There is no relation between consciousness and timelessness because mortal human beings thinking and feeling themselves to be timeless is nothing but fervent imagination based on ancient fairytales. In their awareness and resulting fear of death ancient humans have conjured up the belief that there is some other place to go after death, that there is something that will live on after this body dies – and 99.99% of humans haven’t dared to question this soothing belief ever since.

Once I dared to investigate my belief in some spurious after-life, in an eternal life and in some ever-present Energy – God by another name – and dared to face the fear of death, consciousness became a very simple thing to understand.

In a normal person, consciousness is what is happening when one is alive and awake. Consciousness is the state of being aware of one’s actions, sensations, feelings and thoughts. This marvellous ability of the human brain to be conscious is so miraculous in itself that any invented explanation of a Higher Timeless Consciousness having created this human consciousness pales in insignificance.

Given that each human being is born with an instinctual ‘self’ overlaid since birth with a further layer of social identity, this consciousness is a ‘self’-consciousness. Thus a consciousness of ‘who’ I think and ‘who’ I feel I am is constantly predominant and the bare consciousness of the flesh-and-blood-body only gets a peek in during a body-only pure consciousness experience when the ‘self’ is temporarily absent. A naïve observation and contemplation about the workings of this amazing physical universe, or simply being immersed in the sensual pleasure of being alive, can bring on such pure consciousness experience.

Whereas when one wants to relate one’s own consciousness with this imaginary timelessness, the only way to proceed is to totally become immersed in one’s feelings, disidentify and disconnect from the body and all things physical, disassociate oneself from everything that is down-to-earth, actual, common sense and happening in this moment, and imagine oneself to be ‘somewhere else’.

To shed the belief in a Higher Power and a life after death was certainly daring – for there could be an angry god standing at my grave, couldn’t He? When I finally admitted that a timeless consciousness – the feeling of immortality – was a mere product of my fervent belief, I was then able to take my life into my own hands and proceed to change the programming in my brain. Acknowledging the fact that Timelessness and God have never existed is the only way to become free of malice and sorrow.

It is a fact that when one dies one dies, irreversibly, irretrievably and irrevocably. Any other opinion of death is only a belief.

To find out about death as a fact I needed to investigate my belief in anything meta-physical and explore the emotional reasons for wanting to believe in something other than what can be sensately experienced. This investigation is verily ‘not for the faint of heart and weak of knee’, for one may encounter fear and dread the likes of which are ‘truly amazing’. Those fears are the very reason that all the ancient humbug beliefs in numerous silly fantasy-heavens have survived for thousands of years despite the scientific advancements and technological developments. But to proceed beyond the limits of one’s survival fears is an adventure I wouldn’t want to miss for anything. It gives me the freedom to live here on this earth, each moment fully alive, delighting in being this flesh and blood body, and no hold barred.

Personally, it took two months and a lot of discussions with Peter until I finally understood experientially, what the term ‘spiritual’ stands for. For me, ‘spiritual’ had implied the ‘godly’ way of life, following the highest aspirations of mankind, a dedication to be good, to be part of the group of people who also aspire to the same goal. The day I finally understood the literal meaning of the word ‘spirit-ual’, a whole new world opened up. Suddenly the spiritual world was not the only alternate world to the ‘real’ world, not even the best world. Suddenly I understood that I – like everyone else – was producing this world in my head and heart – with my very spirit, so to speak – and this world consisted of spiritual morals, ethics, ideas, beliefs, emotions, loyalties, pride and the belief in the immortality of the soul.

A major distinguishing factor between the spiritual approach to life and the path to an actual freedom is that spirituality teaches one to enhance the ‘good’ affective feelings. One is to indulge one’s intuition, trust, belief, faith, hope, guesswork and is encouraged to sense (as in feel out) a situation. Whereas, on the path to Actual Freedom, one explores actuality by applying thought, common sense, contemplation, practicality and intelligence and undertakes an investigation into verifiable facts of the situation.

I was reminded of a particular outstanding experience during the Anti-Fisher-Hoffman-Process in Pune. It was the second time that I did the group, the first time that I was a staff-member. The AFH, as we called it, is a 10-12 day process of looking at childhood issues and overcoming fear, resentment, anger, attachment by using intense bio-dynamic methods. By the third day, with lots of ‘work’ and little sleep, everybody hit their limit. I dragged myself forward, fantasizing about the time when I could sleep again as long as I wanted, if I only made it through the next ‘hellish’ days. Suddenly it dawned on me that what I was doing was waiting. I was wasting my time for ‘redemption’. And I realised that there was no difference from ‘waiting for heaven’ or for enlightenment, or for the right man, or...

With this insight that there is only now, that I live only now, and that there is no heaven to go to – I woke up into full awareness and aliveness. Postponement only brings more misery, hope is for the hesitant one who does not want to take the first step to freedom. This peak-experience lasted for several hours, and while everyone else was tired to the bone I bounced in refreshed aliveness. Later on the event got filed into the category of ‘group-highs’ and the memory of it soon faded away. But for those few hours I had lived in the actual world, here, now, without God, heaven, authority, love, hope and postponement. I had actually experienced that this moment is the only moment we have got, the only moment we can experience being alive, to be either miserable or happy, complaining or fully alive.

And this is where I see one of the main differences between the freedom, Peter and I talk about, and the teachings of the enlightened masters of all ages: the concept of life after death. ‘Eternity’ was a good attraction at the time, improving on the notion of the Christian heaven and hell. The idea was that the soul was eternal, and would live on forever and ever, evolving and in bliss, or, re-appearing in endless re-incarnations, sorting out one’s so-called karma. Enlightenment offered the dream of ‘me’ living on for ever – even after physical death ‘I’ would continue ... and this very dream lead to the most insidious postponement – everything will be fixed with enlightenment or otherwise in Nirvana after death... This belief in eternity comes in many forms and disguises, but if you take a closer look, you will always find that the Divine, the Melting with the Universe, the Dissolution into the Greater Whole – life after death – are an essential part of Eastern teaching.

