – a blatantly obvious, proudly cherished and humbly prized alteration in one’s state of consciousness or an obvious shift of identity.

In those three years, for me, thinking was everything I could do. It was as if I was standing in the middle of a landscape, the Land of Thinking. I could only see land as far as my eye could reach. By thinking about thinking, I started to see that the Land of Thinking has clear borders. That land suddenly became a small island in the middle of an endless sea. This happened one week ago. The experience is extremely frightening and at the same time, it fills me with bliss that I have never experienced before. I went beyond the island that I knew, and discovered that I could still see everything very clear, better than clear, much much better than clear. I spend hours and hours looking from this endless unimaginable sea of clarity.

The experience you describe could well have been what is known as a pure consciousness experience (PCE). Everybody has had a PCE sometime in their life where, for a brief period, one magically finds oneself in a ‘self’-less state of sensate-only experiencing and the perfection and purity of the actual world – the fairy-tale like physical universe – becomes stunningly apparent.

The PCE offers a glimpse or window out from the ‘real’ world everyone is born into (and therefore assumes to be all there is), and one suddenly finds oneself in the unimaginable, magical, fairytale-like actual world.

*

Earlier I heard Andrew speaking about the fact that ‘there is only one’. I always found this very inspiring and poetic. I thought he meant that you should not wait for others to become enlightened first. Somebody must be the example, somebody must make that leap, why not you? I don’t think that I misunderstood him, but now that I see this other perspective I see that he wasn’t speaking in a poetic or metaphorical way at all. He was speaking very literally. There are literally no others!!! That is the shocking conclusion that I draw since I see that other perspective: I did not know that the secret is so incredibly big!!!!! I did not know that I am literally completely alone. I see all the people, I see that secret and realize that I am completely alone.

The feeling that ‘there is only one’ or ‘there are literally no others’ is but a feeling – an affective interpretation of the actual experience of no separation that is startlingly apparent in a PCE when the ‘self’ is temporarily absent. The aching feeling of separation arises from the fact that there are 6 billion human beings on the planet, each with a separate ‘self’, engaged in a grim and desperate instinctual battle for survival. There are also those few who have induced in themselves an altered state of consciousness whereby they have adopted a new identity – a higher ‘Self’ passionately deluded into ‘being’ Oneness. For these few unfortunates, and their followers, the feeling of aloneness is simply replaced by a feeling of Oneness. A sensible, modern aspiration is to be free of the Human Condition in total, both aloneness and Oneness, both illusion and delusion – and an unadulterated pure consciousness experience is the proof that this is possible.

I find reality as I thought it was very flimsy, a small island in an endless sea, but in no way an illusion. So I agree with No. 00 that there is something to say about how we conceive of life, it is very flimsy.

Both a real world reality and a spiritual world Reality are indeed very flimsy. Both these conceptions about what it is to be a human being and the physical, actual world we find ourselves in are illusions conceived by the psychological and psychic entity that inhabits the flesh and blood body. ‘Who’ we think and feel we are is the flimsy thing – lost lonely, frightened and very, very cunning. Eastern religious philosophy has it that ‘who’ we think we are – the ego – is the problem and teaches devotees to give full reign to ‘who’ we feel we are – the soul. Spiritual believers are continuously admonished to ‘leave your mind at the door, surrender your will and trust your feelings’. This shift of identity from ego to soul gives rise to a narcissistic soul uninhibited by intelligent thought, and there is no greater narcissism or stupefied intelligence than to believe oneself to be divine. The path from ‘self’ to ‘Self’ is a path of self-aggrandizement, not self-immolation. No wonder there is such doubt and confusion on the spiritual path for one is constantly having to deny common sense, the physical world as experienced by the senses and the fact of physical death as a finality.

Now that everything is inside out and upside down, I have no idea what to do. I can see that a very large part if not everything in my behaviour is an expression of this very flimsy notion of reality. I can see how the big movements in my behaviour and even more, the very small things in my behaviour are an expression of this flimsiness: my endless worrying, scheming, complaining, postponing, and manipulating. I decided to start there, in the little ego-trip from moment to moment, because there is no other place then that to start: now.

It is indeed extremely upsetting to have had a pure consciousness experience, or an altered state of consciousness for that matter, for as one returns to reality one’s perception is mightily changed. I had a particularly overwhelming altered state of consciousness experience when, after six months of withdrawing from the world and indulging in intensive spiritual reading and meditating, I was walking along a beach and had an experience of being ‘pure love’. I was Love, and love for everything poured out of me. ‘Existence’ and I were one, and all was love. ‘I’, as I normally was, was definitely not there – ‘I’ had become pure love. Or, put another way, I had an experience of the ‘self’ becoming the ‘Self’. For me, I realized if I continued on the path I was doomed to become enlightened, yet another Saviour of mankind, another God-on-earth and that was enough to ring the alarm bells. Somehow I knew that this was not what I was after, as I wanted to be an ordinary human being, not an extraordinary divine one like the so-called Enlightened Ones. Besides, I had not met one of these gurus whose life I would like to emulate. I didn’t like how they were with their women, I didn’t like their lifestyle and I had seen too many ‘off stage’, as it were, as emotionally driven and devilishly cunning. I had also seen enough of their power and authority, with its subsequent demand of worship and adoration, to be dismayed at the thought that the Master-disciple system represented the pinnacle of human endeavour. There had to be something better.

