Selected Correspondence Peter

Ego

Whenever ‘I’ started to claim the glory – i.e. whenever I started to feel I was the Saviour of Mankind – I found that it was good to remember that the ability to think and reflect, to be aware, and to be aware of that awareness is, at core, a function of what I am – this flesh and blood body. By doing so, I avoided the spiritual path trap of feigning a ‘self’-effacing humility whilst sprouting ‘self’-aggrandizing nonsense.

Another approach I found useful was to regard the process of becoming happy and harmless as one of actively freeing the intelligence inherent in the physical brain in this physical body from the mind-numbing constraints of the socially-instilled moral and ethical programming and the debilitating effects of its genetically-encoded archaic-instinctual operating system.

In other words, I gave credit where the credit is due.

The harmless part of the intent to become happy and harmless ensures that one’s intent remains a pure intent – i.e. it ensures that ‘I’ do not lust for fame and glory and seek power over others. One’s pure intent to be happy and harmless is ultimately consolidated in a PCE where it is directly experienced that there is neither the need, nor the compulsive desire, to change the world as-it-is nor to change people as-they-are, for peace on earth always already exists here in the actual world of the senses.

The process of socialization that very child inevitably undergoes means that all children are taught to suppress, deny or subjugate their ‘dark side’ hence the seeds of dissociation are sowed early on in life. 

It’s not an ‘idea’ that we have, it’s a very real way of coping with our dark instinctual side that is ingrained in each and every human being for very practical reason – to make each child a fit member of the family, tribe or society it is born into. Given this scenario it is quite natural that human beings associate with having ‘good’ feelings (being good) and dissociate from having ‘bad’ feelings (not being bad).

This is why developing an objective awareness of the full range and depths of one’s own feelings and passions in action is initially extremely difficult – it is an unnatural process that runs counter to all of one’s social conditioning, not to mention one’s ‘self’-centred instincts.

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Those who go on to succumb to spiritual or religious belief, or the ethical beliefs of secular humanism, take this dissociation a step further in that they actively practice sublimating their dark side and aggrandizing their good side.

What broke me free of this ingrained habit of dissociation was the realization that deep down inside I was as mad and as bad as everyone else.

Have you ever done any meditation? The reason I ask is that if you have you might well be able to answer the question yourself from your own experience.

If I read you right, you have come across the common conundrum that many people have when mulling over actualism – how can ‘I’ become aware of ‘I’, or how can ‘I’ change ‘I’ or how can ‘I’ eliminate ‘I’?

Personally, I didn’t get too hung up about such questions. Maybe because I am a practical, down-to-earth person, I figured that if I wanted to change then it was up to me, if I wanted to be free it was up to me and if I wanted to become aware of ‘me’ and how ‘I’ operate then I have a brain whose function is not only to be aware of things but also to make sense of things.

In short, spiritualists regard thinking as the root of all evil and hence they abandon clear thinking and common sense in favour of refined feelings and imaginary scenarios. In contrast, actualists acknowledge the fact that the instinctual passions are the root of all human malice and sorrow and in doing so they are then free to engage clear thinking and common sense in order to come to their senses.

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Put briefly, the idea of meditation is to cut off from sensate experiencing and to stop thinking (as in become the watcher) and allow imagination and affectation to take over … and lo and behold … a new very-grand ethereal-like alter-identity emerges.

Personally, I don’t favour using the terms ego and soul as they are terms that have such historical baggage that their meaning has become so confused as to be often meaningless – for example, in those cultures yet to be afflicted by Eastern Mysticism, someone who felt themselves to be God-on-earth would be regarded as the ultimate ego-maniac. I much prefer the terms social identity and instinctual identity to describe the two aspects (nurture and nature) that together make up ‘me’ as an identity simply because they accurately and succinctly describe the sources, causes and resultant effects of being a feeling ‘being’.

In the Eastern Religions the mind is seen as ‘the problem’, and a puerile belief-system and associated torturous practices have evolved over centuries, deliberately aimed at stifling and eradicating sensible thought, such that imagination and impassioned feelings are given absolute free reign. A common theme in all ashrams, temples and Sanghas is that, as a devotee, you are admonished to ‘leave your mind at the door, surrender your will, and trust your feelings’. This stifling of the mind has left much of the East wallowing in poverty, ignorance, repression, suppression, corruption, superstition, fatalism, subjugation, acceptance, servitude, despotism, and theocratic rule. That these Ancient traditions and wisdoms are still practiced is witness only to the desperation of those seeking freedom, peace and happiness and obviously has nothing to do with the sagacity or success of the belief-system.