It’s a fascinating business ‘to be or not to be’ and how to move from one to the other. When we watched the report on Timothy Leary that Peter wrote about, I could relate very well to the flavour of those times, the idealism, the peace movement and the ‘tune in, turn on and drop out’ scene. My ‘drop out’ was not into drugs, but into religion. I went to India to find God. My God was called Rajneesh and he claimed to have all the answers. I learned to be more sophisticated with my labelling, he was ‘an Enlightened Master’, the best, of course, something which every master claims to be. And if we did what he told us, surrendered and meditated earnestly, we would get to experience heaven on earth, i.e. become enlightened and thus reserve a place for our soul in Nirvana-land after death.

Doesn’t this sound very similar to the good old Christian religion of Big Daddy in the sky who knows it all and promises you heaven after death if you are good? With the only difference being that my ‘God’ was still alive and the Christian God-man had died 2000 years ago. Therefore the transition out of normal society into a spiritual community wasn’t such a big jump as I had thought at the time. Emotionally and instinctually I was still feeling safe with the higher authority of the ‘Good’ and secure with the reassuring feeling of belonging to a religious tribe.

With that understanding in mind, the report of the ‘great drop out’ of Timothy Leary, the ‘high priest of the his times’ could be seen for what it is, a ‘shifting of furniture on the deck of the Titanic’, staying safely within the parameters of the ‘self’ and of an imagined life after death for that very ‘self’. Yet I find it very serendipitous that crazy people, including myself, have experimented with all kinds of possible options of what it is to be a human being. It gives me an opportunity to study what I as well as everyone else have discovered, to investigate the uselessness of the traditionally offered solutions and to stop repeating the mistakes of the past.

I always wondered a bit why Richard, in particular, railed so much against the gurus and spiritual masters. I even accused Richard of having a ‘bee in his bonnet’, which he readily admitted.

Wheeeeeeee, Alan, that is truly an occasion to get the bottle of Champagne out of your fridge and have a big toast on yourself! What a day of remarkable significance when you stop being immortal – or potentially immortal – and become alive in this moment.

I can take the analogy that I wrote to you the other day a bit further – everybody walks on their hands and suffer blisters and headache, and then we wonder why we feel so mad and weird walking upright. To come to one’s senses and walk upright, one first has to fall on to one’s nose, or bum, and most people object to that position... Leaving immortality behind is a big step towards walking upright, at least in my experience. Welcome to the ‘bee in the bonnet’-club.

Rajneesh was actually a very tricky guy. One day he would talk about God and the other day deny that there was such a thing as God. He had a whole discourse series on Jesus, where God appeared in every other sentence. Then he talked about Zen, and suddenly all was prevailing emptiness and utter serenity. So in the process of checking out my beliefs and replacing them with facts I had to take a closer look, not just rely on what I ‘felt’ Rajneesh had said or meant. By really digging into the contents of his teachings and words I was able to dismiss him as the ultimate authority.

What I found was that his essential teaching was about the Divine, Existence, Buddha Nature, Oneness with the Whole. So, where is the difference? God or the Divine, God or Buddha Nature – it still ensures immortality. The spiritual ‘Universe’ is ‘Timeless’ and ‘Spaceless’, and after death one will be united with the Whole, forever in bliss. Just the words on his tombstone ‘Never Born, Never Died, Only Visited this Planet...’ are enough to reveal his belief in an afterlife as the ‘real life’ and the actual world as an illusion.

Love and Enlightenment are lures that are certainly not to be taken lightly. That’s why Peter and I are putting so much emphasis on Virtual Freedom. In the face of ultimate extinction the survival instinct makes one grab the only option to survive – Enlightenment, the delusion of immortality. But I know now by extensive experience how enlightenment looks and feels like and I am 100% sure that it is a second rate alternative to Actual Freedom.

In addition, my interest at present is: to see what love does to me.

It is, for sure, the individual’s responsibility to look into themselves. But you can only effectively look into yourself without the guidelines of those gurus, teachers, Enlightened Beings, ‘Mr. Wise Guys’ and Masters who tell you to look into yourself within the guidelines of their particular ‘Truth’ or belief-system. As long as you are lead astray on a path of fairy-tale and fantasy, glory and immortality, good feelings and bliss, how can you clearly and honestly look into your ‘self’. You will only be moving furniture on the Titanic again, rearranging feelings – good ones to the right and bad ones to the left – and then end up with a polished, but same old identity of No 5.

To investigate thoroughly and sincerely into your ‘self’ you will need to investigate into those who have programmed you – parents and peers, teachers and Masters, and you will have to question all of their passed-down values. For Actual Freedom you will have to investigate into your spiritual identity as much as into your moral or ethical identity – the whole lot. There is no other way to clean up the Human Condition in oneself other than to first question those whose authority one holds in high esteem. Otherwise you only remain a believer.

This is not a small thing we are doing.

It is not merely ‘definition differences’ we are talking about. It is worlds apart. This is something nobody has ever dared to question before. Or have you found any kind of Guru or teacher who dared to question Love and Compassion, who dared to put his grand wonderful identity as ‘One-with-the-Whole’ at stake for the sake of experiencing the perfection of the universe without being identified with it? Not a single one! All the Enlightened Ones keep their BEING in tact. They know WHO they are. So this conversation is not about definition differences. It is about a completely new understanding and approach to the human instincts. It is about eradicating them, not mere transformation. It is the acknowledgment that they are only software, not hardware – they can be deleted.

