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Selected Correspondence Peter Spiritualism
Cognitive dissonance can apply not just to people coming to understand a new paradigm, it can also happen to those who at the moment have committed themselves to that paradigm. I freely admit that I do have difficulty in understanding why people would have such difficulty in understanding a new paradigm but then again I do understand from personal experience that it is difficult, if not impossible, to understand something entirely new whilst still clinging to the past. It is quite remarkable how you have not understood the thrust of my message. Given that your post was entitled ‘the failure of spirituality or disinclination?’ I understood the thrust of your post was that human beings, as opposed to the spiritual teachings themselves, were to blame for the failure of spiritualism to bring an end to human malice and human sorrow. As such my response was to point out that the blame for the failure of spiritualism lies not with the followers but with the revered spiritual teachings themselves because the teachings are not at all concerned about peace on earth. I have re-read your response again and the phrase that I picked up on was your comment that –
And my point was that actualism is not any technique nor does it have anything at all to do with the old paradigm of spiritual liberation. Having explained why my apparent misunderstanding of the thrust of your message occurred (that which you call cognitive dissonance) – would you now explain what thrust of your message actually was? * Comments from experienced actualists, including Richard, invited As it has been said at many places on the AF website that the self will do anything but agree to being happy and harmless, then the method to be happy and harmless doesn’t even come into the picture. This may well be your attitude to actualism but it certainly wasn’t my attitude. Who is talking about attitudes here? All I am saying is that for one to start working towards peace and happiness, one has to, as it were, get off one’s butt and work hard at it. And since most people are ambivalent about inner work, the success or failure of a method (what one does after one gets off one’s butt) is immaterial at this stage. Okay. I thought you were also talking about your own attitude (as in – settled behaviour, as representing feeling or opinion; (also attitude of mind) settled mode of thinking), which is why I responded with a personal example – my own attitude with regard to making the decision to dedicate my life to becoming happy and harmless. Am I to take it that you were only talking about other people’s attitudes and not your own? * In fact, as I have written many times before, it is not a matter of not agreeing (or agreeing) to become happy and harmless – au contraire, I found the path to becoming happy and harmless has a big sign over it saying ‘Warning! Do Not Enter Here!’ Now that is being disingenuous. Despite the warnings, if you entered, that means the visions of success overshadowed the warnings. What I am saying is that most people don’t have the gumption to even move into anything other than their conditioned mind-set, be it spiritual discipline, actualism and so on. Far from being disingenuous I am talking about my own experience of actualism. The reason I mentioned feeling that there was a big warning sign was that I knew if I went down that path would be the end of ‘me’ – the feeling of fear was as if I was literally entering a tunnel from which their would be no return. At that stage I didn’t have ‘visions of success’ as you put it, rather a feeling of embarking on a path that led to oblivion. And yet despite the feeling, I did set off on the path and once I did so the fear of leaving the past behind was replaced with the thrill of discovery. The interesting thing about the feeling of fear of setting off in a new direction is that once you do wholeheartedly set off, the feeling of fear evaporates – fear is only a feeling after all. * Despite the warning I found that I had no alternative but to go down that path – after all I had already found that there was no way I could be happy and harmless whilst being a materialist (it’s a ‘dog eat dog’ world and I didn’t like eating ‘dog’ given that the dogs were my fellow human beings) … Okay, people who dedicate themselves to spirituality in order to find liberation would agree with you that the normal life of materialism is nought but suffering. (Just on a tangent here) Your teacher and perhaps yourself has no objection in eating his fellow creatures (e.g. cattle, chickens, et al). Why this selective liking of only your fellow-species? Oh, if you agree that violence is inevitable and one has to kill to eat anyway (the fond argument of your teacher), then when in crisis, I won’t be in the same room with you or your teacher because you might decide that at that moment killing your fellow human being is also sensible since you have to kill to eat anyway. This is definitely a tangent and a corny one at that. I presume you understand that when I talk of the dog-eat-dog world of materialism I mean that the current progenies of hunting and gathering humans still act as they have been genetically and socially programmed to do – they instinctually compete against other humans beings in a grim and ruthless battle of survival. The only difference being that what was once a brutal physical battle has now by-and-large become a brutal psychological and psychic battle (unless law and order breaks down that is and then the gloves are well and truly off and battle reverts to being a brutal physical battle for survival). As for my being a non-vegetarian, I see no reason why I should bow to What others choose to focus their time, energy and passion on is their business entirely. * … and I found that there was no way that I could be happy and harmless in the spiritual world (it’s a guru vs. guru world and I didn’t like how the gurus were as men, … I agree. I didn’t like how they treated their fellow human beings and I didn’t like their lifestyle). Perhaps a different viewpoint might be in order here: I guess you couldn’t stay away from sex and women, is that it? No. Your guess is wrong. I’ve written many a time that the reason I sought out a female companion after coming across actualism was that I wanted to prove that it was possible for me to live with at least one other person in utter peace and harmony, something I had failed to do previously. I say that because at the beginning of your actualist career, you proposed to a woman whom you found physically attractive (you didn’t consider your sexual instincts to be a hindrance to happiness then, did you?). Of course not. I started where I started – a normal bloke with a full set of instinctual passions intact, both the ones I proudly wore on my sleeve as a badge of honour and the ones I repressed and shamefully hid away from others. The very reason I chose to find a female human companion and not a male human companion was that I am heterosexual by nature and as such I was attracted to the proposition of being able to get to the root of my sexual predatory nature such that I could become free of its insidiousness. Besides which I always thought the Eastern approach of avoiding the temptations of the pleasure of sexual play, not to mention avoiding the difficulties of living with one other person in peace and harmony, was, to put it bluntly, a wank. * It is the dis-inclination of humans towards change, the inertia that is so pervasive, that is the reason that all solutions have failed and will continue to fail, even actualism. Am I to take it that you hold to the belief that you can’t change human nature? If you choose to read my sentence that way, that is certainly your choice. However, I clearly mention the word dis-inclination and not im-possibility is the reason why solutions continue to fail. Again, I thought you were talking personally rather than generally which is why I responded with a personal question to you and a personal answer from me. I’ve already said why the traditional solutions within the human condition fail and will continue to fail to bring an end to human malice and sorrow and I have already indicated that I chose to try something new. As I understand it, you are proposing that the reasons all the (traditional) solutions continue to fail is solely because humans are disinclined to change? If so, my response is that it is the traditional solutions that are wanting, not human beings per se. * [Am I to take it that you hold to the belief that you can’t change human nature?] The question I asked myself when I came across actualism was why not? What occurred to me was that if the answer to that question was no, then that would have mean I