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Selected Correspondence Peter Spiritualism
Given that you have resorted to attempting to play the role of guru on this list rather than on your own mailing list, it occurred to me to offer you a bit of advice with regard to your self-appointed status of would-be Guru. I very rarely offer unsolicited advice to anyone these days but it does seem that your business is slow over there on the Ranch, else why would you bother hawking your ‘wisdom’ on a non-spiritual mailing list. I do realize that you are probably the last person who would be open to taking advice from anyone but I do have good credentials in being able to advise Gurus as I was an avid follower of many in my spiritual years. It is also an opportunity to pass on some information about the nature of the guru-disciple business for those who may have come to this mailing list thinking that this is a spiritual mailing list replete with a resident Guru. The first important aspect that one needs to realize is that the reason that people are attracted to Gurus is that they are essentially looking for a Big Daddy or Big Mummy who will tell them what to think, what to feel, what to do and how to do it. In order to be successful in the business it is important for a Guru to never lose sight of this central role you are playing in other people’s lives and this essential need you are fulfilling, and I say this from direct experience of following several Gurus, and a good deal of reading about others. I am not saying that a Guru can’t have an individual style, but the important thing is to have and sustain an air of authority about you such as a child would feel for a parent. A dependant child will take a deal of tough love from a parent provided there is a balance of soft love, or to put it another way, a child will take a bit of stick as long as there is carrot on offer to balance it out (else t’is what is commonly known as child abuse). In exactly the same way, a Guru needs to offer a mix of carrot in the form of soft love if he or she is to wield the stick on occasions. What the successful Gurus do is offer the carrot of unconditional love in the form of vibes and to do this they need to sustain an aura of love combined with a certain degree of personal charisma. Whilst this tends to come naturally to those who are Enlightened (as in they have ‘become’ Love, That, It, or whatever), for those who are not yet fully deluded these attributes do need working on. Successful Gurus – those who have both aura and charisma and those who utilize both soft and tough love – literally have their followers on a string, and the shorter and stronger the string becomes, the more they personally can get away with, for the followers literally become blinded by love and devotion – not to mention being literally hobbled by dependency for the Guru’s love. Successful Gurus can literally toy with their followers and their feelings, sometimes casting pearls and sometimes not, sometimes praising, sometimes rebuking, thereby always ensuring they remain on the hook. From what you have said, it appears that you may have modelled your business on Mr. Gurdjieff – the tough, hard approach, all stick and no carrot. I would suggest that Mr. Gurdjieff may well have had an aura, a certain (exotic/eccentric?) charisma and offered carrots as well as wielded the stick because he at least had gathered a few disciples by the time he died. Whilst I do understand that some people are attracted by the brutally honest (as in brutal), tough love (as in odious) approach, as in ‘She’s really being Real’, I do think it somewhat restricts your market both in numbers and in dollars. Well that’s about it. The town I live in has two significant businesses, one being tourist, the other being Gurus and wannabe gurus of various sorts and at one stage I thought of offering a guru-grooming service, offering advice about style, technique and presentation – I think there could well be a buck in it for a smarter operator than me.
Peter, I’ve just finished reading your online journal and enjoyed it immensely. Your common sense approach to the subject matter within each chapter rang true to many of my own views upon this life we experience. Becoming an actualist was a life-changing experience for me because I had to stubbornly break a lifetime habit and instinctive compulsion of ‘self’-centred affective experiencing. The main point I wanted to get across in writing my journal was that the process of actualism is a life-changing experience and to regard actualism as a philosophy is a cop-out. Unlike both yourself and Richard I have never been down the spiritual paths – neither western nor eastern, and can not remember being anything but an out and out atheist, so reading your journal made perfect sense to me – I have no religious baggage to unload. You have obviously at least intellectually explored some spiritual paths as you have recently said –
I am curious – when you say you ‘have never been anything but an out an out atheist’, why then did you bother reading spiritualism? The reason I ask is that most Western people who claim to be atheists use the word atheist as meaning they do not believe in the monotheist Christian God and yet they quite happily believe in the animism of Environmentalism, the metaphysics of Einsteinian science, the mysticism of philosophy, the occultism of traditional healing, or whatever. When I use the term thorough-going atheist, I use the term to mean someone who not only intellectually discards any spiritual, mystical or metaphysical beliefs whatsoever but does so on the basis of their own direct experience that any and all spiritual, mystical or metaphysical beliefs are naught but human feeling-fed fantasies, i.e. they have no existence in the actual world. A lack of any hands-on experience of the spiritual path need not be a hindrance to becoming actually free of the human condition … provided one starts to become vitally interested in being here. * I am also looking at my ego and becoming more aware of how it gets in the way in normal day-to-day interactions using HAIETMOBA. I am also aware that what I’m probably doing is bolting on some actualism to my current life style, … If you are aware of this then you will also be aware that you are wasting the opportunity that the actualism process offers. I certainly don’t have the pure intent to ‘go all the way’ although I think I do have what you refer to as PCEs but only fleetingly. These moments usually come when sitting looking at the trees through the windows of my conservatory. The fleeting moments you describe may well be what are sometimes referred to as Nature Experiences whereby one feels an inner peace by making an affective connection with the inherent stillness of this paradisaical planet. Nature Experiences are commonly experienced as being precious ‘time-outs’ from the rat-race or the real-world and whilst they could be a precursor to the onset of a PCE they are more generally experienced as spiritual experiences in that ‘I’ as spirit being connect with the spirit of nature, or ‘I’ as feeling being feel connected with the Whole.
