Selected Correspondence Peter

Common Sense

• A small group of others who have determined that the method on offer by this person has meaning to them, and they make a conscious choice to lead their lives in a similar fashion. They emulate his ‘philosophy’ and practice his techniques, likely with varying degrees of success. However, they are leading a simulation of the originator’s way (that’s what the word ‘virtual’ means after all), so it is possible that they have suspended some measure of their common sense in order to ‘be like Richard’. I can’t really ascertain that, but if that were the case, then they are dancing around the edges of cult-ness.

Your supposition depends upon your definition of the term ‘common sense’. The common-to-all sense would have it that human beings need to be aggressive in order to survive in the world and that suffering is not only essential but is good for you. On the other hand, to me it is common sense to do all I can to become both happy and harmless.

Perhaps a better way of putting my desire to emulate Richard is that I have abandoned the usual common-to-all-sense and relied on the uncommon-to-all-sense of devoting my life to becoming both happy and harmless. Thus far this sense is indeed uncommon, for I only know of less than a handful of people who have openly declared themselves to be similarly motivated, and I have the good fortune to live with one of them.

I use the term ‘common sense’ in exactly the same way as you. I suppose it is a term that is too subjectively defined to be bandied about as freely as I have.

Okay, but whereas you said ‘so it is possible that they have suspended some measure of their common sense in order to ‘be like Richard’, my experience is that I came to my senses when I decided to become actually free ‘like Richard’. I had to stop believing the non-sense I believed about what it is to be a human being – the common-to-all sense – and I had to start taking a clear-eyed look at the facts of what it is to be a human being – the uncommon-to-all-sense. To me this is not suspending ‘some measure of … common sense’ but discovering common sense and putting it into action. If you check back to the passage you originally wrote, you may find your use of the term common sense was the opposite to how I use it when I write.

The only reason I am labouring the point a bit is that I had to work hard to develop a clear-eyed common sense because my thinking was always skewed by the morals and ethics I had been taught as a kid and imbibed in my latter life. My common sense – the free operation of the intelligence that is the hallmark of the human brain – was obscured, if not completely obliterated in many cases, by the beliefs I had unwittingly taken to be truths and it took a good deal of effort and time to eliminate them.

And then there are the feelings that kick in automatically and instinctually before thinking has a chance to operate freely – the feelings that infiltrated my thinking without me even being aware of what was happening. It took persistent attentiveness on my part to become aware of this biological fact but once I got the hang of it, this attentiveness became almost constant and then it was thrilling to be able to observe and sort out how the human condition operates. It then increasingly began to be a pleasure to think, to ponder, to contemplate, to reflect, to understand, to realize, to be able to think things through in order to arrive at the facts of the matter … and to be aware that I was coming to my senses, both literally and figuratively.

That’s what I call common sense.

Why was it that that Spirituality seems to promise so much and has delivered so little? Promises and expectations,’

Yes, but I believed all the fishy spiritual hocus-pocus, as you put it, because it was the only thing on offer at the time. I gave it 15 years of intense effort (‘Yeah, but obviously not enough!’ – I can hear the refrain.) and it didn’t work. So I gave it up and tried something different. In the physical world, if something doesn’t work after all your efforts to get it to work, you finally throw it out and find something that does work. The chief executive of an American airline summed it up when he took over an ailing airline. He tore up the company’s operation manual on the basis that, by definition, a lunatic is someone who keeps on doing something that does not work. But this sort of common sense has no place in Religion or Spirituality. Humans still wait for a God (or God-man) to ‘fix it all up’ one day, or ‘transport’ them to some imaginary ‘inner’ cosmic world, while actively contributing to the wars, persecutions, fanaticism, perversions, sexual ignorance, etc. and masquerading it as the cure!! The priests and gurus are the greatest peddlers of snake oil (charlatans) on the planet. If I had of succeeded in the spiritual world I would have merely become yet another ‘King of the psychic world’. What I sensately experience, now, as this body, is so superior to what the Holy Ones experience in their ‘inner world of bliss’

I remember when I first came across Richard and he said it is possible to be happy and harmless, and to live with a woman in peace and harmony. I had tried the normal path of family, career, money, relationships, being part of a group, etc., and had the feeling I had done it all. I had got to the stage that the career option of being a Guru didn’t seem what I wanted to be. So I simply decided make being free of malice and sorrow my main business in life. And I was successful. So, I really did it for me, for my personal peace. But if others take this on as an aim in life then we may well eventually have happy and harmless people on the planet. It may well take thousands of years but it is now possible.

And did you think about what would be if, for example, some person starts to present him self as Jesus Christ (for the second time amongst us). What is the miracle, which he must perform in order to people start believing in him. In this moment we have a great number of miracle men all around the world. In comparison with them Christ would be nothing but a cheap magician.

From where I see things, as long as he/she has God on their side they can promise anything and people will still believe. Christians still await the second coming. Buddhist await the return of Maitreya, and Rajneeshees for the new man.

Maybe your intentions are sincere, but then how can you expect from the people to just believe you and take you for granted only on the basis of dead words presented somewhere on the Internet?

I said in the Afterword to my journal, and here in this mailing list, not to merely believe what I am saying. It is such a poor way to live one’s life on the basis of believing what other people say.

For me, facts and common sense beat belief and feelings any day. If I was running a business and wanted to be successful I would rely on facts and common sense. I simply applied the same sense to being here as a flesh and blood human being and then the magic really began to happen.

Eastern philosophy and religion deny and negate the innate intelligence and common sense operation of thought while giving full and unbridled reign to the affective and imaginary faculties. ‘Get out of your head and into your heart’ can be translated into ‘give up common sense and you can imagine and ‘feel’ anything you want to’. Feelings of Love, Oneness, God, etc. abound – varying only by the particular belief system one is influenced by at the time.

Hence Christians ‘see’ and feel Christ, Buddhist ‘see’ and feel Buddha, scientists ‘see’ parallel universes, etc. etc.

So, in the ‘world according to No 10’, I am allowed to have an opinion but the sin of all sins is to make a judgement.

If by judgement you mean the ability to judge wisely in matters affecting action, good sense, discretion then I make judgements based on all the facts I can gather. I then make a judgement on what is the sensible action to take.

The operation of common sense is essential if one is to be free of such moralistic and self-serving nonsense as ‘thou shalt not judge’.

The problem with being motivated by the ‘truth’ is that everyone has their own version of the truth, as in ‘my truth’ and ‘your truth’, and that each Religion has their own particular version of the Truth according to the Teachings of their particular Master, Messenger or Guru being followed. Further, some people believe that there is but One Truth, an obvious fantasy as it is such a nebulous thing as to be ‘beyond words’. When it is put into words the fighting begins in earnest as to which version is the Real Truth. This nonsense has gone on for millennia and is a mere excuse to have a mythical God to bow down to or look up to. Just because everybody believes something to be true doesn’t necessarily mean it is true. It just means that everybody believes to be it to be true. To believe means ‘fervently wish to be true’ as per dictionary definition.