But to eradicate my instincts and beliefs means that everything that I know I am ceases to exist, and everything anybody ever claimed to know or to be ceases to be of any reference. This included my beliefs in an immortal soul, a life after death or before birth, a god-like energy of the universe and a meaning of life. I am not surprised that hardly anybody has dared to take up the inquiry. It is a ruthless operation. But also it is the very best I have ever done in my lifetime. And it works. That may be scary too, because one really watches oneself dying, having less and less substance and identity to fall back on for definition and reference.

At quite an early point on my way to actual freedom I found that as I proceeded the rungs of the ‘ladder’ would disappear behind me. With every understanding of a particular belief that belief lost its substance – I could not believe it anymore, the rungs disappeared by the very fact of seeing it as a belief instead of a truth. The same applied to feelings and emotions. Realising that my emotion consisted of a combination of my instincts and vivid imagination they lost their credibility. This understanding made it clear that every attempt to give up was merely a postponing of what I had already seen as the desirable goal in life – to be free from malice and sorrow. And as for postponement – the very fact that there is no life after death puts postponement in its place – a waste of precious time, time that I could be happy was wasted in delay because of my lack of courage. That understanding spurred me on, it gave me back pressure to persist in spite of fear, fright, apprehension, trembling or cowering. Yes, fear is par for the course but one can do something about it, one can ride on the thrill into yet another discovery.

It has been considered the best, because one would feel better hanging out with enlightened people, god’s messengers or just with their ‘holy’ words. Religion, mysticism and spirituality are nothing but an escape from the ‘oh so terrible’ life on planet earth. One can escape from the hardships of life by contemplating divine love, by imagining a protective and loving god, by believing in a reward after death. But why not become happy and harmless – then you won’t need any synthetic consolation of god’s love or life after death. Again, there is a third alternative – getting rid of the problem instead of trying – and failing – to solve it by spiritual or moral means.

When, for the first time, I not only contemplated but also really understood that an actual physical infinite universe has no physical place for god who, by definition, resides outside of the universe, it blew my whole belief of a higher force to pieces. It then became all too obvious how many other beliefs were feeding from this one imaginary and passionate assumption that there is something ‘higher’ than human beings that is running the show. Bang, here I was, suddenly realizing that I was all by myself, alone and lonely, frightened and unprotected, but free of that imagined authority that had controlled my life. For an hour I experienced in a pure consciousness experience the delicious perfection of this purely physical, utterly un-spiritual universe. I delighted in my autonomous intelligence, the freedom to sort out my life all by myself and for myself and experienced the awareness of this marvellous, magnificent physical universe. I have written about it a year ago:

Finally one evening, when talking and musing about the universe, I fully comprehended that this physical universe is actually infinite. The universe being without boundaries or an edge means that it is impossible, practically, for God to exist. In order to have created the universe or to be in control of it God would have to exist outside of it – and there is no outside! This insight hit me like a thunderbolt. My fear of God and of his representatives collapsed and lost its very substance by this obvious realization. In fact, there can be no one outside of this infinite universe who is pulling the strings of punishment and reward, heaven and hell – or, according to Eastern tradition, granting enlightenment or leaving me with the eternal karma of endless lives in misery.

This insight presupposes, of course, that there is no place other than the physical universe, no celestial, mystical realm where gods and ghosts exist. It also implies that there is no life before or after death and that the body simply dies when it dies. I needed quite some courage to face and accept this simple fact – to give up all beliefs in an after-life or a ‘spirit-life’. But I could easily observe that as soon as I gave up the idea of any imaginary existence other than the tangible, physical universe, everything, which had seemed so complicated and impossible to understand became graspable, evident, obvious and imminently clear.

When the enormous consequence and implication of slipping out of this insidious belief in any God or Higher Being dawned on me, I was at the same time free of anybody’s authority. I was free of the fear that had been spoiling every relationship with every man in my life: father, brothers, male friends and boyfriends, employers, teachers and Master.

Now I am my own authority, deciding what is silly and sensible, using the common and practical intelligence of the human brain. I am responsible for every action in my life and I can acknowledge that now. However, this means that from now on I cannot blame anybody for making me jealous, miserable, grumpy, afraid, angry or frustrated over any petty issue. Now there is no more excuse, no more hiding place. They are my reactions and my behaviour, which I have to face and change in order to be free.’ A Bit of Vineeto

Now I am responsible for my life and for my life only – without a belief in any bodiless existence before birth or after death. I am neither beholden to any higher authority, nor to any man-made unliveable morals or ethics. And I am free from guilt and the fear of god’s wrath – a fear that became quite apparent when I struggled to ditch the belief in god, heaven and hell.

Also I want to chat a bit about the subject that Peter has raised in his last post to you – the ‘good’ and –tender’ instinctual passions. It was a good reminder for me when he said that it took Richard only a few months to eliminate anger, yet 11 years to eliminate the ‘good’ – pacifism, love, compassion, beauty and bliss.

So, as part of my investigation I watched a movie today which could be called a classic regarding this very issue. It is called ‘Good morning, Miss Dove’, a film made in 1955, full of the straightforward morals and ethics of post-war America. Miss Dove turns down a marriage proposal in order to become a teacher of her little town and teaches generation after generation not only geography but in particular how to behave like perfect moral citizens. Every word and gesture of hers is oozing the ‘good’ and the ‘right’, teaching the distinction between the respectable and the disreputable. In her subtle and ‘humble’ way she has got the whole town under her thumb, not only because almost everybody has been her former pupil and thus imbibed with the very same ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, but also because she is flawlessly incorruptible. As such, she can even tell the priest how to pray with her on her death-bed.