As for the ‘tall poppy syndrome’, you only need to observe the revolving door of spiritualists who come to this list and head straight for Richard in order to cut him down a peg or two. And it is fascinating to observe how they are so convinced that they, and their ilk, are right – that the meaning of life is somewhere hidden in the ancient mumbo-jumbo of Eastern spirituality – and that we actualists are wrong, so much so that they have not the slightest interest in what is being talked about on this mailing list. They provide a wonderful opportunity to observe first-hand how holding on to any religious or spiritual belief or philosophy actively stifles any possibility of even considering the idea that something new has now been discovered – that it is now possible for any human being, so inclined, to become free of malice and sorrow.
Over the past few years I have had occasion to have some discussions with a Buddhist and I am continuously amazed at how quickly he can assimilate anything I may happen to say about actualism into his own religious beliefs. He does not even blink an eyelid, let alone stop to think or contemplate. These interactions continue to remind me of the overwhelming power that the sense-numbing combination of belief and passion has over human thinking – so much so that this disability has been recognized in psychiatry and given the label of cognitive dissonance. The other aspect that always stands out in these discussions is that he is so totally self-centred that he has no interest whatsoever in what is happening in the world, i.e. he is so much is he concerned with maintaining his own ‘inner peace’ he doesn’t give a fig about peace on earth. Similar to my experiences. I’ve been amazed at the chameleon like characteristics of Buddhism ... that’s the primary factor in its spread. It always struck me as odd that Tibetan and Zen flavours bear almost no resemblance. There have been some examples of spiritualists who even manage to absorb some of actualism into their spiritual beliefs and some have even started to teach their own personal hodgepodge version of actualism to others. What they don’t realize is that they stand out like dog’s balls because they come across in the vein of spiritual teachers – seeking power and authority by questioning and probing the beliefs of others while blithely never daring to question their own beliefs. The reason they don’t dare question their own beliefs, as you put it so well, is that ‘Once one questions beliefs to this sort of extent, it’s a one way street’. * That ‘religion is the greatest obstacle’ is a spiritual-world psittacism often trotted out by spiritualists in order to separate their own spiritual-religious practices from that of the herd. Well of course. I tend to lump ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ together. Regardless of the dogma, they tend to smell the same to me. It takes a good nose to sniff out spiritualism precisely because of its chameleon like character. As your investigations proceed you may well be surprised at the extent of its almost complete infiltration into every aspect of Western society. I know I was.
Also, I see that you are still referring to me as a spiritualist, which sounds a little odd coming from a religious devotee such as yourself. You can have the last say if you want as I don’t wish to continue this into the new year. Might I remind you that it was you who asked a question of Richard on a spiritual mailing list and then posted his answer to this list. If you are not a spiritualist, why do you correspond on a spiritual mailing list and why do you talk spiritual talk on that list? When I corresponded on several spiritual mailing lists and pointed out the flaws and failures of spiritualism, a common response was that many correspondents would then proceed to deny they were spiritualists – a blatant ‘not me, it must be someone else’ denial. Another common reaction was to label me as being a religious devotee – a taunt favoured by followers of Eastern religion in an attempt to deny the religiosity of their own beliefs. If you don’t want to be a spiritualist, then don’t be a spiritualist – living life devoid of beliefs is a such a palpable tangible freedom for one ends up freed from the constant need to either deny, hide and conceal one’s beliefs – or to defend, champion or fight for one’s beliefs.
Well, while probably most people interested in freedom, peace and happiness would be on, or interested in, the spiritual path, there may be others who are not. So far, perhaps that remains to be seen. The famed spiritual path is rapidly losing all credibility as time goes on. The West’s grand flirtation with Eastern religion is beginning to look a bit like a leaky sieve. At one end spiritualism is being watered down to moralistic self-love and stress-relieving techniques, à la Oprah Winfrey, while the increasing exposure of the necessary narcissism of the spiritual teachers, Gurus and God-men is spoiling their game no end. Things have changed enormously since I first tentatively trod the boards of the spiritual stage. So much more information is available for anyone to make his or her own assessment of what is on offer and whether it works. Many who come across actualism are so heavily indoctrinated by Eastern religion that they skim a bit of what is written, if at all that is, and dismiss it as spiritual. If they read a bit more they react strongly and then dismiss it as anti-spiritual. In time, the writings on this web-site will be simply acknowledged as non-spiritual and down-to-earth and, as more people become interested, actualism will increasingly become a vibrant and flourishing third alternative. I became interested in what Richard had to say while on the Krishnamurti list, it is true. But earlier in my life, I was on what I would call the ‘drug’ path – ‘better living through chemistry’. I cared not a snoot for religious or other spiritual thinking, although the ethos of that time – the Love Generation – was very much influenced by Eastern religions and ideas. And Richard got himself Enlightened without any knowledge of Eastern religion at all. I got myself involved in Eastern Religion after a dark night of the soul, knowing not a fig about what I was getting in to. Not that I knew it then but peace, love and brown rice was really religion, narcissism and poverty.