In the Buddhist tradition, there have been, at the very least, 1 billion followers over the centuries, and Ken Wilber estimates that no more than one thousand have achieved Enlightenment – the Altered State of Consciousness that masquerades as freedom. This is a success rate of 0.0001% – and the failed rest dutifully believe that they get recycled to suffer earthly existence again and again until they eventually manage to achieve freedom from the cycle of birth and death – the wheel of misery. ‘There is always next lifetime’ is a common refrain. What a depressive and oppressive mindless belief-system.

May I suggest that what you are experiencing are your own feelings and emotions arising from your instinctual passions and not, as is commonly believed in spiritual circles, ‘the unending desires of the ego’. ‘Wrong’ thinking doesn’t cause war, murder, despair and suicide – normal flesh and blood human beings endowed with genetically-encoded instinctual passions do. There is now a chance for those who want ‘to live in such away that we couldn’t possibly be making a more positive contribution to the world’ to actually do so, but the price to pay is beyond what is considered natural – ‘self’-immolation.

I do know it is extraordinary to consider that everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong but it does explain why, after thousands of years of well-meaning effort by billions of people, there is still not anything remotely resembling peace and harmony between human beings on the planet.

When one realizes that the suffering human beings inflict on each other, and the deep despair and hopelessness many feel, can now be eradicated, and not simply accepted as unchangeable or as an essential part of some perverse Divine plan, then one is personally challenged to actually do something about it.

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.

Someone said, ‘Everyone has an ego’. I say no one has an ego. Not that this misunderstanding called ego doesn’t cause a lot of problems, but it is not a reality. When the ego is seen through then pure function can just do what humans do, but much better. You still go by your name, you still can do all the things you did before, but you can’t hate and you no longer see any part of this wonder-full creation as being separate from your own being. You go on with the identity, but without the living nightmare of ego.

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 – ‘I had, and still have, all the feelings about the way this world is ran by our governments’. 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 ‘you no longer see any part of this wonder-full creation as being separate from your own being’, 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’?

As for being perfect: It is all too subjective. An enlightened person is not hung up on what society says is right or wrong, which is largely based on just belief handed down by other egos. Like Krishnamurti was found to have been having sex with his friend’s wife for many years. Many people thought this was so very bad. ‘How could a truly enlightened person do that?’ His friend had decided years earlier that he did not want to have sex for spiritual reasons. So he stopped. Well, his wife wanted to have sex.

So she did with Krishnamurti. Should she have suffered the rest of her life because her husband didn’t want to have sex? And why shouldn’t Krishnamurti have sex? You are not more spiritual because you have or don’t have sex. I have been celibate for 12 years, but that doesn’t make me any better than someone who has sex every hour on the hour. That is just the way my needs have changed over the years. People could say how bad it was that Krishnamurti didn’t let people know he was not celibate. He knew full well where most people’s heads are at in this matter. It most likely wasn’t from lack of honesty but from knowing many people might stop listening to what he had to say, and what he had to say was very important for people to hear. I will let others judge people like him. He did the best he could for over 60 years of teaching.

An interesting point of view. What Krishnamurti had to say was so ‘very important for people to hear’ that it was okay to deliberately conceal a long standing affair with his friend’s wife and engage in subsequent long and bitter legal battles against his friend in order to suppress any knowledge of it becoming public. Sort of a ‘don’t look at the finger, look at the moon’ argument or ‘I’m only a poor humble messenger but my message is pure gold.’ Do you not take a stand, presume a position, make a judgement on Krishnamurti by refusing to pass a judgement yourself and leaving it to others?

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.

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.

The instinctual ‘self’ every human being is born with is pre-programmed with a set of defence and propagation instincts, namely fear, aggression, nurture and desire, which form a primary and automatic impulse and in most cases deep-seated emotions override the supposed free will of ‘who’ we think and feel we are. In spiritual practice one surrenders one’s will to a higher force, placing one’s life in gloried service to God – thus ‘it is not my will but Thy will’. For someone like Ramesh Balsekar this means that if he kills another human being it is perfectly okay ... for it is ‘God’s will’. By surrendering their will to God many people literally get away with murder.