held a deeply cynical view about the possibility of there ever being peace on earth between human beings – and that was a view that I, for one, refused to hold to Have you been fundamentally able to change your nature since you started practicing actualism? Has your ego been demolished? Has your being been extirpated? I have had this question put to me many times over the years and whilst it is often asked as a way of denigrating my efforts of investigating my feelings, emotions and passions and of abandoning my beliefs and becoming as happy and harmless as humanly possible, it nevertheless is a fair question given that ‘I’ sill remain in existence. The only reason I can come up with as to why this is so is that becoming virtually free from malice and sorrow is relatively easy compared to taking the final step into an actual freedom from the human condition in toto – curiously enough, the same warning sign ‘Do not enter here’ – only this time the warning is purely instinctual. * The very reason people are staying away and leaving in droves from Actual Freedom (that they are unwilling to work hard and dismantle their identities and fond feelings) could be the reason spirituality has failed to bring peace on earth in the last 3000-5000 years, to wit, disinclination of normal human beings to enquire into their reactions, to dismantle their beliefs and to be ready to diligently and individually go beyond the frontiers of humanity. Why you suggest that any spiritualist should berate themselves for the failure of spirituality to bring an end to human malice and sorrow is quite frankly beyond me. Why you berate your fellow actualists for not practising sincerely enough comes in the same bucket, doesn’t it? Hmmm. Perhaps you could give me an example of my berating my ‘fellow actualists’ for not practicing sincerely enough. I readily admit to not being tolerant of dissociative practices, spiritual or metaphysical beliefs, philosophical ponderances and the like – I didn’t tolerate them in me which is why I have been able to come to my senses, so why should I give succour and support to any correspondent who comes to this mailing list trotting out the same old failed practices and wisdoms, no matter what version they are hawking? I would not be doing anyone a favour by supporting beliefs that do nothing but continue the mayhem and misery of the human condition on a mailing list dedicated to discussing the way and means of becoming free of the human condition. I found that only a scrupulous attention worked for me in order that I could make sense of the instinctual nature of the human condition and it is this need for scrupulous attention of one’s own beliefs and one’s own feelings, emotions and passions that I am attempting to pass on to those with an ear to listen. * The reason spirituality has failed to bring peace on earth is because peace on earth is simply not part of spiritual belief – … Have you managed to bring peace on earth, now that it is simply part of actualist belief? I would hazard a guess that almost everyone who is subscribed to this mailing list ‘knows’, as in has experienced, the utter peacefulness and stillness of this verdant planet literally hanging in the boundless vastness of space, no matter how briefly and no matter whether they can specifically remember having had the experience. Is not the nascent promise of this experience the inherent attraction to what is on offer on the AF website? Peace on earth? The peace that many people know is already here … if only …? The traditional ‘if only’ response is ‘if only everyone else would stop fighting and feuding’, and yet a little introspection reveals that the ‘if only’ applies only to ‘me’. A little introspection reveals that ‘if only’ ‘I’ stopped feeling resentful about being here ‘I’ could start to feel good about being here and eventually even start to appreciate being here and eventually even start to marvel at the wonder that not only this planet is but at the fact that the universe exists in its peerless infinite and is happening right now. ‘Peace on earth’ does not mean that actualism proposes that everyone has to become peaceful, far from it. Peace on earth means being able to experience the peace that is already here when ‘I’ am not here – the peace that everyone has experienced at some stage in their life, no matter how briefly, no matter whether they have a conscious memory of it or not. Very often people think that actualism is only about bringing an end to the suffering that human beings continue to inflict upon themselves and upon each other and yet whilst this appalling situation would come to an end if everyone on the planet were at least virtually free of malice and sorrow, it is the end goal of actualism which attracts people to actualism in the first place – the lure of the direct experience of the already existing peace on earth. Not as a nearly experience, not as an intellectual understanding, not as occasional experiences, not as temporary experiences but as a permanent 24/7 until physical death experience. Actualism is not an all or nothing business – by doing all you can to eliminate your own resentment, antagonism and sadness you are demonstrating by example the utter senselessness of being an instinctually driven being and by doing so you are concurrently taking the necessary steps towards becoming actually free of the human condition in toto. A win-win situation, a win for you personally and a win for your fellow human beings. * [The reason spirituality has failed to bring peace on earth is because peace on earth is simply not part of spiritual belief –] spiritual belief has it that peace is only possible after physical death in some imaginary other-world. Okay, if by peace is meant a total absence of any kind of pain, mental or physical, that is quite a true statement. As long as the body is there, physical pain (necessary at times to signal discordance in the organ systems) will also remain. If I were to follow your line of reasoning then indeed the only way to avoid physical pain is to be dead or even better still, not to be born in the first place. I for one am very appreciative that other human beings have invented drugs that not only relieve pain but that can render me unconscious should it be necessary prior to the pain becoming so strong that I would naturally become unconscious. But I fail to see what this has got to do with becoming free of the human condition … or are you saying that becoming free is impossible because human beings can have accidents, can become sick, certainly get old and certainly die in the end? If so, this sounds suspiciously close to the core of the Buddhist (fatalist?) philosophy that ‘Life on earth is essentially suffering’. * When the spiritual teachers point out that the student is not being sincere enough, hard-working enough, the actualists blast the teacher considering the method to be itself flawed. Again the spiritual method is not flawed, it’s not the spiritual teachers that are at fault, it is the spiritual *teachings* – the mishmash of ancient fairy stories, pathetic homilies and fear-ridden superstitions together with the venerated state of delusion known as enlightenment – that are hopelessly flawed. That’s what I said above. The teachings contain the method, don’t they? My point is, why do you neglect the insincerity of the student as a factor in the whole issue? Because as far as I can ascertain from the thrust of your post you are lumping actualism in the same category as spiritualism and what I am attempting to do is to point that out to you. Can you see that the whole question as to whether or not the ‘students’ of spiritualism are sincere or not is irrelevant because it is the spiritual teachings themselves that are flawed – not the students? When I was attracted to spiritualism I, along with many others, was attracted by the promise of peace on earth – of like-feeling people living in communes in peace and harmony. I was, in your words, a sincere student as were many others of my fellow seekers. What I eventually found was that the whole experiment failed, firstly because peace on earth was not part of the spiritual teachings, and secondly that the spiritual teachings did not acknowledge, let alone address, the fundamental reason for human malice and sorrow – the genetically encoded instinctual passions manifest in this body as ‘me’ a parasitical impassioned being. Whilst other people may like attempt to denigrate me by making snide remarks about my gullibility in treading the spiritual path, I am well pleased that I did because by having done so and having experienced first hand its failures I was able to firmly close the door on spiritual belief once and for all. * I remember realizing one day towards the end of my spiritual years that millions