As far as standing up to the scrutiny of spiritual pundits, when faced with the facts about the spiritual world, some weird and strange arguments emerge as you will have noticed. Much frantic back-peddling and denial is obvious. I do understand we were spoiling their game, but it is a game that needs spoiling if peace is to come to this fair planet. And as you well know, to become actually free is now the only game to play in town – the Gurus have had their day. Well, this is a bit of a loose, late night ramble but I’m enjoying writing on ‘home turf’, so to speak. We have the list-writing on our web-site, as you know, and the next exercise is to sort it by topics so as to make it more useful and convenient for anyone who is interested. It was interesting to look back at the objections that we came across. I stated early on in the correspondence that I had begun the spiritual path with the ideal of peace of mind for me and the ideal of peace on earth. I was howled down for this and it soon became obvious that for those remaining in the group that love for the Master was the only remaining ideal that anyone could cling to, all else had failed. When push comes to shove – love for the Master (or God) is wheeled out as the fall back position, Never Ever to be questioned. To the point of being willing to sacrifice one’s life for, or kill for, although few would admit to it. It all seems to boil down to a desperate need to belong to some group or other, to believe in some higher authority, some better life somewhere else – anywhere but here, now, as this flesh and blood body only. The other thing that was very evident was the total lack of
interest in discussions about peace on earth. Total self-interest, remoteness and detachment to the point of
cynicism and beyond were apparent, which took me aback on occasions. The creation of the ‘watcher’, in
psychiatric terms is called dis-association, when one is willing to kill or do a criminal act without any
feelings what-so-ever. The revelations of It became so glaringly obvious that not only is there no solution to the human dilemma within the spiritual world, but that no one even imagines there is. It is completely and utterly a selfish undertaking. Beneath the noble poetic rhetoric lies self-interest, cynicism and hypocrisy which rivals any in the real world. There is none so self-righteous as the man or woman of God. So, life is bloody excellent here – a small but significant wedge is being driven in the door of the spiritual temples and an enormous door is swinging opening to the actual world of sensibility and sensate experiencing for human beings. And the prize is not only peace and freedom for oneself, but ... peace on earth. To quote no better source than yourself – ain’t life grand!
I do agree that my route is very different to Richard’s torturous and lone adventure, but from now on we will all follow a very simple and direct path to Actual Freedom. It may have slight eccentricities for different people, but there is no other ‘way’ or other ‘path’. It will become easier and easier as more is written, as more people come along, as the ‘long grass’ is trampled, as the ‘Demons’ are laid to rest, as the traps and fears are exposed for the illusion they are. The other point is that it is becoming very clear to me that everyone is influenced by Eastern Spirituality, for the simple reason that up until now it has been the only thing that has pointed to the possibility of freedom before physical death. The falsehoods, myths and lies propagated confirm the fact that it offers nothing other than a delusionary and imaginary escape only, but the influences of the ‘Spiritual Search’ is universal, atavistic, pervasive and intrusive on all human beings. Thus we look to the PCE in the same way we look to the ASC – a way to ‘get out of it’. We look for and actively pursue it as some sort of ‘relief’ from our ‘normal’ human existence and pursue it as such. In the spiritual world one does a group, goes to an ashram or sits and meditates to escape from, or obtain some relief from the ‘real’ world and from the churning thoughts, feelings and emotions that make up ‘who’ we think and feel we are. The path to Actual Freedom involves assiduously and deliberately challenging the bundle of thoughts, feelings and emotions that are actually what ‘I’ am made of, and simultaneously challenging the instilled overriding and primitive belief that this physical world, as-it-is, is a miserable and frightening place to be in. To do this means one will soon end up living and enjoying a Virtual Freedom, where one will live in a state that is the closest ‘humanly’ possible to a peak experience, for 99% of the time. Then, and only then, will the genuine article of a PCE just slip in the door, or waft in on the breeze. And you may well get to have a PCE in the mean time – but you haven’t wasted (too much) time in worrying about it all in the mean time. You will get to live in Virtual Freedom, which is way beyond ‘normal’ human expectations anyway, so much so that you will have no emotional memories of ‘who’ you were before you started on this wide and wondrous path. The aim of the exercise is, after all, to live in the world as-it-is, free of malice and sorrow – to be here – not There, as in an ASC. To treat the PCE as one would a spiritual ASC or epiphany is to mix a ‘bit of spiritual’ in Actual Freedom and, as we know, they simply don’t mix. The path to Actual Freedom bears no resemblance to the spiritual path – they run in opposite directions. The aim of one is to ‘get out of it’ – the other is to get fully into it, this business of being alive as a flesh and blood mortal human being – to be an ‘earthling’, as I wrote to someone the other day. Well, I’ve got off on to one of my raves again, Alan. I’ve got no idea if this answers any of your questions, but it is how I experience this wide and wondrous path to Actual Freedom. Alan, these comments are not personally ‘aimed’ at you for I know not your circumstances or life experience or situation – they are my experiences and those of Vineeto which I am simply passing on. And a little plug for the down-to-earthness of my journal as well, don’t be fooled by the apparent simpleness of it all – life was meant to be easy, after all. We humans have got so used to sticking our heads in the sand, or in the clouds, for so, so long, with all the complicated and torturous mythical explanations and philosophies about human existence... we are not at all used to simply seeing what is under our very noses ...
