Selected Correspondence Peter

How to Become Free from the Human Condition

You asked about being here... For me ‘How am I experiencing myself now?’ translates into the optimum when I am so here in this moment that there is no room for anything else – doubt, emotion, feeling, love, etc. I am fully engaged in and aware of what is happening. I am fully involved sensually in doing what is happening. No room for sitting back on the fence feeling or observing. Not to say that I am not considerate or sensible in my words or actions: they then become naturally appropriate to the situation. Then each moment is indeed delightful, sensual, immediate, apparent and obvious.

Occasionally I have pulses of fear race through as the audacity of living this way strikes a primordial chord – like a cosmic chorus of ‘how dare you ...’ thundering from somewhere, but lately I experience this as a good and thrilling sign. What a journey ... as one makes sense of the Human Condition and actively wills its demise in oneself.

I would like to ask Peter and Vineeto to write about some difficulties they found in this part when they practised this method initially.

Although I will answer your questions I suggest that it would be best to read what I have written previously when I was in the throws of making these investigations as what I wrote then was more pertinent in that it was written closer to the events.

What does one do when one feels bad?

Get back to feeling good as soon as possible as nothing good that can be said about feeling bad – and I say this despite the fact that many people laud the bitter-sweet feeling of sorrow.

How much of study is required?

None at all if one realizes that nothing good can be said about feeling bad.

Having said that, it is generally not that easy because not only is feeling good disparaged within the human condition – the ultimate Catch-22 put-down being that feeling good about being here means that one is uncaring or even callous because one is not feeling bad for those who are feeling bad – it is also the default instinctual condition given that the prime instinctual passions are those of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, all of which contribute to ‘feeling bad’.

Just the right amount to get back into feeling happy and harmless once again?

Yes – with the proviso that if one finds oneself repeatedly feeling bad when a similar event happen or in similar circumstances then it obviously makes good sense to get to the bottom of why it keeps happening so as to not have feeling bad happen again when a similar event happens or in similar circumstances.

If one has 100% intent can one just look at the feeling and get back to being happy and harmless instantaneously?

Yes – with the proviso that this is often difficult to do initially as one discovers that one has had a life-long habit of being angry – of holding a grudge against someone, of feeling righteous about something or another, of blaming others for doing something or of not doing something that I believe they should be doing or not be doing and so on – or of feeling sad about my lot in life, of being envious of others, of feeling resentful of others, of feeling as though I don’t belong and so on.

Is the amount of work that is needed inversely proportional to the amount of pure intent to be happy and harmless?

Does it not make sense that unless one has a 100% intent to do something then one will never be successful in doing what it is that one wants to do?

And is it inversely proportional to one’s grip on the method?

As for ‘one’s grip one the method’, the main difficulty with the method is its simplicity and straightforwardness – denial and obscuration being the main tricks a social/instinctual identity employs in order to evade exposure. The good thing is that attentiveness combined with pure intent allows you to understand and experience this aspect of the human condition in action and thus prevent it from getting in the way of your being happy and harmless.

When I look into the feeling – there is the cause of the feeling and there is the effect of the feeling and there is no clear boundary in between ... at least in the beginning.

It’s good to keep in mind that many a person is in prison solely because of the effects of a feeling, be it anger, jealousy, envy, resentment, greed and so on. They are locked up away from mainstream society for many and varying reasons of course and the courts by and large take note of the varying causes in order to determine what are called mitigating circumstances but by-and-large they are there because of the effect of a feeling.

The effect (the expression and evolution) of the feeling dominates the cause. One may feel irritated because his boss said something about him and might discharge that irritation on his child’s undone homework thinking that it is the cause. I guess more attentiveness reveals the actual cause. But is there always a cause? How about when one deals with instincts? Is there a cause or trigger?

Given that I have written millions of words on this subject I am reluctant to track over it again … other than to say that if you are being attentive of the consequences your feeling irritated has on your own wellbeing and on the wellbeing of those upon whom you inflict your irritation and this is not enough of an incentive to stop feeling irritated, then no amount of musing about cause and effect will help.

I am reminded of those who argue about the possible link between violent videos and violence and whether or not one is the cause of the other, all the while blithely ignoring the fact that both are expressions of violence and that violence is and always has been endemic to human nature. The current popular argument is about the ‘causes’ of terrorism, a by and large diversionary argument that completely avoids the fact that such acts of senseless anarchical violence are part and parcel of the human condition and always have been part and parcel of the human condition.

