What method are you talking about, what results have you achieved,

Ok. Lets start with simple physical task examples. I am better at living now than I have ever been before in any number of these tasks however the certainty accompanying such expertise comes with the gradual measurement and incremental improvement clearly observed in everyday normal life situations compared against my aims. How well I communicate with you may depend on my criteria of being understood or by how well I type and spell and form grammatical syntax, etc. So far I seem to score very poorly on all counts. I may also measure my performance by how emotional I am during and after a task, and so on and on until I have improved.

Perhaps a few practical examples, relating to specific incidents, would serve to communicate what you mean. As you have reported them, your results do appear a bit woolly and nebulous and could be read as an exercise in ‘self’-improvement and not ‘self’-immolation.

I spent years on the spiritual path becoming more holy and more superior, ‘being in the world, but not of it’, etc., so I know the ethereal nature of the spiritual path very well. The reason I wrote my journal was both to explain the falsehoods and failures of the spiritual path and to trumpet the practical, down-to-earth benefits of pursuing actualism. As such, one of the core themes of the Journal was my success in finally being able to live with at least one other person in peace and harmony, certainly the most difficult of task for any human being to accomplish, be they normal or spiritual. It is these practical, very pragmatic examples of ‘improvement’ that give authenticity to what otherwise can be misinterpreted as nice-sounding wordiness or misconstrued as another rehashed form of spiritualism.

Spiritualism only offers the feeling of ‘we are all one’, while in fact each Guru, and his or her followers, are separate and competitive. Spiritualism only offers the feeling of harmlessness while in fact actualizing peace on earth is not on any spiritual agenda. Spiritualism only offers the feeling of happiness, but only if one goes ‘inside’ and dissociates from the world of people, things and events. An actualist, however, is vitally interested in actualizing happiness and harmlessness and not just imagining it as a fickle and illusionary inner feeling or ‘realizing’ it as an aggrandized altered state of consciousness.

For an actualist the proof that the method works is to be found by a demonstrable lack of malice and sorrow in the robust and fully committed living in the world of people, things and events. Do I get pissed off at other drivers when driving? Do I get moody around my partner? Am I 100% committed to living with my partner? Am I avoiding intimacy? Am I affected by the weather? Do I bitch about, or blame, other people for my moods and emotions? Am I affected by other people’s moods? What makes me angry and why? An actualist looks for pragmatic answers and practical evidence of change – not as an inner feeling but as a demonstrable fact.

Alan said it well recently when he was involved with setting up his computer system in his new house. Despite all the protocols and pit-falls, networks and nuisances, setups and setbacks, he found that he accomplished the task without the usual anger and frustration that would have been present had he not been practicing actualism for a goodly time.

By the asking of the question each moment again ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’, (as I might ask when learning to drive a car by asking ‘how relaxed am I while driving in this moment of being alive?) I make ‘my’ ‘purpose’ and ‘my’ ‘method’ more in the moment each time again until the two merge. I have found that by practice, keen observation born of the repetitious asking of ‘myself’, ‘I’ can improve more quickly than by not asking any questions until I am virtually free of ‘purpose’, ‘method’ and ‘myself’.

Why do you imagine that you will become virtually free of ‘purpose’ before you are actually free of malice and sorrow, assuming that this is your purpose? It does sound a bit like the spiritual practice of acceptance to me.

Why do you imagine you will be virtually free of ‘method’ before you are actually free of malice and sorrow, assuming the method is what makes you virtually free of malice and sorrow? It does sound a bit like Van Morrison’s ‘No Guru, no method, no teacher’ popular spiritualism to me.

As for improving until you are virtually free of ‘myself’, you would have to provide some personal anecdotal evidence of both the inevitable turmoil that the process of becoming virtually free produces and of the tangible down-to-earth successes it produces, otherwise it sounds a bit like the usual spiritual delusion to me.

Spiritualism has a long, long tradition of ambiguous wordiness solely devoted to promulgating ‘self’-indulgent feelings, imaginary states and ever-promised but never-delivered outcomes. T’would be a waste to miss the opportunity that the actualism method offers by remaining ensnared in this archaic tradition of double-speak.

The most profound and transforming experiences of life come when we cease attempting to analyze what is happening to us.

Eastern spiritual teaching is not aimed at finding out what is going on in one’s psyche, investigating these feelings and passions but is aimed at suppressing the bad feelings and savage passions and giving full reign to the good feelings and tender passions. An old, ancient, fear-driven idea that has been tried and found wanting for millennia because it not only fails to address the problem of human malice and sorrow, it prevents one from even finding out exactly what is the problem inside oneself.

I for one was vitally interested in why I was sad, melancholic, peeved, annoyed, angry, unattached, alienated, euphoric, blessed out, humbled, grateful, loving, hateful, resentful, bored, envious, etc. Why all these feelings prevented me from being happy and harmless 24 hrs. a day everyday? But in order to become interested and begin questioning and investigating I had to abandon my spiritual conditioning.

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This new and non-spiritual down to earth path to freedom has only recently been discovered and is now in its initial pioneering phase.

The path you describe sounds very similar to what Krishnamurti espoused beginning in the early part of the 20^th Century, and thus hardly qualifies as ‘new.’

I take it when you say ‘sounds very similar’, you mean feels very similar. If you had read what I am saying you would have understood that I am an atheist through and through whereas Jiddu Krishnamurti was a God-man through and through.

To quote the man himself –

‘That state of mind which is no longer capable of striving is the true religious mind, and in that state of mind you may come upon this thing called truth or reality or bliss or God or beauty or love’. ‘Freedom From The Known’; ©1969 Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Ltd.

He is describing well your desired state of ‘pure, thoughtless awareness’. I find it a blatant deceit for the great and revered teachers to claim they are thoughtless, for it is clearly nonsense. A human being has to think to operate and function at a level of intelligence beyond a dog or a chimpanzee. What they are talking about as thoughtless is, in fact, the training of right thinking – thinking in a certain trained spiritual way so that one can eventually ‘realize’ – as in think and feel – oneself to be God.

I too am fascinated by the discoveries in the field of neurobiology but fail to see how an understanding of the origin and functioning of the reptilian brain gives us any advantage in controlling it.