upon millions upon millions of human beings had devoted their lives to the spiritual teachings – that the East was littered with monasteries that have been filled with monks for millennia all of whom have diligently practiced the teachings from dawn to dusk, every day of their lives from childhood to death. No, only a few people had the gumption to go all the away and question everything that had been taught to them. Rest were just parrots or machines. No wonder they did not achieve liberation. I remember thinking one day what would happen if everyone in the world achieved spiritual liberation and all became enlightened all at once? Would a system of rosters be introduced such that the throne was rotated, who would bow down to whom, who would touch whose feet, whose teachings would be followed, who would clean the toilets, who would pull the rickshaws, who would be the most divine and who would be the most humble? As I said, I am not at all interested in spiritual belief let alone spiritual liberation – which is after all why I became an actualist. * I was suddenly struck by the fact that if I really wanted to succeed in the spiritual world, if I really wanted spiritual liberation, then I would at least have to do the same – turn my back on the world completely, become celibate, eat brown rice, beg for my food from others and so and … There have been enlightened teachers who were not monks, in case you forget. And yet I didn’t mention becoming a monk. I said that I realized that in order to become enlightened I would have to turn my back on the world and abide by the rules and regulations of whatever teachings or teacher I was following. But given that you have mentioned monks, do you not find it somewhat curious that in one of the Eastern countries where the whole society supports the monk business, the most revered of these monks, He whose teachings they follow and whose guidance they seek, got his most-revered-ship not by sincere spiritual practice but via the ‘miracle’ of reincarnation? * … then, when I had achieved liberation, have people venerate and worship me for having done so. As you can gather, it was about this time that I started to become suss of the whole spiritual liberation/spiritual slavery game. There have been enlightened teachers who actively discouraged veneration and worship, in case you forget. And there have been enlightened teachers who actively discouraged sex and disparaged women and yet were partial to a clandestine ‘bit on the side’ as it were. I have also heard it said that there are many enlightened people whom nobody knows about because they are completely anomous in that they don’t teach and aren’t teachers. There are all sorts of myths and legends about enlightened teachers which is why I am happy to have had the opportunity to observe the behaviour of a few of them up close so I could ascertain for myself the vast gulf between myth and fact. * Personally I had no trouble evaluating the failure of spiritual liberation simply because I spent years inside the spiritual world and I know it inside out, as it were. May I ask? How much effort did you put into your meditation / seeking before evaluating it as a failure? Just curious. I obviously spent enough time and made enough effort to come to the conclusion that enough was enough. * The failure of spirituality is not only an endemic failure, it is systemic failure – not only the techniques (meditation and/or prayer is method whereby one practices dissociation and indulges in imagination) … I agree. Dissociation is not the way. And yet how else do you suppose that the enlightened become enlightened if not by dissociating from, sublimating and transcending the so-called Evil passions whilst enhancing and identifying themselves with the so-called Good passions – why else would other people venerate them as being transcendent Beings? * [The failure of spirituality is not only an endemic failure, it is systemic failure – not only the techniques (meditation and/or prayer is method whereby one practices dissociation and indulges in imagination) … ] but the aims (spiritual liberation means that one becomes enslaved to some mythical God or believes oneself to be the reincarnation of some mythical God). Come on, the above is not true of the greatest teachers. Hmmm. Would those greatest teachers be those long dead teachers whose words and intent we cannot truly know because all we know of their teachings are interpretations of the words they supposedly said that have been passed down and reinterpreted from generation to generation of followers perhaps? Or are you talking about someone who is walking and talking – someone about whom we humans here today can make an accurate assessment of both their words and their deeds? * [The failure of spirituality is not only an endemic failure, it is systemic failure –] as well as the results (no peace on earth because the whole thrust of spiritualism is that peace is ultimately only possible after physical death). See my comment about physical pain above. See my comment about your comment about physical pain above. * I happened to be polishing up the ‘Introduction to Actual Freedom’ yesterday – we plan to include it as a PowerPoint presentation on the DVDs – and I was struck yet again by the fact that the divergent and disparate nature of spiritual belief itself inevitably produces competing and conflicting groups of human beings all of whom feel their particular belief, be it monotheist, henotheistic, pantheistic, polytheistic, agnostic, Eastern, Western or whatever, to be superior to the beliefs of other human beings. Given that this innate feeling of superiority/inferiority is an inevitable by product of the very act of believing itself, the best feeling one can muster towards one’s fellow human beings in these circumstances is a feeling of tolerance towards those who do not happen to share one’s own particular belief. To feel superior to, to feel tolerant of, to feel compassion for or to feel pity for one’s fellow human beings is far from a salubrious situation and a far cry from an actual peace and harmony between fellow human beings. Even more insidious is the fact that the much-lauded Eastern spirituality that is so fashionable these days has inferiority/superiority inbuilt such that it is manifest in many Eastern cultures as an inviolate caste system. The belief in reincarnation, karma, dharma and imperfect souls calcifies the belief that some people are born superior to others and some are born inferior to others and the appalling results of this belief can be plainly seen in many Eastern cultures. The inbred arrogance and cultured indifference of those who feel themselves to be born spiritually superior to those whom they believe, and who believe themselves, to be born spiritually inferior results in an entrenched inequity that can only be described as abysmal. The odd thing about now being able to so clearly see how and why spiritualism has failed and always will fail to bring peace on earth is that I couldn’t see this whilst I was consumed by spiritual belief. There is indeed no way to be able to clearly see the facts of the matter whilst holding to a belief that is contrary to the facts of the matter – belief does indeed make one blind as it were. * I notice you made no comment about the insidious caste system that has evolved in much of the East as a direct result of the belief that some human beings are born with imperfect souls and some being born with presumably more advanced souls dependant upon some past-life misdeeds or good deeds. Did your lack of comment mean that you thought it irrelevant to the topic (the failure of spiritual belief) or was there some other reason?
Unlike many on this list I was never part of any spiritual group or movement, although I had always been interested in discovering what life was about and was involved in ‘personal growth’ in the late 70’s/early 80’s. I have scant knowledge about the personal growth movement but it would seem to me that Eastern spirituality would have underpinned much of its philosophy, as it did most of psychiatry, psychology and therapy in the last 100 years. Carl Gustav Jung and Wilhelm Reich, two of the prime movers of 20th Century psychology and psychiatry, were both deeply interested and moved by Eastern spirituality. As a suggestion, and it is only that, it may be interesting to go back and re-read some of what you were ‘in to’ before, just to look at it with fresh eyes – both to see what your initial attraction was and what sense you make of it now. I know, for me, it was very revealing to very deliberately re-visit the spiritual teachings I had been so ‘in to’ before I took on actualism – I learnt so much vital information about myself, the human condition and the supposed wisdom of humanity.