Whereas a fact is a fact. What about if we were motivated by a common sense evaluation of facts rather than imaginary concepts? What about if we considered that there was no life after death? What about if we were motivated to become happy and harmless, rather than the frantic desire to visualize an after-life? What if we stopped believing in mythical Truths and looked at the facts for a change?

Great that you haven’t given up hope of finding any small slice of openness. When I met Richard I was intrepid in both my questioning and scrutiny of what he was saying – there was no way I was just going to take on another set of beliefs. What he was saying that he had found out about the Human Condition was both incomprehensible and frightening to ‘me’. I would often recoil in bewilderment but I was determined to ascertain for myself whether or not what he was saying was factual. To go away, read, contemplate, question, investigate, recall, ponder, ruminate ... and then come back and ask again. I would pursue this process with each of my dearly-held beliefs until the clear facts emerged. I have written more of it in the Intelligence chapter of my journal, if you are interested.

As for never coming across someone so brainwashed before, it is not that I am sprouting Wisdom or a new belief system. I am simply stating facts. When talking to Richard, I always tried to avoid getting into a ‘tis’ – tisn’t’, ‘right and wrong’ type of discussion. Much better to look at the facts of the situation – and they were always 180 degrees different to what I had been taught.

The certainty and surety comes from facts and common sense, whereas doubt and confusion are the direct result of belief and feelings.

And what I talk of is the actual world of purity and delight that we have all experienced in a pure consciousness experience – that world that is right under our noses when ‘I’ temporarily abdicate the throne. It is not a philosophy or something Richard has invented. This actual world is ever-present, but it is not a world that ‘I’ can experience, therefore ‘my’ demise is essential.

Everybody has what they fondly declare to be their ‘own’ truth and passionately defend it – even declaring their ‘right’ to do so.

Unfortunately, what I discovered was that ‘my’ truth was no more than ‘me’ taking on some particular versions of Ancient Wisdom and interpreting them to fit ‘my’ selfish motives. This ‘I’ did in order to become a member of some particular group and gain a sense of belonging – all to soothe the lost, lonely, frightened, and very, very cunning entity ‘I’ really am. ‘My’ truth was nothing more than a phantasm, designed to perpetuate ‘my’ existence and once I saw and acknowledged this, it was impossible to defend any more.

All this would not matter one iota but people do fight with each other as to whose ‘truth’ is ‘right’, or gang together in religious or social groups and fight horrendous wars as to whose collective ‘truths’ are right.

I am not writing to No. 4, the spiritual believer. I am writing to No. 4, the fellow human being and I am reporting – as a fellow human being – what I have found out and the extra-ordinariness of it all. That there is actually a way to become free of malice and sorrow. Many on the list complain that I am not talking to ‘them’ and it is true. I am communicating directly to the fellow human being using common sense and native intelligence – saying don’t believe what everyone has told you – don’t just go on believing what the old fuddy duddies of the past have told you is true.

It is 1999, not 500 BC, and there is now available a way out of the mess we humans have found ourselves in. I don’t expect you to believe me but if you are at all dissatisfied with your life and in following the ‘tried and failed’ methods ... maybe, just maybe, it might be worth considering ... trying something ... new.?

Your preferring to see the Human Condition as ‘useful mud’ which the lotus ‘needs to grow’ is a perfect example of the Ancient Wisdom which you yourself described as ‘Ancient Foolishness’. The poetic metaphor of the mud and the lotus means that we humans need to suffer in this life on earth in order for our souls to grow to become God and live in the ‘lotus paradise’.

So you are suggesting the reason we need ‘religious systems’ is so that the chosen few can then imagine that the earth is their own particular ‘lotus paradise’. Hence the Ashrams, temples, monasteries, and churches become Oasis’ of Consciousness where the devout pray and meditate to reach a state of detachment such that the earth is seen as a ‘lotus paradise’.

In other words, we need the ‘mud’ of the Human Condition and its religious systems purely in order that the religious people can rise above it. It’s the old ‘we need to suffer in order to feel God’ number.

If you eliminate suffering you eliminate the need for God – it’s as simple as that. You can twist it anyway you want but suffering is essential for God’s very existence.

Whichever way you look at it, both Eastern and Western Spirituality clearly indicate a ‘something else’ or ‘somewhere else’ apart from this physical universe

Many people have already resorted to bestowing Godly qualities or energies on the physical universe – anthropomorphism abounds, hence the term Universe with a capital U. Anyone of spiritual conviction is so far from having the ability to apply common sense that for them to even use the term leaves me gasping in incredulity.

Common sense or native intelligence only begin to come into play when the human brain is freed of the absurdities and restrictive covenants applied by believing Ancient Wisdom. Then, and only then, can one look at the bulk of the social identity, and only then one can explore the core instinctual emotions. By developing a firm and self-convincing spiritual identity on top of an already enveloping social conditioning one has gone even further away from both common sense and the senses of the physical body. The denial of the body and the mind evidenced by such Wisdoms as ‘you are not the body/mind’ confirm this non-sensical retreat.

It is a long and rocky road back to the senses and to common sense – it is the greatest challenge facing Humanity at this time and it is the personal journey of a life-time to accept the challenge.

That the physical universe is not a concept is easily demonstrated by putting gaffer tape over your mouth, holding your nose and waiting 10 minutes. As you rip the tape from your mouth, gulping air you may well begin to consider that the physical universe is a fact for you, not just a concept.

As for the slippery concept of God, this conversation stands testimony to that fact.

Part of the reason I get off the Sannyas list for awhile is I am becoming more and more aware of my tendency to write unclear sentences. I have a tendency to allude to things rather than state them clearly. As I write, my meaning seems clear to me, but the feedback I get is undeniable – my language is open to multiple interpretations. I admire your ability to be more literal. I do not rest with this; I aim to learn. In fact I am learning.

One of the reasons I wrote my journal was to make sense of life. To check out for myself what my experience had shown were the facts of being a human being on the planet, as opposed to the beliefs I had taken on board. I deliberately avoided much contact with Richard and dipping into his writing at the time as a way of checking it out for myself. I wanted to check if what he was saying stood up to the test of common sense and gelled with the facts. It did and 100% so. Of course, I freely acknowledge bleeding him for information, and his encyclopaedic knowledge of the Human Condition. His experiences of Enlightenment are unprecedented in that he is the only one who has escaped from the massive delusion of Divinity.

So, writing is such a useful tool for clarity, I always want to say what I want to say clearly and concisely. It also means I have to know clearly what it is I want to say – for me that is simple, as all I do is state the facts. What others do with the facts is their business.

or you are intellectual masochist ...

