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Selected Writings from Peter’s Journal on the Third Alternative
But I do acknowledge serendipity, and it was surely serendipitous to meet Richard and Devika on a warm, summer evening in January 1997. It started off as a slightly awkward social evening but as it continued it proved to be profound for me. I do not remember a great deal of the post-dinner conversation, but a few things stick in my memory. ‘Everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong,’ Richard said at one stage. I was starting to have some doubts about Enlightenment, and that ‘crack in the door’ was enough for me to reply, ‘Really? – I’ll think about that for a bit’. ‘The only danger is you might become Enlightened,’ said Richard about the experimental method he had devised to eliminate the ‘self’ – that psychological and psychic entity that is the root of sorrow and malice and that dwells within all human beings. ‘It is possible for a man and a woman to live together, twenty-four hours a day, in utter peace, harmony and equity, totally enjoying each other’s company, and the sex is great,’ said Devika. Now I was really interested! ‘I was Enlightened for eleven years before I managed to break free from the delusion that I was God,’ said Richard. My brain went into gridlock, but this sounded like an interesting path to investigate, particularly considering what Devika had said about man and woman living together. Little did I know that the first statement was to lead to nearly a year of examining every belief I had taken on as to what it is to be a human being on this planet, and to reject every one of them as silly! And little did I know that I was soon to prove Devika’s statement as a fact in my life. And needless to say, I have managed to avoid becoming Enlightened,
or indeed any form of Guru-ship.
‘Everybody has got it 180 degrees wrong.’ We had been talking for about an hour. They were the latest of the ‘spiritual people’ who seemed to be coming into my life like a flood at the time. My flat-mate had invited them to dinner and I was curious to listen to their story and hear of what I initially took to be their spiritual experiences and words of wisdom. I had come to a point in my life where my spiritual search had become obsessive. The major issue becoming evident to me at the time was that I did not like how the ‘Enlightened Ones’ were with their women, I didn’t like their lifestyle, and I didn’t like how they were with each other! So I did have some serious doubts about the spiritual world and desperately wanted some answers that made sense. We had talked until 3 am in the morning and I found our guests a
most curious couple. There was an ordinariness about them that was most refreshing – despite their most
outlandish stories and concepts. I thoroughly enjoyed talking to them and I had not felt talked down to. What
soon followed were many visits to their house. I have little memory of the details of what was said, only that
I was continuously attracted to finding out about this curious new way of looking at life. I promptly
rearranged my life and subsequently spent about twenty hours a week in comfortable discussions in Richard’s
lounge room. Broadly, what emerged that I could relate to was that I, as a human being, had been programmed
since birth with a set of beliefs, which formed my identity, and that by identifying, challenging and
investigating these beliefs they could be eliminated. Further, I had come into the world pre-programmed with a
set of instincts, and these instincts too could be similarly eliminated. The ‘I’ that I think I am and
that feel I am, that troublesome psychological and psychic entity, was actually nothing more than the sum
total of these beliefs and instincts! And the whole package could be got rid of! Not transcended as in the
spiritual world, but actually annihilated. It sounded good to me ... if a touch scary.
‘It is possible for a man and a woman to live in peace and harmony.’ The idea set me on fire more than anything else that was said, and when I first read Richard’s journal this was what interested me most. The journal explained that he and his companion had, over years of investigation, delved into the beliefs and instincts that are the very root cause of the battle of the sexes. A trenchant and no-holds-barred approach had resulted in eliminating those beliefs and instincts to a point that allowed them to live together in peace and harmony. This idea is quite the opposite to spiritual teachings that simply give no credence to men and women living together. In fact, success on the spiritual path traditionally meant one ended up alone, celibate and Enlightened. While this has somewhat loosened in modern times, one’s companion then is but a disciple, a disastrous recipe for an equitable companionship between two human beings. The appalling attitude towards, and treatment of, women in the East and their standing in society is ample evidence of centuries of Eastern Spiritual teachings put into practice. And, of course, the pleasure of sex is a definite no-no for the serious meditator and spiritual aspirant. What was on offer was clearly radically different to both the ‘normal’
and ‘spiritual’ approaches to men and women living together but, as I had always wanted a companion to
happily share life’s pleasures with, I decided to ‘give it a go’. Having made the decision, the major
problem then was to find a woman.
The extraordinary thing was that, here I was, involved in easy conversation with a man who had been Enlightened, in his living room, just down the road from where I lived. At last I had found someone I could really talk to about Enlightenment and spiritual matters – what about thinking, what about sex, what is the meaning of life, what is Enlightenment like? To uncover the mystery, to talk matter-of-fact-ly about the meaning of it all. Not to mention the ‘ordinary’ – where do you buy that coffee and did you see that new show on TV? But the thing that really got to me was that he was talking about men and women living together and the pleasure of sex; how unlike the Enlightened Ones! – in fact 180 degrees opposite. It was obvious I was involved in something radically different here, and given that all else had produced no tangible results, I decided to give this one hundred percent. I just thought I had nothing left to lose; all else had failed. So why not? Richard had got himself Enlightened some seventeen years before by an intensive method aimed at finding the state he had experienced some time earlier in a ‘peak experience’. He achieved an altered state of consciousness complete with feelings of Oneness and Timelessness, Love for all, Compassion, and a drive to spread his Message.