I am in no way discouraging you from doing all you can about eliminating malice and sorrow from your life – it is the very best practical contribution that one can make towards ending all the wars, rapes, murders, child abuse, conflicts, despair and suicides that plague humanity – but when all is said, and all is done, an actual freedom is only to be had by stepping out of the real world and into the actual world.

What interests me particularly is your description that when sorrow came to you that you ‘faced it down until it lost its grip and ‘it’ eventually weakened and before long it withered and died.’ Your description is markedly at odds with my own experience of investigating and becoming progressively free both of my social imprinting as well as the feelings, emotions and passions that give substance and validity to ‘me’.

In the process of actualism I was often aware of and involved in investigating a number of intertwined issues and therefore it was often difficult to separate out one particular emotion, track the course of its demise as well as be aware of how the process in fact worked. I was often too busy separating out and making sense of my social programming – looking at my moral stance and ethical values that stood in the way of me clearly seeing and experiencing the emotion in its raw and basic state to have an overview. Because I was busy doing it as it were, I was much more fascinated that the process worked rather than in how it worked. Often I would be startled to discover that what had been a major worry or a pervasive and debilitating emotion had disappeared out of my daily life and all I had done was investigate it, root around in it, make sense of it, understand how it operated, look at it from all angles in order to get to the bottom of it.

I did, however, eventually come to realize that the very process of focussing my full attention on the feeling or emotion, investigating it as it was happening in all its aspects and then thinking about it afterwards in order to make sense of the experience was exactly what weakened its grip. As Richard describes it – if I remember rightly – you shine the bright light of awareness on the issue, problem, debilitating feeling or consuming emotion and it will eventually wither in the light of awareness. The work you have to do, and it is indeed work, is to be willing to bring it out of the cupboard and be stubborn enough to stick with it until it is resolved.

Speaking personally, I would not describe this process as ‘facing it down’ – it being the particular feeling or emotion – because that to me implies keeping the lid on it or forcing it further down or away from one’s awareness. It may be your choice of words but your description fits with what I did in my spiritual years. I, exactly like everybody else, was taught to separate my feelings out into two piles – the good ones that earned ‘me’ kudos and brownie points and the bad ones that got ‘me’ into trouble and that ‘I’ then felt ashamed of. Thus ‘I’ was forever on the lookout, forever on guard, just in case my dark side showed through. And invariably, every now and again, it would despite my best efforts and good intentions and these bleed-throughs were what finally twigged me to begin to really investigate my dark side as well as its opposite number, my ‘good’ side.

There’s another experience I had that might shed some more light on the issue of attentiveness and awareness. It relates to an event that happened about 5 years before I met Richard and became immersed in the actualism process. At this time I was following the spiritual principle of ‘self’-ishly sorting my feelings into good and bad, right and wrong, desirable and undesirable rather than going any deeper into investigating how ‘I’ ticked. I had a consuming experience of grief after my son died that served to put my spiritual smugness on the sidelines for a while. I wrote about it in my journal and I’ll just include a snippet for reference –

I found a largely unspoken sympathy directed towards me because of my son’s death, and I became aware of a certain personal emotional investment in continuing my grief. The grief was to remain simmering just below the surface for some two years. I would often find myself feeling guilty about his death, but eventually it became obvious that this was senseless, as I explored all of my actions and could see that in no way was I culpable. I realised some of the guilt was associated with the question: ‘Did I give him too much freedom?’ And the answer was always that it was better to have given him freedom than to try and tie him down. For the last six months of this two year period I would walk the beach near where I lived for hours and hours, miles and miles, trying to make sense of why he had died. In the end I wore out the question and accepted the fact that there was no answer – he was no more in my life. He was dead! Peter’s Journal, Death

In hindsight, and it is only hindsight for at the time I was following no method at all, I simply became aware one day that the grief had gone – that the feeling had left me. All I had done was allow it to run its course without judgement, without indulgence, without suppressing it or repressing it. What I did was a lot of experiencing of, and thinking about, grief and one of the most striking aspects I clearly remember was how much this emotion was a part of my identity. When the emotion finally left me I was no longer a grieving father with all that being that identity involved. It was literally as if a part of ‘me’ had disappeared along with the associated reoccurring emotional memory.

