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Selected Correspondence Peter Altered State of Consciousness aka Enlightenment
‘Beyond’ clearly means on the same path. Why do you assume that ‘beyond clearly mean on the same path’? The Oxford Dictionary gives the following definitions of the word beyond –
When Richard uses the word beyond as in ‘beyond enlightenment’ he is obviously using the word as meaning ‘Surpassing or exceeding in quality or quantity; superior to; more than with’ along with ‘outside the limit of; out of the reach, comprehension, or range of; not subject to’. If that is the case, why is actual freedom, a state which lies ‘beyond’ spiritual enlightenment (according to Richard) ‘180 degrees opposite’ to enlightenment. Given that it is not ‘the case’, one only needs to read the writings of actualists to know that Enlightenment, a permanent state of dissociation from the world-as-it-is, with people as-they-are, is the antithesis of being happy and harmless in the world-as-it-is, with people as-they-are. Enlightenment and an actual freedom from the human condition are worlds apart – 180 degrees opposite. If you want the difference spelt out in detail, I recommend reading As enlightenment is an extinguishing of the ego, isn’t that a pre-cursor of the total annihilation of the psychic entity. My own experience of the altered state of consciousness commonly known as Enlightenment is that it is not an extinguishing of ego but it is a delusion whereby one’s personal identity is transformed into an impersonal grandiose identity. Having experienced this myself there is no way that I am going to become Enlightened – integrity, sensibility and sincerity stand in the way of such a calamity. And if so, is it enlightenment that is to be condemned or the stopping at that stage and not going further towards psychic self-immolation? Even before I came across actualism I was suss of the revered Godmen and Godesses – I was sucked in by the lure of their message but the end product in terms of how they lived their lives and how they treated their fellow human beings was far less appealing. When I became an actualist I passed through a phase of being angry at these charlatans and snake-oil sellers who prey upon the hearts and minds of their fellow human beings in return for their adulation and worship, particularly as the whole idea of having fellow human beings as fawning disciples never sat well with me. However, the more I became happy being here, the less interest I had in the beliefs and passions of others, hence I no longer condemn Enlightenment, or those who pursue it – indulging in any spiritual belief whatsoever is just a very silly way of wasting one’s time. On a relative scale, isn’t enlightenment a better state than the normal state of fearing and scheming and conniving and killing others? On a relative scale of comparing degrees of the carnage that following one’s instinctual passions can produce, I have read that Nazi officers who witnessed the Nanking slaughter by Japanese soldiers – soldiers who followed the common Eastern religious belief that ‘I am not the body’ – where appalled at the utter callousness of this belief put into action. The following excerpts may well be of interest –
But why bother about ‘relative scales’ within the human condition when it is obvious that there is something rotten at the very core of the human condition – something so fundamental that everyone is busy either denying it, turning away from it, covering it up, fervently hoping that ‘Good’ will triumph over ‘Evil’ or frenetically praying that there is a life after death. It may not deliver the goods totally but I don’t think it delivers nothing at all. Indeed, the whole pursuit of Enlightenment has ensures that billions of people in the East have remained in denial of the animal instinctive roots of the human condition and have avidly practiced dissociation, all in the hope of ending up in la-la-land – and this malaise is now infecting the West at an astounding rate. This worldwide obsession with Eastern religion and philosophy has delivered a New Dark Age – this time around based on the morals, ethics and superstitions of pantheism as distinct from monotheism. After all the only person who has so far achieved actual freedom arrived their stage ‘through’ enlightenment. And that same person has made it abundantly clear that it would be utterly silly for anyone to follow in his footsteps. Is it not possible that the way to actual freedom lies through enlightenment for all? No. It stands to reason that it is much easier to come to one’s senses from the condition of being a relatively normal human being than from being trapped in a delusionary state, whereby all of one’s passions are aggrandized. Why is it that others should avoid treading the same path? I can’t speak for others but integrity, sincerity and common sense are my reasons for avoiding Enlightenment. Whether it is easier to be actually free without being enlightened must be an open question as no one else has become actually free till date. Your statement makes no sense to me given that the only person thus far to become actually free has reported that there is an easier and more direct way – and he is speaking with the benefit of hindsight. Your post leaves me wondering whether you have any particular personal experience to draw upon in making such a definitive statement to your fellow correspondents on this mailing list … or are you just mounting a defence for the status quo, in this case the revered state of Enlightenment?
Gary posted an interesting bit that rang true with some of my other recent investigations :
as to [this comfortable and peaceful corner of reality in their homes] This is where we feel secure; we also call it ‘our’ privacy. This so-called ‘private me’ generally hides/withdraws as soon as the flesh-body goes (is forced to go) outside this peaceful corner and apparently then this ‘private me’ morphs into this very lonely and frightened entity (that it actually is) shelled by the overall social protecting/ controller who takes over and makes the grim battle of survival more or less bearable yet not a celebration. Thus we carry our ‘privacy’ with us as a sort of a burden that yet is held incredibly dear, because should we actually feel at home outside our home we may become this instinctive/emotional affected being that indeed might laugh cry get angry, shout or have orgasms in public and so on when the body-energy takes over; i.o.w. we would go more or less ‘insane’ and and/out of control, surely the thin veneer of civilization would no longer hold and one might start acting with a new social consciousness. Self-aggrandizement is the key to actual social interaction, because if I become a ‘godman’ I have no other choice then to proclaim anyone who I meet to be the same and pass over that message (not necessarily verbally though). iow. I become the challenge of change to my fellow man and perhaps not everybody is ready to accept that as it implies full responsibility wherever you are for what you are. To deny oneself to be less then a ‘godman’ is to deprive one’s fellow-beings from this opportunity of realization and keep humanity away from entering into a new kind of consciousness where the energy of intelligence can take over this planet, because it now has been well suffering long enough from stupidity and carelessness. On the contrary this ability to interact with the ‘psychic web’ may well be the opportunity to tap into any emotion (or instinctive reaction) to experience it learn from it and neutralize its harmful aspect, next feeding this neutralized energy back to the web this may cause a momentary flash of awareness, iow it may raise the consciousness of that particular ‘social circle’ in which one is resonating. This is a particularly accurate description of the lure of self-aggrandizement. Within the human condition, there are only two choices – remain within the grim reality and relentless competitiveness of materialism – ‘the grim battle of survival’ – or seek an illusionary protection of some mythical God, or in pantheistic belief, indulge in the ultimate ‘self-aggrandizement’ – the delusion that your are, in fact, God. This ‘seeing the Light’, ‘being born again’, or feeling oneself to be immortal and eternal is rather like putting on a suit of armour – ‘a new kind of consciousness’ – in order to protect oneself from the ‘suffering’ and ‘stupidity and carelessness’ of others who continue to live in the illusion of grim reality. In the town where I live, there are literally hundreds of people in various stages of self-aggrandizement, all of whom proclaim they are a God-man or God-woman of some sort, all of whom are willing and eager to proclaim this to anyone they meet, to pass on their message that everyone is the same and to trumpet the message of humanity entering into a new kind of consciousness, because this planet has been ‘well suffering long enough from stupidity and carelessness’. Each of these teachers has their own particular realization to pass on and their own group of followers. There is no consensus between the teachers nor between the followers of different teachers at all – indeed there is very often dissension between the followers of the same teacher. The belief that ‘a new kind of consciousness’ based on self-aggrandizement will bring peace on earth between human beings is just that, an idea – it does not work in practice, has never worked in practice and can never work in practice because it fails to address the root cause of human violence and suffering. Rather than bringing an end to human violence and suffering, spiritual and religious belief simply adds another dimension to human conflict and misery – the battle for the moral high ground, a battle ultimately fuelled by the self-righteous anger of those who feel ‘holier than thou’ or maintain a position of being ‘above it all’.