Why was this state different to what he had aimed for, why was he driven to save mankind, why did he feel timeless when the clock still ticked away? He travelled to the East seeking answers but came back even more troubled. Over a period of twelve years he was to question all of the sacred tenets of the Enlightened Ones – the massive delusion as he puts it – and emerged some six years ago into what he now calls ‘Actual Freedom’. The man I sat talking with for hours and hours in his suburban living room had actually forsaken the Glamour, the Glory and the Glitz of Enlightenment! In Eastern Spiritual terms, he had eliminated not only the ‘self’ but the ‘Self’ as well, not only the ego but the soul. I thought his credentials were impeccable, and he was willing and able to talk clearly about his experiences and discoveries. He had had a female companion for the last eleven years and together they have investigated what is called the ‘Human Condition’ – that set of beliefs, conditioning and instincts that is the program by which human beings have operated ever since they emerged from the caves or trees. Further, they had developed a method for actually ridding oneself of malice and sorrow, the very core of the Human Condition. To become happy and harmless was the term I liked. It seemed to me an eminently sensible aim in life! Peter’s Journal, ‘God’
Well, why is Enlightenment just for the ‘chosen few’, and why – when it happens to someone – is he or she worshipped and revered like some God? Is it that it is such a miracle to get Enlightened in the first place that we bestow divinity on them, and then curry favour with them and worship them in the hope that it might rub off on us? I posed these and many other questions, as I tried to see what actual good had come out of a system that had been followed by billions of people, for thousands of years. Buddhism has been in existence for at least 2500 years and Hinduism supposedly twice as long. I was looking for evidence and facts – not hopes or beliefs. The case for the defence was definitely not looking good, but I still found myself defending at least something of the spiritual and hanging on grimly. Surely there was a ‘Something’ else? Was it possible that I, and everyone else on earth up until now, had got it wrong and that only Richard was right? I had been reading widely throughout this time to check out the facts of what Richard was saying and what I found was astounding. I found that the whole of philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, astronomy, physics, indeed all of man’s knowledge, and wisdom is based on an underlying assumption of a ‘something more’ than the physical universe. A belief in the meta-physical permeates all human thinking and wisdom. If one eliminated this assumption or belief the whole lot comes crashing down like those card stacks I used to make as a kid. Then it all started to make sense to me, to fit the facts – everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong – everyone! There has been no actual evidence or facts after thousands of years to support the belief that there is a God or a Something else. The cry in the churches, temples, ashrams and satsang halls is still one of trust, faith and hope to maintain the belief in a Something else. It was as though I was able to begin to see through the whole charade and fantasy of the spirit-ual world – to be able to see things from another perspective. It was like a mist or a veil clearing. It was then that I realised that Richard was the only atheist I had met and seemingly the only one that has ever been. I was obviously in the company of a mad man and a super-megalomaniac to boot. But then again, the wise men in the other camp were calling themselves God or at least ‘one with God’, and this seemed totally insane to me! I reached a stage when I thought I was going mad, but then again the whole world was mad anyway. I only had to watch TV, read history, or listen to the next-door neighbours fighting to know I lived in a mad house ... and here I was worrying about going mad!! In particular I remember one day on the building site when one of the subcontractors said to me that he was having a bad morning and that he felt he should meditate, and did I mind. Given he was a straight sort of guy I thought he was joking until I saw him ten minutes later in full lotus position sitting right in the middle of the noise and chaos. And it was just at the time that I was thinking I was going mad! In the end I ruled the mad bit out of court as I somehow knew all this was just going on in my head anyway, a sort of a last defence battle of the psyche, refusing to let go of cherished beliefs in the face of facts. Further, it was not only my belief, it was insidiously permeating every human brain – it was wired-in, instinctual, genetic if you like. Stubbornness drove me on – I was, after all, in this to find out the meaning of it all; to make sense of being a human being on this planet. Peter’s Journal, ‘God’
To see power and authority in myself and to have seen them in the Enlightened Ones was to prove the critical point in the process of eliminating them in me. No longer would I be seduced down that spiritual path towards power and glory. I had reached the point where the spiritual path and the path to actual freedom radically diverge and go 180 degrees in opposite directions. There is an apparent similarity at first glance in that both identify the ‘self’ as the problem. One, the traditional, goes to God, glory, power and authority; the other goes to actual freedom, which I had glimpsed in peak experiences and which was becoming more and more obvious and apparent in my life. In my experience the other difference is crucial– one works, the other doesn’t. I was becoming increasingly happy and harmless, and therefore different from other people, who remained firmly entrenched in sorrow or were still trying the traditional paths as a remedy. They were still searching while I was busy arriving. However, what a freedom to see others as fellow human beings who choose to do what they want with their lives, and not as people I had to save. This path to freedom was proving to contain no power or authority. But then again I had only to observe Richard and how he was – and, of course, I did continuously. I could see that the path to actual freedom was eminently sensible, practical, workable yet utterly magical. And that Enlightenment has had its day; it’s finished, redundant, obsolete, archaic, primitive, harmful and silly! Peter’s Journal, ‘God’