Human beings have been forever trying to control their instinctual passions and it has clearly failed, for law and order in the world is still only maintained at the point of a gun. Further the Eastern religious practice of Divine Transcendence, whereupon one suppresses one’s bad feelings and savage passions and identifies solely with one’s good feelings and tender passions, does nothing but spawn human beings who believe themselves to be Gods and thus reek even more malice and sorrow on a blighted Humanity. I am talking about a new method that results in the elimination of the blind instinctual passions – not the failed methods of controlling or transcending. I am talking about a third alternative.

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This particular aspect of awareness is not a natural phenomenon, nor one practiced on any of the traditional spiritual paths, and needs to be actively cultivated and persistently practiced in order to ensure success.

We are certainly privileged to have contributing to this discussion someone who is well-versed in all the traditional spiritual paths.

In fact, I have little intellectual interest in religion and the hundreds of spiritual paths and teachings, but at some seminal stage on the path I was twigged to understand what I was following, what the teachings really meant, what they really were saying. This wanting to understand is what the teachers summarily dismiss as being intellectual or being in your head. But I refused to be fobbed off for I was interested as to why, the further I went along the spiritual path, I was becoming more un-attached and disconnected from the actual world of people, things and events. When the physical world started to appear dream like and illusionary and ‘I’ started to live within a world of ‘my’ own creation, I really started to have doubts. That is when I became really interested in the teachings I was following, began to read a little of what was on offer in the spiritual smorgasbord and began to take a clear-eyed look at its effectiveness.

After all, once you become a God-man the delusion is so powerful, overwhelming and convincing it is almost impossible to turn back to normal, let alone to discover what is actual.

However, I will have to submit a dissenting opinion on the above statement and proffer that there are in fact many spiritual paths where such ‘self-awareness’ is a prime objective with teachings aimed at achieving just such a ‘self’-less state, arrived at by eliminating all impressions and impulses of ‘who’ we are.

No, all spiritual paths lead to exactly the same point – realizing ‘who’ you Really are. This ‘who’ you Really feel you are, aka soul, as opposed to ‘who’ you think you are, aka ego, has many names, for spiritual teachers have a personal investment in inventing new words and new ways of saying the same old thing in order that that their particular teachings appear to be original, fresh and new. Some of the more common names for this newly created spiritual identity or ‘self’ is known as ‘original face’, Being, Self, Impersonal Self, Divine, Love, God, Atman, Buddha Nature, True Nature, Is, That, Such, Source, Presence, Intelligence, Spirit, Universe, Consciousness,

The Eastern spiritual tradition of cunningly doing only half the job of ‘self’-immolation is what leads to the creation of a grand Self – a supposedly thoughtless, totally impassioned, fantasy identity.

What I am talking about is eliminating both ‘who’ we think we are and ‘who’ we feel we are – total self-immolation.

It is also a stunner to realize that this deep questioning and examination of out-moded spiritual beliefs is dismantling my social identity, that it is part and parcel of this demolition work. This work leads to examining the other end of the duality: the tender instincts of nurture and desire. I have historically been focused on fear and aggression, but both sides of the equation need to be thoroughly explored. As you say, and quite sensibly so:

There is no love or hate in a tree, a keyboard, a cloud, a coffee cup. There is instinctual fear, aggression, nurture and desire in animals for it is literally a dog-eat-dog world. There is instinctual fear, aggression, nurture and desire in the human animal but we have been socialized to mask our fear, be cunning with our aggression, be proud of our nurture and devious with our desire. Peter, The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List, No 8, 13.7.2000

Most people who have been searching for freedom, peace and happiness have adopted a new identity – that of a spiritual seeker, and this new identity is the first thing that has to go before you get down to your original social identity. What made this process easier for me was that I figured whatever I could take on later in life as a belief, a conviction and an identity, I could very easily discard – a bit like a layer of clothing or the outer skin of an onion. Once this spiritual identity is out of the way, the work of dismantling the rest of one’s social identity can begin.

Just as an aside, it is curious to observe that the Gurus and God-men still have much of their original identities operating – thus the Indian Gurus never quite transcend their roots and original religious beliefs exactly as the Western Gurus remain western and retain much of their original religious beliefs.

An actualist needs to thoroughly clean the cupboard of all belief.

So, I wish to explain that I feel I have set myself on the broad highway towards freedom. I’ve got a lot of gas in my tank and many miles to go, I am sure. I am reading and digesting as much as I can about Actual Freedom, on the website, etc. I am hoping to have more discussions with all of you here. This is very exciting work and I have been having a lot more fun lately than usual! I’ve had some pretty good laughs of late and I have been sleeping a lot better. I am a lot happier and I have a lot more energy.

Perhaps these are some of the immediate benefits to living in the present moment with people-as-they-are and the world-as-it-is.

Personally, the relief at leaving the spiritual world was palpably delicious – I felt such a relief from not having to continually maintain trust, faith, hope and belief in the face of doubt, confusion, factual evidence and common sense. Many people who have come across Richard over the years stopped at this very point, relieved to have got out of the spiritual world and then promptly settled down to normal life once again, a goodly bit happier for the leaving. For an actualist, this abandoning the spiritual path is the beginning of the adventure of ‘self’-discovery, not an end unto itself.

This is why I say that the path to Actual Freedom is a passionate adventure. The same fuel that drove initially my spiritual search, drove my search for freedom from malice and sorrow – same passionate desire, opposite direction.

You need a good deal of gas in the tank initially and eventually you’ll come to a stage when you find yourself careering along, looking for the brakes and finding there are none. Then, as soon as you dare to, you take your hands off the wheel and sit back and be aware of doing what is happening and amazement, wonder and delight come flooding in to fill the hole that is left when ‘you’ temporarily abdicate the throne. When you do this often enough, and find that the actual world is not only safe but pure and perfect, you become aware of your destiny.

In a recent post, No 8 wrote –

But the information is fascinating. Seth is no advocate of irresponsibility; he declares you are absolutely responsible for every minuscule event that ever happens to you. The archives of every word he spoke have been stored at Yale University and physicists are studying his probability theory which you can read about in a book titled Bridging Science and Spirituality.

In reply, you wrote –

‘I’ll pass No 8, although I did put my foot in my mouth in a post to Gary entitled ‘disembodied morals’.’