None of this has the purity of a PCE, but it’s getting closer. Yes if you are having a PCE, then second-best is second best, but if your not having a PCE then second-best is a darn sight better than wasting one’s time wallowing around feeling miserable about having to be here or about doing whatever it is that one is doing or needs to do, or feeling bitter about and being antagonistic towards one’s fellow human beings. I think dissolving the ‘inner family’ has made it possible to travel more lightly, and there is less sense of ownership (including ownership of ‘my’ ‘own’ consciousness) than there was before. More and more often I’m experiencing myself as the actual physical universe experiencing *itself* through my eyes and ears and heart and mind. If this has any mystical connotations, it shouldn’t. It took me a bit to come to appreciate that if ‘I’ had the feeling – as in the affective experience – that ‘I’ was ‘the actual physical universe experiencing *itself* through my eyes and ears and heart and mind’ then I was but a step away from delusion. The way to check this out for yourself is to compare whatever it is you are feeling against how you experienced yourself in a PCE. This way you can determine for yourself whether what you are feeling is on-track or whether or not you might be wandering off track. It’s not for nothing that it is essential to be attentive to both one’s so-called bad feelings and one’s so-called good feelings. It’s more like amazement that this universe and life on earth have evolved from a chemical soup into increasingly complex forms of organic sludge and finally into self-aware and world-aware creatures. There’s a simple delight in being conscious of it all, and an amazement that it should exist at all. Yes, it is indeed amazing and magical and delight-filled when you take a clear-eyed look at it. And to think that there are those who claim that this amazing physical actuality is but an illusion and that their own inner affectations and imaginations are the only true reality. * Altered states of consciousness are far more tempting because denial and dissociation are easier options ... Jeez, not for me. I’ve found ‘denial and dissociation’ so bloody boring as to be an impossible way to live. I made the comment because this was my experience – even a good many months after I had a good intellectual grasp of the fact that actualism had nothing to do with spiritualism and that any ‘self’-aggrandizing states were but a wank, I gradually became aware that I was having subtle behind-the-scenes ‘self’-aggrandizing feelings. The only reason I discovered them was that they came bubbling to the surface such that I could neither deny them nor dissociate from them. I mentioned it in my journal so as to flag a warning as it were to others who might tread the path –
Experienced in an enlightened state, I am the cup and the cup is Me, the cup has intelligence and is not merely dead matter, My perception allows me not only to represent it in the brain but also to Be the elements which make the polyester cup (the atoms and the molecules). This is an excellent description of the extent of the delusion that can eventuate when someone is afflicted with an altered state of consciousness. Common sense is the first casualty whenever anyone embarks on the spiritual path. At this stage I can see a difference in experiencing the same cup in an ASC (via Self) – being the cup, ordinary way (via self) – associating a qualia which distorts the perception, like watching a mirror image of the cup in the mind (different image for different persons), or seeing it in a PCE – naked perception, direct experiencing, crystal-clear view (for the moment, that’s only theory in my case). Whilst I realize it can only be theory for someone who cannot remember having had a PCE – nevertheless if the explanations you read make sense to you, you could up the ante and call it a good working theory or a prima facie case such that it tweaks your curiosity to explore further.
Which brings me to the other aspect that occurred to me about your comment about current world events. I’ve written about it in my journal but I’ll repeat it here, as it is directly relevant to our discussion. Before I came across actualism, there was a period of some 18 months where I lived alone in a self-contained flat by the ocean and started to really enjoy my own company for the first time in my life. Living was easy; safety, comfort, leisure and pleasure abounded and I was, what I would describe in hindsight, as being at peace with myself – rather like a Buddhist monk would be hiding in a comfortable cave. I was reading spiritual books at the time and induced a full-blown Satori experience, which was confirmed by a local Guru as being the ‘genuine article’. I remember being a bit perplexed at the time for it seemed as though I was inexorably heading for a career as God-man – whereas I had already determined that I didn’t like their lifestyle, I didn’t like how they were with their women and nor did I like the whole Guru-disciple business. The other doubt I had was that the experience was so utterly self-centred that it seemed not only was the world enrapturing, as in beguiling, but it was also chameleon-like as in unreal, dream-like, insubstantial, illusionary. While it was marvellous, to say the least, to have such an altered state of consciousness experience, it did also mean that all of the other people in the world also appeared to be unreal, insubstantial and illusionary as well, which only served to confirm my dislikes of the exalted state of the God-men and how they treated other people. I eventually came to understand that the revered spiritual states of consciousness were in fact a retreat from the world of people, things and events such that the entire physical world appeared to be an illusion and it felt as though only ‘I’ existed. Hence, despite the fact that I lived a life dripping in safety, comfort, leisure and pleasure, the only way I could manifest a feeling of perfect peace was to retreat from the world and go ‘inside’, evoking a dream-like state of utter self-centredness and self-glorification. This period of my life proved to be a valuable experience, for when I met Richard and heard him say ‘everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong’, for a brief moment the penny dropped, as it were. All of a sudden, all the doubts I had about the God-men and the spiritual search were crystallized into an ‘of course, the God-men are trying to get out of it by going ‘there’, retreating ‘inside’ – whereas what Richard is talking about is coming here to the actual world where we flesh and blood human bodies really live.’ That brief moment of understanding proved to be sufficiently revealing that I likened it to a crack in the door – and I have been persistently widening that crack ever since. So, in a bid to rope in this rave and wrap it up, the two thoughts that occurred to me was the futility of Humanity’s search for peace by persisting with the long-tried and always-failed methods and how this contrasts with the radical new approach – the do-it-yourself method. If all else fails, which it clearly is – take unilateral action.
In these ‘self’-less pure experiences, one is the universe experiencing itself as a flesh and blood human being. This was only part of my own experience. What struck me more than anything else was the revelation that ‘I’ was not the body. Even though I recognized that I was in a particular human body, ‘I’ in fact existed beyond space and time and that when the body died ‘I’ would still exist. My experience was unlimited consciousness without any boundaries or limitation, eternal and aware of itself. (It’s difficult to put this into words as it immediately creates a sense of limitation). I can’t even claim that this revelation was ‘mine’. What was revealed was definitely not a ‘status quo viewpoint’ it was the absolute Truth beyond question. What you have described very well is the classic dissociative Altered State of Consciousness that results from the pursuit of Eastern religious belief. For followers of monotheist religions these experiences of Truth are that one hears God, becomes His faithful messenger and servant in the firm knowledge that one will get to meet thy Maker after death. These ASC experiences are most common during ‘dark nights of the soul’, after imbibing hallucinogenic drugs, after intense periods of prayer, meditation or some similar spiritual practice. Although these experiences are other-worldly, ‘self’ aggrandizing and always relates to a salvation or an immortality for one’s ‘self’, what is most telling is that, there are differing cultural/ religious variations in these Truth experiences. A Buddhist never hears Jesus talking, a Jew never feels he is Maitreya, – everyone experiences what he or she have been taught they should experience as the absolute Truth or God. I could never reconcile that if the Truth was the truth as in a fact, how come so many variations were experienced and how come humans ended up fighting and killing each other over whose version of the Truth was really, really true. * ... what I am proposing is peace on earth, as this flesh and blood body only, in this lifetime. So I can’t agree with this, as I know that ‘I’ am not ONLY this body. Fair enough. If you have had these types of experiences they are very convincing, which is why people claim to ‘know’. What I am saying is obviously not for you for you obviously have no doubt that ‘you’ are an immortal eternal spirit, not a flesh and blood earthling. I believe that when each of us recognize our own True nature, the Self, then this realization MUST be lived (i.e. in time and space as the body), and only then will peace on earth exist. Well, Eastern religion has been around for over 3,000 years in the East and there are stuff-all signs of anything remotely resembling peace on earth despite some estimated 1,000 Self-realized beings having spread this same message. This common belief won’t happen simply because everyone is barking up the wrong tree – in all religious pursuit, peace on earth in this lifetime, is always readily sacrificed for the utterly selfish pursuit of immortality and the fantasy of a peace after physical death.