The interesting part for me was that the concept of a morally flawless life could still touch me. Humans of all ages have strived for the best, have tried to be ‘good’ and have partly succeeded to keep the ‘bad’ under control. But ...

1. First of all, the whole system only works because everybody believes in God and in a life after death, where one will be either punished or rewarded for one’s deeds. Otherwise, what is the point of being good – it never really pays off in this lifetime.
2. Secondly, a flawless life according to the morals and ethics of normal society is such a dull and humourless affair because it is based on repressing and sublimating one’s every instinctual drive including sex. Miss Dove in the film did show this very well, as the town’s straight-laced spinster.
3. Thirdly, and what was also very obvious in the film, is that the sublimated and repressed instinctual drives are being transformed and used for power over others, which in itself is the very antithesis to freedom. Miss Dove was not only the saint of the town, loved and respected by everybody, she was also the queen, with every one of her former pupils eager to please her. Of course, with absolute power one can easily play humble – the art of subtle covert rule.

It’s been a good exercise to examine and analyze the stronghold of the ‘good’, to see the emotional attraction and the hidden traps. I find it harder to recognize than being angry or fearful because the ‘belief in the good’ only becomes apparent as a slight tug on the heartstring, a sweet feeling, an attraction for the ‘good’ hero in a story or a disappointment when the corrupt wins. But leaving Humanity behind means leaving the ‘bad’ and the ‘good’ behind and every catch needs to be investigated.

A fascinating business.

‘But it was not all over yet. The sense of love and warmth that had resided in the heart moved further down into the belly, what Japanese call the Hara. I found it to be the seat of ‘being’, of bliss. It was a less fiery passion, more of a calm prevailing blissful state of eternal ‘being here’, as opposed to the actual being ‘here’. I don’t remember much of it except for the seductive invitation to stay there, ‘you have found your destiny, this is what they all talk about, you have arrived’. <snip> ‘Big deal! Seeing the Power and Glory in action and its impact on me I turn away. This is not the perfection I am searching for, this is not the purity that I know from peak-experiences. As I watch the sky dawn in its wonderful changing colours with life awakening all around, leaves rustling in the wind, cicadas chirping, magpies whistling, fear returns and I welcome it as a sign that I am on the road to freedom again. The delusion of Power and Glory is seen for what it is – and disappears while I lie on the couch contemplating life and death and the universe.’

Interesting that you talk about the blissful state. We found a book by Bernadette Roberts, a Christian mystic, called ‘What is Self?’ where she talks about no-ego and the no-self, only to describe that after enlightenment she gets even further lost into the fantasy of being one with Christ. And recently, somebody on the Sannyas-list asked me about the so-called Akashic Records, I experienced that bliss-state’ again for about an hour, the state Mrs. Roberts seems to talk about. I finally got a grip on it – I could experience it and describe from the ‘outside’ what was happening. This blissful state seems unemotional, no love or compassion is felt in the heart, everything is a cool ‘oneness’. One feels all-pervading, ‘I am everything and everything is me and everything is divine’.

The experience can easily be mistaken as intimacy because the sense of ‘me’ is so expanded across the universe and spread so thin, so to speak, that ‘me’ is hardly noticeable. As ‘I am every thing’, one is of course ‘feeling’ intimate with the physical world and is able to psychically tune into the religious experience of others. (see Bernadette Roberts, ‘What is Self?’). Fascinating and seductive and very eerie. I think this could be a bit like the parallel universe scientists fantasize about. One then lives in a universe where everything is a virtual replica of the actual, with the glow of divinity, unity and timeless-ness to it – and as it is a virtual reality, it is controlled by the imagination of the one who makes it up.

This ‘parallel’ universe ‘feels’ and is ‘imagined’ as intimate or not-separate from ‘me’, and yet it is twice removed from the physical body, the senses, this actual world. This ‘insanity’ of ‘feeling one with everything’ is the barrier that prevents one from experiencing the world directly with the senses as a flesh and blood body. Wow, I really understand why these guys are so far out there, lost and locked in an imaginary space that has almost no return-ticket.

But then, you only have to pinch yourself and where it hurts, that’s actual.

It is good not to be trapped by this complete insanity. It is the same type of disassociation that people suffer from that are in an insane asylum. The film ‘Awakening’ depicted some of those people. There was one woman who could not walk to the window because the checker pattern on the floor was interrupted by a black line until the doctor painted the black line into checkers. In her ‘world’ the black line was dangerous. The religious insanity is being locked into another type of fantasy-world, where one isn’t really the body and one’s True Self will be free only after death – it is an altered state of consciousness, forever cut off from common sense.

No, not witness – eliminate. There is a big difference. Witnessing creates a new entity, the ‘watcher’. One is to identify with and become the ‘watcher’ and dismiss or transcend the rest as imaginary. Body-mind, emotion, thought and senses, as well as the physical world, are considered as an illusion, while Consciousness is supposedly one’s true nature.

Elimination happens through understanding the root of each particular problem, the human instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. By seeing when I was acting out of my instincts, ‘human nature’, I could also see that I have a choice. But in order to have that choice I have to questions all emotions, good and bad, and all beliefs (‘real’ and Divine), in fact, the very act of believing itself.

Not so. I don’t believe, either consciously or unconsciously. I only take my informations about life from what I can see, hear, smell, touch and sense, the very physical. Everything that goes on in the head and the heart is belief and imagination – it is the very stuff the ‘self’ is made of. Once you stop believing in the soul you experientially understand that it does not exist outside of your belief. To believe that there is life after death needs the act of believing. It is not a proven fact. Once you stop feeding that belief you will suddenly see the fact that this body dies when it dies and that there is nothing else to it, no soul to live on for eternity. Once god, love, soul, other lives etc. are not supported by our psychic entity, by the very act of believing, they disappear. They have as much substance as a ghost – none whatsoever.