It’s a rather big foot, Peter, and I was wondering if you might like to reply. I called it the ‘sticking point’, because I feel there is a point that most of us get to when we are severely challenged and up against something that refuses to budge. Faced with an adversary who is intent on putting an end to your life at the point of a gun or some other equally potent weapon, it is interesting to speculate as to whether one would respond instinctually with a ‘kill or be killed’ mentality or whether something else would happen, something more akin to intelligence and common sense. Of course, I may be neglecting to recognize that common sense might dictate speedily dispatching the onerous adversary with a well placed shot. A kind of ‘putting him out of his misery’, as it were.

If you would care to respond, you might comment on whether or not you were caught unawares when you responded in that way by saying ‘aggressively’. It was a rather revealing remark, as I think we are all in that boat, unless of course we are in Actual Freedom.

It looks as though we have a crossed-post situation where I have answered most of the points you raised by answering your first post on the subject. At the moment I am quite busy working so I tend to be slow in my responses if the inbox gets full. I also like to respond in reasonable detail to questions raised which was another reason that I was attempting to pass on the longish piece of Sethism that No 8 posted, but it looks as though my attempt failed. You quoted No 8 –

‘Seth is no advocate of irresponsibility; he declares you are absolutely responsible for every minuscule event that ever happens to you.’

Common to most spiritual/ religious teachings is the moral principle that everyone is responsible for their actions, whereas one only has to take a clear-eyed look at the sacred teachings to discover that this is not so in fact.

In monotheist religions the issue is very clear. There is one God only, usually a creator God, and everyone is ultimately judged by this Big Daddy who offers the carrot of a heavenly after-life, or the stick of a hellish after-life.

This threat of Divine punishment and the promise of Divine reward ultimately means that everyone is responsible only to God for his or her actions and to no-one else. Thus a mythical God becomes one’s ultimate authority and the beleaguered believers dance to the tune of their God as well as His or Her earthly representatives – the Popes, Bishops, priests, Gurus and God-men, pundits, teachers, etc. When my God is ‘The one and only God’ it means that all other Gods are impostors, fakes and competitors, and those who follow other Gods are therefore non-believers, heathens or barbarians.

This battle of the ‘I-am-the-one-and-only’ type Gods has meant that millions upon millions upon millions of impassioned believers have attacked, slaughtered, maimed, killed and tortured other human beings in thousands upon thousands of pogroms, missions, retributions cleansings, wars and crusades, that have gone on for at least 3,500 years of recorded history. This senseless violence, spawned of religious belief, is still on-going with no sign of abating as all the prayers for peace on earth to these self-same mythical Gods have curiously gone unanswered.

In the monotheist system violence and killing is not only condoned as in ‘I’m fighting for God’ or ‘I lay down my life for God’ but it is Glorified in that the very action of killing, or being killed, ‘for God’s sake’ is a guarantee of a glorious redemption and salvation for one’s immortal soul.

This action of deliberately surrendering one’s responsibility is predicated on believing in the ancient ignorant beliefs and superstitions of good and evil spirits, Forces or Beings as the underlying cause of the animal-instinctual savage and tender passions in operation in human beings. As such, to hold any skerrick of belief in any of the ‘I-am-the-one-and-only’ type Gods – by whatever name – is to renounce responsibility for one’s actions and ignore the fact that every flesh and blood human is automatically driven by instinctual animal passions. These passions arise from a genetically-encoded very crude program instilled by ‘blind’ nature purely in order to ensure the survival of the strongest (i.e. most brutish) of the species. Animal ‘evolution’ in action is not a pretty business ...

Last century, when the last world war after the ‘War to end all Wars’ finished and yet another (Cold) War developed with each side playing a game called MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction – many people who were desperate for peace on earth turned their backs on Western Religion and adopted Eastern ‘spirituality’ with open-hearts and lofty expectations. Given that any belief demands faith, trust, hope and unquestioning agreement, none bothered to stop and investigate the basic tenets of this ‘spiritual movement’ – Eastern religion and philosophy. The core belief that underpins Eastern religion and philosophy is that ‘who-one-truly-is’ is spirit only and one is most definitely not the body. To sustain this belief one needs to deny the body and its functions, as in ‘I am not the body, I am not the mind’, etc. This belief, if fully indulged, can lead to a state of solipsism – ‘the view or theory that only the self really exists or can be known’ (Oxford dictionary) – which is the most extreme form of denial, pathological dissociation. This denial represents an abdication of any and all actions that ‘the body’ and ‘the mind’ happen to do for they are not ‘me’, they are but vessels for ‘my’ earthly journey or even ethereal manifestations of the real, substantive ‘Me’. This core belief in the East is most graphically seen in the teachings of Ramesh Balsekar and the wisdom and culture of Zen Buddhism.

A bit from Ramesh Balsekar which you may think of as extreme, but it is nothing other than a ‘tell it like it is’, unambiguous description of the deep-seated belief that ultimately prevents a spiritual believer for taking full responsibility for their malicious and sorrowful words, thoughts, feelings and behaviour –

WIE: Do you mean to say that if an individual acts in a way that ends up hurting another, then the person who did it, or, as you say, the ‘body/mind organism’ who did it, is not responsible?

Balsekar: What I’m saying here is that you know that ‘I’ didn’t do it. I’m not saying I’m not sorry that it hurt someone. The fact that someone was hurt will bring about a feeling of compassion and the feeling of compassion will result in my trying to do whatever I can to assuage the hurt. But there will be no feeling of guilt: I didn’t do it!

The other side of this is that an action happens which the society lauds and gives me a reward for. I’m not saying that happiness will not arise because of the reward. Just as compassion arose because of the hurt, a feeling of satisfaction or happiness may arise because of a reward. But there’ll be no pride.

WIE: But do you literally mean that if I go and hit someone, it’s not me doing it? I just want to get clear about this.

Balsekar: The original fact, the original concept still remains: you hit somebody. The additional concept arises that whatever happens is God’s will, and God’s will with respect to each body/mind organism is the destiny of that body/mind organism.

WIE: So I could just say, ‘Well, it was God’s will that I did that; it’s not my fault.’

Balsekar: Sure. An act happens because it is the destiny of this body/mind organism, and because it is God’s will. And the consequences of that action are also the destiny of that body/ mind organism.’

Interview with Ramesh Balsekar from ‘What is Enlightenment’ magazine, Moksha press.

The most telling expose of Zen Buddhism I have come across can be found here and, in the interests of brevity and non-repetition, I’ll let you follow it up if you are interested.