Although this post is generally in response to the ‘Actualism and PCEs’ post of 23/01, I have retitled my reply because the general topic does seem to be shifting to actualism in the market place, i.e. the process of becoming free of malice and sorrow, in the world as-it-is, with people as they are. It is both a fascinating topic, which yet again serves to make a clear distinction between ancient Spiritual freedom and an actual freedom from the human condition in total. The mailing list I was last writing to had as its discussion topic at one stage ‘how to be in the world but not of it’, which neatly sums up the spiritual approach. I would paraphrase this as ‘how to begrudgingly accept being here while taking every opportunity to be there’. I found the contradictions, sentence to sentence, in all of the contributor’s discussions to be quite bewildering. One moment they would talk of going ‘there’, or going ‘inside’, and the next sentence they would be extolling the virtues of being ‘here’ ... by their very words they were proving that they were not talking about the same place. Whenever a contributor touched on the horrors of the human condition they would soon indulge in the bitter-sweetness of feeling sorry for those poor ‘ignorant’ people, ennobling their own pity as being superior by labelling it as feeling true compassion. Whenever someone dared to share the reality of their own lives they would be reminded by other group members that they are not in fact human beings but that who they really are is Divine spirits. Whenever someone began to despair of the human condition they were reminded that peace on earth is ultimately impossible and one’s only hope is to seek solace in the hope of an other-worldly paradise. Should anyone begin to question any of the passionate spirit-ual beliefs, or worse still, dare to question the teachings or the teacher, the tribal elders or head Shamans would quickly pull them into line, either by seducing the group member by sweet talk or disciplining them with a loving reminder. If seduction or castigation fail the ultimate threat is of ostracization. Once you are hooked into the spiritual world, it’s very tough to get out of it. I think I have wandered slightly off-topic because I began by talking about the diametrically-opposite difference between coming here to the actual world and going ‘there’ to the spiritual world. Just a little story from my spiritual years will illustrate the fact that actualism is 180 degrees different to Spiritualism. When I was a freshman spiritual disciple of Mohan Rajneesh, I remember being awed when a long-time disciple told me that they had met Rajneesh in person and how, when he looked into His eyes, there was nobody inside – meaning there was no personal self inside His body. I thought it a bit strange at the time because I understood Enlightenment was about being here. But then again, personal Enlightenment was not really on my agenda because I had joined up because I had fallen in love with Rajneesh and we, his Sannyasins, were going to change the world by practically demonstrating to people that we could live together as a community in peace and harmony. Some ten years later, when I met Rajneesh in person and looked into his eyes, I realized he was not here at all but was really somewhere else. Of course, my experience was that he was not here in the ‘real’ world, but had really gone ‘there’ to the spirit world – but he was definitely so far-out from anything that was going on in the physical world that nothing could bring him back. This impression of far-far-outness, as in being on another planet altogether, was confirmed only months later when he died and the words on his tombstone read – ‘Never born, Never died, Just visited this planet’. ‘Tis strange looking back as to how the intensity of the feeling of love could so blind me that I either ignored, or blatantly denied, the fact that I was the follower of a God-man, that I had simply been suckered by his sweet talk, overwhelmed by the feeling of being loved and belonging to the congregation and enraptured by his psychic cunning into being a faithful goody-two shoes, holier-than-thou, religious believer. And not only that, my love for the God-man was unconditional – as in totally faithful, totally loyal and totally unquestioning. Unquestioning of his duplicity, contradictions, lies, deception, angry outbursts, his greed and lust for power, his blatant refusal to be responsible for anything he did or said, his running away and abandoning his followers when the going got tough, his secretive sex-life and his manipulation of those close to him for his own ends. What an utter blind fool I had been, but then again ... once you are hooked into the spiritual world – it’s very tough to get out of.
Pointing out wrong thinking and watching the awakening that accompanies realization is great sport also. My experience of God-men is that they like to ensnare others into loosening their clinging to so-called wrong thinking and twist them into adopting Right thinking solely in order that they can strut their own humble Self-Righteousness in return for admiration, gratitude, love and veneration. *deep bow* Thank you for sharing. It’s a pleasure to be able to pass on my experiences of 17 years on the spiritual path. The other day I came across a woman who was just starting on the spiritual path and who was still shell-shocked at just having visited India for the first time. It struck me at the time, after 17 years of searching for peace and happiness on the spiritual path, how serendipitous it was to have come across an ex-God-man who had discovered something far superior to the hallowed state of Enlightenment – an actual down-to-earth freedom and not a fear-driven escape into an inner spiritual fantasy-land. This serendipitous event has given me the opportunity to contribute to the de-bunking of the shams and scams of the utterly ‘Self’-centred spiritual path by writing of my experience and making it freely available for others to peruse. And then, on top of that, I get to write of my experience and expertise in utilizing the actualism method to become actually free of the human condition. Where I come from, sharing is making your experience and expertise freely available for others who are interested – to hide nothing, to sweep nothing under the table. For a normal person sharing means sharing their feelings of malice and sorrow – what is commonly known as having a gossip, having a whinge, having a bitch, having a heart to heart, connecting, giving support, being honest, etc. My experience with God-men is they don’t share – they hide much from others and are driven to preach and proselytize to others.
It took me 17 years of exploration on the so-called spiritual path to finally understand, acknowledge, and act upon, the fact that spiritualism was nothing other than ‘Olde-Time Religion’. Every pundit, teacher or follower I met or group I was in felt they were unique or that they were specially ‘chosen’ in having the truth of their existence revealed to them personally. Spiritual revelations and experiences are music to ‘me’, as soul, and inevitably lead to ‘self’-ish introspection and an increased detachment from actuality. My experience of religious and spiritual groups was just that it was more of the same-same in human affairs and interactions: in other words, the same people vying for position and power, the same coercion by the group on how to think and behave, the same dynamics of leader-follower, etc. I don’t know now what I thought would be different. Religion promises but does not deliver. I wanted at one point to immerse myself in a monastery where my life would be molded and controlled for me by others. The process in the religious/ spiritual world of subjecting oneself to a Power or Powers and the earthly representatives of that power has its analogy in the work world with its hierarchy and office politics. There are generally two archetypes on the spiritual path – those who devotedly follow and those who desperately seek. I was very content with being a devoted follower of a Guru until the death of my son got me off my bum and made me into a seeker. The timing was serendipitous for soon after my son’s death my Guru died and I witnessed first-hand the inevitable formation of yet another dead-God-man religion. And I clearly saw that spiritual people are nothing other than normal people – it’s just that they tend to be a bit sillier for they have gone off into la la land.
I would appreciate, too, your opinion on why I ‘sound Spiritual’ ... I don’t doubt your obvious expertise in this field but would appreciate specific examples, if possible. I do not wish to be ruled by ancient wisdoms, truths etc. My inherent common sense has always steered me away from the tried and failed logic of my family and ancestors. I have commented repeatedly about specific points in your posts that sounded spiritual to me and I see no point in going over old ground, ad nauseam. In your last post you said – ‘I am not at all interested in the spiritual’ and I don’t doubt you at all. I would only say that not being interested is not the same thing as actively investigating your spiritual conditioning, be it Eastern and Western or both, such that you become free of it. As an example, what you said in full was ‘I am not at all interested in the spiritual (though I have gotten too much into my head at times)’ which indicates a typical spiritual viewpoint of what ‘being spiritual’ is. The current New Dark Age spiritualism can be seen generally as having two broad paths or approaches. There is the right thinking/being the watcher approach, whereby thinking – or wrong thinking to be accurate – is deemed to be the source of all evil and one develops a new identity as an aloof right thinker. This path is typified by J. Krishnamurti’s teachings and most of Buddhism. The other is the more emotive heart approach where any and all thinking is derided and one forms a new identity as a truly loving being. This path is typified by devotee religions such as Rajneeshism, various forms of Hinduism, Sufism, etc. To become free of the real world and the spiritual world requires an active deprogramming of all of the opinions, beliefs, morals, ethics and automatic instinctual reactions that have been programmed into your brain. To do this requires a burning curiosity and an intense observation and investigation of this programming, in you, in action – in short you need to develop a vital interest in what it is to be spiritual and how it manifests in yourself. You need to become interested in what makes you ‘tick’ – what makes you moody, worried, angry, sad, lonely, upset, peeved, melancholy, dissociated, lacklustre, bored, remote, etc. if you at all aspire to becoming actually free of being continually run by these emotions. Is this not good sense?