*

He might have thought so himself, and yet it was a belief and not a fact that he is not the body, that he only visited this planet, that his soul is immortal and dissolves into the Whole, that real life starts after death. You can find many, many words for what he taught to be the truth – still, it is an ancient belief. It needs trusting and believing, it needs surrender to the master’s wisdom to keep up this imagination. The moment you stop feeding the belief in an afterlife it eventually disappears as the mirage that it is.

I have not found ‘the truth’, which is indeed different for everyone. I talk about facts, about experiencing the world without notions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, true and false. You can be maybe ‘right’ according to your affective experience, but the physical senses without emotions and feelings give a clear experience of the world-as-it-is. You cannot call a coffee-cup a chewing gum. This is where actual freedom differs from spiritual truth in that it is definable, describable, factual, physical, obvious and perfect, as evidenced by the physical senses.

Exactly, ‘our physical senses are not fit to respond to the divine’ , and there is no need to. The ‘divine’ is a product of our imagination, like everything else that cannot be evidenced by the physical senses. God is a mere fiction of the human psyche, the ignorant human invention based upon the dualistic need to explain anything and everything in terms of cause and effect. And what human energy is powerful enough to give birth to this imaginary god? Passionate human energy, of course, all in a desperate search for immortality, a denial of physical death.

With this insight that there is only now, that I live only now, and that there is no heaven to go to – I woke up into full awareness and aliveness. Postponement only brings more misery, hope is for the hesitant one who does not want to take the first step to freedom.

Yes, that’s what is may look like at first glance, but Osho talks about ‘leaving the body’, not dying. He said he would dissolve into his people, when he dies, so there must be something he believed would remain of him after his bones were burnt. His ‘now’ always had the implication that there is also a life-after-death. Once I fully accepted the fact that life after death is a mere belief, dearly ‘wished for’ by the psychological and psychic entity within, the very impact brought ‘now’ much closer.

What do you mean ‘I know for a fact that he didn’t’. Yes, he didn’t promise the Christian or Jewish God or Heaven, but he kept talking about the divinity of Existence, dissolving into Godliness. The concept changed from God as a person to God as a quality. If I meditated enough I would reach that Godliness or discover it in me.

*

And this is where I see one of the main differences between the freedom, Peter and I talk about, and the teachings of the enlightened masters of all ages: the concept of life after death. ‘Eternity’ was a good attraction at the time, improving on the notion of the Christian heaven and hell. The idea was that the soul was eternal, and would live on for ever and ever, evolving and in bliss, or, in endless re-incarnations of sorting out one’s karma. It offered the dream of ‘me’ living on for ever, even after physical death, ‘I’ would continue... and it lead to the most insidious postponement – everything will be fixed with enlightenment or in Nirvana after death...

I don’t know where you as a sannyasin got all these ideas from, because all what you are saying here are just your interpretation of what enlightened masters of all ages intended.

How did you interpret all the stories about life after death, about dissolving into the divine energy of Existence, about re-incarnation and karma? Wasn’t re-incarnation one of the very reasons to become enlightened in this life-time, to stop the wheel of endless births and deaths? It definitely was for me.

*

This belief in eternity comes in many forms and disguises, but if you take a closer look, you will always find that the Divine, the Melting with the Universe, the Dissolution into the Greater Whole – life after death – are part of Eastern teaching.

Ok, if you want to – I can give you two quotes to ponder about:

‘Never Born, Never Died, Only Visited this Planet ...’ His tombstone.

‘When I say to you that you are free, I mean that you are a God.’ Rajneesh, The Beloved/2, Chapter 10

I have come to see Osho’s teaching as a modern version of Eastern Teaching. He talked on Buddha, Krishna, the Zen-Masters, Zarathustra, the Sufi-Masters, Lao-Tzu, Ramakrishna, etc.

But in order to question the Master after a devotional relationship of almost two-thirds of my adult life, I first had to question several ingrained concepts in me. I found the belief in authority was a big issue, and a strong need to always have somebody to guide me, love me and to belong to. Surrender to his authority was an easy option. There was also the belief in God or Existence, the ultimate and invisible authority, some (non-physical) energy outside of me and outside of the physical universe. This energy represented the ultimate power and Wisdom.

Dismantling the need and belief in authority allowed me to stand on my own feet for the first time in my life. What a freedom not have to react to people, men in particular, out of superiority or inferiority, but to be able to communicate with everybody as fellow human beings! Now I am my own authority, deciding what is silly and sensible, using the common and practical intelligence of the human brain. I am responsible for every action in my life and I can acknowledge that now. However, this meant that from then on, I could not blame anybody for making me jealous, miserable, grumpy, afraid, angry or frustrated over any issue. Now there was no more excuse, no more hiding place. They were my reactions and my behaviour, which I had to face and change in order to be free.

And then there was love. The need to be loved and the hope to become Love one day. Love for the Master made it impossible to question anything he said; I was following him not only for bliss, but for love. And yet, so many things didn’t add up. I had needed to explore the nature of the bonds with the Master and face the fears which came along with dismantling my relationship with Him – he who claimed to represent the ‘Absolute Truth’ in the spiritual world. Given that I had seen through the belief in the ultimate authority of God or Existence I could then more easily set out to investigate the facts of enlightenment.

You see, No. 16, all those beliefs I had to tackle first in me, before Peter and I could begin to talk openly about Osho without me being offended.

If you are ready to look for proof that Osho was in fact talking about godliness, divinity, merging with the Universe, etc. you can send the search function through one of the discourses on the Osho-website, read without interpretation and find the answer for yourself.