As a rough rule of thumb it is useful to bear in mind that when Western religions talk of peace they talk of ‘Rest in Peace’ as in peace after death. Peace on earth is usually only referred to when a day of reckoning happens and whichever of the ‘I-am-the-one-and-only’ type Gods returns to earth and saves His people and wipes out rest, usually in some horrific cataclysmic slaughter. When Eastern religions talk of peace they talk of ‘inner’ peace only – retreating ‘in’ to find one’s true self as a way to escape from the suffering of the material physical world. In this scenario earthly existence is seen as suffering, i.e. as earthly suffering is essential and end to it is neither desirable nor possible in this belief -system therefore peace on earth is not on the spiritual agenda. As such, to hold any skerrick of Eastern spiritual belief is to renounce the possibility of peace on earth for the utterly self’-ish feeling of ‘inner’ peace (Nirvana) and the promise of an eternal peace after death (Parinirvana).

Some interesting recent correspondence I had on a spiritual mailing list about spiritual teachings and peace can be found here.

I know that some people regard actualism as an endless repetitive denunciation of religion and spirituality but they miss the point entirely for one cannot begin to come to grips with instinctual aggression, let alone sorrow, while at the same time holding on to any religious/ spiritual belief, whether it be Western or Eastern, Earth-bound or inter-Galactic.

Becoming aware of anger in oneself is a great start – acknowledgement is an essential first step in any cure. For those who have trod the Eastern spiritual path this step seems almost an impossibility for they have been so immersed in the practice of denial that the program has become both automatic and overwhelming. Not only did I have to take this step of abandoning the spiritual path, but then I came across the suppressed underlying Western-spiritual feelings of guilt and shame that shrouded, inhibited and crippled my common sense investigations of aggression and anger.

These investigations are not for the faint of heart, but the reward of an actual peace on earth, in this lifetime, as this flesh and blood body, is now, for the very first time, alluringly available ... and the tantalizing prospect that this could spread like a chain letter around the world over time is breathtaking in its implications.

Another matter, you suggest that a sincere seeker could try out different spiritual practices and methods as you yourself have done to check the validity of them. I’m a bit surprised in hearing you say that, OK nothing beats our own experience for evaluating things, but I didn’t expect that you of all people would suggest such a thing. Is it really wise to screw with our minds in every thinkable way with the risk of getting caught in delusion? Wouldn’t you agree that the years you spent in the spiritual arena was a waste of time from one point of view? So I’m questioning your stand in this matter a little bit. In knowing what you know today the natural thing would be to advise others to stay away from the gurus and all, to have nothing to do with the sickened spiritual scene. This seems like a contradiction to me.

What I said was –

Personally, I found my immersion in the spiritual world a fascinating experience. I got to experiment with and experience all sorts of therapies, meditations, practices, teachings, Gurus, etc and eventually came to reject them all on the basis that they did not work. I would encourage anyone to do the same because then one can make a sensible judgement, based on personal experience as to whether something works or not. Of course, not every thing needs to be approached this way – if something is obvious from the experiences of others, from sufficient reliable evidence, from reading, from a check of historical records, etc. then one can also make a sensible informed decision.

If you are discontent with your life as-it-is in the real world and can see by experience and sensible investigation that the spiritual world offers no solution then you may well be in a position to try something different. It is your life and your freedom and I only made the comment in case you are just looking for another belief to replace your spiritual beliefs.

On the path to an actual freedom from the human condition, to be a mere advocate of, or believer in, actualism is a second-rate choice. An actualist is someone who is actively, intently, stubbornly, full bloodedly, whole-heartedly and totally consumed in the pursuit of an individual actual freedom from the human condition. An actualist is concerned with action not advocacy, and with practical implementation and radical change, not theoretical observation and superficial adaptation.

To undertake this process one needs to firmly know that both the real world and the spiritual world offer no solutions and how you come to that knowledge and understanding, if you do, is your business entirely. I was simply making a suggestion based on my experience but I also realize that those who follow this increasingly trodden path need not have to experience all that those who went before did.

However any pioneering effort in the early days needs a boots-and-all approach or you will either not start or turn back at the sign of the first storm.

The reason I bring this up is that I’m interested in seeing everything clearly and as untainted as humanly possible, if there is going to be any hope for mankind we have to be able to rid ourselves of every false notion and face the stark reality of life as it is and to be able to see what we’re actually doing. Delusion has endlessly many faces and it’s a constant challenge to avoid getting caught in a limited view, most people aren’t really interested in the facts of life but prefer to stick to obvious misconceptions, obvious even to themselves. Not many dare to live a life of integrity. So that’s why it’s important that you and I and everybody else really look into our motives for the way we act in the world and how we relate to every aspect of human existence.

I would hazard a guess that your emphasis on integrity is why you have dared question the spiritual life where any integrity is forsaken for surrender, loyalty, faith, discipline, trust, humbleness, conformity. Integrity demands that we humans find a way to walk upright in the world as-it-is, free, beholden to no-one, happy and harmless – actually free of malice and sorrow.

Question: Once again, how do you relate to the possibility of there being a god or something else beyond our comprehension, are you even interested in that enigma?

Personally I have no belief in God by whatever name, therefore the notion of God has ceased to exist. When one stops believing, hoping, trusting and having faith that something exists it simply withers away by itself.

I recently saw an interview with a Christian monk who said the first thing he was going to ask God was ‘How come there is so much pain and suffering?’ – an excellent question I thought. If there is a god or something that is pulling the strings or creating all this human suffering then it is about time we told He/She/It to butt out.

The excellent thing about stopping believing in God as the ultimate authority was that I was able to grasp the tiller, so to speak, and steer the boat away from the rocks – including the rock of Enlightenment.

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B. The next experience took place about 15 years ago. I was living in a cabin with two of my schoolmates. That night these two guys made fun of me and I felt a little left out.

BUT, something really happened that night. I woke up (it was much too powerful to have been just a dream) and felt an unbelievably strong energy in my body; I haven’t experienced anything like it before or after that night. I was feeling scared but also excited, (mostly scared actually) and suddenly I found myself hovering near the ceiling of the cabin. I was ‘flying’ towards the door and I remember that I could see my mates in their beds. When I came closer to the door I got quite scared, fearing that I would disappear into the Swedish summer night and I soon found myself ‘floating’ back to my bed.