No, neither. I trained as an architect but found the whole business a bit too intellectual. So I spent most time actually building, on site, hammer and nail bag stuff. I like practical hands-on work so words, writing, and the like are new to me. I have no interest in intellectual pursuits – I find so much of it to be mere ‘wanking’ (masturbation).

I write now because I enjoy it, it is good fun to offer – for the first time – an alternative that works.

It is the next significant change that will happen with humans – that we will gradually see peace and harmony spread on the planet. It is no small thing that Richard has discovered. It is a leap to a new species no longer driven by felines of fear, aggression, nurture and desire.

And each person is free to do it themselves or not. Cute Hey ... Perfect.

As for masochism, I aim for safety, comfort, and avoid the possibility of pain. I am a coward of the first order.

Well Peter, there’s not much more for me to say, you are in control of your dream. You too have the ability to allow contentment, peace of mind when you are doing whatever it is you do. You can even allow the world to be worldly... all the options still exist, but an option is not the same as a promise. Options come with personal responsibility.

Option implies choice, and yes, I certainly exercise choice based firmly on what is silly and what is sensible, what is a fact and what is merely a belief, what works and what doesn’t work. It takes the angst, doubt and fear out of choice and is magically freeing. I don’t even have to ‘feel’ responsible any more given that I am no longer malicious (hence no guilt, shame or repentance arise) nor am I sorrowful (hence no sadness, compassion or resentment arise)

Thought encloses itself in its own word’ What then is this activity from which one ought to abstain? It is the disordered activity of the mind which, unceasingly, devotes itself to the work of a builder erecting ideas, creating an imaginary world in which it shuts itself like a chrysalis in its cocoon.’ – The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

Eastern philosophy and religion deny and negate the innate intelligence and common sense operation of thought while giving full and unbridled reign to the affective and imaginary faculties. ‘Get out of your head and into your heart’ can be translated into ‘give up common sense and you can imagine and ‘feel’ anything you want to’. Feelings of Love, Oneness, God, etc. abound – varying only by the particular belief system one is influenced by at the time.

Hence Christians ‘see’ and feel Christ, Buddhist ‘see’ and feel Buddha, scientists ‘see’ parallel universes, etc. etc.

Spiritual insights or Altered States of Consciousness (ASC) do indeed by-pass thought – and common sense as well!

It was only that some inherent common sense prevented me from being happy and content with my lot in life and that left me with a healthy suspicion about the traditional spiritual illusion of ‘freedom’.

Again when I met Richard, the ‘I’ that I was then had very little common sense because I was stuffed full of beliefs, morals, ethics and dimwitticisms. I had run blindly with the mob, as I was programmed to, albeit more than a little uncomfortably at times. I had to work bloody hard to rid myself of all this rubbish in order to develop a common sense – an ability to make a non-‘self’-centred, factual assessment. There was, however, previous fleeting flashes of common sense that stood me in good stead in my normal and spiritual times. These were often manifested as doubt and suspicion – which thankfully never developed into cynicism – and was also evident as what is best described as a bullshit detector.

I have always said that what Richard did was seduce and encourage me to go all the way in developing this fledgling and fragile common sense.

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It was only that some inherent common sense prevented me from being happy and content with my lot in life and that left me with a healthy suspicion about the traditional spiritual illusion of ‘freedom’.

What commonly passes for common sense is but society’s varied versions of common practice – a confused jumble of morals, ethics, ancient wisdoms, compromises and platitudes. Intelligence, interminably straight-jacketed by a social conscience, and ceaselessly inflamed by the instinctual survival passions, is incapable of exercising common sense.

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There is no perhaps about it at all. It is so vastly superior that I find it amazing that people still desperately cling to their religious/ spiritual beliefs, failed morals, unliveable ethics and precious feelings. They pay a terrible price in running with the herd.

What always attracted me to actualism was the good sense of it all. As for ‘not spiritual in nature’, I am well aware I could be accused of being excessive in attempting to drive a wedge between actualism and Eastern spiritualism. Given that they both offer freedom, peace and happiness it is important to investigate and look for the differences between the offerings. I had sufficient in-depth, first-hand experience to know that an ‘inner’ spiritual freedom was a bogus ‘self’-indulgence and its historical track-record is appalling, to say the least. Taking on something new is a daunting prospect but what was written about actualism at the time – which was only Richard’s Journal – made such good sense to me that I was encouraged to dig in to find out what was really on offer.

‘Have you experimented by acting against your social norms (acting against our religious / social conditionings and taboos to investigate the rush of emotions that follows such experiment, for example)? If so, did such action break through the psychological power of the norm and did it give you more encouragement to investigate them more deeply?’

What I find now is that silly and sensible replaces good and bad, right and wrong and as such, it is very sensible to obey the laws of the land – the freedom and change is fundamental and internal, not conditional on the external. The aim is freedom from malice and sorrow, in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are. Put into practice, this means that if you are not happy now because of some belief, moral or ethical value you hold, if you are upset because of the way someone else is, or if you are miffed or angry about some situation you can do nothing about, then you have something to look at in your own psyche. If there is some sensible action to be taken to change one’s circumstances then one can make it in a sensible, harmless and appropriate manner.

A bit of digging in and changing oneself rather than looking outside and blaming others or the circumstances is required.

Many people pay lip service to the idea that the only person you can change is yourself, but when, and if, the penny drops, your life will never be the same again. For me this realization proved the starting point to really beginning to change. I won’t post it here but you will find my story of this realization in the ‘Living Together’ chapter of my journal and Vineeto has written about it in ‘A Bit of Vineeto’.

Becoming free of ‘religious / social conditioning and taboos’ is a process that brings to the surface much fear for one is literally dismantling a large part of one’s identity and stepping out of humanity, so it is sensible to be cautious as to what you say to others and what you do during this process. Much passion can be uncovered and much turmoil can result as the firm and familiar ground beneath one’s feet seems to shake and eventually disappears. Each success brings a tangible, palpable and heady freedom.

Our social identity was instilled in us in childhood in order to curb and control the emerging instinctual savage passions arising from the animal fear-aggression reaction genetically encoded in our ancient brain structure. With the knowledge gained from the pure consciousness experience and the relentless application of common sense – the silly and sensible judgement – you are capable of reducing the effects of the instinctual passions in your life such that you are able to become happy and harmless 99% of the time. Unless you are willing to strip away and reduce this outer secondary layer of identity you will never be able to investigate and experience both the savage and tender instinctual passions that form the deeper primary instinctual self.

It’s certainly a good job that I don’t take other people’s opinions seriously.

Personally, I always used to check them out and see if there was any factual basis in what they were saying. If there was, I would assess my actions and make any necessary adjustments so as to not cause offence to others, or take offence from what others did or said. This is peace on earth in action.

I think maybe it’s time for you to assess your actions now. This is arrogance.