*

The eternal, undying soul spoils the game of living now as the only moment of being alive.

Strange way to argue, I must say. Are you saying, the soul exists, and some people don’t understand it? You don’t say how you know that the soul exists. Yes, many, many people teach and believe that the soul exists. That does not make it a fact. No scientist has ever seen it or weighed it – and they have gone great length to prove the existence of a physical thing called soul or spirit. And if it is not physical, it must be a concept. What is your concept about the soul?

The soul is the part of the self that everybody wants to keep, that nobody has dared to question. The identity is made up of ego and soul, the one ‘we think we are’ and the one ‘we feel we are’. In Eastern teaching the aim is to get rid of the ego, and one is then rewarded with ‘universal love’, ‘one with everything’ and bliss. One’s identity simply shifts from the ego to the soul, from the head to the heart.

*

That’s where Richard shocked my out of my socks: He proposed that there is no life after death. You die when you die, fullstop, basta, finito, extinct.

Could you explain, why this is not a fact to you? Have you talked to any dead people who have returned to earth? Have you seen photographs of spirits when they returned to earth? Spiritists over centuries have tried to provide factual evidence of what they ‘see’, none up to now has come up with a satisfying material. Until life after death is actually proven, I see no point in taking it as a fact. It remains a belief. To believe is to ‘fervently wish to be true’. And there is no doubt that humans fervently and desperately wish for an after-life of some kind.

*

When I asked Richard why he is so confidently positive about this statement, he replied: ‘Because there is nobody and nothing in me that lives on, I am only this flesh and blood body, there is no soul, no entity inside this body that could live on.’

He is not the only one who said that man has no soul; again this is no proof that the soul is only imagination. If people pretend they have a soul when they haven’t then of course they imagine, but who knows, perhaps there are some people with a soul. It’s not that I hope there are some, mind you, it’s just impossible to state as a fact that a soul does not ever exist in a human being. The only fact here is that a lot of conceptualization exists in the world.

I actually don’t know what you mean by ‘soul’ which some people have and some don’t. I understand ‘soul’ as the sum of heart and feelings, human aspirations, the thing that lives on after the death of the ego and after physical death. Since there is no physical evidence of a soul in the human body, that proves that it is a concept and imagination – a very powerful imagination as such. It is believed by all.

In the past have experienced glorious heartful moments and days, filled with warmth and love-for-all. But living in the actual world now 98% of the time, without the burden of those soulful feelings, life is fresh each moment, thrilling, wondrous, a dance and a delight.

Richard said there is nothing in him, neither ego nor soul, which would live on after his physical death. He had become enlightened (got rid of his ego). In years of investigation he worked himself out of the immense delusion and imagination of the concept of ‘soul’ by questioning everything that was not an experience of the physical senses. It is not just a statement or a concept that there is no soul. You might want to read about his experience on the web site to make up your own mind.

*

Then, the concepts of ‘divine energy’, ‘eternal soul’, ‘Existence looking after us’, etc, are seen as only built and refined over the centuries to keep the fear of death at bay, to console us about the terrifying fact of approaching death.

Of course, but it doesn’t prove that ‘divine energy’ or ‘eternal soul’ are concepts to all people. Generalizing again here.

You seem to say they are facts and not concepts for you. How? What makes them facts for you?

The advantage of the actual world is, you can reach it from anywhere, it is always here. Everybody can see a coffee cup as a coffee cup , a tree as a tree and hear a cricket as a cricket. No spiritual achievement is needed for that – on the contrary, it leads you further away from the actual experience of the physical senses. But to keep God in existence you need many beliefs – the belief that God is all-present, all-knowing, all-pervading, the belief that God loves you, that God created the universe, that God will take care of you and take care of your soul after death. Question those beliefs and you will watch God disappear in front of your very eyes. God, by whatever name, actually does not exist.

You don’t have to go anywhere ‘first’, you can experience it any time. You can start today by relentlessly questioning everything that is not evidenced by the physical senses, and what is left after all beliefs are dismantled is the actual, the factual. It needs courage and a bloody-mindedness and a good deal of common sense – but it is possible, one can start immediately.

*

No, there is no purpose other than living the perfection of the actual world and being aware of it. It is the psychological and psychic entity that yearns for a purpose to justify its existence. And when you look around you will find thousands of imagined purposes in people’s lives.

To enjoy life and then die. As all living things do. Be born, live and die. And what are we here for? To enjoy every moment of being here as the universe experiencing itself in its magnificence, exuberance, abundance, perfection and purity. And in order to be able to live as this sensate and reflective human being we investigate into the Human Condition which is our heritage.

Isn’t that enough, isn’t that more than enough? Why waste the time we have on this verdant planet by worrying about people who died, to fear and worship imaginary gods and ‘great beings’, dreams and fantasies. Why not stop hoping that someone else can fix us up and why not instead start making yourself happy and harmless now? Essentially everybody spends his/her life worrying about what happens afterwards and in that way wastes this moment of being alive that is happening now.

Well, it is up to you.

I have decided to investigate facts rather than believe what I have been taught and it made me happy and harmless. I had to leave a lot of dreams, hopes, fears and the feeling of belonging behind but the result was beyond my wildest dreams. It was not easy to face my fears, to give up the imaginary protection of some imaginary greater force, but after investigating into the facts I could not believe this dream of a greater force any longer. I saw that the belief was produced by my fears and the fears of all of humanity, the fear to be alone, the fear of death. I decided to face and eliminate my fears rather than being dependant on this imaginary protective force.

Peace-on-earth, in this lifetime, on this planet is possible now. But it is up to you, it is you who chooses what you want to do in your life.