I have had two similar experiences. As a kid I used to have dreams of flying which were both exhilarating and scary, and I have talked to others who have had similar dreams. When I first wandered off down the spiritual path I had an ‘out of body’ experience while meditating – there was ‘me’ hovering above my body sitting on the floor, attached by a golden cord. To me it proved what a powerful and consuming thing my imagination could be. Any thinking that is unrestrained by common sense and unrelated to sensorial input, as in the dream or meditation state simply becomes disconnected, disassociated, jumbled and downright weird in most cases. When thinking is overwhelmed by chemical surges from the amygdala as in a ‘dark night of the soul’, a near-death experience and the like, all sorts of cultural/ spiritual imaginations can be experienced, many of them either frightfully real or blissfully real, depending on the chemical flow at the time.

C. These experiences haven’t been that dramatic but still they might mean something.

What happens is as follows; I’m with other people in a group, let’s say that I’m at the Andrew Cohen center of impersonal enlightenment in Stockholm discussing some issue over a cup of tea. Sometimes I can feel very uncomfortable in a group and not actually being part of the discussion. Then what happens is that in a split second I find myself very much a part of the group and I’m suddenly seeing everybody else much clearer, I’m not at all occupied with myself and my personal problems anymore. The instant before I was utterly self-conscious and suffering because of that, only interested how I came across to the rest of the group. On the most powerful occasion I was actually looking at myself from my companion’s point of view, it was almost as if I was in their body and could see exactly what they were perceiving, their experience was more important than my experience in that moment.

I would hazard a guess that you are picking up on the psychic energy of others in these situations. I have had many similar situations whilst in groups and there is an overwhelming surge of chemicals that emanates when one feels safe and assured in the company of others. There is an instinctual gratitude that one feels protected, sheltered, included, wanted, loved. This can even manifest as a deep feeling of ‘coming home’, of having found one’s true self and having found one’s true friends. Collectively, this is manifest as a fierce group loyalty and a feeling of ‘we are the chosen ones’. The opposite feeling, when picking up on the psychic energy of others, is to feel isolated, an outsider, under suspicion, unwanted and unloved. These feelings are usually quickly dismissed for they lead down the path of loneliness, sorrow, depression and despair. Many people simply hang around in spiritual groups for the feel-good psychic energy rather than risk abandoning the group entirely for that would mean having to face and deal with the unwanted or undesirable emotions.

When exploring emotions and feelings it is quite extraordinary to discover how much of what we think and feel is influenced by others. The bottom line that always drove me into this investigation was the evidence of the harm this collective psychic energy can manifest in the world. Mass hysteria, be it for good or evil, has produced some of the most horrendous acts of violence and brutality – all committed by normally peace-loving people who are overcome with the extreme passion generated in what is known as a group high.

The psychological and psychic entity within us is driven by the body’s survival program to be psychically on-guard, continually searching for who is friend to love and who is foe to hate, but even with friends our suspicion, intuition or gut feelings will never let us drop our guard completely.

Thus, actual intimacy with other human beings can only occur in a ‘self’-less state, either temporarily in a PCE, or permanently in actual freedom.

Maybe that is enough for now even though there are endlessly many topics that can be discussed and investigated. I don’t really know where I’m going right now since there’s so much happening at once, only a few months ago I thought of maybe becoming a priest but that idea seems far away now. You’ve helped me see a possibility I didn’t really consider before; I guess I’m looking for something more down to earth at least. I’ve been thinking of studying Krishnamurti to see what he has to offer the world. From what I’ve read this far I can see at least some good points, especially that one should be independent and find out for one selves. That can’t be repeated often enough by teachers and others, it’s very refreshing to hear K put so much focus on that ‘The truth is a pathless land...’ I’ve also been thinking of studying philosophy at the university but I don’t know if it’s worth the time, money and effort. Maybe it’s better to seek on my own on the Internet for instance!! Then you can choose freely what one is really interested in and not what one is asked to read in order to pass an exam. ‘The benefit of university would be the company I suppose, good opportunities to interact with others that are (hopefully) interested in the big questions of life, but there are probably a lot of youngsters taking those courses to follow the current trend.

I look forward to hearing from you again.

When I was leaving the spiritual world and began to really investigate what others had to say about the human condition, I was amazed to discover that everyone – and I do mean everyone – has a spiritual outlook on life. The spiritual viewpoint permeates philosophy, science, medicine, education, psychology, law, etc.

No one dares to question the sacred ceiling for the atavistic fears and peer pressure are shockingly real. It is an act of extraordinary gall to even consider that everyone – and I do mean everyone – has got it 180 degrees wrong.

But it does explain why after millennia of so-called civilization and spiritual search, there is nothing even remotely resembling peace on earth.

Well there’s ‘something for you to sink your teeth in ...’, as you said.

It was about 8 years later after looking ever deeper into it that I awoke one morning and from the time the eyes opened until they closed in sleep that night there took place a complete transformation of what was left of this being. The ego was dead, there was no god to take its place. It was clear that the very words we use to communicate were a symptom of an underlying illness of misidentification. That we had evolved in such a way as to turn everything into abstractions and rarely, if ever, saw what was real before our eyes.

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

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

I had been teaching before this and after it became very difficult to find anyone who would listen because I no longer talked in religious or spiritual terms. After a while I just stopped talking with anyone about this. It seemed pretty hopeless.

Many teachers report a feeling of hopelessness and frustration at their pupils not ‘getting it’. I always thought they were being compassionate until I woke up to the fact that they were displaying the very human qualities of anger and frustration – something I had assumed they had transcended. Since then I have found many mentions of the fact that Enlightenment does not mean the elimination of malice and sorrow – it means the transcendence of human qualities – as in ‘existing apart from, and not subject to the limitations of, the material universe’. As such the truly Enlightened Ones feel sorrow – manifest and disguised as Divine compassion – and malice – manifest and disguised as Divine Anger.

Over these many years things have become ever clearer. I have seen that it isn’t so much that we are acting from our animal instinctual conditioning as it is what took place as we developed the ability to abstract life into words, pictures, concepts, etc. As that process developed what had been our instinct to protect our bodies was carried over into feeling a need to protect the images we had of ourselves. The ego has always been just conditioned thought that formed as a sense of personal identity.