Many, many spiritual people, despite their years on the spiritual path, have never ever bothered to investigate their social/spiritual conditioning as many simply swapped their Western beliefs for Eastern beliefs. The main reason for this blindness is the practice of denial and transcendence – they don’t want to be here anyway and have no interest at all in being a happy and harmless citizen of the world. ‘Be in the world but not of it’ is the best they can muster – a pathetic statement of non-committal non-participation, if ever there was one. They never connect their own feelings of nationalistic pride with war and conflict between nations, they never connect their own spiritual beliefs with war and conflict between religions, they never connect their own inability to live with others in peace and harmony as being at all related to the violent events on the evening news. Their armour of denial, their myopic ‘self’-centred selective awareness and their comfortable cocoon of moral superiority and associated spiritual pride serves to isolate them in an inner world totally of their own making. I found that after my spiritual years I was totally ignorant of the inherent workings and functional aberrations of the Human Condition and I deliberately embarked on a journey of exploration, comfortably undertaken lazing in front of the TV or sitting in front of the computer. This investigation of grim reality and the imagined Greater Reality is essential if one is to break the stranglehold that the utterly selfish Eastern spiritual teachings have had in all aspects of one’s thinking about the Human Condition, the universe and what it is to be a human being. It is such an exciting exploration to discover the facts of what it is to be a human being as opposed to being a mere mouther of everyone else’s Truths and psittacisms. Actual Freedom and autonomy has to be earned by stubborn and persistent effort – it is not granted by grace to the meek and mild.
The other thing I have been musing over is the curious reaction from Sannyasins to my Journal. I liked Sannyas and Sannyasins, particularly in the early days. There was a sense of pioneering, challenging the norm, giving it a boots and all approach. Now I get many people telling me ‘I’m all right’, ‘I’m watching my self’, ‘I’m happy’, ‘Life goes on and I’m going with the flow’, ‘I am already That, all I have to do is realize it’ ‘There is nothing I can do – it is all in God’s hands’ etc. etc. Acceptance was always an acceptance of me as I was, whereas if I was honest with myself, I wasn’t the best I could be – I wasn’t free.
As for your notion that the experiment failed, I see no possible way you could know that, as the experiment continues even if it is only with me. I have written in detail of my experiences and why the spiritual path failed not only for me but for millions of others down the ages, but you stubbornly refuse to want to read anything of my story. What you do with your life is your business, after all, it is your life. I say that as a fact. And it is so perfect that it is that way. I am simply offering an alternative for anyone who has doubts about the spiritual path, its workings and its results.
Being a Sannyasin for me was/is about making choices. And the choices are taking personal responsibility or avoiding personal responsibility. Both are the available options, and still there are no guarantees of outcomes regardless of one’s choices. So does this mean that it doesn’t matter what one does, it is all right anyway. I read a bit of Ramesh Balsekar the other day and he said it didn’t matter if you killed someone as it would have been God’s will anyway. I truck with none of this. I enjoy freely and sensibly exercising my will – no God’s will operates in this body.
There was a book I read recently called ‘Hell-bent for Enlightenment’ and I bought a copy as it was about someone’s personal search for freedom from the Human Condition. When I read the book I was fascinated to see that her ‘Enlightenment’ would occur next year upon death and then she would ‘drop out and go back to where I came from’. It struck me again that this is nothing more than the Heaven I thought such a silly idea as a kid.
All of the major philosophical movements are built upon the supposed teachings of long dead wise men, pundits and philosophers. Any so-called modern wisdom ... you are confusing orthodoxy with realization Realization is about as orthodox as you can get. Everybody’s doing it. The latest versions are called ‘Awakenings’ and are a bit watered down wherein one still has a few ‘personality quirks’ remaining – like anger, jealousy, sadness, depression, rage, impatience, etc. * Have you not read any religious, spiritual or philosophical books? Certainly, I read all of them, but finally I read me... In the spiritual books the ending is always – and then I realized I was God and God was me, or some similar version. Which is what everybody finds if they search inside. Funny that – no-one finds that they are a human being, they always find they are a God. Reminds me of past lives – not too many farmers from Burringyup. It is timeless and always individual... always a discovery. Always individual? It is the discovery of ‘I am’ and thus individual... indivisible... Knowing truth means knowing there is no ‘me’ or ‘my’ I think I have read hundreds of variations on this theme from spiritual books and Gurus, but if you insist it is individual you are in good company anyway. * Strange, to watch hundreds of people, sitting isolated, with their eyes closed, going inside and imagining ‘feeling connected’ This projection of yours is at the heart of all your bullshit. It is you who is imagining that the others are imagining feeling contented. Are you saying you don’t have a feeling of ‘feeling connected’ when you go ‘inside’? Isn’t this the point – to feel Love or Agapé? I hardly see this as a projection. Why else does one meditate? Why else does anyone seek Union? What you do over and over is to make a false statement such as ‘Ancient wisdom is good old religion’ and then groove on your own misunderstanding. On the other hand you could be a Boring Again Christian yourself because you are so deaf and dogmatic... To call someone a Christian seems to be the ultimate Sannyas insult. I have nothing against Christians, some of my best friends are Christians...You are like a boring again Christian who just says their script over and over and never stops... because they are so convinced that they are right. Given the spiritual nature of the list I am pointing out the facts about spiritualism – that it is nothing more than Eastern Religion. Given that Religion and the belief in God has, and never will, bring peace on earth – quite the contrary – I write of a new solution to the Human dilemma. How it is now possible to rid yourself of malice and sorrow, should you so desire. What you find boring I find an extraordinary development in human history. Which is why I reply to all the objections. Maybe, just maybe, a new phrasing, a new aspect, a new fact will be the ‘crack in the door’ for anyone who is interested. * To become free of the belief in good spirits and bad spirits. To break free the slavery of the Master-disciple business It is you who calls it slavery, that is your interpretation. Well, the first thing asked of any disciple of a Master is to surrender to the Master. I remember in the early days of Sannyas the need to surrender was an essential requirement. One surrendered to the Master and put one’s faith and trust in Him. This is not my ‘interpretation’. I can distinctly remember the phrase ‘You are not surrendered enough ... Swami’ that was so often used in the commune. Now, to surrender means to give in, as in ‘I give up’. For me that is slavery – albeit willingly.
Yes indeed, and it is a thing I make no apologies for. Millions, if not billions, have assiduously practiced their methods, sat in their presence, and gave their lives in loving gratitude and humiliation for nil result – except for a tiny few who get ‘it’ and then get to become the ones to whom others then practice their methods, sit in their presence, and give their lives in gratitude and humiliation ... You seem to build your whole rap on speculations and projections. Then from there spin off into the clouds with your new found way to be. But if you start with building on delusions where can you end but with anything but delusions?? Millions? Billions? give their lives? for nil?? just speculation and projection. As far as I am concerned...these people devoted what they wished, learned what they learned, and went on to live long productive peaceful loving ordinary lives... maybe some didn’t. So what! ‘Millions, if not billions’ is a reference to all the devotees of Eastern spirituality (Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Shintoism, Taoism, Zen, etc.) in all the thousands of years, many, many of whom spent their lives secluded in monasteries or ashrams (in Tibet, Japan, Thailand, Cambodia, Korea, India etc.) or devoting hours of their days in meditation, ‘watching’, praying, or the like. The recent influx and western interest in spirituality is but a ‘blimp’ on the vast sweep of history. The point of my statement was that once this became evident to me I was able to put my position in perspective. The failure rate of producing profound individual awakenings (Enlightenment) of the Eastern religions became startlingly evident, as did my arrogance in assuming that I could do any better. The other issue was that despite (or because of) the numbers, sincerity and effort of all these people the countries had appalling levels of poverty, disease, corruption, repression of women, and often downright theocracies. I fail to see this as speculation and projection. A study of history and an open-eyed visit to the East will still confirm this to be the case in many countries.