No. This is commonsense. If one wants peace on earth then one cannot expect it to happen unless one is willing to do it oneself. This fact scares almost everyone away from actualism for they know, deep down inside, that to actively pursue an actual freedom from malice and sorrow will be the death of ‘me’, that lost, lonely, frightened and very, very cunning entity that dwells within the flesh and blood body. For me, I just figured I had nothing left to lose ... except more of the same and then I’d die without having lived as I knew it was possible in the Pure Consciousness Experience.

What is, in fact, the absolute pinnacle of arrogance within the Human Condition is to call oneself God-on-Earth.

Altruism, for me, was evident when I started to become aware of how my malice and sorrow was causing suffering for those around me and usually those closer to me suffered most from my moods and my behaviour. It then became very clear I had to stop inflicting my ‘self’ on others – altruism in action.

When I came across Richard I remember thinking it was easy for someone whose family had grown up and who did not have to work for his income due to the fact he had a war service disability pension to become free from the human condition. What about someone who had to work, had a family, or lived in not so comfortable or safe circumstances? Was he talking about having to drop out of the world as-it-is and people as-they-are – exactly as those on the spiritual path have to do?

I was working building a house at the time and soon discovered that the hurly burly of the real world was exactly what was needed to provide me with the opportunities to test myself. I remember one situation at work where one particular person would continually cause me to be upset, so I used the situation to rid myself of all that was causing me to be upset. My motto was – ‘I was not going to let this person ruin my enjoyment of my time at work’. I was not going to try and change him, I was simply going to make it my business that he was not going to ‘get’ me. By neither repressing nor expressing my reactions and feelings, I was able to sort out the whys and whereabouts of my malice and sorrow in this situation and soon he gave up on me for he found that he couldn’t get at me, no matter how hard he tried.

This experience meant that I came to see that actualism works in any situation, for anyone, anywhere. In fact, for those who have been wafting along on the spiritual path and are interested in actualism, it is essential to get out of one’s (inner) cave – rejoin the world of people, things and events and be tested. Unless one tries out a theory and find it works it will always remain a theory or a belief or a philosophy.

So, if you spend the biggest proportion of your waking hours working, or with family members, then it is vitally important that you be happy and harmless in those moments. If you are involved in solving a problem at work and become frustrated, or you find yourself becoming upset by someone, then these are the immediate challenges. This is what ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ means in the hurly burly of family and work. I found that I didn’t have to run the words per se, but simply be aware whenever I was emotionally upset, which was a sign of malice, or I was feeling lackluster, which was a sign of sorrow. The quicker I caught myself, the more likely I was able to trace the cause or event, the quicker I could get back to feeling good again. If I was fully involved in the doing of something, then so be it, jolly good. Actualism is such a simple business.

I do like it that you are finding and tackling the challenges of work and family. My experience is that if you have the desire to be happy and harmless, and the awareness to eliminate emotional passions to the extent that common sense can freely operate, you can literally do no wrong. The more ‘you’ are willing to step out of the way, in any circumstances and at any time, and dare to let the moment live you, the more the purity and perfection of the actual world is able to become apparent.

Each of the early actualists is pioneering slightly different aspects, with slightly different flavours as we are all from different social conditionings, differing nationalities, differing spiritual conditioning, different living circumstances, male and female gender, etc. Your lot seems work and family, in particular – good hey.

It’s an extraordinary adventure, this business of pioneering an end to malice and sorrow, which is why the doing of it is not a dispassionate but an enthusiastic affair.

There is far more magic in actually being here in this physical world than I have discovered in any imaginary spiritual world – the so-called meta-physical. I am now also able to live together in perfect peace and harmony with a woman. I now have an intimacy, a direct experience and knowledge of the other human being with whom I have shared this amazing, tangible unravelling of myths, beliefs and instincts. Here is a woman with whom I not only bared my dark side – I eliminated it. Together with the ‘good’ side as well. Not the emotions merely paraded out in some sort of sharing but an honest and thorough investigation to root out the source of all that stood in the way of our living together in peace and harmony. Deep sea diving, if you like. Boots and all, no holds barred, the full monty, all the way. Together we systematically removed all that was in the road between us – the whole lot!

And the rewards are extraordinary – l have complete freedom to be ‘me as I am’, and for Vineeto it is likewise. No expectations, no bonds, no wanting to change the other – why should I? She is perfect; she has made herself that way by ‘cleaning herself up’. And what a delight to meet equal intelligence, equal common sense and an equally sexual being! We experience equity as two human beings and delight in the physical differences, as those differences allow us to enjoy delicious, lusty sex! The hours and hours of talking, discussing and dissecting the Human Condition; the ‘What it is to be a man or a woman’; the ‘What’s going on for me’; the ‘Oh! That’s how you see it?’ – the fascination of discovery! It is astounding to actually meet another human being naked of pretence and defence. It leaves love for dead!’ Peter’s Journal, Living Together

Those who claim to know are not aware that they do not really know, because it is not a knowing. It is an emptiness of knowing. Paul Lowe, In Each Moment – A New Way to Live

Oh, dear. Spiritual double speak for ‘it is a denial of common sense’.

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One of the most significant changes that is happening on the planet is difficult to talk about because the mind does not want to hear it. We have been conditioned to believe that events on the outside control how we feel on the inside, which is not true. The changes that have the potential to transform our lives have to do with our inner world, with consciousness, not our attempts to change and control the people and things around us. Paul Lowe, In Each Moment – A New Way to Live

Difficult to talk about? I personally have been hearing these same words for over 20 years, and the message of transformation has been preached about, talked about, written about, and practiced for thousands of years. What do you think the millions of monks, Saddhus and disciples have been doing all this time if not desperately trying for inner transformation? Does ‘potential’ have a use-by date? When can we demand results – as in ‘significant changes’ ? As for – ‘the mind does not want to hear it’ – the message of denial and personal transcendence is indeed anathema to common sense, but ... it is sweet music to the ‘soul’.

Given the process for an actualist is to re-wire one’s brain it is essential to change the way one interprets the ‘spiritual message’ – to understand exactly what is being said rather than gloss over the content of the message. To remain passionately seduced by ancient belief and fear-driven imagination is an affront to one’s intelligence. Only by substituting fact for belief, that which can be sensately experienced for imagination, and common sense for affective feelings, can one begin to come to one’s senses both literally and figuratively.

But change does not come about without effort, work, diligence and perseverance – to both make one’s own investigations and discoveries, as well as reading what others have written of applying the method and experiencing the process of Actual Freedom. One’s progress and successes – or lack of – on the path to Actual Freedom are directly related to the time and effort devoted to these activities.

No effort = no change.

We were having a chat the other day about the amount of time and words we expend in demolishing spiritual belief. Surely we could simply write about what is new, factual and what works rather than bother about what is ancient, based on mythology, has been well tried and has failed.