I always thought what a marvellous time it was to be right in the middle of the formation of a religion when in my spiritual days and now I get to see the beginnings (or continuation) of a war on TV. Such fascinating times to be alive – to see the cultural identities we have been imbibed with, to see the religious myths, to see the Human Condition as a totality.
The Guru season has finished in town – they are all off playing the northern hemisphere circuit, no doubt. I’ve come to see them as bliss-dispensers – you pay your money and you get your ‘fix’, you pay your money and you get your ‘fix’. Good business but the market here is very crowded in the season. I thought of running a Guru Booking business – venue booking, accommodation, advertising etc. but they tend to have their lackeys do it for free. The other thought was a Guru Finishing School as some of them could do with a bit of help in presentation, image, aura-polishing, ‘energy’ transmission and the like... with quantity has come a marked decline in quality.
Which reminds me of a cute story that happened lately. About a year ago I got a bee in my bonnet to write a piece for the national newspaper as they were publishing readers’ stories in their weekend magazine under the banner ‘Real Life’. Inspired by the fact that I now had something to say about ‘real life’ I sent off a piece on death, culled from my journal. Lo and behold they published it – I had kept it very mild and watered down. Then I sent another piece culled from the Living Together chapter and called it ‘Liberation from being men and women’. Nothing happened and about 3 months ago they returned it with a ‘Thank you, but ...’ note. About 3 weeks ago Vineeto brought home a copy of the local Rajneesh Sannyas magazine, and there on the cover were the words ‘Liberation from being men and women’. ‘Something familiar about those words ...’ I thought, and looked inside to find my article printed word for word with ‘Author unknown’ at the end. It turned out that Vineeto had given it to a woman at work who was associated with the magazine at the time to see if they were interested in publishing it. Nothing happened and we both forgot about it, and meanwhile the woman ceased her involvement with the magazine. It seemed that the article – author unknown by now – was found by someone who considered it interesting enough to publish. So the traitor-to-the-cause, the blacker-than-black sheep gets his article published anonymously in a Rajneesh magazine. They haven’t a clue how much of a heretic I am. Maybe they just think I’m a Guru basher – if they think at all, that is. Cute Hey... When the editor found out t’was me he rang up to apologize and casually mentioned they would consider publishing something else; so I popped one in to him but ‘upped the ante’ just a bit this time – sprinkling the piece with a few words like instincts, beliefs, morals, ethics, peace, fear, aggression, malice and sorrow. It’s entitled ‘Folks and People’ and is hung around the story I recently related on the list about the waring gangs in Chicago. We will see what becomes of that. It is amazing to see serendipity in action – to watch the marvellous quirks and twists and links and opportunities and events that occur – as though by magic. As I said in my journal of the path to Actual Freedom – ‘Serendipity is, after all, what happens when you take the opportunity that comes along.’
I realized in writing to No 5, that the numbing legacy of having been on the spiritual path is many-fold and that the path to Actual Freedom ‘requires naiveté not cynicism, determination not fatalism, bloody-mindedness not defeatism, confidence not pessimism, a stubborn refusal to settle for second best not resignation, and a burning discontentment with the Human Condition of malice and sorrow not a self-centred complacency.’ After writing this I did a mental checklist of my ‘spiritual legacy’ and would say that this very legacy is the reason this process has taken so long for me. I went into the spiritual world with passion and gusto and ended in wimpism, resignation and acceptance. It is the inevitable result of having been in a system of thought and belief based on human beings needing to surrender their will to a higher ‘creative force’, ‘energy’, etc. As such, I have been wary of being impelled by passionate enthusiasm only and this is why I have carefully sought personal verification by experience of the ongoing and incremental success, observing success in others, the validation of scientific factual evidence and the confidence and surety of many pure consciousness experiences.
... And these men believe they are God on Earth. It would be a joke really, except for the fact that other people – would-be’s and wanna-be’s – insist on believing them and worshipping them as God-men. Of course, India is full to the brim with these nutters but a few of the English speaking Gurus were quick to jump on the Western bandwagon that rolled to the East in search of freedom, peace and happiness. 30 years on this search has ‘discovered’ disciplehood (surrender), religion (war), and meditation (either blessed out ... or freaked out). Many who sought something other than Religion and War turned their backs on Western Religion and real world values merely to end up believing in Eastern Religions and adopting ‘spiritual’ values. Out of the frying pan and into the fire ... The rest just gave up. So, to return to your conversation with the woman –
We may or may not meet again ... she works as a spiritual-group facilitator. ‘We are all one’ is indeed one of the classic lines from the spiritual world and perhaps no other platitude more accurately illustrates the gulf between belief, feeling and imagination and what is fact, sensible and blindingly obvious on the other. ‘We are all one’ and yet ‘we’ continuously and instinctually fight and fear each other in a grim battle of survival. The passionate feeling that ‘we are all one’, engendered by belonging exclusively to one spiritual group or another, gives rise to feelings of elitism, separateness, isolationism, remoteness, seclusion, exclusivity, defensiveness, blind loyalty and blind faith, snobbery, false superiority, intolerance, etc. etc. – anything but ‘We are all one’. In fact the feeling is not ‘We are all one’ but rather ‘We are the Chosen Ones’, and for the Guru it is not ‘We are all one’ but it is the feeling that ‘I am the One’. What a phantasm the spiritual world is, and being ‘admonished to leave your mind at the door, surrender your will, and trust your feelings’ ensures that the followers remain unthinking, unquestioning and off in La-La land – anywhere but here in the actual world and anytime but now, this very moment of being alive.