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

You have, and still are, misunderstanding much of what I have said. You so want it to fit in where you can make a point in what you are saying that you just don’t see what I am saying. And perhaps I am guilty to some degree of the same thing. It is funny how you think I am a spiritualist when that is hardly the case. When I went through that transformation 22 years ago one of the first things I wanted to do was start a publication called ‘Actuality’. I read a lot of what was said on the actualism Web site and agree with most of it. That is how I have seen things for a long time, and it has gotten even clearer in recent times. I never played the guru role, and couldn’t. I just talked with those who seemed open. I knew for a long time if I wanted to play that role I could become rich and, seemingly, powerful, but that would have gone completely against the truth as I see it.

I didn’t say one thing, if seen how it was meant, that was untrue on the mailing group. How people wish to interpret it is up to them, I can’t help that. Every time I go out on a limb to speak, or write, to people it always ends the same way. I say it as clearly as I can and it still gets twisted into something else. It is a useless process.

I don’t know whether you have noticed or not, but people on the mailing list all agreed with you and all expressed gratitude for your contributions. They didn’t see that you were ‘going out on a limb’ at all. The spiritual world is able to contain a myriad of broader perspectives than the rock-solid physical, material actual world and your teachings are easily accommodated in the broad church of metaphysical belief.

But I do appreciate your position on the Master-disciple game – we seem to agree that it sucks. Two points of agreement!

One thing I do not agree with that I read on the actualism site is that part about their being no reality to the intuitive, precognition, etc. This is the only thing I meant when I wrote to you about there being more than the surface. I am not seeing anything other than the rock solid real world, but it is broader than most seem to see. I cannot, and will not, deny experiences that have happened most of my 61 years. I have seen events happening many miles away, and had them confirmed by people who were there. I have seen what was going to happen before it happened many times. I have seen objects jump off the wall from just my thinking about them doing it. I could write a book about all of this. So for me to say it is unreal would be to lie. That is all I meant while talking about there being more. In the latest findings of many scientists these things are just a part of the nature of the reality we all share.

This is exactly what I mean by the fact that we live in two different worlds. The awakening from the nightmare of reality to the realization of Reality is to subjugate a false personal sense of self and replace it with a true, impersonal sense of Self. The evidence of the truth of this ‘other-world’ is the feelings that arise and the experiences that are experienced. This other-world is a psychic world – thus one feels psychically linked with all other humans and the feeling of ‘We are All One’ is realized. In my case the experience was ‘I am love and Love is me’ – and any personal sense of self was completely overwhelmed by this new experiencing. I have also experienced the opposite of Grand, seductive and glorious in this psychic world and that is the Diabolical – a world so repulsive, so horrendous as to literally tear at one’s innards. I didn’t stay there long, but long enough to know that the Grand and glorious psychic experiences are underpinned by the Diabolical, and the dream of good, immortality and unity is but the opposite of the nightmare of evil, death and a hellish eternal lonely damnation. Duality isn’t eliminated, it is reinforced by the creation of a new world of imagination – that of Reality.

I don’t deny your experiences and I don’t deny that they are real. I have had many psychic experiences, all of which could be explained as psychic aberrations although I have never experienced physical objects moving – but my question would be ... ‘so what?’ If your psychic abilities were such that you could actually stop wars and suffering on this planet then I would willingly be sitting at your feet and following your teachings. We could then point you in the direction of trouble spots in the world and you could use your powers to end malice and sorrow in the world rather than moving objects and playing with clairvoyance. Until then, it is obvious that you have got yourself stuck in the spiritual world Reality – exactly as thousands upon thousands of others have in their search for a way out of being in the nightmare of real-world reality.

I have already stated my position about the spiritual world and many people miss the fact that spiritual means

‘pertaining to or consisting of spirit, immaterial’

as well as

‘Of, pertaining to, or affecting the spirit or soul, esp. from a religious aspect.’ Oxford Dictionary

While you insist that your awakening, your experiences and your current state are non-spiritual, as in non-religious, it certainly is spirit-ual, as in being psychic in nature. Methinks you are splitting hairs, yet again.

It’s a funny thing trying to sell a book on how to become happy and harmless, and be able to live with a woman/man in peace and harmony and equity. To not only find no takers, but a myriad of objections or nihilistic responses.

There are a lot of intelligent people and you cannot fool them.

I was kidding about selling a book! It is free to read on our Web-site and deliberately so. There are too many Gurus, therapists, shamans, diviners, Healers and the like who prey on the suffering of others offering snake-oil, palliatives and platitudes. I watch in amazement as the next wave of fashion sweeps through the town I live in and the desperate fork out hundreds, even thousands of dollars, for a quick fix, a feel-good week, or to sit adoringly at the feet of the next self-proclaimed God-man. Are these the intelligent people you are talking about? I was one of those seekers only 2 years ago, the difference being I was willing to ‘dig deep’ and question the teachings itself – the whole construct that is revered as Ancient Wisdom.

Just because everybody believes something to be true doesn’t make it a fact.

I am definitely wrong with you but there are, and will be, others who welcome a sincere and ‘open’ discussion even if it steps over that sacred and holy barrier of daring to question the Teachings themselves.

What teachings are you talking about? Osho never gave any teachings, at least none that I am attached to.

There seems to be a common use of this phrase ‘attached to’ in spiritual circles that is indicative of the creation of a ‘watcher’ – another identity who watches and is not ‘attached to’ what is actually observed with the senses, what is actually written, said or felt.

Hence one is not concerned with, interested in, or effected by what is actually happening – one remains merely watching and observing. Many take it to the point whereby, when they feel sad or angry (sorrow and malice) they are not ‘attached to’ it or merely watch it. This they then wrongly interpret as ‘being aware’. Merely to remain a dis-embodied, uninterested and unattached ‘watcher’ is to cop-out of the act of being an aware , senate, reflective flesh and blood human -fully involved in the act of living.

For me the awareness sparked by continuously asking myself, each moment again, the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ left no room or possibility of remaining a dis-embodied and unattached watcher.

I became vitally interested, then fascinated, then obsessed with any thoughts, feelings and actions that prevented my happiness in this, the only moment that I can experience. This, of course, assumes that ones intent is to be happy in this moment – a rash assumption I know.

But to do this, to take the first step, ‘I’ have to have the courage to question all of the ‘truths’ and Ancient Wisdoms that are the very substance of ‘humanity’ and ‘my’ very bondage to ‘humanity’.