But this demolition is no side issue, no sour grapes exposé, no mere berating of the ‘opposition’, for unless spiritual belief itself is eliminated one has no chance of becoming actually free of the Human Condition. Richard has taken years of painstaking investigation and effort to break through the stranglehold that the good instinctual passions have on Humanity and, as such, the new path has been forged but each who follow have to follow by themselves.

Not all will go all the way to Actual Freedom, but there are enormous personal advantages to be had by being free of spiritual belief. One comes closer to what is actual, one comes closer to sensate-only experience, one is less internally affected and externally effected, and is less inclined to indulge in denial and acceptance. One is more likely to be considerate of one’s fellow human beings, not out of a desire to be good but out of a common sense awareness of the effects one’s thoughts, feelings and actions have on others. One will be more likely to want to change and some steps may be taken in this direction. Thus, the time and effort involved in demolishing spiritual belief is returned a thousand fold in one’s everyday life of instantaneous and intimate interactions with people, things and events.

For those with the necessary fortitude, diligence, patience and application a Virtual Freedom from the Human Condition is readily and easily obtainable and then one lives beyond one’s wildest dreams – to be virtually free of both malice and sorrow is a most estimable state.

Whereas human intelligence, freed of all of the social conditioning (particularly the belief in God or some form of afterlife and immortality) and the animal instinctual passions is capable of such clarity and common sense that it has to be experienced to be appreciated. Such is the functioning of a brain so freed that I am capable of understanding the whole of the Human Condition of malice and sorrow for I am outside of it as I no longer dwell in the ‘normal’ world or in the ‘spiritual’ world. The mind, when freed of belief and affectation, is capable of immense clarity.

So you found Richard’s Website by accident – most extraordinary: the find of a lifetime really. The man has impeccable credentials having been there, done that, survived, questioned and emerged from the delusion of Enlightenment to report that all is indeed rotten in the world of Gods and Spirits. It was amazing for me, at that stage, to find someone who said ‘Keep questioning – deeper and deeper – dare to question Every belief. No matter how sacred, no matter how dear to me.’ It was also good to find Vineeto to investigate all the gender/sexual/love beliefs and conditionings and understand them not only intellectually but practically: down-to-earth if you like. The discoveries, realizations and sorting out of the full extent of the Human Condition is indeed a fascinating journey. To challenge and go beyond what human beings have believed to be the Limit – beyond Human Nature is quite something.

But I’ve also held that once one did it, then it is easier for the next, even easier for the next and so on. Not that this is a movement with Richard as a leader – the latest saviour – it’s just that there is increasingly more information, more words, a broad map of common sense if you like. In the context of these maps each person is then able, with increasing confidence, to undertake a journey within to rid themselves of the Human Condition. That was what motivated me to write, to try and describe in words, in practical terms, so it was good to hear you enjoyed it.

Now, however, we reach the threshold of the truly mysterious, for we must look to the far reaches of physics, to the paradox-ridden realms of the very small and the very large. There await us bejewelled creatures, strange beyond dreaming, that are born of the highest faculties of the human mind. In this mirror, we will see almost nothing we recognize. Does this mean that we are abandoning reality for illusion? Not at all: we are doing just the reverse. In reaching this far into the realm of the invisible, away from the homely metaphors of everyday life, we are approaching reality. We must not complain if we find it strange. Indeed, it is this very strangeness that tells us that we are ‘on the right track’. When science was young common sense was our guide. The model of the world we built up from new discoveries was based on familiar objects – clocks, pistons, billiard balls. As science has progressed through its great conceptual revolutions – relativity, quantum mechanics, supersymmetry – its discoveries have become more exotic, more remote from everyday experience. Easily recognizable images based on familiar things have given way to abstract theorems which tell of particles moving backwards in time, of a universe structured in eleven dimensions and so on. During this process, the status of common sense has been inverted: no longer our guide in the search for truth, it has become our adversary. D. Reanney, The Death of Forever

Hard to even make a comment on that one, given that science is reaching far into the realms of the invisible – and apparently the realms of the unmeasurable – exotic imagination runs riot in the search for the truth.

*

.... quantum mechanics is par excellence the field of science where commonsense breaks down completely. In particular, the link between cause and effect blurs. In our everyday world of ordinary experience, we take it for granted that a ball will not move unless some force (like a kick) is imparted to it. In the micro world of the quantum, an electron on one side of a barrier can simply ‘reappear’ on the other, without physically ‘moving’ – an effect called quantum tunnelling. D. Reanney, The Death of Forever

Now we get to the crux of the matter as to why I nearly fell off my chair – it was being ‘quantum tunnelled’ at the time. In a bid to inject a degree of common sense (?) into this I’ll risk a quote from Paul Davies about Quantum Theory.

‘The basis of this theory is that in nature there is an inherent uncertainty or unpredictability that manifests itself only on an atomic scale. For example, the position of a subatomic particle such as an electron may not be a well-defined concept at all; it should be envisaged as jiggling around in a random sort of a way. Energy, too, becomes a slightly nebulous concept, subject to capricious and unpredictable changes.’ P. 90, ‘The Edge of Infinity’ Beyond the Black Hole

Now, if we note the word theory and Mr. Davies words ‘... only on an atomic scale ..., ... may not be ..., ... should be envisaged ..., ... slightly nebulous ...,’ then I am quite happy for them to imagine, invasive and theorize for all they will, as long as the chair doesn’t fly across the room and the coffee cup becomes so nebulous that it can’t hold coffee. It is a far, far stretch from Mr. Davies description of the ‘theory of things so small that we can’t actually substantiate them’ to the fantasies of Mr. Reanney and the Mystics. They are frantically clutching at straws in order to turn the actual into an illusion, the substantial into the insubstantial, the obvious into the apparent, the material into the ethereal – in short to escape from this actual world, as evidenced by the senses into ‘another’ world of imagination.

So, I had what I would describe as a normal week and went to bed one night and lay back after a romp with Vineeto, well contented with life. I didn’t go to sleep and lay for a long while, not thinking about anything in particular, when a tremendous rush of fear welled up. It was as though I was in great physical danger – which I was not at all. It was the kind of fear that overwhelms one in a life-threatening situation. It was not induced by ‘me’ thinking or feeling about death – quite the contrary. I remember thinking – ‘This is the fear when it comes and its here now.’

There was a ‘what to do now’, a touch of hesitancy, and the thought occurred that the only way I would go into that fear was as an act of self-sacrifice. I began to think of people who I knew and who I wished well of, and in that the fear subsided and I slipped off the intensity of the fear. But it left me with the confident surety that the key to the door is that it is ultimately an act of self-sacrifice in that moment. The decision to go forward, the impetus, can not be for ‘me’ as it is the ending of me. The only way I can see to over-ride the survival fear is to use another instinctual drive – the willingness to sacrifice myself for others.