The path of the devotee is a reality to many, and my perception is that probably just as many reach this way as any other. AND, I agree that most don’t awaken. If by reach you mean become Enlightened, the figure I have heard quoted is 0.0001% of devotees. Ken Wilber in ‘What is Enlightenment’ magazine But so what? What’s your problem with the world AS IT IS? Well for me it hit me like a ton of bricks one day when I realised that the spiritual path is not a new thing – millions if not billions of Easterners have painstakingly and diligently practiced meditation, witnessing, watching, retreating from the real world, etc. for thousands of years with so few ‘reaching’ and no tangible, actual change in the the Human Condition for the rest – humans are still firmly in the grip of malice and sorrow. The problem with the world AS IT IS is that humans still fight horrendous wars 160,000,000 killed in wars this century alone and the proffered hallowed solutions are a mere fantasy escape from this reality. When I was in the first stages of awakening, as perhaps you are, No, I have had a few of these awakenings and there was still a ‘me’ there, except I became a Grand ‘ME’ – I was Love, Existence and I were one and the same. I was trying to convince everyone of what I saw as the truth. I never got that far as I realized that if I kept on with pursuing my ‘awakenings’ that I would end up Enlightened and it was happening at a time that I was starting to have more than a few reservations about Enlightenment as a career path. In short, I didn’t like their lifestyles, I didn’t like how they were with their women, and I didn’t like the whole worship, God-men bit. I’m not being facetious, as you probably see it – it is how I saw it. It was at the time when I was deciding what I wanted to do with my life, and when I met Richard and he said you can become happy and harmless, actually free of any malice and sorrow whatsoever, in the market place, on earth, right now, right here – I took up the offer – and it worked. I was in a way right, but I was trying to change the world. This arrogance is actually hurtful as it is not accepting. Yes, it is such a strong instinctual pull to go for the Glamour, Glory and Glitz of being the Saviour of mankind. I battled with it for months on the path to Actual Freedom and I wrote about it in my journal, the God chapter, if you are interested. As for change the world – their are 5.8 billion people currently and what an impossible task. I turned it around 180 degrees and focused my entire efforts and energies on changing me – the only one I could change and the only one I was vitally interested in. After all I have to live my life, if I am not happy now, then I have something to look at, something to do, something to dig in to, something to change. I made my being happy and harmless the most important thing in my life. As for accepting others the other remarkable thing is that I now like my fellow human beings, I neither fear them or feel aggression towards them. I wish them well in life. And I offer my experiences and expertise, with neither humility nor arrogance, to anybody who writes to me. I began to realize that people awaken in their time, that learning only happens thru living, and there are no shortcuts. As I said, others are not my concern as to what they do with their lives, my happiness depends on no one else. But if someone writes I am delighted to talk of my favourite subjects. When you really get Osho, you get the joke ... that seriousness is the problem. I just decided as nothing else was working after 17 years on the spiritual path I would give something else a whirl. Sincere, honest, obsessed, serious – yes, at the time since it was my life and my happiness I was concerned. These days its not at all serious, this business of being a human being. I just need to make sure I have enough money for my simple needs – rent, food, and a computer mainly. I sold my car and bought a computer thinking it would be cheaper, but hmmm... Each day I awake, knowing I will have a perfect day and knowing that the only essential thing is to eat. A sense of well being that is palpable is my constant experience, on top of which I get to do cute things like write to you. Life was meant to be easy, simple, direct, obvious, sensate, delightful, harmonious, ever fresh each moment...
So, unlike the other metaphysical and philosophical theories of freedom this one works and delivers and, as such, easily rebuffs charlatans and frauds. The proof is in the actual and in my experience if you can prove an end to malice and sorrow in equitable one-on-one companionship you have ‘put your money where your mouth is’. There is no greater test of fire than sexual freedom and equity, than for man and woman to live together in utter peace and harmony – not in theory but in practice. The Gurus have failed to deliver, they have had their day. The old ancient, long dead ones have eschewed morals and ethical precepts for their followers who have fought horrendous wars as to the Rightness of their masters or own particular God’s vision. And as for the modern Gurus, I know them well to be pretenders. I have seen the despair that ravages their private lives and those around them. The chaos and duplicity of their personal lives, their sexuality, their treatment of women, the psychic powers and the entrapment, surrender and eventual total emotional dependency and enslavement of their disciples is but a sad useless re-run of all that has gone before. No wonder the spiritual or religious pursuits require bucket-loads of faith, trust and hope – it is needed in the face of its continual failure to produce the goods – peace on earth. What I am saying to you is that Enlightenment is finished, now that Richard has exposed it from the ‘inside’. Discipleship and the Spiritual Path are also finished and Vineeto and I have exposed the fraud that it is nothing other than Eastern Religion masquerading in sheep’s clothing. So maybe, just maybe, it is worth while considering that everybody (including yourself) has got it 180 degrees wrong. Not just a bit wrong, but all wrong. It can be an enormous blow to pride, particularly male pride – I know it was for me – but I am immensely pleased I let go of the ‘tried and failed’. I did however have to acknowledge I was neither happy nor harmless in order to even begin to become free of the crippling Wisdom of the Past. And then I got to be a pioneer on the path to actual freedom and I always liked to do a bit of pioneering occasionally, to dare to be authentic and original is such a hoot. It’s such good fun being a human being.
Yes, but what’s not a fact is that a teaching is a failure because carnage has not been stopped. Understanding of a teaching can’t be pushed down peoples throats. They have to do it themselves. A master or teacher can’t force himself on people. He offers an opportunity to understand, but many people unable to console themselves with third rate concepts, after all it’s easier, with all trouble you mentioned as a result, yes. Okay, here is another idea you can deny or object to. I’ve got an endless supply, by the way. So let’s say there have been about 10 billion human beings who have walked the planet since cave-man times. Let’s say there have been about 1,000 masters or ‘good-quality teachers’ who have known and not merely pretended. My guess is that there have been at least 1 billion who have given the teachings a ‘fair go’ in their lives. They may not have realized the Truth but they have sincerely tried their best to live by the teachings. And yet, we humans still fight and kill each other. There is not even a semblance of hope that peace and harmony is possible on the planet. So what you are saying is that the 1,000 teachers are right and the 1 billion followers are wrong. This is only a suggestion, but maybe, just maybe, you might consider, if only for a second or two, that the ... teachings could be wrong? What twigged me was the possibility that ... everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong.
There is usually a clap of thunder and a flash of lightning and that’s that. End of discussion. So, Ancient Wisdom is the Wisdom of Humanity – the set of ‘rules’ how it is to be a human being on the planet. The mother of all Wisdom is ‘you can’t change Human Nature’. When I met Richard he said ‘Of course you can! Why not?’ I liked that... Why not indeed! That’s not my understanding. But if a human wants to change its nature a set of rules is fine. One has to start somewhere. Intelligence will find its way. No, the essential requirement of the ‘set of rules’ on the spiritual path is to leave one’s intelligence and further to surrender one’s will to God. One is doubly doomed. Intelligence is thwarted by the call to trust and unquestioning faith and the demand of surrender, devotion and loyalty enslave one for the term of one’s natural life. A high price to pay for the hope of a mythical after-life. The only benefits in this life is the feeling of being one of the chosen few – one gets to feel sorry for those not especially chosen or those who are backing the wrong horse in following a lesser or false God. For this insanity one sells one’s freedom, denies one’s intelligence and surrenders ‘lock, stock and barrel’. To surrender is to admit defeat to the possibility of living, on this earth, as a flesh and blood human being – and this act of surrender inherently requires an enormous faith in an after-life – one is trapped in a vicious circle.