Firstly, there is most obviously an instinctual sense of self-recognition, a faculty we share with our closet genetic cousins – apes and chimps both recognize ‘themselves’ in a mirror. This instinctual primal ‘self’ is made more sophisticated in humans, for the cognitive neo-cortex (the ‘conscious’ to use LeDoux’s term) is only capable of detecting the chemical flows of the amygdala (non-cognitive and ‘unconscious’), and these are ‘felt’ as basic passions or emotions and interpreted as feelings – ‘my’ feelings. Thus, we ‘feel’ this genetic instinctual programming to be ‘me’ at my core. This program thus gives every human being an instinctual self which is translated into a ‘real’ self that is both psychic – LeDoux’s ‘unconscious’ made obvious and real by the ensuing flow of chemicals from the amygdala – and psychological – interpreted as thoughts by the modern cognitive brain. (The modern brain is also taught much after birth – one’s social identity – but I’m interested in the deeper level at this stage.) This explains that the spiritual journey ‘in’ is thus a journey to find one’s instinctual self – one’s roots, one’s original face, the Source, etc. If, on this inner journey, one ignores or denies the passions of aggression and fear and concentrates one’s attention on the passions of nurture and desire, one can shift one’s identity from the psychological thinking neo cortex – the ‘ego’ to use their term – and ‘become’, or associate with, or identify with, the good feelings of nurture and desire. This is a seductive and self-gratifying journey, for one is actively promoting the flow of chemicals that give rise to the good, pleasant, warm, light-headed, heart-full and ultimately ecstatic feelings. These flow of chemicals overwhelm the neo-cortex to such an extent that they become one’s primary experience, and the input of the physical world as perceived by the senses and the clear-thinking ability of the cognitive modern brain are both subjugated – or ‘transcended’ to use their term. One then ‘feels’ one has found one’s original ‘self’, which one has of course, though t’is all but a fantasy of one’s imagination. I particularly remember when I first came across spiritual teachings, the mythology and poetry that alluded to this ‘inner’ world seemed to strike a deep cord with me – the tales of Ancient Wisdom ‘connected’ with this deep (unconscious) level which was a connection with the instinctual memory in the amygdala. I had ‘found’ someone who had the answers, was in touch with the Source, knew the meaning of life, the truth – I had come Home. I began a journey into the inner world of good feelings, made real by the ability to enhance the chemical flow of nurture and desire and dampen, suppress or ignore the feelings of aggression and fear. I was literally leaving the real world behind and seeking solace and succour in the spiritual world. I was thus forfeiting any chance of breaking free of my instinctual passions, in total, for a selfish bid for personal bliss and a permanent place in an imaginary ‘other world’ composed solely of chemically-supported blissful feelings.
Just a note with some more about theoretical scientists. I had dug out some relevant quotes but Richard was quicker to reply. I thought I would leave it but a recent meeting twigged me to post them anyway. Vineeto and I were invited out to dinner recently, and after the meal the evening turned to an interesting discussion on life and the universe. We merrily talked of what is actual and they merrily talked of what is spiritual, so few alleys of conversation were pursued to any depth. The woman was particularly interested in the ‘method’ we were using and I asked her: ‘method to do what?’ As it turned out, she didn’t have an aim in life but was just interested in finding a new method per se. She was simply on a spiritual quest for methods, paths and teachers. That conversation soon dwindled, and in an attempt to inject a bit of common sense into the evening I steered the discussion back to the actual – tapping the arm of the chair to give an illustration of what is actual. The man immediately told me it was a scientifically proven fact that the chair did not exist as the essence of matter was ethereal and constantly fluctuating between here and there – pointing over there – and as such could not be actual. Needless to say I nearly fell off my chair, literally, as what I was comfortably sitting on had magically been transported, by scientific theory and this man’s belief, over to the opposite corner of the veranda. Which only goes to prove that believing what theoretical scientists say could be a danger to one’s health – as well as one’s sanity.