Surrendering one’s will to God is a cop-out that instantly allows one off-the-hook from even acknowledging that one has instinctual passions – let alone begin investigating them, let alone consider eliminating them.

Any entity, either normal or spiritual, is instinctually and socially imbued with both willpower and pride. On the spiritual path one is encouraged to surrender one’s will to God and to cultivate one’s humility. There are none so proud than those who have humbly surrendered their will to God for they stand on the side of Good, Truth, Right and the Almighty, by whatever name.

Those who achieve Enlightenment do so by stubborn will for it is no easy thing to subjugate or transcend one’s ego, or personal self, and develop a new dissociative God-realized identity, or impersonal Self. It involves denying the existence of evil in oneself in order to become only the Good, who then gets to feel pure and perfect – and above it all.

One has to desire to be God or God-realized with all one’s will. When I had a few major Satoris or Altered States of Consciousness, I knew I was on the way to being a Guru or God-man and it was only by having seen them close up, in action, on and off stage, that I started to question the very nature of Altered State of Consciousness experiences. What I found was that these experiences were not at all unique, they were culturally biased, they were affective only, and while they took me away from the ‘real’ world, they took me even further away from the actual world.

The ‘real’ world is a nightmare, the equivalent of wearing grey coloured glasses. The spiritual world is a fantasy dream, the equivalent of wearing rose-coloured glasses. When one dares to take off both glasses, the actual world – the amazing physical infinite universe we live in – becomes startlingly apparent as having always been here. It was only ‘I’ who stood in the way, or ‘me’ who claimed it as mine in affective/ spiritual experiences.

A psychological and psychic entity, the ‘self’, is imbued with tender and savage passions and is taught to be fixated by morals of good and bad and ethics of right and wrong and therefore all acts of caring, no matter how well-meaning, will ultimately be ‘self’-centred and selfish.

Again two aspects operate – one’s social identity of morals, ethics and beliefs and the instinctual drives. Many parental acts of sacrifice for their children are accompanied by a feeling of resentment that often bubble to the surface in times of stress, or in later life when one has done one’s social and instinctual duty.

There is, however, a predisposition towards altruism in human beings that is at the core of many of these acts of sacrifice. It is this propensity that one can tap into if one wants to make the only sensible sacrifice possible in order to facilitate peace on earth – self’-sacrifice or ‘self’-immolation, as opposed to the religious/spiritual senseless and selfish action of killing their own bodies or the bodies of other spirits.

All of the successful Gurus demand a lot from others rather than give to others. They demand love, loyalty, surrender and devotion. I used to think they gave a lot until I realized that without their followers giving continuously they would be mere mortals like the rest of us.

It takes enormous courage to question the tender passions and the Good, for we have been taught by our peers to believe that without these facets of ourselves we would run amok or become evil. But for those daring enough this very investigation is the key to the door that keeps us trapped within the human condition of malice and sorrow and the duality of Good and Evil.

Spiritual jargon being as slippery, poetic and illusory as it is, I find the whole argument about ego a bit of a furphy. It is clear that a spiritual person who becomes God-realized or God-intoxicated, or whatever other name is used, has suffered a shift of identity. This can be described as the transcendence of the ego and the ascendance of the soul, but it is all so shrouded in mystique and confusion it is all much clearer if one calls a spade a spade, and calls it a change of identity.

It is time to practice an active question all of one’s emotional identity, all of the feelings that are preventing one from being both happy and harmless.

I see you are starting to toy with the idea that there may be some physical basis for the illusion of the ego. As a radical proposition – which may well be too radical to get posted – I offer the following writing –

All humans are instilled with an instinctual animal ‘self’ that is the very core of the self-survival program. Although this instinctual survival program is genetically-encoded in animals so as to ensure the survival of the species and not the individual, in humans the survival program is also ‘self’-centred.

Our instinctual-rudimentary ‘self’ is both palpable and potent due to the surge of chemicals arising from the primitive brain. This ‘self’ is our instinctual ‘being’ at our very animal core – instinctual, thoughtless and emotional. Further, this primitive ‘self’ is made more complex in human beings by our ability to think and reflect and, as such, we have a more elaborated ‘self’ consisting of ‘who’ we think ourselves to be as well as ‘who’ we feel ourselves to be. ‘Who’ we think and feel ourselves to be is both a psychological ‘self’ and an instinctual ‘self’ – both mental and emotional – manifest as a discordant and alien identity that appears to be located as a thinker in the head and as a feeler in the heart and gut.