As for Sannyas, I’ve never been into believing in God; as a matter of fact, Osho repeatedly said God doesn’t exist. I know many discourses where he talks of God, Oneness, Divine, Sacred, Holy, Nirvana, Love, Being, Buddha Nature etc. The use of words with capital letters in all his writings and books is a clear indication of God or the Divine in whatever form or description. The Eastern spiritual tradition is not monotheist like most Western spiritualism and, as such, God is a slippery concept, and deliberately so. Yes, slippery, like a bar of soap one desperately tries to grasp when taking a shower. Don’t know why you insist on talking about God. There is no God, for Christ’s sake! I keep forgetting that for Sannyasins now Rajneesh is God, not merely the Master ‘who’s finger points to the moon’. He is the moon, hence the shift in Sannyas from seeking enlightenment and freedom to grateful prayer, worship and devotional servitude to Him. I wrote a bit in my journal of the time when it first became apparent to me that Rajneesh was God and Sannyas was a Religion – ... ‘I returned to the West for more work, a bit of travelling and another relationship. Almost my entire work and friendships were within the Rajneesh community, or the ‘Club’ as I called it, but even this attachment was beginning to wane. When the men, particularly, would gather and talk about the Ranch, it always reminded me of old soldiers retelling their stories and I thought: ‘Is this how I’m going to live my life out; remembering the Good Old Days?’ I went back to Poona once more but it was very clear it had finished for me. After all, the whole attraction of the spiritual path in the first place was that I regarded it not as Religion – it involved being in the presence of a living Master, and now he was dead. I had even come to see the pictures of Rajneesh that hung on the walls of friends’ houses as no different to the little statues of ‘Jesus-nailed-to-the-cross’ that I saw on the walls in Catholic homes as a teenager’ ... Methinks you have your own God and happily dismiss anyone else’s God – a common form of slipperiness well used in the spiritual world. * Whichever way you look at it, both Eastern and Western Spirituality clearly indicate a ‘something else’ or ‘somewhere else’ apart from this physical universe Well to try to uphold that the universe is only physical leads to absurdities when one uses common sense. Sooner or later you will have to invent some or other God, a physical one of course. The concept of a universe as being only physical is as slippery as the concept of a God... Many people have already resorted to bestowing Godly qualities or energies on the physical universe – anthropomorphism abounds, hence the term Universe with a capital U. Anyone of spiritual conviction is so far from having the ability to apply common sense that for them to even use the term leaves me gasping in incredulity. Common sense or native intelligence only begin to come into play when the human brain is freed of the absurdities and restrictive covenants applied by believing Ancient Wisdom. Then, and only then, can one look at the bulk of the social identity, and only then one can explore the core instinctual emotions. By developing a firm and self-convincing spiritual identity on top of an already enveloping social conditioning one has gone even further away from both common sense and the senses of the physical body. The denial of the body and the mind evidenced by such Wisdoms as ‘you are not the body/mind’ confirm this non-sensical retreat. It is a long and rocky road back to the senses and to common sense – it is the greatest challenge facing Humanity at this time and it is the personal journey of a life-time to accept the challenge. That the physical universe is not a concept is easily demonstrated by putting gaffer tape over your mouth, holding your nose and waiting 10 minutes. As you rip the tape from your mouth, gulping air you may well begin to consider that the physical universe is a fact for you, not just a concept. As for the slippery concept of God, this conversation stands testimony to that fact. * To call a spade a spade – it’s all God ... be it by any other name ... a ‘something else’ or ‘somewhere else’ apart from this physical universe. Part of the human condition is this eternal duality: some say the universe is all physical, some say it is all God. I don’t take sides... To take sides is to get stuck in the mud... This is the ‘one foot in each world’-philosophy upheld by many. It equates to ‘I’ll get on as best I can in the real world and I’ll sprinkle a bit of religion to keep up my ‘brownie points’ for the after-life’. The eternal duality that you talk of is the battle between good and bad, God and the Devil, Sacred and profane. As such, anyone who leaves the en-trapment of the spirit-ual world of good, God and Sacred can only be seen as going towards the bad, the Devil and profane. But, of course, there are no Devils, there are no Demons in the actual world. They exist only in the heads of those who believe in them. The Actual world is benign, benevolent, abundant, opulent, ambrosial – a literal sensual paradise, both infinite and eternal. And all happening, here, now. As for ‘one foot in each world’ – step out of both worlds, leave your ‘self’ – and ‘Self’ – behind and step into the actual world. * The belief in an after-life is exactly what prevents human beings from being here on the planet, now at this moment, as a flesh and blood only human being. Each human has a soul, or psychic entity that ‘feels’ separate and alien, and wants to desperately believe in an after-life. This ‘me’, usually evidenced as fear, is aware that the flesh and blood body will inevitably die and therefore ‘my’ only chance of surviving is to believe in an afterlife or seek Divinity and Immortality.
I have enjoyed your writings. But only one thing has been questionable to me. Its about being disciple of Osho. As far as I have understood, you seem to had been a disciple of him to get something, Enlightenment, actual freedom, or anything you can call. It sounds a kind of bargain to me. It is very strange compared with my experience of being a disciple of him. Yes, I am starting to wonder myself what people become a disciple of a Master for? What is it that they are seeking – if anything at all? When I said I was seeking peace and freedom I was howled down. When I said it was a New Man – peace on earth – I was similarly scorned. And yet when I ask anyone why they are a disciple the silence is deafening – it as though I have asked some very strange question that they have never ever thought about. I know that when I took Sannyas I was pretty much ‘going with the flow’ and it was at a stage when it became apparent what an awful place the ‘real’ world was. It was only the death of my 13 year old son, that shook me out of my lethargy and set me searching for freedom from the ‘shackles’ that I could feel bound me. And I wanted to be free – as this flesh and blood body – before I died. The sight of the dead body of one so young and so close to me gave me both the intent and the sense of urgency to ‘get off my butt’ and to not stop searching until I found. A month later, I was watching Rajneesh’s body burning down by the river, and ‘more shit hit the fan’ – I knew I was on my own ... my Master was dead. Still, I hung in out of loyalty, love and gratitude, but I could also see the religion forming all too clearly. I got a glimpse of the absurdity of it all one night while shouting Ya-Hoo to an empty chair, with thousands of others dressed in long white robes – ‘Is this what my life has come to?’ Despite this glimpse of sanity it still took me another 2 years to swallow my pride and admit I was in a religion. By the way, my dictionary defines a disciple as ... ‘an adherent of the doctrines of another; a follower’ – Macquarie You are now OK. Its good. But I think being disciple of Osho is not what you have experienced while you were a Rajneeshee. Well, in the ‘good old days’ we renounced the ‘real’ world, joined the commune, donned orange robes, wore a mala, and ‘worshipped’ 10 or so hours a day. There seems to be a milder more laid-back ‘Meditation Club’ type disciple emerging these days. Fair enough, the ‘serious’ approach really ended when the Ranch folded. ‘Aye ... it’s not like it was in the old days’ ... Oops ... I’m starting to sound a bit like the ‘old boys’ talking about the ranch days in the corner at some Sannyasin gathering. No, look, I haven’t got a problem at all with your objection to what I say being based on questioning my ‘disciplehood’. I’m ‘OK’ now, as you put it, precisely because I questioned my disciplehood, and the facts I discovered were a shattering blow to my pride. For me, it’s just so unbelievably good not to need to follow, to need to trust, to need to have faith, or to need to believe ... to be free of all that is an amazing experience, to be free of the ‘shackles’ I felt when I stood by my son’s coffin.