And the new science called ‘paradise engineering’ is offering a practical potent method for that ... and one day you will see that your list musings and your self-musings are just the tail end of the methods and paths that you quite rightly proclaim as part of the problem, rather than of the solution ... but don’t stop there at www.benares.com, ... at the doorway into a new understanding ... as most people do.... drill right down thru the sites accessible from there, thru the paradise engineering presented there, which is the only viable method for actual freedom.... and begin to understand that you are still in delusion, still in denial, and still living in an illusion. The so-called new possibility for freedom on offer at www.benares.com is not new at all, it is just a contemporary rehash of a well tried and well failed practice that has been around since humans first discovered hallucinogenic plants. The great ancient myths and legends that form the basis of spiritual belief, religious dogma and human wisdom have all emerged from altered states of consciousness induced by some sort of ‘paradise engineering’ – by imbibing some form of mind-altering substance. As far as I know, each of the tribal groups and great civilizations had their drug or drugs of choice and the high priests, gurus, shamans and witchdoctors were always amongst the most ardent users. There is a long tradition, particularly in the polytheist religions, of hallucinogenic drug use that continues to this very day. Taoists monks in Japan still ‘retreat’ to the mountains in search of magic mushrooms, Hinduism is awash with ganga smoking out-of-it gurus and the current fad for Eastern spiritualism was initiated by the youth of the 60’s tripping off to the East in search of the permanent drug experience. Not only have the spiritualists endlessly experimented with paradise engineering, so have the materialists. Alcohol in some form or another has generally been the sop of materialists even to this day. Although one doesn’t ‘get out of it’ in an altered state of consciousness by imbibing alcohol, its effects dulls the senses sufficiently to provide many people with a sense of temporary relief and refuge from the stresses inherent in the rat race world of material pursuit. In the last century particularly, there has also emerged what are called designer drugs – specifically engineered and targeted at lessening the debilitating effects of undesirable emotional states or at heightening the euphoric effects of desirable emotional states. Many of these drugs have been invaluable in ensuring a better quality of life for many people who suffer from the extremes of the emotional see-saw that characterizes the human condition and no doubt both their use and effectiveness will increase as pharmacists continue to fine tune their effectiveness. But to prophesise that ‘paradise engineering ... is the only viable method for actual freedom’ is to ignore the fact that paradise engineering has been very much part and parcel of the human condition for thousands of years and stuff all has changed. Why should something that has been tried for thousands of years by millions upon millions of people, and has failed to bring anything remotely resembling peace on earth, all of a sudden work? ‘Paradise engineering’ has been a path trod for millennia – nothing new is offered in the slick presentation of the Hedonistic Imperative other than the futuristic fantasies of what genetic manipulation may or may not do. No doubt some people in the next generation will give up waiting for Godot and start waiting for Genome. Having said that, hallucinogenic drugs do undoubtedly cause a physical change in the functioning of the human brain and whilst the most common result is a mild, or even full-blown, altered state of consciousness, there is also the possibility that a pure consciousness experience can eventuate. The first, and most substantial, PCE I can remember was triggered by taking MDA. That I had a PCE and not an ASC was a serendipitous event, for most people I have talked to had Love experiences whilst on MDA and they all felt aggrandized in some form or other. It is only a speculation on my part but the idea of ‘self’-love and its inherent power never sat well with me and maybe that is why I had a self-less pure consciousness experience and not a self-aggrandizing altered state of consciousness, but I wouldn’t hang my hat on it. After this first experience, repeated usages of the drug failed to produce the same result and I soon after abandoned its use as retaking it only resulted in the usual up and down cycle associated with all drug use. What is available now is a no-cost, do-it-yourself, drug-free method of firstly being able to provoke the onset of a pure consciousness experience and then being able to remove the impediments that prevent one from being free from the human condition in its entirety. Already in my short stint of practicing actualism, I experience ordinary life as better than a pure consciousness experience simply because it is constantly excellent – there is no experience of being here briefly and then having to go back into the grim reality of the real world. Once the realization set in that I am here anyway, I set about removing the objections and excuses, buts, bitches and blames, ruses and resentments that got in the way of me being happy and harmless, 24 hrs a day, every day. To aim for anything less than this, or settle for anything less than this, is but to continue to waste this moment of being alive. To miss out on the sensual delight of being here in this earthy physical paradise by being angry at or sad about people as-they-are, or by being resentful or miserable about things as-they-are, clearly makes no sense whatsoever. After all, actualism is about coming to one’s senses ... literally.
You do seem though, to believe in something you call Impersonal Self or Divine Nature as opposed to self. I don’t believe in it anymore, for I have personally experienced it as delusionary state whereby ‘I’ was Love, God-intoxicated, etc. ‘I’ was the very centre of all that existed and the world about me appeared to be a dream-like state that existed for ‘my’ benefit. ‘I’ was both timeless and eternal and ‘I’ was a pure feeling being located in the heart of my body, which was also part of the dream. It is a very, very seductive state indeed – and it appears to be very real and all-encompassing as ‘my’ new and glorious identity overpowers any meagre identity that existed before. What saved me from venturing further on this path was a confirmation from an Enlightened One that this was indeed an experience of Enlightenment – the dearly sought-after prize of the spiritual search. As I contemplated my future fate, I realized that if I continued on the spiritual path I would soon end up Enlightened myself. I had seen enough of the Enlightened Ones, their lifestyles, their psychic powers, how they were with their women, the insidiousness of the Master-disciple system, etc., to begin to seriously question whether this was what I really wanted. I also knew deep-down inside that I was copping out and that there was something seriously wrong with this dream-like state simply because it was dream-like and that it was a completely ‘self’-centred state, despite ‘my’ feelings of Love for all. In the end it was integrity that turned me away from the spiritual path and spiritual belief. ‘My’ delusion was thinking ‘my’ intelligence to be real love... which has resulted in ‘my’ sense of Aloneness for many years... My experience of this sense of Aloneness that I had in my spiritual years was that is was accompanied by a smug, self-centred feeling of superiority that cut me off and isolated me even further from the ‘real’ world – which is the point of being spiritual, now that I look back on it. It was only when I had an Altered State of Consciousness or Satori that I realized how removed I would be in Enlightenment – and how Alone. No wonder the Enlightened Ones desperately need Love and people to worship them. One PCE in 1976 which lasted for a few hours was actually ‘only’ tantalizing Enlightenment... Divine Love. An extraordinary and powerful phantom that only fades to nothing but memories. For an actualist is it essential, vital and critical to make the distinction between an ASC and a PCE. If you had an experience that was ‘tantalizing Enlightenment’, it was an ASC – an Altered State of Consciousness – whereby one’s consciousness or identity shifts to becoming the feeling experience of the universe, thus one feels Love, Divinity, Wholeness, Unity – one feels oneself to be Godly. This is most definitely not a PCE – a Pure Consciousness Experience. The only similarity is that one gets a glimpse of something other than the real world – in an ASC one gets to see a golden, glowing, self-fulfilling and self-aggrandizing dream world with you at the centre of it all. All seems an illusion including one’s body, as the heart literally bulges from the chest and poetic and loving thoughts surge through one’s brain. Yea, I’ve been there and done that, and it sucks. What alarmed me most was that I would end up yet another God-man which is the inevitable result of becoming Enlightened.