To take the first step for me was to be attentive to the urging inside telling me there was more to this life than only what I sensed and saw.

Somehow my genes remembered where I came from. This urging has been with me for my whole life. As I grew, and learned the way of the world, I felt myself going further and further away from myself. The nagging insisted. I realized I stood in my own way, which means I had become my personality. I have returned. I didn’t question any beliefs, my nagging was enough and now I have no questions and no answers other than the immense wellbeing of knowing my truth.

Another post from you. The trouble is I have to reply in words, what to do ...

Yes, I can relate to your description very well. What you are describing is the feeling of ‘coming home’, ‘realizing I am That’, ‘finding my inner peace’, ‘finding God’ etc. The terminology varies between particular religions and spiritual philosophies but all point to an ‘inner’ peace and a ‘communion’ with some form of supreme being or energy.

My experiences led me to challenge the belief in a supreme being and an after-life as well as my ‘inner’ experiences and spiritual identity – and this questioning led me inexorably to the actual world of purity and perfection, delight and innocence. And the amazing thing is, it is under my very nose as it were, all ‘I’ – both ego and soul – had to do was get out of the way.

I can’t give you more than the sense I make of the Human Condition.

Of course you cannot, not even this. Because you can know the human condition as your condition, nothing more.

The Human Condition is common to all, as per definition. The ‘spiritual’ world is firmly within the Human Condition. Since time immemorial humans have worshipped Gods, believed in good and evil spirits.

The only difference between you and I is that I acknowledged the Human Condition in me and actively pursued its total elimination in me.

I gave up trying to become God and immortal and set myself a sensible, down-to-earth aim – to become free of the Human Condition of malice and sorrow.

... a while ago about a book I have written about my years as a Sannyasin of Osho.

Making money on gibberish? Well, all credit goes to Osho.

No, I seriously doubt if I will make any money at all from it, only a handful have bought the book and no spiritual bookshops will stock it as it is too heretical. Pity, because I always thought the spiritual seekers might be interested but they seem too loyal to their particular Master, have too much of an ‘investment’ in time and effort, or are simply ‘hanging in’ with their particular group to even consider an alternative.

*

I turned my back on the normal world ...

What’s that? Could you help me with a simple definition?

‘Turned my back’ means I left the normal western Christian world I had lived in and became a follower of an Eastern Spiritual Master. This involves a renunciation or turning away. Or at least it did in those days. Most people have watered their faith down a bit to fit in to normal, while the more devout continue in the old traditional ways.

*

... and, falling in love with the Master ...

Dream on (IOW, don’t mistake greed for love),

... launched myself into this new adventure. I was particularly taken by his wisdom about Religions and the problems they cause and the fact that most wars and persecutions are the result of blindly following some particular Religious doctrine and defending or attacking others of differing belief.

The first 4 years were glorious, with the aim of a utopia in America, a city to show the world how to live. The heady days came crashing down with the internal corruptions and the external pressures from the local communities who felt threatened by the anti-Christian Devil and his followers in their midst. The threat of violence was diffused when Rajneesh left and the dream was shattered.

Then came Pune 2, and delicious years of worship in the Ashram, architect/builder for the Samadhi, meditation and groups, and then He died. I continued on devotionally for some 2 years,

Could you be more specific, what did you continue devotionally for 2 years?

The usual round of work in the West, visits to the Ashram for groups, work, meditations, and hanging out.

*

... but found myself following a dead Master

Finally an insight – FOLLOWING – very important insight, so let’s see what did you do after a dead Master ...

– something that was at odds with my understanding that when a Master dies the formation of a Religion is the inevitable result. Sure enough, one night in White Robe it hit me like a ton of bricks as I was shouting ‘YA-HOO’ to an empty chair.

If you looked more carefully the chair was empty from the beginning.

Well, for me the experience when he was alive was different to when he was dead, with an empty chair and an old video. Maybe no one else noticed if he was alive or dead, but I did.

*

... that it took another year or two before I finally began to look for something fresh and new in the spiritual world and tried out a few other scenes. None was satisfactory, but I did begin to gain a broader vision of the spiritual world. Finally, I realized that the Spiritual is nothing more than Eastern Religion, that in fact I had only traded believing in Western Religion for believing in an Eastern Religion. And all of it merely ‘that Old-time Religion’, to quote from the song.

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

Expectations and expectations again. Think about it for a change. Think about YOUR motives. You seems like a kind of guy who prefers to buy what he wants to have, and all this fishy spiritual hocus-pocus is actually nothing for you, you buy and yet you get nothing, strange, ha?

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

What I sensately experience, now, as this body, is so superior to what the Holy Ones experience in their ‘inner world of bliss’.

*

the East is a chaos of poverty, pollution, overpopulation, repression for women, multitudinous worship of gods and ancient spirits, rigid class structures, theocracies, technological underdevelopment, sexual repression, corruption, etc. And yet we look to their religions as the solution to both personal, and global, peace and harmony?

The other issue for me was that I saw, despite the centuries of devotion, meditation, spiritual practice and surrender, that so few had achieved the prized goal of Enlightenment. I saw recently that a Buddhist claimed, with some pride, that only about a thousand Enlightened ones had emerged from 2,500 years of devout effort by millions of monks. This meant a success rate of 0.0001% – pretty bad odds, and confirmed in my personal experience in Sannyas and amongst Osho followers.

If you could just give up ...

In the end I had to admit that Spirituality was a failure for me and was as inherently flawed as all other religious pursuits.

Finally.

Up until now there have only been two alternatives on offer for a human being, either to be normal and accept the world as it is

Here you go again, sorry but I have to say you are really very unintelligent. What did you do in this 15 years of ‘terrible devotion'? Have you ever, just for once actually listened to Osho? Because that’s exactly what Osho was trying to help his friends and fellow travellers with, to be ordinary, to accept the world as it is – just perfect,

There is a current fashion in spiritual jargon ’to accept that the world is as it is – just perfect.’ I couldn’t do that successfully. Firstly I had to acknowledge that I was not perfect, that malice and sorrow raged within me and the traditional antidotes of love and bliss, tolerance, pacifism, being good, were but a Band-Aid to a much deeper problem. Secondly, I see wars, poverty, rapes, murders, tortures, persecutions, domestic violence, sexual abuse, etc. still raging on the planet with no end in sight.