I used a technique that Richard suggested which was invaluable, and that was to pretend or try to mimic the peak experience of being in the actual world when back in ‘everyday’ moments. I described it at the time as pushing myself as far as possible to the surface of the eyes – to be purely my senses. This means definitely not creating a watcher or Self’ with a different set of morals and beliefs – usually vastly superior to that which is being watched – but simply practising to establish a direct connection between the senses and the actual world. It is 180 degrees the opposite of the spiritual ‘awareness’, which is to focus on some blissful, still or peaceful space inside. The aim was to bring myself out of my inner world of the psyche into the actual world of my senses – to become fully engaged in the actual world. It takes constant effort and vigilance at the start not to be sucked back into misery and sorrow, not to resort to malice. The usual constant interacting with other similarly afflicted people creates a common ‘psychic world’ of fear, malice and sorrow as everyone battles it out for survival. It all, of course, simply happens in the imagination. This world appears to be real because of the commonly shared emotions and feelings, but it is not actual, factual. Many people I know are constant travellers in this ‘psychic world’ and have developed quite an expertise in interpreting the many and varied highways and byways. Therapists, astrologers, psychic readers and mediums are the experts in this world with the spiritual teachers as the indisputable Masters. I simply stopped believing (or trusting) what everyone else told me was right or good or real and used ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive now?’ as my guide. The thread that holds it together is the knowledge of the peak experiences, when I know and experience everything as perfect. Everything really is and always has been perfect except for the churning self-centred thoughts and resulting feelings and emotions. It is as though the psychological entity creates a film or skin over every thing I see, feel, hear, taste and smell. This reminds me of the similar experience of the feeling of ‘shackles’ on me that prevented my freedom. Those shackles are real in the ‘psychic world’ but, as I have discovered, they are not actual. When I eliminate the ‘psyche’ or ‘self’ I become free of the ‘psychic world’ at the same time – free of those shackles I had experienced way, way back when I stood in front of my son’s coffin. Peter’s Journal, ‘Intelligence’
Furthermore, I saw that the spiritual path involved surrendering your will to ‘Someone’ or ‘Something’. I then understood that in surrendering my will, I simply became a puppet of others – a total slave. Becoming free is to become free of the authority, opinions and beliefs of others – to be autonomous. I remember Richard saying that at one stage he had to ‘reach deep inside himself’ to regain his will, which he had surrendered to the ‘Absolute’. My will is the very engine needed to make me free – it is my ability to function as an autonomous human being – and to surrender that will to someone else is to be defeated before I start.
So what I initially saw as a paradox actually works: the only way to fix up the problem which was inside my brain was to use the only tool left available – the intelligence of my brain. This is definitely 180 degrees in the other direction to the spirit-ual; it is definitely a third alternative. I liked the stage when I did not even need to question any more the ‘tried and true’; I knew that it was not the solution, for it had not worked. I then simply looked at what was sensible to do in each situation. It then becomes apparent that Richard is actually trying to seduce people out of feeling sorrowful and acting maliciously, by saying ‘Why don’t you stop?’ It is really so easy to be a human being, effortless – you simply do what is happening. With no ‘self’ to run amok, to be wary of, an utter ease and confidence pervades the physical universe – and I can be me, at last! The actual experience of living with Vineeto in peace and harmony is proof that applying common sense works. My experience is: ‘Get it while you can’... Peter’s Journal, ‘Intelligence’
This last year’s journey of discovery into my psyche, to eliminate my ‘self’ – that accumulation of beliefs and instincts that I erroneously believed to be me – has provided the answer. The answer is, of course, not to deviously shift my ego or identity into the realm of the Spirits, but to journey 180 degrees in the other direction, into the realm of the senses – not to the ‘spiritual Universe’, but to the actual physical universe of people, events and things. Recently someone said of Richard’s writings: ‘Why is he talking of everyday things?’ Well, when I lived in the world of emotions, feelings, energies and spirits, it was a full-time neurosis, and I couldn’t savour the delights of food, sex, conversation, doing ‘nothing’, playing FreeCell, reading a book, walking, sitting and watching the sky (or the ceiling). Now I do. Having nothing meaningful or useful or significant or urgent or exciting to do, day after day: and yet experiencing every day, each moment as perfect. Everyday life, everyday things. It has to be lived to be fully understood. Peter’s Journal, ‘The universe’
I remember when Richard first said ‘Everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong’ and I struggled to consider the enormity of the statement – it was hard to conceive. But I asked myself over and over – ‘What if he is right?’ And the more I thought about it, the more it explained a lot that was wrong. It allowed me a ‘crack in the door’ and began an incredible journey on the wide and wondrous path to freedom. So should you be moved to try something different to the ‘Tried and Failed’ then more information is available. Serendipity is, after all, what happens when you take the opportunity that comes along. Peter’s Journal, ‘Afterword’ Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless © The Actual Freedom Trust |