What is most contradictory in my personal opinion, is that we people are seeking enlightenment based on the ‘normal-average’ parameters. Obviously, we all know that the average people are not awake. Awake seems to be those individuals who look somehow abnormal to the normal eyes. But now, my question to the forum is, how can we possibly expect to succeed in this search for enlightenment while we take ‘average behaviour’ as a reference? Please, don’t think that I am ‘mad’ here. I just find this ‘normally intriguing.’ You are right. It is impossible to succeed in the search for enlightenment while taking average behaviour as a reference. The whole point of becoming enlightened is to ignore and transcend average and normal behaviour in oneself such that one eventually gets to feel perfect and pure. It is also very clear from the behaviour of those who have attained enlightenment that the state does not go hand in glove with perfect behaviour. As you yourself said earlier in the post –
There is so much duplicity, duck shoving around the behaviour of the awakened and enlightened ones and their so-called embodiment of perfection. It is little wonder both their credence and honesty is coming under increasing scrutiny. What I find most intriguing however, is the common belief in the spiritual world that seekers are somehow exempt from the normal instinctual behaviour exhibited by average or normal human beings. This blatant denial in Eastern religion is exemplified in such beliefs as the notion of karma whereby one believes one has already somehow done sufficient work or good, most often in a previous existence, such that one is no longer normal but is ready to Transcend. Some believe they are therefore born into the right circumstances, as in being born a Brahmin, while others who have bad karma, are born lesser as in average, or even born an Untouchable. This supercilious belief, when formalized, results in the horrendous religious caste systems so prevalent in the East. The Tibetan Buddhists have a cute system whereby the good lamas are reincarnated and ‘found’ by others, such that they escape ever having to be normal or average. The other fashionable expressions of exemption from normal and average is to be found in the concept of being chosen, of being special, being more awake, having a higher consciousness, doing God’s work, etc. Wondrous are the ways that spiritual followers invent to prevent acknowledging they may be normal or average as in bad or evil, let alone lost, lonely, sad, angry, frightened, etc. All of this denial in the spiritual world can be sheeted home to the beguiling and irresistible lure of feeling God-like and Timeless, thereby assuaging the fear of death. All of the ills and woes of Humanity can be sheeted home to the genetically-encoded instinct to survive at all costs, which human beings have turned into a psychological and psychic will to survive ... at all costs.
First I would like to say that we are more alike in our thinking than not. I, too, am a product of the 60’s, and 50’s, and I had, and still have, all the feelings about the way this world is ran by our governments. No, No 8, we are not alike in our thinking. I gave up blaming others for the violence and suffering in the world and saw that I was the cause of violence and suffering for those very same feelings were in me. It was only by firmly grasping this fact, which is startlingly obvious in a pure consciousness experience, was I able to even begin doing something about it. It was only by seeing the inherent power and crippling humility that causes so much malice and sorrow in the spiritual world, which was startlingly obvious in the pure consciousness experiences I had while in the spiritual world, was I able to dig myself out of religious/ spiritual belief and to begin to tackle both the good and bad emotions in me that give rise to human malice and sorrow. It is obvious to any one who thinks that we are all part of the problem. Who was I blaming? So, are you now switching positions and saying you like the way ‘this world is ran by our governments’? Because I see what you see. Even to the unawakened mind it is obvious that some things are worse than others and even the people in government can control the madness to some degree, but far too often they choose not to. How do you think that ‘the people in government can control the madness to some degree’? Are you advocating more police, more armies, more laws? Or should they adopt the Tibetan Buddhist government’s pacifist approach of fleeing to the next country and leaving the people to fend for themselves when madness manifests as invasion by a neighbouring country? This is choosing not to ‘control the madness’ in action. How would you go about controlling the madness given that it is all so obvious to you? Of course they are acting from the same illness as every one else. I shouldn’t have to say anything about this, it is all so obvious. Aye. The illness, as you see it, is that most people are un-Enlightened or un-awakened to the Truth. To use your words, the Truth is
Hence the way to cure ‘the illness’ is to stop identifying with human fear, suffering and hatred. This approach does nothing at all to cure the illness but it does offer a way of psychologically distancing oneself from the illness. This approach to dealing with trauma is commonly known as dissociation.
In the case of spiritual Awakening or Enlightenment, the resulting condition is of an altered state of consciousness where certain concepts such as ‘beliefs, images, fear, suffering, hatred, etc., etc.,’ are separated from the conscious personality. Thus, the illness continues unabated and untreated but the traumatized victim no longer associates with the symptoms of the illness and no longer believes he or she has the illness. * I have also seen what a mess we are in and how much needless suffering is going on and want only to see an end to it. I don’t doubt the sincerity or fervour of your belief. All the priests, shamans, God-men, Gurus, Enlightened Ones and their followers for thousands of years, have offered the same spiritual message and yet the last century was the bloodiest to date. Is that the guru’s fault? Were the warring parties enlightened? I too would wish that the teaching of so many enlightened people had changed things to where we stopped all the needless killing. Again, is that the teachers, or teachings, fault? Of course it isn’t. Well, you could hardly accept that it is the fault of the teacher or the teachings for you are one of the teachers teaching those teachings. In order to avoid a confrontation that might raise your defences, let’s have a look at the sacred teachers and teachings of Zen Buddhism as exposed in two recent books –
It does seem that at least some are willing to lay some blame for war and suffering at the feet of the revered and sacred teachers. There are some serious cracks beginning to appear in the ‘sacred ceiling’, No 8. It could be a good time to consider a career change. * The way you look at things, trying to see just the facts, is also the way I have always looked at things. The way I see it is you just haven’t gone far enough yet. No. I spent 17 years thoroughly immersed in the spiritual world and I went far enough to understand experientially that it leads only to very seductive, grand and glorious feelings that can totally overwhelm any personal perspective, or ego viewpoint. It is quite extraordinary the extent to which sensible down-to-earth intelligence can be overwhelmed by chemical flows from the ancient instinctual brain so as to produce feelings of euphoria and delusions of grandeur and immortality. The tell-tale sign as to the fact that Enlightenment is only a feeling, albeit a Mighty Grand One, is that it does take effort and vigilance to maintain and it does take the love of others to sustain the feeling. You have no direct understanding of enlightenment or you would not say it is a feeling. It has nothing to do with feeling. Because people have said what feelings they went through when they awakened doesn’t mean it is a feeling. Okay, let’s look at what you have said before about Enlightenment –
So perhaps we can say that Enlightenment is an absence of certain feelings as in – you no longer feel hate for others, you no longer have the living nightmare of your ego-thoughts and you no longer feel your being is separate from all of life or creation. Apart from lacking those particular feelings and thoughts you are apparently just a normal person with the normal range of feelings. * I don’t deal with many people just because of this sort of misunderstanding. Where I am coming from cannot really be understood until one reaches that same place. Words can go around and around and never get to that place. Whenever the Gurus and God-men are factually-challenged they eventually trot out the traditional hackneyed fall-back defensive position of ‘what I speak of is beyond words’. As if the experience of Godliness, God-realization, God-intoxication, Enlightenment, Awakened, or whatever other name you want to use, has not been written about and spoken about endlessly. It is indeed well documented as a glorious and utterly ‘self’-fulfilling experience. You just have not experienced what they, we, are talking about. If it was a word thing it would have changed the world a long time ago. What they are saying is true. It has nothing to do with a self-fulfilling experience. The self can never prepare for enlightenment. You are just missing a very important point, that can never be clear until you have seen the same reality. Well, at least we can determine that enlightenment is not a word thing – i.e. it cannot be described in words. You also insist it is not a feeling thing. Given also that you cannot touch it, smell it, taste it, hear it or see it, we could probably