Again this is not a passionate, put up affair. No heroism, no imagination – just a common sense ‘everybody wins’ situation. I get what I want and another human is free of the Human Condition. I say this because I know and have experienced the instinctual wiring to sacrifice myself for others. It was when I was told that my son had died, and in the initial few moments of intense grief the thought occurred ‘Why him and not me?’ I would have gladly and willingly given my life for his in that moment. If Mr. God have had boomed down from his white cloud – ‘Do you mean it?’ the answer would have been an unhesitating ‘Yes!’

It was his death that got me into a passionate search for freedom in the first place, and I see that the self-sacrifice is the key to the door to freedom. Why else would you do it? The Enlightened Ones do it knowing full well that they are going to Bliss, Eternal Life and a good deal of Adulation. Theirs is not a ‘death’ but an Altered State of Consciousness – they die into the Glory to ‘become’ the Glory, surviving to wreak havoc with the hearts and minds of others. ‘Feet of clay’ is a good description.

I see this self-sacrifice as a down-to-earth practical use of one instinctual drive to overcome another. It’s simply a using of the tools available at the appropriate time. In the past year of living in Virtual Freedom, since I finished my Journal, I have become increasingly attuned not only with the operation of ‘me’ as a psychological and psychological entity, but also of the havoc and mayhem of the Human Condition in operation globally.

My favourite description of the process that happens to the old pathways that have been forged since birth, and reinforced constantly since then, is that when new paths are forged with common sense – sometimes painstakingly – the old ones simply atrophy. This is easily attested by the observation – ‘Did I really believe in that once upon a time?’ One can initially feel a fool but it gets really delicious when one cannot remember ‘who’ it was who believed such a nonsense and why. One starts to realize that one is becoming free to such an extent that one is fresh again every moment and that the very act of believing is disappearing. With belief goes imagination, and only that which is actual becomes apparent and obvious.

The spiritual path eternally promises, dreams and offers hope but it never has, and never can, deliver peace on earth. Actualism delivers the dream of peace that many humans sincerely seek and puts it into practice, but only for those willing to head in the opposite direction to the ‘Tried and Failed’. My friend who said I was living what Rajneesh taught was half-right in that I am living beyond the wildest dreams of Humanity. But I only do that because I abandoned the hackneyed spiritual Wisdom based on denial and ignorance, ‘back-tracked’ all the way out of the spiritual world and set off down the path of intrepid investigation in pursuit of common sense. The path that is 180 degrees in the opposite direction to that which every one else follows. The path that everyone says don’t go on or you will end up irresponsible, evil, insane, and a traitor to Humanity to boot! That is the meaning of everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong.

But the first thing one needs to do is find out whether you have been ‘sold a dummy’, or not. That was my first reaction to the idea that there is a third alternative to staying ‘normal’ or becoming ‘spiritual’ – ‘Does that mean I have been sold a dummy?’ But the only way to know that was to find out for myself. And to undertake that investigation is to go against one’s instinctual programming that binds one to being a member of the herd called Humanity.

If this process of introspective observation is carried to its conclusion, even the background sense of core subjective self disappears into awareness. Thus, if we proceed phenomenologically, we find that the ‘I’ is identical to awareness: ‘I’ = awareness. A Deikman, Awareness = ‘I’

Thus, as one carries this process on to its conclusion, any personal sense of self disappears as the new ‘I’ becomes the watcher of the other ‘I’ – the one who is selfish, self-obsessed and neurotic, and this new watcher has got nothing to do with the flesh and blood body and its sensate experience, instinctual passions and fears. One proceeds phenomenologically as in

‘the method of reduction whereby all factual knowledge and reasoned assumptions about a phenomenon are set aside so that pure intuition of its essence may be analyzed.’ Oxford Dictionary

Thus ‘proceeding phenomenologically’ is to abandon facts and common sense and opt for pure intuition and as such we opt out of the real world of people, things and events and we become the awareness of these phenomena. Thus ‘I’ am not my feelings, ‘I’ am not my thoughts, ‘I’ am not my body, ‘I’ have nothing to do with the real world – ‘I’ am awareness only.

All this does nothing but more strongly confirm that ‘I’ am a disembodied entity who has taken up residency in this flesh and blood body. At its most basic this new stripped-down ‘I’ is really just the awareness of what is going on around me. Thus, the real world appears as an illusion or a picture show that ‘I’ am watching, initially from inside this body, but then even this bodily phenomena disappears into awareness itself. Thus ‘I’ = awareness = nothing at all to do with the real world of people things and events and most definitely nothing to do with this flesh and blood body. Complete and utter dis-association is the result.

I do like writing, which is all I do – it’s simply common sense to tell others what is now available. It’s more of a hobby than work and most of my writing has been my sorting out and reporting on experiences, understandings and facts discovered. Whenever I read any spiritual twaddle nowadays I am astounded as to its duplicity, confusion and blatant self-centredness, so it’s a joy to write of something as down to earth and non-spiritual as AF. Writing also is great exercise for the brain given that independent and clear thinking is stifled in childhood and school years by countless putdowns and strict regimentation and is even further strangled, admonished and literally demonized on the spiritual path. The other point is that I am not working to change anyone else – as I said, that is an impossibility and it is also a ‘self’-serving exercise. It’s good to be free of that one.

‘Eastern spiritual belief has it that human existence on earth is a ‘necessary suffering’ and that ultimate peace and fulfillment lies ‘elsewhere’, after death. This ‘necessary suffering’ is in fact the Human Condition of malice and sorrow and includes war, murder, rape, torture, domestic violence, corruption, despair and suicide. With this belief that all this suffering is necessary to human existence firmly habituated on the planet it is no wonder that human suffering and resentment continue to flourish.’ Introduction to Actual Freedom

Of course, the Eastern religions also believe that one is born ‘innocent’ and only corrupted by ‘evil’ thoughts and that ‘right’ thinking will lead to a state of Divine purity! Unless one back-tracks out of all this nonsense, one has no chance of undertaking the common sense investigation necessary to re-wire one’s brain – to reprogram what society and blind nature has programmed your brain to think and feel to be real, true or the Truth.

I thought I would pen a letter to you about one of those ethical values that is so instilled in human beings that it not only clouds any common sense operating but also acts to forever lock malice and sorrow into the human psyche.

I often wonder what people make of the simple statement that one has a social identity that consists of all the morals, ethics, values and psittacisms that have been instilled by one’s peers in order to keep one ‘under control’ and to make one a ‘good’ citizen. It seems such a straight forward statement yet there is no discussion or questioning whatsoever regarding morals and ethics and their failure to stop the barbarous human warfare that rages on the planet between various tribal, religious or ethical groups. Despite the fact that countless well-meaning people have been following these pious morals and unliveable ethics there is still no end in sight to the sadness sorrow, depression and suicides. Having to live one’s life bound – as in bondage – to a set of morals and ethics is to be shackled to Humanity.