Given that the instinctual animal ‘self’ in humans has morphed into a sophisticated and cunning psychological and psychic identity that appears to live within the flesh and blood body, it is obvious that the instinctual animal passions can only be eradicated by eliminating both the psychological ‘self’ and the instinctual ‘self’.

The elimination of one’s ‘self’ needs to be total – both ‘who’ you think you are as a social identity and ‘who’ blind nature has programmed you to instinctively feel you are … in spiritual terms, both the ‘ego’ and the ‘soul’. The good news is that with the extinction of who you think and feel you are what you are will emerge – a flesh and blood human being, free of malice and sorrow and free of any metaphysical delusions whatsoever. Introduction to Actual Freedom, Actual Freedom 1

You also say that if a person says he is god he has ego. I do not agree.

How Big can an ego get that calls oneself God? Maybe Supreme God is bigger than God ... or God of Gods?

When I was a kid they locked people up in asylums if they went off ranting that they were God, or the Saviour returned. I remember a couple of them used to be on Hyde Park corner in London with signs saying ‘The End Is Nigh’, and ‘follow me and ye shall be redeemed,’ and I regarded them at the time as having a bit of a screw loose.

A person may be ego-less and yet have discovered his own godliness (or god nature) within him or her and is sharing it. You have to be very aware to see if the person is speaking with an ego or not.

Yes, if only we know what the ego is – in my experience it is used in the East as expressing the fact that some-one still has a personal sense of self and has not yet realised his or her Divine sense of self, or that they are God, or at One with God.

Yes, from your point of view I am not free of ego, unless I call myself God, Enlightened, That, at One, etc ...

What I am is this physical body only, there is no psychological entity inside, no ‘I’ – the little man inside my head who was controlling things.

There is also no ‘me’ as a psychic entity, no feeling ‘me’, no soul or spirit, that will live on after I, this body, dies.

That is why I say that everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong.

So much confusion exists in Eastern teaching about the ‘ego’, and generally it is put out as an admonishment to surrender your ego to God (or the Master). And once you have surrendered your will to anyone, or anything, you are really stuffed ...!

Good to chat ... good subjects to get out in the open – ‘on the table’, so to speak.

But, one can get into torturous semantics with all this stuff about ego and soul, while simply setting your aim in life to become happy and harmless cuts right through the lot.

Peter wrote: – so much words that I can only ... pay you respect cause: Your Ego is 100 tons weight and you have very, very strong neck in order to carry this monster. Almost alone against all that people on the list for about how much time – 3 weeks? Even if I actually don’t agree with you in many points I still pay you respect ...

Respect is a fickle thing. As with the guy I mentioned above, he paid a sort of respect in saying I was talking wisdom, but then would be saying something different about me to others. The way I look at the issue is similar to the way I look at a building. I have been a builder, and when I see a building that is built well, I admire the way it is built because I can see the care, consideration and effort that has gone into it. It is an admiration of the quality of human achievement.

When I met Richard, I admired what a fellow human being had achieved in ridding himself of malice and sorrow.

What an extra-ordinary achievement to have found a solution such that it is now a realistic expectation that one day there will be an end to war, murder, torture, abuse, famine, repression, religion, spiritual-ism, suicide, depression and sadness. Not only to have discovered a way to be free of the Human Condition, but also to have worked out a simple method, whereby anyone can do it themselves, and to be able to effectively convey it to others with the written word, wherever they are on the planet.

... or maybe your endless arguing with people on the list is helping you to ripe your Ego, to make it perfect ...

What I see is, that someone who swans around being at one with God or God-realised with worshipping disciples is on the Grandest of all Ego Trips. And we let them get away with it because we are instinctually driven to follow the herd, to want to make someone else a leader so we can meekly follow.

It’s such a poor excuse not to look at what anyone is saying to do the old ‘your just ego-tripping’ thing. In this country we call it the tall-poppy syndrome – any one who sticks their head above the crowd gets it cut off.