I remember contemplating the failure of religions, be they Eastern or Western, to deliver anything remotely resembling peace on earth while driving up the escarpment that encircles the lush semi-tropical coastal plain where I live. I stopped and looked out at the edge of the greenery, where a seemingly endless ribbon of white sand neatly bordered it from the azure ocean. Overhead great mounds of fluffy white clouds sailed by in the blue of the sky. Right in the foreground stood a group of majestic pines towering some thirty meters tall. I was struck by the vastness, the stillness and the perfection of this planet, the extraordinariness of it all, but ... and the ‘but’ are human beings! Human beings who persist in fighting and killing each other and can’t live together in peace and harmony. It was one of those moments that forced me to do something about myself, for I was one of those 6 billion people. It was exactly one of those moments that forced me to deeply question the traditional spiritual path – the tried and failed.

I never understood that ‘letting everything be as it is, and paying attention’ is a way to describe the perspective from the endless sea. It means that you no longer try to go beyond something, or try to change or understand anything. I always passionately hated meditation. I always got very restless when I tried to meditate. During teachings and other moments that I was amongst people that where meditating I always kept quiet and thought about what to eat tomorrow, my shopping list, and other practical things.

Yeah, I always passionately hated meditation as well. The idea that the meaning of life was to be found by sitting in a quiet place with one’s eyes closed, looking ‘inside’ for the meaning of life always seemed more than a little strange to me. Now I realize that meditation is but an ancient shaman practice to cut oneself off from the actual world as evidenced by the physical senses in order to more fully indulge one’s passionate imagination so as to induce an altered state of consciousness.

Now suddenly the idea of ‘letting everything be as it is’ and ‘paying attention’ makes perfect sense, because I see that ‘the truth’ is ‘in between’ all the things that you can normally pay attention to. This may sound very ‘hocus pocus’, but I really see this.

When I let everything on the little island ‘be as it is’, and ‘pay attention’, I suddenly see that in between all the things that I normally pay attention to, this groundbreaking perspective has been there all the time, all the time that I tried to go beyond that which was fascinating me, like my restless shopping list.

‘Letting everything be as it is’ is practicing acceptance of ‘me’ as I am, thus ensuring that nothing of substance will change. The spiritual ‘paying attention’, as a meditation, is to practice denial of things as they are and encourage a transcendence whereby one rises above the mundane and physical. One denies one is a mortal flesh and blood human being and aspires to become a Divine – and therefore immortal – spirit only. Thus ‘I am not the body’ and ‘I am not the mind’ become mantras of denial for the true spiritual believer. As you say, one tries to go beyond, or rise above, the world as-it-is.

Do more people have this experience? From the perspective of the little island, the truth seems a mental illness, it really frightens me to death. The past days the idea of a mental illness pops up when I REMEMBER my experience. But from the perspective of the endless sea, the life on the little island seems a dream. Often I read and heard what people like Andrew and J. Krishnamurti said about this dream. I thought they spoke in a metaphorical or poetic way, now that I see that it is literally a dream, everything is completely inside out and upside down.

Indeed, an altered state of consciousness is a mental affliction, albeit very fashionable and much sought after. The very idea that this wondrous, eternal and infinite universe was created or is maintained by a God or is some sort of illusion of God’s or human’s consciousness is nothing other than ancient mythical fables – an imaginary fear-ridden fantasy arising from primitive ignorance. To actively maintain these myths is to deny both fact and intelligence, and to actively aspire to be God or to realize God-consciousness is to court mental illness. An altered state of consciousness such as enlightenment is a mental aberration and an affront to intelligence. The spiritual world is a world of institutionalized insanity.

There is a way out of this madness and that is to actively pursue a pure consciousness experience (PCE) and have the courage to turn one’s back on the delusion of an altered state of consciousness (ASC).

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So No 1, I am not denying the validity of your experience. I am simply pointing to a sensible and vital interpretation that is not influenced by ancient ignorance and dour religion and philosophy, particularly that of the Eastern ‘spiritual’ variety that is currently fashionable amongst even the most genuine seekers of freedom.