agree that it is indeed ‘other-worldly’. It is obviously not of the physical world, it is obviously not of the world of grim normal reality but it of the world of Greater Reality, as it is often termed. Once one experiences this new reality, one no longer has an ego that identifies with the nightmare of ‘fear, suffering, hatred’ that goes on in the physical world where we humans actually live. You also have a loose habit of using the word self which includes both ego and soul when what you really mean is ego. This shifty sloppiness does your case no good at all. * Whenever the Gurus and God-men are factually-challenged they eventually trot out the traditional hackneyed fall-back defensive position of ‘what I speak of is beyond words’. As if the experience of Godliness, God-realization, God-intoxication, Enlightenment, Awakened, or whatever other name you want to use, has not been written about and spoken about endlessly. It is indeed well documented as a glorious and utterly ‘self’-fulfilling experience. All one’s dreams have come true and more, but its fatal flaw is that it is only a grandiose feeling that does nothing to address the elimination of the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire that are the root cause of human malice and sorrow. For all of the grandeur and passion of religious belief it has done absolutely nothing to eliminate human suffering on this planet and in fact, as you yourself acknowledged, is actively contributing and perpetuating human suffering as is evidenced by all the countless recriminations, persecutions, vitriolic conflicts and religious wars that are ever ongoing. The truth is not a grandiose dream. Well No 8, just previously in this post you said –
To me, something that billions of people have wished for over thousands of years and that has not happened does seem to qualify for the title of the most grandiose dream of all time. Again it has nothing to do with feeling. If the teachings you followed didn’t show clearly what is needed to go beyond the instinctual aggression, passions of fear, etc., then you weren’t following an enlightened teacher. What they taught is exactly what you teach – a transcendence of unwanted and undesirable instinctual passions and an increasing disidentifying with them to the point where complete dissociation occurs as in an altered sate of consciousness experience. All teachers in the Eastern spiritual traditions teach the same thing with only minor cultural or fashionable variation to techniques employed and jargon used. I know you insist your teaching is non-spiritual, non-traditional and unique but you have yet to demonstrate that this is so. Of course I agree whole-heartedly with the problem that religious belief has caused and is still causing. I have nothing whatsoever to do with religion. Do you go by the theory that if you say something for long enough then it will become a truth, for your whole teachings intimate Eastern religion and philosophy? I most likely won’t be part of the mailing list group for much longer. I can only deal with groups for a short time then I just want to be quiet. I am very interested in the whole ego thing so I will be responding to what I read in the magazine when I get my copy here. Just be open-minded and see what I have to say. You may not agree with any of it, which is fine, but you may also see where I am coming from. Yes, I did note with interest your post on the subject of ego. Given that my interest is peace on earth and I like to reply in detail I can’t comment on your post on the list so I will take the opportunity to do so here.
You say you can’t hate but you obviously can still blame other human beings for as you said at the start of this post –
These feelings usually range from being upset, miffed, impatient, perhaps even angry or swing back the other way to feeling pity for them, sad, despairing, hopelessness and perhaps even depressed. If you ‘can’t hate’ which of these other feelings do you ‘still have’? When you say
do you include the human beings who are in the governments that run this world and do you include all the wars, murders, rapes, tortures, domestic violence, despair and suicide in this wonder-full creation that is not ‘separate from your own being’? Just because I can’t hate doesn’t mean I can’t see the facts before my eyes. I find nothing wrong with feeling many ways about things in this world. That does not for a moment make me feel separate from the whole. That would be nonsense. It saddens me deeply to see what is happening in the world. I presume you see what I see – people being malicious or angry to the point of killing others and people being sorrowful or sad to the point of killing themselves. You have said you don’t feel hate any more and now you say you can feel deeply sad in your awakened state. It is good to find someone in an awakened state who is willing to be honest about what is going on with them and how they experience the world rather than say it can’t be put into words. I am curious though when you say that after your ego-death, if I can use that term, you no longer identify with the nightmare of ‘fear, suffering, hatred’ yet you still feel the suffering of others. Is it that you no longer think you are identified with other human beings but you still feel identified? If so, this would be in accord with my experience in that transcending the thinking self still leaves a feeling self, often denoted as an impersonal self or a grand Self. When you see what is real, and the false is still acting on the world, you do all you can to help stop that process. And that is what it is: A process of misunderstanding based on a false belief brought about by the ego dream. I know at the core of all those people doing all the things that cause suffering is the same being I am. I know that by going through what I did changed all that for me and it can change it for everyone. But curiously enough you still say you suffer as in ‘it saddens me deeply to see what is happening in the world’. I presume this deep sadness for others is a suffering for others as in feeling compassion for others. This again would be in accord with the transcendence of a personal self and personal suffering to a state of being an impersonal self who then feels sorrow for others – an impersonal, non-identified suffering. Again this is in accord with my experience – the ending of personal psychological suffering is not the end of suffering for then one has the experience of suffering for all of humanity, a psychic suffering, whereby misery and pain can literally drip off everything. My experience in the psychic world is that this type of suffering can be far deeper than one’s own personal suffering for one then takes on everyone else’s suffering. No wonder the Enlightened Ones are driven to save the world and desperate to entice others to join them in their crusade, for underpinning the Divine lays, ever lurking, the desperation of universal suffering – often referred to as the Diabolical. Of course, there is no Divine or Diabolical, bliss or despair, malice or sorrow or any of the instinctual passions in the actual world. All these feelings and beliefs, ideas and fantasies exist only because they are the psychological and psychic machinations of a wayward identity within the flesh and blood body. These feelings may well be real, and are felt to be so because of the chemicals that surge through the human body from the reptilian brain ... but they are not actual, as in existing in the physical world. * I am awake, but I am not perfect in the eyes of some, perhaps most. So what? Most people have such a misunderstanding of what it means to be enlightened. Enlightened people are just people who have seen the fact of our being one with all life. I just live my life not harming any one or any thing. That is simple, we can all do that, awake or not. Well, that’s a bit of a come down for the exalted and much prized state of Enlightenment. This seems to none other than the ‘we are all enlightened, we only have to realize it’ psittacism that is floating around the spiritual world. So now, I assume your teaching is simplified even further to – if everyone sees ‘the fact of our being one with all life’ and ‘just lives (their) life not harming any one or any thing’ then there will be peace on earth. Why not? I am awake, I harm nothing or no one. If everyone just lived that simply were would the wars and killing come from? It is true that the mind of the unenlightened is the same mind as the enlightened, except for the enlightened have awakened to a clear direct seeing the fact before our eyes. Okay, let’s look at the facts before our eyes. The Dalai Lama is an avowed Buddhist who would claim that he would harm nothing and no one. He is a pacifist, which meant when someone invaded his country he fled. Now if everyone in the country you lived in was a pacifist it is like hanging out a sign – pleas invade – we won’t stop you. The Dalai Lama, now safe behind the protection of the Indian army is busily trying to get someone else to free his country. Pacifism is an unliveable ideal in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. Do you not rely on the guns of the police and army for the privilege of feeling a pacifist? Would not it be more sensible to tackle the root cause of malice and sorrow – the instinctual animal passions in humans – rather than striding the moral high ground sprouting unliveable ethics that completely ignore the facts before our eyes. The Enlightened not only cop-out from acknowledging any malice in themselves but they also cop-out from acknowledging sorrow in themselves. As you yourself stated Enlightenment means that one no longer identifies with one’s personal suffering but that one feels universal sorrow or compassion for others. This is easily seen in action whereby they continually