What twigged me to write was a conversation I had with a man recently about tolerance. It was one of those convivial evenings as we settled back after dinner at his beach-side house. We had bought a whole coral trout and some baste for the sunset barbeque meal, his wife had concocted a wonderful salad and he had provided some delicious soft Merlot wine. Vineeto and I, he and his wife contentedly lazed back after the particularly tasty meal, and their newly born baby slept in the corner after her meal at the breast. We started swapping life stories as one tends to do in good company and his wife began chatting to Vineeto about her upbringing as a Japanese and how she had come to leave Japan and ended up in Australia. She evidently was of mixed Japanese-Korean parents and, as such, was very much regarded as a second-class citizen in Japan – something which she didn’t take too kindly to. I then proceeded to explain to her some of the religious and ethnic divides that are rife below the surface in the country I grew up in at all levels of society.

I soon trotted out one of my favourite stories about the insanity of Humanity – the fact that my father, like many other young Australians during the Second World War, was sent to Europe to help England fight Germany. He ended up in the Middle East fighting the Italians in the desert and then came back to fight the Japanese in the jungles of New Guinea. When I went to university to study architecture two of my best friends were an Italian and a Japanese – of the same tribes that my father had been busy trying to kill only 20 years earlier. What struck me as even stranger was here I was some 30 years on telling this story of muddled madness to a woman of Japanese stock, and a woman of German stock, both now residents in this country. It was at this point that the man came out with the statement that ‘we are all different’ and that all children need to be taught ‘tolerance’ from the beginning. He said the trouble was that ‘some people’ weren’t tolerant. When I asked him who were these people he looked a bit befuddled as he sensed he would have to trot out his prejudices by coming up with an example. To let him off the hook a bit, I stated that it was only in recent years I had come to see the extent of my own ‘limits of tolerance’ having being born into a largely Christian society. As such I was imbibed with the view that say Muslims, in particular, were ‘evil and intolerant’ people, and I could tell that it was this particular religious group that he had in mind when he talked of those whose children needed to be ‘taught tolerance’.

I backtracked the conversation a bit for his plea for tolerance was based on his preceding psittacism that ‘we are all different’. I looked around at the four of us sitting there and could obviously see that two were males and two were females, so I stated that beyond that physical fact , we were no different in that we were all flesh and blood human beings. We had no differences apart from some physical differences – plus a good deal of social conditioning but I was trying to isolate that fact out for a bit. At core we were all the same passionate beings – German anger is the same as Japanese anger, Australian sorrow the same as English sorrow – yet this man insisted that we are all somehow different and therefore we should be tolerant of each other’s differences. I was going to pursue the point that we are all the same animal species and that it is a fact that we are only taught to think we are different and unique via our social conditioning – to not only be loyal and good tribal members but to cherish and be proud of our being ‘different from’ and ‘better than’ other tribes and to be ready to fight for and defend our ‘being different’. Oh yes, and then we are further taught that it is good to be ‘tolerant’ of others who happen to be ‘different’ than us.

One needs to be taught that we are different and be prejudiced and intolerant of others first in order to then feel the need to be tolerant. These ethical values are but societal conditioning that sits like a sugared, feel-good layer to cover over our instinctual love of aggression – we love a good fight and the tribe next door, that ‘different’ mob, was always the best target as there was always some old score to settle – some pay-back for a past deed. It has the added advantage of giving us someone to hate and fight that isn’t our own kin or our own tribe.

But I didn’t pursue the point as he was already confused enough, and it was senseless to spoil the evening. Perhaps the failure of the principle of tolerance is most clearly seen in Europe where, after two horrendous wars fought in the first half of the century that decimated whole generations and lay ruin to the continent, some enterprising politicians decided enough was enough. The idea of a European Union was born, whereby national barriers would be gradually demolished to form a more unified, less tribal and more peaceful European community. Just on the brink of implementing this policy it seems as though the threat of ‘loss of national identity’ is becoming too much for many to contemplate. In fact, it appears, from reports, that there is a ground swell for increased regionalism with even smaller, more nationalistic groupings clamouring for power, independence and autonomy. Identical fears are heard in the raging and anger against ‘globalization’ – people desperately wanting to cling to the past and to their tribal and ethnic groupings – to remain the same and part of a traditional warring group.

This behavioural evidence is in direct contradiction to the spurious argument that ‘we are all different’ for everyone fervently wishes to remain part of the traditional group into which they were born, to hold the same values, morals, ethics, truths and psittacisms – to be the same as everybody else and not different. An identical scenario also operates with our spiritual/religious beliefs that have been passed on to us as a social conditioning. Later on in the evening, the husband made a comment about religions at one point and when I asked him his views he said he was not religious but found much to his liking in Buddhism. When I pointed out that Buddhism was an Eastern religion he looked at me as though the thought had not occurred to him. Goodness knows what all those statues are about, what all those temples, all those monks and nuns, all that prayer, worship, devotion, sacred texts and objects are about if not to denote a religion. And yet those on the ‘Eastern spiritual path’ somehow manage to think themselves unique and ‘different’, on the cutting edge of ‘consciousness raising’, whereas in fact they are (as I was for 17 years) merely dedicated followers of fashion. A New Dark Age fashion that unabashedly aims to turn the clock back to belief in ancient mythical, mystical mumbo-jumbo. Of course, whatever brand of religion one follows, believes in, trusts, and regards as the One and Only, one is then bound to vociferously support it and faithfully fight to defend it. This superstition, prejudice, bias and intolerance then necessitates that one espouses and practices ‘tolerance’ for other religions purely because of one’s imbibed hatred and suspicion of other creeds. My former spiritual group, the Rajneeshees, are notorious Christian haters – as was Rajneesh himself. The Christians are notorious Muslim haters – a feud that dates back thousands of years and that no amount of ‘tolerance’ has managed to quell. Protestant and Catholic feuds are notorious and the list goes on and on ... Tolerance is pretty thin on the ground and when push comes to shove it simply disappears into thin air. As does ‘civilized behaviour’ when war breaks out, as does being good when rage wells up in one’s bosom, as does love disappear when jealousy rages, and the list goes on and on ...

Yet despite the abysmal failure of ethics and morals to curb our instinctual passions people desperately cling to rights and wrongs, good and bad, rather than look at the third alternative – a common sense judgement of what is silly and what is sensible, based firmly on facts. For me, the first and most freeing of these common sense, silly / sensible judgments was to ditch any tolerance of religions whatsoever. Too much blood has been shed, too many have humbly prostrated themselves to the God-men’s Super-Inflated Egos to be tolerant of this errant puerile nonsense. And yet, whenever I care to point out the facts of the failure of religious belief to bring peace to earth and an end to human suffering, I am accused by some of having some sort of personal vendetta or grudge running. Most curious.