Well, I doubt very much that this post will reach you. This is, after all, a ‘moderated list’; the experience I wrote about was both actual and iconoclastic and I am questioning not only the teachers but their sacred and holy teachings. T’is silly that some fervent believers still insist that the Truth cannot be questioned for it is high time that Ancient Wisdom was challenged. Religious and spiritual belief has had its day, it’s run its course. It has had thousands of years to deliver an end to suffering and malice and has failed lamentably. Indeed much of human suffering and malice is directly attributable to the mindless subservience to religious belief and spiritual superstition.

Surely it’s time to consider a new non-spiritual, down-to earth, approach to becoming free of the Human Condition of malice and sorrow.

As for your second point – ‘something that is the pinnacle of human consciousness and the most precious discovery anyone can realize’. Do you mean Eastern Enlightenment or spirituality in general? Either way, are you saying that all human beings should still believe in, and follow the wisdom of, those on the planet thousands of years ago who claim to have discovered the Truth about human existence on the planet? That what they discovered we should still hold to be sacred and inviolate? That despite the fact that human beings still slaughter each other in horrendous wars over which Truth is the only, true, real or right Truth, we should accept that the current human condition of malice and sorrow represents the pinnacle of human consciousness? That peace on earth is not possible?

I do understand the wonderful feelings and deep emotions that well up when one hears the Truth spoken by some God-man or woman, the blissful states that can be experienced and the altered states of consciousness that can be induced for I have experienced the full gamut over a period of 17 years. But the central message of the Truth – there is life after death and we are just ‘passing through’ before we go to a better place ‘somewhere else’ – is a fairy tale. When I was on the spiritual path it was the best on offer for it pointed to being able to achieve release or freedom for one’s self or soul while on earth, not in heaven. At least it offered succour and a chance to feel good.

But things have moved on, particularly in the last century, and a momentous breakthrough has been made in this last decade that makes the ancient search for a freedom for one’s spirit utterly second-rate. Many, many humans have attempted to break the stranglehold that ancient belief and mysticism has always held over the human search for freedom, peace and happiness and, the time being right, it has finally happened.

I was struck with the same reaction as you when I first came across this third alternative but, as I had some doubts about the spiritual path anyway, I was prepared to investigate further to see if what was proposed made sense.

After all, you are against Rajneesh.

No, it is nothing personal. There have been about one thousand Enlightened Ones, according to one figure I have read, and all of them were deluded, and all of them promised the un-deliverable. They only have power and authority because people desperately want to believe the fairy stories of an ‘after-life’ and another ‘world’. This belief in the Divine-ness of the God-men is given credence by the feelings of love for Them and the self-gratifying feeling of being a chosen one. The chance for a genuine personal peace and an actual global peace is forfeited on the altars of the God-men – all for a bit of utterly selfish ‘feel-good’.

And in a sense I wanted to prove you have misunderstood him.

I understand him and the Guru-disciple business only too well for the likes of most people. When I talk of the facts of the business, particularly when I get to the point of discussing exactly what it is the God-men are saying and what was the actual result of the theory when put into practice, they invariably ‘head for the hills’. Still it’s early days... this is the first time in human history that a way has been found to actually break free of the Human Condition. To break with Ancient Wisdom and the belief in Gods and Devils, Spirits and Auras, Ghosts and ‘Other’ Worlds, Immortality and God-men and also to irrevocably break free of the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire.

To become modern humans, discontinuous from the past. To finally stop battling it out with each other for ‘survival’ and to stop believing in ‘spirits’ and in a spirit-ual world.

Dynamic meditation helped me get the first PCE and other Osho’s meditations helped me get consequent PCEs. That is a fact, take it or leave it.

What you said in your post was – Osho created situations in which we could get PCEs and hence have a bench mark to work with. What I pointed out was that Rajneesh aka Osho created situations in which his disciples could get Satoris – brief glimpses of an Altered State of Consciousness whereby one experiences oneself as Divine and Immortal, Spaceless and Timeless. Given that he has been dead 10 years he obviously knew nothing of what Richard is saying for it was only 7 years ago that Richard discovered a state that is beyond the delusion of Enlightenment. It was only 3 years ago that he used the term Pure Consciousness Experience to describe a self-less state that is devoid of any delusions of Divinity, Immortality, Divine Love and Divine Compassion. Even you had not heard the term PCE until a few months ago and obviously have difficulty in comprehending the fact that it is 180 degrees opposite to an ASC.

Methinks you must be joking here. Can you imagine having a ‘fruitful discussion’ with someone whose fame and fortune depends on being a Guru or Guru-ess – who has realized their true Self – about giving it all up and becoming mortal and self-less? It is nigh-on impossible to get any spiritual disciples to consider the possibility that the Guru-disciple business is past its ‘use-by-date’, let alone those who have reached to the very top of the pecking order! For those who feel themselves to be an immortal God, it’s a bloody long way back down-to-earth to the actual world. You just have to ask Richard.

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