That’s why I like the times we live in – the Net allows a conversation like this for the first time in human history – where one is able, with reasonable safety, to challenge the Wisdom of the past. I did sit down for a long while to contemplate the safety of doing what I am doing but I also figure that who I am talking to may be riled, but only aggressive with words. I remember a childhood rhyme that went ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me’.

PETER-LOVE,

I’m sitting... I am saying... I mused... I first came across... my reactions. I am looking... When I first met... I was full... I felt that... I naturally assumed... I had... I leapt... I realised... something far more radical – the total annihilation of the ‘self’. I remember... dawned on me... I was in for – the end of ‘me’. I thought, ... The end of ‘me’!... But I had... free myself... I had determined... as I stood... my son. I had decided... I propositioned... I do appreciate... all I am saying... my experience... I wrote in my journal of my battle... I still found myself defending...I, and everyone... I had been reading... I found ... I found... I used... to make... to me... I was able to... I realized... I had met... I was obviously... tom! I reached... I thought I was going... I only had to... I lived... here I was... I remember...to me... I mind... I thought... I saw... I was thinking... I was... I ruled ... I somehow knew ... my head... my belief... drove me on – I was... in me... I realized... I no longer... I knew I could not... on me... help me... I could... my own intelligence... I have got it right... I knew... I have been such a fool!... I recognized... bound me... given me... I then realized... I came to realize... I would be a greater fool... I often saw... on myself... I realized... my life... I was after...I started... in me... I got further... I began... I had begun... my role... I would see myself... It seemed to me... I also had... to myself... in my desire... to me in my situation... I would try ...I saw that... I had no power... I would not want... I tried to... this path is anathema to the ‘self’... in myself... in me... I be seduced... I had reached... I had glimpsed... my life... In my experience... I was becoming... I was busy arriving...

Obviously this path has not made the slightest dent in this ego.

Just thought I would do both of your posts tonight...

Have you ever tried to write a personal story about yourself without the first person pronoun I? It is very difficult. If I used the word coconut instead of I, it comes out looking pretty weird – coconut sitting..., coconut is saying..., coconut mused... Royalty use the term ‘we’ as in ‘We hereby declare ...’ to denote that they are above the ordinary and speak as kings/queens. Religious leaders declare they have found the Truth, or Love and then go on to talk about it thus avoiding the use of the personal pronoun. Of, course it is then God, Truth speaking and not them, they are but ‘humble messengers’. What a load of rot! Now, that is what I call Ego-maniacal!

And yet when a flesh and blood human tells his story...

So all encompassing is the belief in God, be it Eastern or Western versions, that anyone who challenges the belief is said to be egotistical, yet someone who calls himself God is seen to be free of ego!!

It will take a while, but it will be so good when we are free of these nonsensical concepts and beliefs ...
So, I will continue to refer to myself, this flesh and blood body free of any psychological and psychic entity, as I.

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Have you ever tried to write a personal story about yourself without the first person pronoun I?

Yes.

What do you call yourself then?

No 11, this one, this writer...

Well I must admit you (sorry the writer) have thrown me (oops ... a personal pronoun) into a quandary. In the interests of keeping us on the same level in that the writer (meaning you) doesn’t think that I am being superior or egotistical, I will adopt your terminology. By the way, does the writer (meaning you ... suppose we call you writer 1 for clarity) adopt the terminology ‘the speaker’ when the writer 1 is speaking to others. Krishnamurti used this terminology while lecturing.

To get rid of the ‘ego’ only, is to let the feelings and passions run rampant, such that one will readily and willingly kill for ‘love’ of country, God or leader and one will readily sacrifice or surrender one’s life for country, God or leader.

You would have to drop your ego to know that you are incorrect here. It is only ego that kills, ego being the identification to something other than what one is. Nobody identifies with what one is, simply a human being. They identify with football teams, etc.

Oh, boy. Now you are saying that no-one identifies with what they are – simply a human being. But you are claiming a higher level of consciousness – doesn’t sound like ‘simply a human being’ to me. And Rajneesh proclaimed himself a God-man, hardly your ‘simple human being’. Your twisting and turning and distortion of facts and words in order to fit your scenario is quite astounding. Are you trying to ‘clip on’ a bit of Actual Freedom on to your philosophical and spiritual views perchance? A few have already tried with ego-deflating results.

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