This is why I can’t relate to the description of facing the emotion nor embracing the emotion, which is another description you used. It wasn’t as though a stronger ‘I’ faced the emotion down or a loving or wise ‘me’ embraced the emotion but more like the grief went away by itself and took a bit of ‘me’ with it.

In hindsight I would describe my experience with grief more as sitting with it, or walking with it in my case, feeling the feeling, thinking about it in all its aspects and checking out ‘my’ investment in hanging on to it, suppressing it, rejecting it or whatever. It was as though I had a good look inside the feeling and I do mean a good look. I sometimes plumbed the depths into despair and dread, I went up all the side alleys looking at all the related feelings such as guilt, self-pity, resentment, altruism, and the like. It took about four years in total until, as if by magic, one day I found I could no longer even dredge up the feeling of grief and until Peter, the grieving father – that particular aspect of my emotional identity – finally disappeared along with the feeling.

It is clear to me now that the most vital aspect of finally ridding myself of grief was my becoming aware of what I described in my journal as my ‘personal investment in continuing my grief’. What I experienced was that the feeling formed an integral part of ‘my’ identity, so much so that there was most often no distinction between the two. When I was in the throes of grief, ‘I’ was grief and grief was ‘me’, so consuming was the feeling. Eventually it became apparent that if the feeling of grief was to go, then that part of ‘me’ would have to go – and I willingly acquiesced to that happening. Just to make this perfectly clear – at this point, only at the end of a long and exhaustive period of experiencing and investigation, ‘I’ willingly agreed to this part of ‘me’ disappearing. ‘I’ did not actively do anything to finally bring an end to this part of ‘me’ – ‘I’ simply agreed to its demise.

This particular event sticks out in my mind as typifying the actualism method even though it predated my becoming an actualist by some years. It stands out particularly only because it was a one-off solitary event and not part of the kaleidoscope of investigations that typified my early years of actualism. However, all of my actualism investigations have followed the very same pattern and all of them invariably end up with the same result ... provided I have been persistent enough, and thorough enough, in my investigations.

It is important to discern and make clear the differences between the traditional spiritual practices of selective awareness, which is designed to be shallow and superficial, and the down-to-earth, all-inclusive, attentiveness that is the actualism method. Only by understanding the full extent of the difference between the two is it possible to go beyond the moral and ethical restrictions of spiritual belief and indoctrination and be able to dive deeper into the instinctual passions that are the root cause of malice and sorrow.

Why do you believe this, if I may ask?

As long as you have ‘first hand experience’ of being sad and malicious you always have an opportunity to begin investigating the human condition in operation as your ‘self’. This is the only way to move forward because your understanding of actualism will go from intellectual curiosity to direct experimentation through trial and error and on to intrigue and fascination.

This is a step above making intellectual sense of actualism as you then start the process of becoming incrementally free of the human condition and as you start to become free you will inevitably facilitate the onset of a pure consciousness experience of actuality. You will then have your own experience of the delight and purity of ‘self’-less living under your belt, as it where, to act as a your own touchstone and guide for your further investigations ... and then you can really start to stand on your own two feet and become autonomous for the first time in your life.

While this is only a suggestion it is founded upon the experience of all that I know of who have assiduously practiced the actualism method so far. If you can’t remember a PCE there is a way to induce one but it does require compulsive effort and obsessive enthusiasm, both of which are contrary to all spiritual teachings.

I said in my journal, I found Richard’s Journal to be a priceless guide to freedom. Evidently I said after first reading it that it was the last book I needed to read! I ended up reading it dozens of times as the first reading was so overwhelming that it is impossible to take it all in – so shocking would be consequences if one could.

I found I would take it a bit at a time and use it as a touchstone to begin musing and contemplating a particular issue I was grappling with. To merely skim the surface is to miss the point – I found the deeper I delved the more insights and realisations I had and the changes which at first were merely intellectual eventually became experiential. In other words, the complete elimination of a dearly held belief of mine meant the actual elimination of that ‘bit’ of me, a step by step path to freedom. If done with intent and honesty the process is at first quite scary, fearful and can be accompanied by a few wobbles. But it soon becomes thrilling and eventually a total obsession and then your cruising. So good luck ... Hope this is useful.