rile against the unenlightened as the cause of wars and suffering. The excuse for this malevolence is that they feel compassion towards those who have yet to realize that the wars and killing is all a dream – created by their ego – from which they haven’t yet awakened. There has been no one in my life who I let believe I was some high and mighty being because I was awake. I have had a problem with people who have tried to put me on a pedestal for just being awake. If I let them it would just be ego playing another game. Why should people want to put you on a pedestal in the first place? Just what Guru-energy are you radiating? Is it you or your seductive message of dissociation from the symptoms of the animal instinctual passions in operation in humans? Do you find you have to be humble to put them off? Again your actions of putting yourself above Father Dionysus, Otto Kernbergand and Ammachi on the list does seem to weaken your case for being an ordinary man. It must be a tricky business getting these balances just right. * As for, ‘you may also see where I am coming from’ – where I see you coming from is a position of back-peddling and I would only encourage you to keep doing it all the way totally out of the spiritual world. Most people think there are only two worlds – the real world or the spiritual world, but if one dares to step out of all illusion there is an actual physical-only world of purity and perfection and the evidence of this is the pure consciousness experience. It far exceeds Enlightenment for all the capricious feelings and unfulfilled promises of purity and perfection of the spiritual world are experienced as an actuality in a ‘self’-less state – a perfection and purity that is rock-solid, sensately experienced, touchable, visible, tasteable, smellable, audible, ever-present, each moment again. * There have been, and perhaps still are, teachers from the East who were awake. They did their best to help others to see. The religions that came up after them did not, for the most part, know what the teacher knew and distorted it all into a mind game. I will not put down those teachers, yet I have nothing to do with religion. If you see things as clearly as you think you do you would see that some of those teachers were really telling the truth as well as words can. Yet again, it is not the teacher’s fault that religions exist, it is those who follow. I know of no spiritual teacher, who had the opportunity, money and business acumen, who did not actively set up an organization surrounding him or her in their lifetime and arrange for it to be perpetuated after their death. Perhaps you could enlighten me if I am wrong? * I am really busy today and am leaving to care take some friend’s home for a week, so I have to get going. I may respond to some of what you wrote later on. It is very tiring for me to write and I don’t have a lot of energy. So I’m sorry if this seems too short of a response for you. Keep looking, but don’t limit your understanding to the past. It can always go deeper. I mean that for us all. I am surprised you keep responding at all. The only reason I came on to the mailing list was to offer a third alternative to those who were having doubts about Eastern religion and philosophy and the fact that it will bring peace on earth. You obviously have no doubts at all but I do think you should qualify your statement –
– lest others also question your teachings in the future. I have a very limited contact with people, and even less contact with people who are trying to understand. The little time I spend on the net is the minimum I can do to help. I don’t know how long I will be on there, but as long as there is some feedback. I am still waiting for my copy of the ego issue so I can respond to what is said in it. I don’t know if anything that has been said here will make any difference to you. It doesn’t really matter. I find that you are making your position clearer with every post, which I do appreciate. What I like is that an actualist can have a conversation with a spiritualist about such a vital and urgent matter as peace on earth and I think that matters a lot. So far the only hope for peace on earth has been to pray for God’s intervention or follow the teachings of God-men. It is good to get a voice for, and scrutiny of, the third alternative and even if it is censored from being posted on a public mailing list, it will go into the actualism records for others to read.
Even if one was very harmonious and grounded in an absolutely positive relationship to life one could certainly feel very miserable from time to time. While remaining a ‘self’ one is forever subject to the full range of emotional passions and there is ample evidence that even those who claim to be peace-loving and have a positive outlook on life are often overcome by anger or suffer inexplicable bouts of depression. This is the case even with the Enlightened Ones who have the full range of emotional passions intact despite their efforts to transcend the savage and emulate and radiate the tender passions. Apart from the mythical almost anonymous past-Masters whom we know nothing about, all of the recent and current crop of Gurus clearly demonstrate, at some time in their careers, all the attributes of what we begrudgingly acknowledge as our human failings.
Also you say,
Peter, what the fuck are you talking about? Do you really know what enlightenment is? Obviously you do not know so how can you expose it? I have learnt more about Enlightenment, the spiritual world and the Human Condition in the last 18 months than I did in 18 years of treading the spiritual path. This is because I stopped believing what others told me was the truth and went in search of the facts. I also have had experiences of Enlightenment (an Altered State of Consciousness) wherein I became at ‘One with everything’. I was Love, everything was Golden, my thoughts were poetry and my centre had shifted to my heart. It was indeed glorious, amazing and so, so seductive. Enlightenment has nothing to do with being spiritual. Enlightenment just means living in awareness and consciousness. It has nothing to do with spirituality. Enlightenment as it is spoken of in the East and by Osho involves a permanent shift or alteration in consciousness wherein one becomes Love, at One, Eternal, Timeless, or whatever other word is used. As I understand it, Enlightenment is the goal of the spiritual search, the very aim of being a Sannyasin. Maybe you are on the spiritual path for some other reason. * Enlightenment is simply knowing yourself and being natural and unpretentious. I don’t know what your aim in life is, but, as a general observation it seems to me that many people have ‘watered down’ the original search for freedom to mean acceptance rather than change. For me, I saw that what I hoped to achieve on the spiritual path – Enlightenment – became less attractive the closer I got. So when I came across Richard I decided to try something new. I then set some realistic goals – living with a woman in peace and harmony and becoming happy and harmless. These I saw as eminently achievable in a short time, such that I could then live the fruits of my efforts, as this flesh and blood body, before I died.
... or you are actually an enlightened person and in subtle way you helping people to release the pressure in a way that they finally have somebody to say: ‘Fuck you!’ I like Richard’s description that the Enlightened Ones have feet of clay. No doubt many sought a genuine freedom based on their peak experiences, but they have been seduced by the Glory, Glamour and Glitz of Enlightenment. And then they collect followers, found a movement, and yet another religion is born. Some, unable to muster the required level of megalomania to stand on their own, slot into a ‘lineage’, thus latching on to the power and authority of their master. This is usually safely done when the master is dead and thus their ‘credentials’ can remain unchallenged. The Guru’s have had there day, but it is what they have chosen to do with their lives. I just see them as peddlers of snake oil. They sell a feel-good ‘balm’ for a disease, that offers ‘relief’ if you are believe it, but does nothing to cure the disease called the Human Condition. And, no, there is no way I can ‘help’ anybody, nor would I want to. I am simply pointing out the facts of what it is to be a human being, the facts about the world or the belief system we are born into and programmed with, and my experience of how to become actually free of it. I am also pointing out the traps and failures of the ancient God-ridden paths that offer a mere synthetic ‘feeling’ of freedom – a poor, poor substitute for the actual freedom that most people have experienced for fleeting times in their lives.
When one experiences this LOVE they are not moved by the words of a ‘Richard’ or anyone else, for they are just words and it is just mind that is moved by them. In the previous post you said, ‘in the PCE the ‘I’ is lost and only here and now is experienced.’ Now you seem to be saying that Love is experienced. The Pure Consciousness Experience is a pure experience untainted by any affectations such as God, Love, Oneness, etc. What you are describing is well documented as an Altered State of Conciseness (ASC) whereby one thinks one is someone else ... in this case Love or God. It is a delusion whereby one sees oneself as the Saviour, God, Love etc. In the ASC the identity merely shifts from the head to the heart, from the ego to the soul – the self becomes the Self. This is why in the East it is preached that one should watch the thoughts and get out of the mind. One’s identity makes the only escape possible – to the Heavenly realms of imagination and, if successful, a more or less permanent ASC is obtained ... and yet another Saviour is born.