To me it looks like that I can experience the actual world sensately, even while ‘I’ is alive and is in charge most of the time. Both ‘I’ and I can exist simultaneously at least for some time. My proposition is that if I focus more and more on experiencing and less and less on feeling, ‘I’ will dissolve gradually in due course of time. It may be boots and all approach, but I think it is working for me. The best part is that I don’t have to wait till ‘I’ completely annihilates itself, I can enjoy the sensate physical world right now. It doesn’t happen for 24 hours, but even those few moments when I can really enjoy the physical world are satisfying enough. And I am not even talking of peak experience. I don’t have any. I am talking of ordinary events like while sipping my tea, my taste buds enjoying the warmth of it and my nose enjoying the flavour. Or while taking a bath, my skin enjoying the cool water drops falling from the shower. It seems that you are saying that the traditional spiritual approach is going to work for you. It didn’t work for me after 17 years on the spiritual path, and once I acknowledged the fact of the failure of this approach to eliminate sorrow and malice in the world I dropped it like a hot brick. I realized that literally billions of people had ‘practiced’ being happy and good for millennia with nil result. This last century has, in fact, been the bloodiest in history. When I first came upon the spiritual path I remember practicing being here and being centred and focused, but my relationships still failed, I still got pissed off, annoyed, melancholic, irritated and occasionally angry. Later I got into Vipassana meditation and then the ‘food queue syndrome’ kicked in – blissful sittings that eventually ended, which meant returning to the real world populated by ‘un-meditative’ people. This approach did nothing to address the primary, central role that instinctually-sourced feelings and passions have in producing malice and sorrow. But I don’t want to get into a right and wrong discussion with you – I just went with the facts and what worked and what didn’t work. For me that meant focusing on feelings with the intent of eliminating malice and sorrow. Your approach is to focus less and less on feelings. I fail to see how the instinctual passions are going ‘to dissolve gradually in the due course of time’. It hasn’t happened over the 3,500 years of recorded spiritual history, in fact, quite the contrary has occurred. The instinctual passions have been co-opted into appalling battles between good and evil and as for ‘‘I’ will gradually dissolve’ – history has it that when this method of dis-association is practiced, ‘I’ become Self-realized – for the few, or ‘I’ become self-centred, self-satisfied, humble, grateful – for the many. When I talk of a sensible, sensate only experience I talk of it at the end of some 2 years of intensive effort aimed at eliminating the debilitating effects of having a social identity and having an instinctual self. I am talking of an experience whereby I have so totally and thoroughly changed myself to the point where feelings and instincts play no role in my life.
Nice talking to you Peter. (I think it is my first direct mail to you). BTW, I have read your journal and enjoyed it a lot. That was how I was introduced to the Actual Freedom site. That time I was looking for someone who had broken away from Osho’s organized religion called sannyas. And what you found was someone who has broken away from the spiritual world entirely and headed off in the other direction. I wrote the journal as the story of my journey out of the spiritual world and into the actual world. But you have to get out of the spiritual world first, there are no shortcuts – there is no clip on a bit of ‘actual’ and motor on the spiritual path. The spiritual path is for the Luddites who selfishly settle for the ‘feeling’ of freedom – a pathetic substitute for the actual. Not for the boots and all, sincere actualist, who will settle for nothing less than an actual freedom.
Maybe becoming free of depression, sadness, loneliness, boredom, resentment, anger, animosity, annoyance, etc. is not of interest to you. No, Peter, your speculation about me is way off the mark. At present I am learning where my anger is coming from. I think my need for love is bringing that and lately I am trying to find where the need for love is coming from. I am also looking as to where do the random feelings of unconditional love I get, come from. No, it is neither speculation nor ‘way off the mark’. Up until now the only way to become ‘free’ of malice and sorrow has been to indulge the imagination and affective faculties (feelings) such that one achieves a ‘spiritual’ freedom – usually referred to as Self-realization, or in its full-blown delusion, as Enlightenment. This is done by negating or denying the ‘bad’ feelings of malice and sorrow and giving full reign to the ‘good’ feelings of love and compassion. To call this figment of the imagination ‘freedom’ is to abuse the meaning of the word which is why Richard used the word Actual Freedom for his discovery. Given that you are firmly on the spiritual path, as is evidenced by your objections and refusal to want to even begin to understand what Actual Freedom is really about, you are obviously only interested in an imaginary freedom. The traditional ‘beam me up, Scottie’ solution, or the ‘beam me up, Bhagwan’ version. This is not a criticism of you personally – these spiritual fantasy ‘escapes’ have, after all, been the only thing available up until now. But you are writing on the Actual Freedom mailing list and any efforts to convince us, deride us, condemn us, or put us down will fall on deaf ears. We actualists stubbornly refuse to settle for a second-best freedom – a synthetic freedom that leads to the Master-disciple system which perpetuates the fantasy world of good and evil spirits, after-life, God, Religions and all sorts of meta-physical mumbo-jumbo. An actualist rapidly moves from learning, thinking, trying, and looking to investigating, pursuing, discovering, uncovering, finding, implementing, activating, challenging and dismantling feelings, emotions, beliefs and instincts. From a mere snorkelling around on the surface to a bit of sincere deep sea diving into one’s own psyche.
At least there is no chance of failing on the spiritual path – one simply becomes a devotee, it requires neither effort nor intelligence, neither independence nor autonomy, neither sincerity nor any degree of risk at all. First, why are you telling me this. What is in this for me. Why is this relevant to what I had asked ? It is only relevant to you if it means something to you. It meant something to me when I realised what lay at the core of the spiritual quest – surrender – which is, as per definition, an acknowledgment of defeat.