‘Subtle, sparkling, dazzling, glorious, and radiantly awesome, in appearance like a mirage moving across a landscape in spring-time in one continuous stream of vibrations... That is the radiance of thine own true nature.’ – Bardo Thodol Ah, the affectations and feelings in full flight, seductive as ever. Ever promising and ever failing to deliver except in fleeting glimpses, unless by supreme effort (usually suffering) one becomes fully deluded into feeling glory and awe. ‘Thine own true nature’ is of course to realise that one is ‘timeless, never-ending, always has been, always will be’ It is an enormous construct that has been built up over millennia and as such is not at all easy to begin to question let alone see through in it’s entirety. The only guide is the peak experience, or Pure Consciousness Experience (PCE), when one is able to directly experience the perfection and purity of the physical universe free of any ‘self’ whatsoever, free of a personal ‘self’ and free of the ‘Grand Self’. We tend not to recall these experiences or re-interpret them later as spiritual experiences, such is the instinctual cunning of the ‘self’ to remain in existence. A Self is, after all still, a self, merely in a grander form, and a deluded one at that, as ‘it’ then believes it is immortal and will survive after physical death of the ‘body/mind’. Everybody has got it 180 degrees wrong – such is the overwhelming power both of wishful thinking and passionate feelings.
Please consider this to be a polite letter. Please consider this to be a polite reply, I’ll try to be polite, more sensitive, not so serious, less arrogant, more grateful, briefer, more humble, less verbose, more sensitive, less ignorant, more loving, less boring, more concise, ... .. Yeah Gads, I’ll end up being normal (or spiritual) again if I took everybody’s advice.
This will be your new name, Swami Anand Deleeto. Will it be difficult to pronounce? Anand means Bliss and Deleeto means clean, wiped away. The bliss of wiping away. Hi Anand Deleeto, I see that No 27 has just freshly initiated you into the world of Sannyas. You don’t know me at all but I thought I would write to you as a fellow human being to offer you a couple of Web addresses if you want some facts about the spiritual world you are in and information on a new, non-spiritual down-to-earth Actual Freedom. I wish you well with your new life, but if you find it isn’t working, that
you still have doubts, that you still feel something is missing, I offer You will probably hear on the grapevine that we are disgruntled ex-Sannyasins with a grudge, the ‘terrible twins’, or that we didn’t ‘get it’, or that we are flogging some rival version of the Truth. That we are pretending it is ‘something new’ when it isn’t Really – the usual stuff. It’s just an offer, something to check out, if you are interested. And just a comment on No 27’s words to you after your initiation – but only if your interested, Deleeto ... This will be your new name, Swami Anand Deleeto. Will it be difficult to pronounce? Anand means Bliss and Deleeto means clean, wiped away. The bliss of wiping away. Ah, yes. The feeling of leaving the ‘normal’ world behind – to take on a new name, a new identity and a new role – the spiritual seeker – and to join a commune of fellow seekers. The Club. It is such a bliss to silence the endless stream of words. Sometimes one has to do it again and again because the words keep coming. The words are so alluring, perhaps I am missing something, one thinks. So one stops a bit and looks and listens, but after a while one sees that it is only a repetition. Ah, Anand Deleeto. I see here that Sw. No. 27 is alluding to silencing the ‘endless stream of words’ from the actual world, from this very computer. He is advising you that it is boring repetition, and not to get trapped in it. But I guess if you bother to wade through the words you will make your own evaluation. I just like it that there is now an alternative to the ‘Tried and True’ spiritual path. I would also point out that the Tried and True is the ‘Tried and Failed’ in that it has been persuade by millions, if billions of people for millennia with only .0001% achieving Enlightenment and the countless religious wars, cleansings, perversions persecutions, tortures and repressions are the inevitable result of the whole spiritual – i.e. spirit-based – belief system. The mind can only endlessly repeat thousand year old arguments. There is nothing new under the sun. It is all a futile exercise like moving furniture around in an empty room. Anand Deleeto, here he is obviously referring to the Ancient texts and myths. Indeed within the spiritual world there is nothing new under the sun. Rajneesh himself talked endlessly about all sorts of Masters and all sorts of other religions and teachings and was a master at telling old myths, stories and legends What I am talking of is outside of the spirit-ual world. You see, I am an atheist – I live in the actual world where Good Spirits and Evil Spirits, Gods or Demons simply do not exist. They are but a collective fantasy of the psychic world. These Spirits or ‘energies’ – all generated in the psyche by a fear ridden ‘I’ do not actually exist. So, No 27 has told you, there can be nothing new under the sun and that this is the best we human beings can expect. To be born into a world where everyone is fighting and squabbling and you end up doing it yourself because ‘this is the way it is’. And there is a ‘reward’ for our suffering ... we simply turn away, go inside and imagine there is a ‘somewhere’ better or a ‘someone’ who is looking after me. Surely there has got to be something better under the sun, and there is. An actual freedom from sorrow and malice is now available if you are interested. Slowly, slowly one gains courage. Be brave, Anand Deleeto, trust your intuition. It was not there before, it is not there now. Dare to wipe away and enjoy the bliss. On the spiritual path, Deleeto, you will be admonished to leave your mind at the door, surrender your will, and trust your feelings. You will be encouraged to sit silently and go within to encourage a stilling of personal thoughts in order to begin to feel Bliss and Oneness. In short, you will give full reign to your feelings and emotions. ‘You’ who you feel you are will become grander and grander, bigger and bigger, and if you really work hard at it, one day – POP! ... you will realize that you are GOD! So if you trust your intuition, trust your feelings – you are but doing a wonderful job in keeping your ‘self’ in existence – from ‘self’ to ‘Self’. For me, I knew my ‘self’ was the problem and eventually saw that to blow it up in self-aggrandizement was to be going 180 degrees in the wrong direction. But this is just what I have found. You will obviously make your own observations and judgements as to what you do with your life-time on earth. It has been nice to drop you a line (... or a post, as it is these days), Deleeto.It was really just to give you a couple of sites to check out if you are ever interested, and have the time ... but then I got off on one of my raves again. But then again, if you are true to your name, you won’t even be reading this, but maybe someone else will, and maybe they will be intrigued.The Net is such a good thing like that. You are free to follow up anything you want to know about or deleeto anything else. Peter’s Text © The Actual Freedom Trust |