Malice and sorrow are absent from the world of this one. Freedom is what one experiences when living in Agapé, which occurs when one accepts unconditionally all that is. The human condition contains many experiences, none of which are better than any other; just different. Fair enough. Many people have gained a freedom from the world as it is, with all its violence, suffering, loneliness, despair, and depression. The cultivation of an ‘inner’ world of peace and tranquillity through meditative practices combined with a detached acceptance of the human condition can eventually lead to Altered States of Consciousness such as Agapé, Self-Realization, Awakened, Enlightenment etc. I, too, travelled this track to the point of having experiences of being Divine Love or Love Agapé, but I found myself increasingly isolated from the world as it is, and curiously removed from any intimacy with those around me. It was as though I saw and experienced everything through a veil of detachment. When the heartfelt experiences were full-on it was indeed glorious but... What nagged me was that I would end up an Enlightened guru and I didn’t like their lifestyles, I didn’t like how they were with their women, and I didn’t like the whole system of God-man and worshippers. It was a tough task to give up the spiritual world but I wanted an actual freedom that is applicable in the marketplace, available to all, perfect and pure, untainted by power and authority. Something that was down-to-earth, not ethereal or other-worldly, something that would deliver not only peace for me but offer the solution to the Human Condition of malice and sorrow for all others. Such that one day, albeit centuries away, an actual peace will eventuate on earth between all humans with no more warring tribes and religious factions.
I wanted an actual freedom that is applicable in the marketplace, available to all, perfect and pure, untainted by power and authority. So, why does an enlightened being have to wallow in power and authority? Just a note to the questions you raised – The Enlightened Ones, having found God and Love, are compulsively driven to spread their message and to gather their disciples. It is intrinsic that if one discovers the Truth then one is impelled to teach it. Truth does not exist without the teachings. They are in effect teaching their versions of the Truth, but a Truth must be told, must be passed on, otherwise it withers. And the one who teaches the Truth has the power and authority, for people are hungry for the Truth with its promise of salvation, bliss and immortality. For those who reach Enlightenment the reward for having found the Truth is having others be grateful to you, love you and worship you. Having achieved the altered state of consciousness, whereby one is God, it is also a very lonely business and one needs love from others. It is all a Grand tradition in the East where the pinnacle of human achievement is to become an immortal God-man ... The Glamour, Glory and Glitz of Enlightenment is the ultimate power and authority. So it comes with the territory, so to speak. It gets a little watered and wimped down in the west with higher numbers and lower quality, but all ultimately are doing battle for customers and status. I have written about my feelings of power and authority and the battle to free myself from their seductive clutches, as has Vineeto. Richard, having been Enlightened for 11 years until he freed himself, is the expert in the field and he has written of it (from the inside) on his web-site. It makes fascinating reading. Can they not just live without malice and sorrow, with unconditional acceptance of everything, as a quiet light to those who are seeking a way out of the darkness they find themselves in? Well seemingly not, if history is any guide. I’ve heard a lot of theories about humble Enlightened Ones, the un-seen and un-heard of ones, but if no-one hears of them then they are a myth. As for the declared one’s – in becoming a saviour of others, a light on the path – they are obviously in the power and authority game. Can not more be done by example, by walking the talk rather than talking the talk? Precisely my point about the Enlightened Ones when I said ‘I didn’t like their lifestyles, I didn’t like how they were with their women and I didn’t like the whole God-man / disciple business. But when you really look at where Eastern spirituality, and dare I say Osho, was pointing to, it is that you would end up single, celibate and become God. That is ‘walking the talk’ in the East. If there are any women around, their role is as servants and worshipping carers. * The Enlightened Ones, having found God and Love, are compulsively driven to spread their message and to gather their disciples. It is intrinsic that if one discovers the Truth then one is impelled to teach it. Truth does not exist without the teachings. Is this true of all Enlightened Ones? There are over 6.000 religions on the planet and nearly as many sub-groups all started by Enlightened Ones or Realised Ones. You can give me all the theories you want but this is the direct result of their teachings, ministries, prophesies, messages or communes. The factual evidence of the urge to spread the message. Does not enlightenment purge compulsion? There is no evidence of it, quite the contrary. All claim a Divine message, a Unity with God, and a desire to share their overflowing. If you are interested you could read Richard’s ‘A brief personal history’ for the inside story of Enlightenment. I take it from your willingness to even talk of these matters that you are not fully Enlightened but only Realised – so you may be curious about another option. The mystical experience is universally identified as being something beyond sharing, so why would such a one engage in the futility of trying to teach what they learned from the experience? I take it you are talking about sharing in the form of – spoken about sensibly with words that make sense then it is an obvious futility. The sharing that is usually practiced is in ‘being in the presence of’, sharing ‘energy’, as in an Ashram, Sangha, temple or the more widely practiced humble ‘sitting’. * For those who reach Enlightenment the reward for having found the Truth is having others be grateful to you, love you and worship you. Having achieved the altered state of consciousness, whereby one is God, it is also a very lonely business and one needs love from others. Is not Enlightenment the realization that there is only Agapé (unconditional love) and this is not only all about you, but is within you as well? Aye indeed. In my full-blown delusion I was Love and Love was me. The feeling was Grand, ‘I’ had realised Love at last ... I find it curios that you have changed your position a bit on your definitions here. You started off writing to me with the statement – After one has the PCE the ‘I’ is lost and only the here and now is experienced. Now all of a sudden there is ‘Agapé that is all about you and within you as well’ . There is a ‘you’ who feels Agapé and as such what you are describing is an altered state of consciousness (ASC) – typified in the spiritual world by the delusion of divine grandeur. One realizes they are the source of all the love in the Universe, they are part of the whole and never experience loneliness and a ‘need’ for others or for love; they already have it all; the idea of separation is no more. The ‘feeling’ of separation is no more – except one is separate from those who have not found the Truth yet. They become mere ‘sentient beings’ for they have not yet discovered the Truth – or have ‘yet to realize that they are God’. And, of course, since it is all only a feeling inside one’s head there is no such thing as a generally-agreed Truth, each have their own slightly different version or flavour. This means that the Enlightened One’s lead a solitary life, ‘above’ their own disciples and fighting and competing with each other for a share of the disciple market. There is no universally agreed upon Truth or even a semblance of one. Hence we have over 6,000 religions and the competition and fighting between them is ‘realized’ as the horrendous wars, persecutions, tortures, suspicions and fears that plague Humanity. It’s a very lonely business being God, and to think otherwise is to be gullible in the extreme.