I was definitely criticizing your style of writing on the list. In short, what I was saying: For my taste, you normally spend too much time denouncing ‘spiritual path’ without exactly defining which part of the ‘spiritual path’ you are denouncing. That’s easy – all of it. This is, after all, a non-spiritual path to freedom. ‘Non’ as in – ‘a negation, a prohibition’ – Oxford dictionary. Having realized my freedom from the spiritual world it often takes restraint from getting up off my chair and jigging all over the keyboard in an iconoclastical tango. To be in at the very beginning of the end of the stranglehold that religion and spirituality has held over human beings for millennia. I was talking to someone the other day about the ‘goings-on’ in his particular spiritual group and we compared notes as to why we turned a blind-eye to things that weren’t quite right, to cronyism, corruption, power-plays, lies, deception, put-downs, repressions, etc., and we both agreed that we saw them as side issues to the main event – the spiritual pursuit. It occurred to me that the only reason I stayed so long was that there was no other alternative to the spiritual, so I had to turn a blind eye, or face going back to the ‘real’ world. In the end I left the group and searched elsewhere in the spiritual world but only found the same duplicity, the same yawning gap between ideals and dreams and the facts. Then I discovered the new third alternative, Actual Freedom. You normally do not make it clear why you are denouncing whatever it is i.e. whether certain things did not work for you or you are positive they will not work for anybody. You have made these things clearer in your response to my criticism. I am astounded. I wrote my journal with the express purpose of detailing why ‘things did not work’ for me on the spiritual path and in all the actualism writings specific facts are presented as to the failure of the spiritual path to bring an individual peace to billions of devotees or anything resembling peace to earth. Quite the contrary, the God-men have left such an appalling trail of bloodshed and suffering in their wake that it beggars description. But as you said you haven’t read enough of Actual Freedom to understand. What is written is no mere criticism for criticism sake but factual catalogue of failure, both personally documented and historically evidenced.
Mysticism and spiritualism are an attempt to ‘feel’ your way to God, philosophy and theoretical science are an attempt to ‘think’ your way to God. For an actualist – awareness and pure intent lead to apperception – a bare awareness whereby one figuratively and literally ‘comes to one’s senses’. With apperception operating almost exclusively an Actual Freedom from the Human Condition is the inevitable result.
Vineeto quoted Richard:
precisely how Barry Long is stating this I know a reasonable amount about Barry Long as I followed him for a while. Mr. Long puts his position quite clearly – he is not into eliminating ‘I’, the self but into transforming it into Self. He teachers the traditional technique of transcending the bad feelings and emotions and giving full reign to the good ones, finally achieving an illusionary ego death whereby one’s identity shifts to becoming the Good, Immortal and Divine. A few quotes to illustrate –
... thus the alien entity, the ‘self’, merely took on a new identity to become yet another God-man – Guru of the West. The old, ‘little self to Big-Self’ shuffle, that has ensnared genuine seekers of freedom for millennia. The spiritual path is plainly talking about men becoming Gods, the ancient ‘escape’ from misery and sorrow – from ‘bad and Evil’ to ‘good and God’. In the beginning it appears both the spiritual path and the path to an actual freedom are talking about the same thing until one digs a bit deeper and becomes aware of the desire to become Divine and Immortal which lies at the core of the spiritual search. Once this is clearly seen and acknowledged, then it is only pride that prevents one from seeking a genuine actual freedom. It’s so good to be free of both the ‘real’ world and the ‘spiritual’ world – an actual freedom from all of the Human Condition.
So, you finally got the chop. Chalk up another victory for the little people. Yes, indeed. Not too long ago we would have been stoned to death outside the temple gates, or hauled from our beds in the middle of the night by hooded men. Mostly this went on as a way of silencing dissent, but it also gave a chance for a few to vent their spleen and anger – nothing like a good old lynching to make one feel really good. As for another victory for the ‘little people’, it really is another victory for God and his earthly representatives – the spiritual Masters. Their demand for love, devotion and loyalty, together with their followers eager willingness to love, trust and surrender has created an atmosphere that makes questioning the teachings and the teachers all but impossible. As such within the spiritual world peace is an impossibility – never has been and never will be possible. Quite the contrary – blind obedience, love and loyalty are a potent recipe for arrogance, conflict and ignorance to flourish. One puts blinkers on to the extent of being willing to kill or be killed to defend the ‘cause’ – in this case the ‘love’ and honour of someone long dead. I am curious as to why anyone would continue to suffer on the spiritual path, given that there is now an alternative on offer, and continue to inflict suffering on others who do not share one’s own particular love for one’s own particular God. It is fascinating as an outsider to see the mastications within the spiritual group to which I used to belong, the bewildered attempts to make any sense of the heritage left by an Enlightened Master. The futile attempts to put into practice the inane teachings such that any semblance of peace and harmony ensues within the group... If one looks with open eyes at the teachings one sees that this ‘love’ is the core – the ultimate sacrifice – demanded by Him as membership of the group. All else is but a sop for the gullible. The fall-back position of ‘love’ and devotion for Him, sets in concrete the formation of His religion. Yet another generation, yet another religion. Hence yet another sectarian separation, conflict, religious war, persecution, discrimination, silencing, ostracising ... on and on and on. But the end is nigh for both Eastern and Western religions. Life on the planet is simply getting too good, too easy, too comfortable for many and it is those people who will begin to challenge the Ancient Wisdom that insists that life is meant to be about suffering and sorrow and fighting and standing up for one’s right to be malicious. It is those people who will seek a genuine and actual freedom – those who will refuse to settle for second best.