It has been great fun again to talk to you.

So, you are saving your ‘pearls of wisdom’ because I don’t appreciate them?

I am willing to learn anything that is new, but not re-hashed old wisdom that is an obvious failure. If you can present me with something that is sound-proof and water-tight, meaning that it works such that it makes people happy and harmless, free from the instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, I am more than ready to listen.

I have had all kinds of psychic experiences of ‘being the heart’, ‘knowing’, feeling compassionate for everyone and everything, at one with the divine and the imaginary bliss of being one with the universe – they are all very nice for the experiencer, but none of them is a solution to both personal and global peace-on-earth. And none of those experiences are actual – they all happen in the head – affective imagination to the point of madness.

I wrote to a friend the other day about such an experience of this religious insanity:

It is good not to be trapped by this complete insanity. It is the same type of disassociation that people suffer from that are in an insane asylum. The film ‘Awakening’ depicted some of those people. There was one woman who could not walk to the window because the checker pattern on the floor was interrupted by a black line until the doctor painted the black line into checkers. In her ‘world’ the black line was dangerous. The religious insanity is being locked into another type of fantasy-world, where one isn’t really the body and one’s True Self will be free only after death – it is an altered state of consciousness, forever cut off from common sense. Vineeto, List AF, Alan

It is such a relief that I am free of these eerie, seductive and imaginary experiences, which had completely removed me from the physical senses and any common sense. It is considered the pinnacle of religious achievement and yet the opposite of, and anathema to, living as a human being in this actual world. The objection to being here on the planet has created this insane paradise of spirit-ual imagining where one is not this flesh and blood body, but a spirit and feeling, waiting for the final redemption at the death of the body.

Now there is a third alternative – one can eliminate beliefs, emotions and instincts and be happy and harmless instead of feeling compassionate and swanning in an imaginary bliss. One can live in this actual, physical, magnificent universe without God but a magic that surpasses every possible imagination.

I am aware that this third alternative can only appeal to someone with a down-to-earth common sense and a burning discontent about the ‘tried and failed’.

If it appeal to you or not, is completely up to you.

So now we are finding out about what is a belief and what is a fact, are we? Remember, belief per dictionary means ‘fervently wishing to be true’, while fact means ‘what has really happened or is the case’. You say that nothing that Osho tried to instil in us was based on belief, do you? Do you say that everything he talked about were mere facts, evidenced by the senses? That one did not need to believe or trust what was said, one could simply see it, touch it, hear it or smell it?

I try to avoid the battling of quotes, Osho said billions of words and everyone makes something else out of it. But since you seem to claim that there was no spiritual conditioning or any beliefs involved, I found for you some of his words, that point to the beliefs of god, divinity, soul, immortality, universe and inner space.

‘God is all around you, but you are so full of scriptures, knowledge, so full of your own ego that there is no space left inside you where God can penetrate and enter into you.’ Osho: The Beloved, Vol. 1, Ch. 1

‘And if we go still more deeply, then the child also chooses the time of its conception. Every soul chooses its own time of conception – when it will accept a womb, at which moment. The moment of conception is not insignificant. It is significant in that it is a question of how the entire universe exists at that moment, and to what sort of possibilities the universe opens the door at that moment.’ Osho: Hidden Mysteries, Ch. 5

‘A man of sensitivity remains wherever he is – and God seeks him.’ Osho: The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 3 Ch. 9

‘Your unmoving centre becomes such a dance. And one who knows his center, also knows his eternity, his immortality. Buddhas don’t die, neither are they born. They simply appear and disappear into the same ocean just like waves. You have to go deeper and deeper every day, you have to bring more and more of the Buddha to the circumference of your life. It happens, certainly – I say it with absolute authority because it has happened to me.’ Osho: Rinzai: Master of The Irrational, Ch. 2.

As I said to No. 10:

With actual freedom a second de-conditioning took place for me, a spiritual de-conditioning. I was ready for it, because after all those years of sincere effort my search did not show the outcome I was hoping for. This second de-conditioning went deeper than the first, it eliminated all of me, ego and soul, emotions and beliefs, instincts and ‘spiritual achievements’. It leaves me as this physical body and its senses, free to delight in this perfect infinite universe as a sensate human being. Nothing more, nothing less.

There is another world, the actual world, hidden behind the spiritual world, but it only becomes apparent when you ‘who you think and feel you are’ becomes extinct, self-immolates. Should you chose to be happy with what you have found so far, then this is not for you. Should you, on the other hand be intrigued, curious, fascinated – and discontent with your present state, then you may feel inclined to investigate further.

Richard: 3. As there is no such ‘Being’ in actuality it is patently obvious that physical death is the end, finish. Kaput.

To Richard:  Er. Nope. Why is it ‘patently obvious’. It’s not at all patently obvious to me. It’s not patently obvious that nothing which in some way I am does not continue after death. It is not patently obvious to me that, without mind, body and spirit I am still, somehow, That.

Can you see that exactly this point is the crux of the matter?

No.

Can you understand that your idea that ‘nothing which in some way I am does not continue after death’ is a spiritual belief, a belief in a spirit-being which will be able to continue after physical death – when *what you are* ceases to be alive, when the lungs stop breathing in air, when the blood ceases to circulate, when the brain ceases to function and when consciousness ceases and when decay and decomposition inevitably begins?

If you can understand that, then the next step is to grasp the fact that a spirit-being has no existence in actuality.

*

For Richard it is patently obvious that there is no ‘Being’ surviving physical death because Richard’s ‘Being’ is extinguished … before physical death. As he lives this experience of being a flesh-and-blood-body-sans-identity day and night he knows without a doubt that there is no resemblance of any ‘Being’ whatsoever found in his physical body.