*

or be spiritual/religious.

Now this is really, really crap, you don’t know what are you talking.

The ‘perfect world’ that the spiritual/religious people talk of is for many a but a temporary touchdown spot on their cosmic tour of bliss (Never Born, Never Died, Just Visiting... – See you Guys...!). Or it is merely a place for us to suffer rightly in, thus earning brownie points for the after death stage. Or they trumpet doomsday, some judgement day or final annihilation of the world, or at least the humans, and only the chosen ones will survive, – at least their spirit/soul/essence will. It is amazing what stories human imagination has concocted over the millennia.

*

or be spiritual/religious.

Now this is really, really crap, you don’t know what are you talking.

The ‘perfect world’ that the spiritual/religious people talk of is for many a but a temporary touchdown spot on their cosmic tour of bliss (Never Born, Never Died, Just Visiting... – See you Guys...!). Or it is merely a place for us to suffer rightly in, thus earning brownie points for the after death stage. Or they trumpet doomsday, some judgement day or final annihilation of the world, or at least the humans, and only the chosen ones will survive, – at least their spirit/soul/essence will. It is amazing what stories human imagination has concocted over the millennia.

*

The only difference between the last two is that religion promises paradise in an after-life and spiritual (eastern religion) offers a glimpse of it while ‘in the body’ and a ‘final’ release into a glorious after-life (Nirvana, etc.)

Now there is a third alternative – a new, non-spiritual, down-to-earth, actual freedom.

A freedom from the Human Condition of sorrow and malice – the freedom to be happy and harmless.

I’ll quote a bit from my journal (being a bit lazy), that may describe this freedom a bit:

After reading until this point I see no point to read on, by now I’m certain that there is nothing worth reading. Peter not to lose my time any longer, it was to long already, I prefer to do gibberish, and I would highly recommend it to you to. It really can help.

Funny, isn’t it. I now regard all the Ancient Wisdom of the past as gibberish.

Peter,

Be well.

I am a bit baffled by your response to me as I offered you a chance to comment on my discoveries about freedom and you refuse to even read them. I first sent you Richard’s manuscript and then a copy of my book and have had a summary dismissal both times.

Why is it that all of the spiritual teachers seem unwilling or unable to discuss or talk about their Truth. And why is it that when someone even presumes to question their teachings they are treated with disdain, scorn or accused of being a Guru. You are the one who declares himself ‘Guru’ and a ‘God-man’, and yet you accuse me of showing signs of Guru-it is. If you had taken the trouble to read even a bit of my book you would have realized that the last thing I am is a Guru. Far, far from it – 180 degrees in the opposite direction in fact.

I was always curious at your treatment of a former disciple and now a Spiritual Teacher, who freely acknowledges his debt to you as his teacher and yet you offer no comment, support, endorsement or anything. Has he discovered the same Truth as you? Is he a competitor, has he not got it ‘right’, is he somehow lesser? If anyone finds the Truth or God by being with you then what is their position? No doubt you will take offence by what I am questioning but this does not mean the questions are not valid. I always thought the Truth and its purveyors could stand a little questioning and I rather naively thought you might be of a different ilk, but it appears not.

Your comment on your brand of freedom being actual is non-sensical in that your definition is ‘Actuality is the apparent world outside the head’. So you adopt the traditional Eastern position that the physical stuff of the universe is apparent only, ie an illusion. Rocks, sky, computer keyboards, food, air, human beings, etc. are, for you, all an illusion – for me they are actual as clearly evidenced by the senses. The freedom that you talk about is to realise a state of consciousness where this perception of the physical world is experienced as an illusion, leading to a temporary, false sense of well-being and bliss. Unfortunately, this misconception, when fully realized leads to a state of delusion where one becomes timeless, spaceless and immortal. And yet another Saviour of mankind is born, resulting in yet another Religion, depending on the numbers of disciples he can gather.

Immortality is, of course, a grand play in the imagination, as in the actual world bodies die and rot and become compost. It is only in the psychic world that heaven and afterlife exist.

Up until now there has only been one door to ‘escape’ from the bondage of having a psychological and psychic entity that fearfully perceived the actual world as an illusionary hell inhabited by evil spirits. The door was marked ‘Truth’, ‘God’, ‘Enlightenment’ or such. This involved transcending the ‘earthly’ realm for some mythical ‘inner’ world or higher plane. To fully step through this door was to become the Self, Divine Love, God or the like.

Now for the first time there is another door that leads to an actual freedom where neither a self nor a Self exist. In actual freedom I am able to be what I am not who I am – this body, not this alien self inside. There is evidence that even the Enlightened Ones know this but they claim it is only possible to reach upon death, in some imaginary afterlife. That door, marked ‘annihilation’, is what I am now willingly rushing towards, now that I have sufficient actual evidence of the purity, perfection and fairy-tale like quality of the physical universe. And then fear – the very substance of self – will totally disappear and I can be me – this flesh and blood body only.

This discovery of a new down-to-earth, non-spiritual freedom will now relegate concepts such as spirituality and Enlightenment to history – into the curio section. Then the planet will eventually be free of Religion, Spirituality, Gurus, religious persecution and religious wars. In short, there will be heaven on earth, here, now – not in some mythical realm after death.

My persistence was to try and tell you of this new discovery. You are indeed ‘fiddling while Rome burns’ and as a fellow human being I thought it only fair to warn you, but twice you have imperiously swept my offer aside, refusing even to peek inside the cover of my book or Richard’s.

So I’ll stop flogging a dead horse, as the expression goes.

I particularly remember writing of my spiritual years and making discovery after discovery that literally shocked me to my core. Events that I had doubts or misgivings about at the time became crystal clear – insights and realizations came clanging along, one after the other. One that particularly sticks in my memory was of being with thousands of other disciples in a hall in India shouting ‘Yah Hoo’ to an empty chair where a dead God-man, ‘my’ Master, had sat. The Sacred Chair where He last sat – the symbolic equivalent of the Cross for Christians. I had had a peak experience at the time – a brief moment of startling clarity – and saw the stupidity and desperation of my situation, and of the whole Master-disciple business in general, and yet it still took me years to act on the realization and get out of spiritual world. It was only by meeting Richard that I finally garnered the confidence to go all the way.

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