Peter wrote – among lots of other stuff: blah, blah, blah,... ‘spiritually here usually achieved by meditative practice, the spiritual people manage to live in a state of denial and renunciation of the real world they so desperately seek to escape’ ...blah, blah... I don’t get it... Spiritual as compared to everyday/mundane? Being spiritual equals a state of denial/ renunciation/ escape????? Where do you get this stuff??? I can be totally meditative while I go to the market or even watch a movie on TV... and I can certainly be quite mundane while sitting ‘trying to be (or better yet appearing to be) in meditation... And what makes you think that if I am totally immersed in a dance therefore making it a meditation... that I am renouncing or trying to escape anything??? I think your dictionary definitions and your trying to be deep about a fairly non-complex issue, such as being in H&N is a little above my head... (thankfully) The denial and renunciation of the spiritual path (Eastern Religions) is evident in the exalted position of the Gurus and Sannyasins in the East. Sexual repression and ignorance abounds, repression of women is notorious, rampant poverty and disease is the direct result of turning away from the benefit of intelligent thinking and resulting technological advances, and the famed compassion in practice necessitates a higher, holier position to those for whom one feels compassion towards. The Dalai Lama is venerated as the re-incarnation of ‘the Lord who looks down with compassion on the world of sentient beings’. These are the facts of what 3,000 years of spirituality have produced, compared with the blind faith in what might be possible, one day ... if only ...
Well, as the subject said I’m sitting back and taking stock of things. It has been a couple of weeks now, of what often seems an endless list of objections to what I am saying. I mused back to the time I first came across Richard and tried to remember what my reactions were at the time. I am looking for some yardstick in order to compare and maybe offer some words to anyone who is interested. When I first met Richard I was full on in the Spiritual world looking for freedom from the ‘shackles’ I felt that stopped me living fully. I naturally assumed that what he was talking about was spiritual in nature and as I had a chance to talk to him personally of his experiences of Enlightenment, I leapt at the chance. Then the shit began to hit the fan as I realised he was not talking of Enlightenment but of something far more radical – the total annihilation of the ‘self’. I remember at one stage it dawned on me what I was in for – the end of ‘me’. I thought, what happens if this thing works? The end of ‘me’! But I had vowed to find a way to free myself of the ‘shackles’, I had determined some 10 years previously to find the ‘meaning of life’ as I stood by the coffin of my 13 year old son. So the offer to become happy and harmless was too good to pass up whatever the cost. And I had decided that the whole spiritual game and spiritual world was increasingly weird. But it took a good deal of bloody-mindedness and intent to get out of the meta-physical world and to even consider that there was an actual world, a world outside of imagination. When I propositioned Vineeto about investigating the possibility of living together in peace and harmony, she was still firmly in Sannyas and for some 6 months we agreed not to talk about the ‘war’, as we put it. But seeing the success of ruthlessly questioning all beliefs around gender, sex, relationships, love, etc., she eventually became interested and was able to question her spiritual beliefs, love and loyalty, surrender and trust. So I do appreciate that it is difficult – such is the all-encompassing belief in a Something or Someone Else, and all I am saying is, to anyone who has any doubts that the spiritual path might not be delivering the goods for you – my experience is this works. It is radically, 180 degrees in the other direction, in the physical world there is no God, guru, Energy, Existence, Truth, Absolute, Intelligence, Spirit, Mother Nature, Afterlife, Karma, Reincarnation or whatever. I wrote in my journal of my battle with God and this is a bit from the end of that chapter.
Any ‘good’ act can be ego-supporting and not necessarily ego-transcending. Living for others is an outcome of liberation, not necessarily a route to it. 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. What is that specific element in different kinds of spiritual practice that destroys ego? Keeps it under control? Makes it stronger and more insidious? Makes it our enemy? Makes it our friend on the spiritual path? Or does our Sadhana simply not change anything about ego having other priorities instead? 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. There is no one prescription for a practice that will give you control over the ego, but it seems to me that having an external guide in the process is essential (this has probably been discussed in this group before I joined – I’m sure there are strong opinions on both sides of the issue). I lived in an ashram for 15 years, doing a 2.5 hr morning sadhana every single day. This certainly changed my life for the better, giving me much more control over my mind and emotions, but more importantly it gave me an experience of the Divine which provides limitless motivation for continuing to pursue union with the Infinite, because all other joys pale in comparison. I too lived in ashrams, for some 10 years of my 17 years on the spiritual path, and had a wonderful time. I got to be in on the inside, to partake fully and whole-heartedly in the spiritual experience. I got to see it from the early days when ‘we’ were going to change the world and bring peace to the planet. I then saw it all dwindle to regimentation, dogma, religious practice and self-interest and finally to the formation of New Age Eastern religious groups reduced to praying for peace on earth and ‘raising the consciousness’ of the planet It was, however, invaluable experience to draw upon later in order to make a clear-eyed assessment of how my religious beliefs and affective experiences had blinded me to my own fear and aggression and how surrendering my will to a spiritual Master or a mythical Higher Force, was the antithesis of actual freedom. By the end of my spiritual years, although disillusioned, I refused to buckle under to cynicism or merely limp back into the ‘real’ world to live out a second-rate life. I knew there had to be something far, far better than the real world or the spiritual world ... and there is, of course. Peter’s Text © The Actual Freedom Trust |