Good to discuss with you these matters. I think the operative word here is pure, as I have discovered. The PCE offers a glimpse or window out from the ‘real’ world everyone is born into (and therefore assumes this to be all there is), and suddenly one finds oneself in the unimaginable actual fairytale-like physical universe. My experience was that each time this occurred I was increasingly able to feel comfortable, at ease, as this new ‘me’ – this flesh and blood body. And every time these glimpses had a different experience to them as I explored carefully the actual physical universe that ‘I’ had normally perceived (like every other human being) to be a place of sadness, fear and aggression. Initially the contrast between the actual, benign, safe, and delightful, and the imaginary world of churning emotions, raging hormones and consuming passions is so startling that the memory is either buried or the experience appears wondrous and awesome. With a pure intent operating to want to live the experience of the PCE every moment, 24 hrs. every day I was able to use the time when I wasn’t actually here living the PCE to root around in the Human Condition – to investigate, discuss, read, think and contemplate on all those instinctual urges and social Truths, Wisdoms and accepted beliefs that made up the particular psychological and psychic entity that dwelled in me and which had taken ‘me’ over. No wonder humans feel alien on the planet.

So, for me the PCE sparkled like a diamond, and when it wasn’t there it meant that I wasn’t here – I was being angry, sad, impatient, proud, humble, fearful or whatever. So then I had something to do – something to firstly acknowledge existed in me and then work to eliminate it by whatever means appropriate. Neither repression or expression will satisfy anyone with sufficient pure intent. Elimination by contemplation – rooting around to eliminate the very cause, the source. And then to have confirmation by the actual experience of emotions and feelings (both the Good and the Bad) disappearing like a strange fantasy that once played out inside my head and was taken by me to be actual by the hormonal reactions in this body. To experience it working is fascinating beyond normal belief. But then the actual always is.

I found in the end the best and surest way to invoke a PCE was to deliberately, steadfastly, and bloody-mindedly clean myself up. Free myself of the disease called the Human Condition – that mutually agreed acceptance that we are above all ‘feeling’ beings, the only trouble is the hallowed feelings are, at the core, malice and sorrow. Competition, aggression, revenge, retribution, violence, murder, rape, war and torture not to mention sadness, resentment, sorrow, depression, despair and suicide are the inevitable result of being a normal human. It was so good that I always had something to do – to clear the dirt from the diamond – to clean myself up so that I can take my rightful place, play my delightful role, doing what is happening now, as a happy and harmless human free of malice and sorrow. Confident that malice and sorrow have had their day.

But it is excellent to have something that works, a way out of the insanity of misery and violence, fear and aggression.

So that is my experience, I have written about it before but it’s nice to have the chance to write of it again. It is such an adventure and can be both weird and fearful business particularly being among the first to pioneer a method of becoming actually free.

This first process had two components – an intellectual understanding such that the fact of being a human being made sense, and this involved a rigorous, challenging, exciting and revealing investigation into the Human Condition and its bedrock of Ancient Wisdom. This is essentially the understanding of the non-spiritual nature of Actual Freedom. The second component was the practical day to day stuff (and what else is there anyway?) of what it is to be a human being – the theory into practice if you like. The experience that Actual Freedom is not a philosophy, not a theory, but a down-to-earth experience as a flesh and blood body. Peter to Richard, 25.2.1999

Couldn’t agree more. The combination of the two is vital – and perhaps inevitable. Sort of convincing ‘me’ that it is possible, while experiencing its actuality.

Just to clarify my post. Up until now the only path to freedom has been a spiritual path to a spiritual freedom – the traditional path of denial, renunciation and transcendence leading to an Altered State of Consciousness known as Enlightenment. The path leads to There – another dimension, a metaphysical realm.

The aim of the path to Actual Freedom is to come here to the actual world. The actual world is that which is evidenced and apparent in the PCE or peak experience and that is where the path to Actual Freedom leads. The actual world is the world as-it-is, stripped of the veneer of reality or Reality that the ‘self’ or ‘Self’ layers over it.