Yet another current development I find interesting in these days of ‘human rights’ is the reported move of some Balkanites to sue the U.N. peacekeepers for failing to stop a massacre of one ethnic group by another ethnic group. Does this mean if there is a murder in one’s neighbourhood the victim’s relatives can now sue the police for failing to stop it? Does this mean that we now put the police in jail and let the criminals go free – it’s an interesting approach that should provide a novel ethical dilemma for some time to come.

It is fascinating to see the convoluted and twisted moral and ethical arguments that rage on the planet, combined with the convoluted and twisted forms of denial of the existence of instinctual animal passions in humans.

No, you misunderstand me. What I came to see was that ‘I’ was what was preventing me, this flesh and blood body, from delighting in the perfection and purity of this actual world. As such I stopped blaming external circumstances for making me unhappy or causing my sorrow. As such, I am able to be happy and harmless in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are. With common sense operating freely I have chosen a place to live that is both reasonable safe and sensually satisfying. If for some reason I found myself in different circumstances, less preferable, if you like, then I would still be happy and harmless. However, I sensibly prefer safety, comfort, leisure and pleasure any day.

But you will not question whether the other half of your self is equally illusionary. If the ego is illusionary, why can you not entertain the idea that the soul may well be illusionary as well?

As for the ‘instinctual processes changing’, all evidence of the Enlightened state is that fear and aggression are sublimated but not eliminated – as you would know – and nurture and desire are given full, uninhibited reign such that people feel Divine Love and even God-realized.

*

Hardly an hour goes by that I don’t marvel at the innate common sense in this human brain and the serendipitous events that led me out of the spiritual world and revealed the actual world that was sitting here all along, under my very nose as it were. The only way to experience it permanently its to get rid of all illusion, both real world and spiritual world, both ego and soul.

Theoretical science has always been grounded in mysticism, be it Western or the now fashionable version of Eastern mysticism. All theoretical cosmology can best be described as mystical cosmology for their search is based on proving a theory that they cannot prove by empirical observation – that there was a beginning and that there may be an end to the physical universe and that there is ‘something else’ or ‘somewhere else’ apart from this observable physical universe. Ever since the time of Albert Einstein’s mystical theory of a space-time continuum, a lot of common sense has gone out the window in both the search for the big picture and the search for the micro picture. When scientists lose their grip on sensate actuality and go searching for a greater reality they are following a long tradition of mysticism.

What we have learned from any form of mysticism is that all it produces is yet even more fanciful versions of mysticism.

Personally, I found my immersion in the spiritual world a fascinating experience. I got to experiment with and experience all sorts of therapies, meditations, practices, teachings, Gurus, etc and eventually came to reject them all on the basis of they did not work. I would encourage anyone to do the same because then one can make a sensible judgement, based on personal experience as to whether something works or not. Of course, not every thing needs to be approached this way – if something is obvious from the experiences of others, from sufficient reliable evidence, from reading, from a check of historical records, etc. then one can also make a sensible informed decision. For example if you are buying a new computer monitor you search around for comparative information from reliable sources and make a judgment based on that. And yet when it comes to the most important decisions in life we willingly surrender common sense and make judgements based on belief and feelings.

To regard that which is physical, tangible, palpable, visible, touchable, smellable, eatable, audible as an illusion is a trick of the impassioned mind that requires enormous effort. In the East this effort requires the torturous abandonment of sensible thinking and common sense – giving rise to the term ego death and the emergence of what could well be termed soulism – a feeling-only state of delusion. The lost, lonely, frightened and very cunning psychological and psychic entity that is the self becomes the Self – cunningly feeling Oneness, Wholeness, Timeless and Spaceless. The Eastern pursuit of ‘Ego-death’ has proven to be a very tragic delusion, for one becomes completely dissociated from what is actual as evidenced by the senses. This means that one renounces the world, both real and actual and begins a process of turning away, turning in, letting go, withdrawing, disidentifying and finally complete dissociation aka Enlightenment. The reason I use the word tragic is that spiritual seekers – many of whom began the spiritual search to find a way to bring about peace on earth – have now been seduced into turning away from the endemic malice and sorrow in the physical world we human beings live in and now regard it as illusionary, not real. They regard the spiritual world as REAL, the normal world as a nightmare to be avoided and the actual physical world as a dream created in their own minds.

The question I ran for a long time is ‘Has everyone got it 180 degrees wrong?’ The fact that all these theories of human existence on earth were cooked up thousands of years ago was the beginning of my doubts. The other thing I found as I contemplated on the question was that it started to explain an awful lot of things about why the spiritual path that didn’t work.

This is the old-fashioned out-dated Eastern philosophical view of human existence on earth. The East has always seen the physical world as a dream, an illusion, Samsara, Maya, etc., and thinking was seen as the link to suffering in this dream world. Basically the idea is if you stop thinking about the suffering in the physical world it will go away. By a process of abandoning sensible thought and common sense they attempted to dissociate themselves from this ‘illusion’ by shifting their identity to become a new non-personal identity, yet another illusion. The cause of malice and sorrow is the identity or ‘self’ that dwells within the flesh and blood body. To rearrange this identity by shifting, polishing, making it holy, making it impersonal, making it Real, making it True, or whatever trick is used, is not eliminating it. The human body is instinctually programmed to do anything to survive and the alien psychological and psychic entity in the body, fuelled by the flush of chemicals released from the amygdala will thus do anything to survive. The multitudinous variations of real self, true self, Self, atman, pure being, Godliness, etc. offered up by Eastern religion and philosophy are a testament to cunning ‘self’-survival in action.

Do you follow your feelings when you ‘dare to find out what actually is true’ and do you find you have to suspend common sense and regard what is actual to be illusionary? For accuracy and clarity of communication I use the dictionary definition of the word actual – i.e. existing in fact as evidenced by the physical senses, in action or existence at this time, existing in act and not merely potentially or apparently. Actual is that which is palpable, tangible, tactile, corporeal, physical and material. It is that which can be experienced by the physical senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch only.

What I came to understand was that if I was on the Eastern spiritual ‘search’ then the path had only one direction and only one possible destination. It is, in fact, nonsense to call any spiritual path a search for the end discovery is predetermined depending on which culture or religious belief-system one is ‘searching’ in. Every religion has at their core a Truth, a written message from God or from his/her earthly representative that is ‘confirmed’ by an emotionally-fuelled experience to be the Truth as in a Satori, epiphany, awakening or realization. Seek (inside) and ye shall find God (by whatever name).

As a kid I could not understand that if there was such a thing as God, how come there were so many and how come everybody fought over whose God was the Right, True, Real or Only God. When I looked around with clear eyes I saw these same divisions and conflicts were abundantly evident in New Dark Age religions. It made me more than suss of the Truth.

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