Owning one’s reactions, seeing them, totally experiencing them, feeling them totally, getting over them, meditating on them, going inside, gaining insight, feeling free, awakening, becoming conscious, etc, etc,... however you want to say these things... are on the path to REALLY WAKING UP... where you get this poem. All your pontifical protestations do nothing to change the fact that the Eastern spiritual tradition firmly points to transcending one’s feelings, turning away from the physical world as it is and aiming for an altered state of consciousness (ASC). This altered state of consciousness is a mere delusion whereby one thinks one is God, Love, Eternal, Awakened, Timeless and Immortal. The delusion is that one totally identifies as ‘being the soul’ and thereby completely denies the physical body. (‘I am not the body’ is a constant theme) – hence the self, in a blinding insight Realizes (that one is God – which one really suspected all along) From this lofty position One then ‘feels’ sad for others – upheld as the noble trait of Compassion. As for the theory of transcendence of feelings that we discussed the other day, I’ll leave you with a bit of the Dalai Lama – from a ‘What is Enlightenment’ magazine interview – ‘... according to Buddhism, all our efforts ultimately should go to training or shaping our minds. Emotions such as hatred or strong attachment are destructive and harmful – we call them ‘negative emotions.’ So how can we reduce these negative emotions? Not through prayer, not through physical exercise, but through training of mind. Through training of mind we try to increase the opposite qualities. When genuine compassion, infinite compassion, or unbiased compassion is increased, hatred is reduced. When equanimity is increased, attachment is reduced. All of these destructive emotions are based on ignorance, and the opposite, or antidote, of ignorance is enlightenment. This is why it is very important to analyze the world of the mind and find out what its basic nature is. What are the different categories of mind? Which minds are destructive? Which minds are constructive? and so on. Once we have analyzed all these questions, then we should try to control our minds by adding more good and removing the bad. Some modern scholars describe Buddhism as a ‘science of mind’ for this very reason’. Interesting, is it not? Personally, I think no-mind is was probably developed as concept by the disciples of Eastern Religions given that they could not make any sense of anything that is said or written. When I re-read any of them today I am totally bewildered.
What does being a disciple mean to you, what did you expect to get out of it? ... have you ‘got’ what you were searching for ...? I feel I had three masters before Osho. I say feel because the relationship was not so clearly defined. In each case, I found myself attracted to that person, having realizing I had something to learn. And I can truthfully say that I did not know what I was going to learn. Early on my path, I learned that the more I saw truth, the less depressed, the more peaceful and joyful I became. Before Osho I felt a kind of enlightenment ... perhaps of the kind you sense, Peter. I did not know my heart, but I knew how to process energy. I could transform any feeling in my body, any sensation ... into a transcendental conscious state. And I remember Amitabh shocking me out of doing it in the first 5 minutes of the first group I did. He said I was killing myself. I immediately saw his point, and through trusting Osho and his group leaders, I relaxed my efforts. I didn’t see any change for some time, but eventually I woke to a ‘higher’ place. For me the key word is trust. And I see this word much misunderstood. I found the book ‘Collisions with the Infinite’ quite interesting, for here was a woman who, after abandoning years of intensive meditation practice, had a profound perception-altering experience. It appears she lost some personal sense of self, and lived for several years in a barren no-man’s land. Gradually after trying psychiatric help, she was taken under the wing of the spiritual fraternity and soon ... Bingo! ... what appears to have been a full emergence into an altered state of consciousness (ASC) whereby she realized her Divinity and Immortality. The interesting thing for me was the influence that her spiritual guides and confidants had on her experiences. What if there was another path apart from becoming God and Immortal? What if there was a way to become actually free of malice and sorrow and live as a flesh and blood human being, happy and harmless? How many would choose it and abandon the hope of Oneness, and especially of immortality? For one, it would mean that when the body died that was it – finito, kaput, the end, no more, extinction, oblivion. And secondly, to experience this Actual Freedom one would have to actively pursue ‘self’-immolation.
In fact, it was an attempt by ‘me’ to turn away from the ‘real’ world and aim to become an Enlightened God-man. To want to become an Enlightened God-man is too big an aim. No wonder you failed. I did start to get close to Enlightenment at one point, but by then it had already begun to lose its attraction as a lifestyle. There is all that celibacy business, keeping up the God image, fawning disciples, the isolation of being God, the impossibility of seeing others as fellow human beings, the whole Religion bit, etc. I am immensely happy to have failed. By everybody else’s terms I am a total failure in life. I am neither rich, famous, powerful, nor am I a healer, a channeller or Guru. An utter failure – a happy and harmless failure and I can’t recommend it highly enough. It beats Enlightenment by a country mile. It is to live beyond one’s wildest dreams – fully alive!
I’m sorry that your spiritual search hasn’t ‘delivered’ the good yet, but don’t give up. It is so easy to join the ranks of the embittered and claim that to be the TRUTH even to try to be their standard bearer. And as everybody knows, misery loves company. Maybe you should take a weekend off and read Mein Kampf or some other inspirational literature. Obviously you have not read much of what I have written or you have completely missed the point. The only thing that the spiritual search can ‘deliver’ (apart from the obligatory suffering on the path) is Enlightenment for the very, very few. As soon as it dawned on me that to be Enlightened is a massive state of delusion and self-aggrandizement such that one gets to Realize one is God. And the reason I could not see the facts was that I was blinded by love. I was further blinded to seeing that the direct and inevitable result of the practice of worshipping men (or women) as Gods is the formation of Religions. This in turn directly results in all the religious wars, tortures, repressions, crusades, ‘cleansings’, terrorism, persecutions, etc that have and still do rage on this fair earth. And all this wrath and malice is raged in the name of whose ‘Truth is the right Truth’, whose ‘Guru, prophet, Messiah or Dead Master is the Only True Messenger! Mr. Hitler and Co. are small fry in the business of leading people to kill and be killed compared to the Holy and venerated Saviours of Western Religion and Eastern Spirituality.
Beholden to no-one and nothing. Free to be happy and harmless – at last. Happiness is your own business, but as far as I’m concerned you are not harmless when you couch your own failure to come to self-realization in general terms and try to prescribe a program for others to follow... Well, I ‘couch my own failure to come to self-realisation in general terms’ simply because it is a common experience. The success rate of Enlightenment is .0001%, which leaves hundreds of millions, if not billions of people who have trod the spiritual path for millennia as ‘failures’. I would say that failure is a pretty general experience. I am but one of many failures, the only difference being that I acknowledged it and escaped from both the ‘real’ world and the spiritual world and stepped into the actual world.
The path to the extinction of one’s soul begins with gaily abandoning the belief in God and an eternal life, and setting about the process of total ‘self’-immolation, And lastly Peter, help me understand what is going on here. What is the nature of this process? Is this how one achieves Enlightenment? Do you know of anyone who has accomplished this? As I have said before, the process begins with daring to question the ancient beliefs in an all-encompassing God, the passion-fuelled aberration that causes human beings to feel that they are God-on-earth and the very notion of the human created duality of Good and Evil. If you are looking to achieve Enlightenment – an altered state of consciousness whereby one feels oneself to be all-powerful, all-glorious, timeless and spaceless – then what I am writing will be useless for you. It would appear that very few have achieved the state of Enlightenment for few point to a seminal momentous event when their ego or personal self has collapsed and their soul or Impersonal Self has became Full. As such, it would seem that the spiritual world abounds with pretenders, would-bes and wannabes, exactly as the Net abounds with cyber disciples and cyber gurus, all unconsciously doing a valuable service by exposing the asinine secrets that the East has so jealously guarded and deliberately shrouded in mystery for millennia. If however, you are asking if anyone has accomplished an actual freedom from the Human Condition – then yes, the way has been pioneered by someone who was himself Enlightened for some 11 years but who dared to question the veracity of the Divine state he was living. By thoroughly investigating the supposed virtues of the Divine state such as Divine Love and Divine Compassion, from the inside as it were, he was finally able to break through the stranglehold that the tender instinctual passions have had on human beings and become free of the delusion of Self-hood and the instinctual passions in total. A handful of others are currently pioneering the direct path to an actual freedom, avoiding the instinctual trap of Enlightenment that has beguiled and ensnared all previous seekers of freedom, peace and happiness. I simply write to inform any others who have a burning discontent with their life as-it-is and have doubts about the traditional spiritual freedom, that there is now available a genuine and actual freedom from the Human Condition, in total. Peter’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved. |