However, as the aim is to come here and be happy and harmless, one always has an immediate goal and aim every moment – to be as happy and harmless as one can possibly be right now. ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ is the key to firstly ascertaining how one is doing relative to one’s aim in life and, if necessary, finding out what is inhibiting my happiness, in this moment. This gives ‘me’ something to do – ‘I’ clean myself up as much as possible by rigorously and remorselessly examining all the beliefs that constitute the Human Condition – all the truths and Truths that form my social identity, and the instinctual behavioural patterns that blindly run ‘me’. This process, if undertaken with a pure intent, will inevitably lead to a state of Virtual Freedom. One then goes to bed in the evening knowing that one has had a perfect day, and knowing that tomorrow, without doubt, will also be a perfect day. Unless one is willing to contemplate being happy and harmless, free of malice and sorrow, 99% of the time – then forget the whole business. One is back aiming for some ‘pie in the sky’, some miracle event to ‘make it all better’. And the Sannyas list was an eye opener as far as that was concerned. When offered an alternative to ‘getting out of it’, such that being happy and harmless became one’s aim in life – none were interested in this aspect; peace on earth got a similar response, living with a companion in peace and harmony hardly raised a murmur. Nobody believes that it is possible to be happy and harmless in the world as-it-is, on earth, here, now, as a flesh and blood body. This is, after all, the core of Ancient Wisdom – the sacred and inviolate centre-piece of the Human Condition.

Pure intent is such a simple term I sometimes find it strange that people have difficulty with it. It simply means I will be the best I can, and if one has had a peak experience then the best is glaringly obvious. Peter to Richard, 25.2.1999

Yeah, well, it is something I have had difficulty with and I am still not sure. Richard has described it as ‘Pure intent is a palpable life-force; an actually occurring stream of benignity that originates in the perfect and vast stillness that is the essential character of the infinitude of the universe. It is no longer a matter of choice ... it is an irresistible pull.’ and ‘Pure intent is the connection between the intimate aspect of oneself, that one usually keeps hidden away for fear of seeming foolish, and the purity of the peak experience.’ Now, while I understand both of these statements – and writing and reading this, maybe I have just ‘got’ what pure intent is – it is my innate and non-affective connection to the purity and perfection as seen in the PCE. It is what ‘obliges’ me to continue, to keep going in the face of all the fears and provides the courage to ‘break from the herd’. I know what is possible and ‘pure intent’ will not let me ignore it. How does that sound?

Those who follow, as opposed to those who first discover, have a decidedly easier time of things. There is no doubt one does this thing of becoming free of the Human Condition oneself but Richard has laid such a wonderful word-strewn path that one would need to be a fool to diverge from it, or try to invent ‘new’ problems or new ‘sub’-paths. One keeps one’s wits about oneself, of course – the way I did that was to check out the facts for myself. One doesn’t ‘blindly’ follow, a little reading, or a scoot around the Net, quickly enables one to discern and confirm the facts as opposed to the commonly held ‘truth’ or belief about something. The proof of anything is – does it work?

The only trap is that one can end up Enlightened and this is now easily avoidable as Enlightenment is such a second-rate, foolish, inane and childish delusion that it defies intelligent consideration as an option to Actual Freedom.

By keeping one’s aspirations and goals immediate and mundane as opposed to eternal and celestial, success is guaranteed – one edges inevitably and perceptively closer to one’s destiny and has a heck of a time on the way. The immediate is the focus, here, now, in the world as-it-is. The sincere and honest tackling of the beliefs that make up one’s social identity will lob one firmly and delightfully in a Virtual Freedom whereby one is happy and harmless 99% of the time. And don’t forget the harmless bit, for one can’t be happy without being harmless.

Despite the fact of having had a substantial peak experience (PCE) some 15 years ago and a substantial experience of Divine Love (ASC) some 3 years ago ... Peter to Richard, 25.2.1999

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

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

I would add that this clarity about the Human Condition has happened not by retreating or retiring from the world of people, things and events but by being fully involved and vitally interested in the fact of being a mortal, flesh and blood human being – here and now. Here – as in the actual world as perceived by the senses; and now – as in this very moment. In this way, one’s Virtual Freedom is ‘tested’ by full involvement, not falsely ‘sustained’ by avoidance or denial.

It is this very ‘boots and all’ involvement in the actual world that makes the act of self-sacrifice – as I see it and have experienced it – a sensible, obvious and necessary step.

I can’t emphasise enough the fact that this deep sea diving into the depths of one’s instinctual being can only be undertaken with the removal of the social identity and this can only be done with the pure intent borne out of the PCE – i.e. one needs to know where one is going and have the confidence that it is safe to do so. The only thing that could go wrong is that one will instinctually grab for safety – the good emotions – and Enlightenment will result. I know this is not the case with you, Alan, but it’s interesting to note how the survival mechanism kicks in, and one’s identity does a life-saving grab. I actually experienced this as an instinctual grab in one of my ‘death experiences’.