I understand that.

If you understand that then why do you go on to say, further below, that ‘I doubt that Richard’s being is indeed extinguished’?

*

Whereas for you it seems impossible to even consider this as a possibility –

Not at all. I am quite willing to consider that as a possibility.

This is what you said only 11 days ago –

‘Perhaps I find the idea of extinction terrifying. I can’t see how accepting that death is the end of absolutely on every level everything that I am, doesn’t equal fear and despair’. Thursday 4.8.2005 12:33 PM AEST

Are you now saying that this is no longer valid?

But, again, let me make sure I’ve got that possibility straight – Richard’s flesh, blood, brain and spirit being died.

Richard’s ‘flesh, blood, brain’ did not die – obviously. What did die in 1992, as in ceased to be, was his spirit being.

It’s all very simple really – spiritual belief has it that the death of the ego is sufficient to become ‘who you really are’, which is ‘me’ at the core of my being. Whereas actual freedom involves the death of both ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul in order that I become what I am – this flesh and blood body only.

That being is dead already. From the death of that state it is obvious to Richard that there’s nothing left but matter. I can dig that. How to extinguish that identity remains mysterious to me, as do a couple of other matters.

The ‘how to’ only makes sense to contemplate when you have come to the conclusion, for yourself, that you *want to* extinguish ‘that identity’, whereas you presently still maintain that ‘perhaps I find the idea of extinction terrifying’.

*

… and therefore you are bound to doubt that Richard’s Being is indeed extinguished

I doubt that Richard’s being is indeed extinguished

Now here is a question for you – if you doubt that Richard’s being is extinguished, i.e. doubt that Richard is actually free from the human condition, then why did you ask him –

‘How do you KNOW that a tribesman of Papua New Guinea twelve thousand years ago didn’t become actually free?’ Re: Go on … 12.7.2005 6.48PM AEST

... because blindly accepting someone’s pronouncements on the nature of things, no matter how appealing (and Richard’s pronouncements are indeed very appealing), is obviously a stupid thing to do. I want to explore as many nooks and crannies, especially sort of fundamental ones, before I toss my eggs in. That makes sense to me. If you can identify exactly why this investigation is more likely to conceal than reveal what Richard is saying, I’m all ears.

When I came across actualism I was fed up with the normal, the therapeutical, the philosophical and the spiritual solutions that society had to offer to the big questions in life and I was ready for something new. That meant that I was ready and willing to question my own ideas, convictions, truths, opinions and beliefs because I already knew that they were counterproductive to making me happy and harmless. To merely question other people, in this case Richard, without simultaneously questioning your own so-called ‘knowledge’ will not bring about any change in your life, if that is what you are looking for.

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[…you are bound to doubt that Richard’s Being is indeed extinguished] and consequently that his condition is something entirely new to human history.

Yes, now again we get to this ‘consequently’ bit. Here it makes no sense whatsoever. As I keep on asking, how does having no identity make it clear that nobody has ever had no identity before? Richard seems to base his knowledge on an enlightened picking up or not picking up of psychic footprints. (…)

Of course, the ‘consequently’ makes no sense to you … you haven’t resolved the first issue which is to investigate if your belief in a life after death, in whatever form, is fact or fiction. Once you resolve this issue to your own satisfaction, you will be in a much better position to understand for yourself what Richard means when he says his being is extinguished.

*

To Richard: But anyway, moving on.

Your ‘but anyway, moving on’ is a throw-away line apparently said in order to avoid sorting this issue.

You might be right. My reaction is; ‘hardly!’ I would very much like to ‘sort the issue’.

If you do, then why not start at the beginning and stay at the beginning before moving on – can you see that the belief in a life after death is a spirit-ual belief because it is based on the assumption that something non-physical (a spirit) will survive physical death?

The issue of a belief in a life after death is fundamental to actualism – if you believe in a life after death or if you want to remain ‘open’ to a life after death then spiritualism is for you, if you think a belief in life after death is non-sensical then you will have a firm footing from which to understand what actualism is about – if you are interested in peace on earth that is.

*

Your circulatory correspondence on this topic …

It seems to me that my correspondence is circulatory because I’m not getting a straight answer to my questions. I am quite willing to accept that it is my crooked reasoning that is warping what is too straight for me to see. But I need to see my crooked reasoning.

Your reasoning is ‘crooked’ because on one hand you want to maintain a belief in life after death while on the other hand you want to understand how one’s being – the very being that supposedly survives physical death – can be extinguished whilst still being alive.

Accusing me of tergiversating, asking pointless ‘yes-but-why’ style questions, circulating around the matter at hand and so forth is all well and good. You might be right. But I need to see exactly what point I’m missing and how I can accept it as plain and obvious and how that might lead to the answers to all the other questions I have.

There is no accusation – you are entirely free to arrange your thoughts the way you want to about the issues that concern you. You were merely made aware of the fact that you are tergiversating and circulating around the issues under discussion. Straight thinking as opposed to circulatory thinking means to begin at the start and only ‘move on’ when the first point is understood and resolved. To reiterate for emphasis – the issue at hand is the belief in life after death. I know from experience that at first it takes guts and determination to even consider that physical death is the end but I discovered, the more I looked into the matter, that I, along with everyone else had been sold a dummy and it was a great relief when I finally stopped worrying about a life after death.

The way I sorted out the issue of my beliefs in life after death was experientially, not intellectually, i.e. I investigated the *feelings* I had around the issue which allowed me to replace my beliefs with straightforward facts. Descriptions of this process can be found here.

A New and Non-Spiritual Down-to-Earth Freedom means exactly what it says, new, non-spiritual and down-to-earth.

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