As you can see, the title is ‘What I am vs. Who I am’, and the diagram essentially addresses the issue of the process of the extinction of ‘who’ I am – the psychological and psychic entity and the emergence of ‘what I am’ – this flesh and blood body only, actually free of ‘who I think and feel I am’. The diagram quite deliberately separates out the active diminishing and eventual extinction of ‘who I am’ – and the emergence and eventual freedom of ‘what I am’. ‘What I am’ has always been here, it is just that it has been obscured and totally dominated by ‘who I am’ – and it is only by systematically and methodically daring to peel back the layers of social conditioning, beliefs, morals, ethics, psittacisms and instinctual passions that ‘what I am’ is more and more able to become apparent. ‘What I am’ thus becomes incrementally freed, strengthened, gaining confidence from the surety of facts, the increasingly unfettered intelligence and the heightened senses – all actual, down to earth, sensible and verifiable experiences. ‘What I am’ is not a new creation, a new identity – it is simply what remains when the ‘who I am’ disappears in total. To put it another way, the ‘who I was’ when I first met Richard will never meet the ‘what I am’ that will emerge when ‘I’ become extinct.

Of course, one has glimpses of this ‘self’-less state in the PCE, when for a period ‘who I am’ exits the stage, or is temporarily absent, but ‘what I am’ can only be totally free when ‘who I am’ ceases to exist permanently. ‘Who I am’ is capable of resurrection or fighting back at any stage – indeed it is passionately driven to do anything possible to survive – including selling off Grandmother if need be – which is where the middle line of the diagram comes into play. This is a simple representation of the wide and wondrous path to Actual Freedom – from naiveté to Actual Freedom. We have started the line with naiveté, for it surely requires naiveté to not only consider that an actual freedom from the Human Condition is possible, but that you, personally, are the one who can do it. To fly in the face of the Wisdom of the Ancients – ‘to go where no man has gone before’ in Star Trek terms, as I put it in my Journal. I conveniently ignored Richard in my dramatization as I figured that the next pioneers were plotting a brand new course – avoiding the instinctual seduction of the Rock of Enlightenment that had dashed the efforts of all before. The other point about naiveté is that the spiritually cynical and the worldly cunning, by their very attitude, exclude themselves from the adventure, and this has been evidenced by the many who have met Richard, or read a bit about AF, and turned away.

For those willing to consider the possibility of an actual freedom, the next step is to garnish a pure intent – an intent to make it something one is willing to dedicate one’s life to and a purity such that one will settle for nothing less than the purity and perfection so obviously experienced in a Pure Consciousness Experience. If it is possible for a brief time it must be possible as a permanent state – purity and perfection is possible as a flesh and blood human being, it requires one’s pure intent to become a ‘self’ consuming passion in life.

As an ongoing experience one moves into a state of Virtual Freedom whereby one goes to sleep at night time knowing one has had a perfect day and that tomorrow will also be a perfect day. This perfection is not the perfection of Actual Freedom but a 99.9% perfection and the hic-ups or stumbles are so minor and brief, that they fail to daunt one on the journey. Serendipity abounds and a fascination with life activates delight and sensuousness as one does all one can to mimic the perfection and purity that becomes increasingly apparent all around in the physical world. One’s mind, more and more freed of imagination and the chemical influence of instinctual passions, is capable of great clarity, and as apperceptive awareness replaces self-centred neurosis one knows one’s days are numbered. By this total and sincere dedication to what is actual, pure and perfect, one abandons control, so to speak, whereby the very process of self-immolation is set in motion – then it is not a process that one has any control over, it is happening by itself.

The ending of ‘me’, when seen dispassionately, is the amygdala doing its survival thing – one encounters surges of chemicals from an obsolete program playing out its death throes – fighting for its very survival as it is programmed to do. This last stages of the ending of ‘me’ is both a psychic and psychological affair, thus accompanying the chemical rushes (fear) one also experiences the psychological equivalent (angst), but one is committed by now – there is no ‘back door’, no turning back, no phoenix to rise from the ashes. ‘My’ end is nigh.

However, to even get to the point where one abandons control requires a pure intent, lest one settles for second-best. Pure intent is one’s sure companion on the journey from beginning to end.

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