You are welcome to try – but from the experience of numerous PCEs, I know that an actual freedom from the Human Condition is not possible unless one examines all of one’s beliefs, feeling and emotions. Therefore, I am intolerant towards all religious and spiritual teachings of enlightenment, including ‘that which is eternal, without beginning and without an end’ to quote Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti.

It is a simple fact that all spiritual beliefs are a delusionary product of feverish imagination and the instinctual fear of death. But to verify this fact for yourself you will have to step beyond your reliance on your previous teacher’s authority and enter the fascinating iconoclastic territory of investigating facts.

No 56: Delirium n : a state of excitement and mental confusion often accompanied by hallucinations. Hallucination n : illusory perception; a common symptom of severe mental disorder. Source: Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Ah… actualism is not about silly academic word games, it is a hands-on enterprise. I’m playing for keeps, the real McCoy. Beware, the wide and wondrous path is a one-way street, ‘I’ am instigating my own disappearance for the benefit of this body and that body and everybody. No wonder, you perceive this as ‘delirium’ and ‘hallucination’. From the perspective of those within the human condition the door to an actual freedom has a warning sign on it which says ‘insanity, do not enter here’.

But once I had seen through and through, over and over, the madness of what is called sanity, this warning no longer holds sway. Funny, today I perceive the instinctual battle between human beings as ‘delirium’ and the search for a spiritual Higher Self as a particularly mesmerising ‘hallucination … a common symptom of severe mental disorder’.

Not only Richard, but Jiddu Krishnamurti, Mohan Rajneesh and all the other enlightened beings as well. The difference between Richard and all the other people who have suffered from the delusion of enlightenment was that Richard was suspicious of the narcissistic feelings that accompanied the delusion, so much so that he continued to question and investigate the very state of enlightenment itself. If you read Richard’s story you will see that he had inadvertently fallen into the delusion of enlightenment on his search for the perfection experienced in pure consciousness experiences and because of this the delusion of self-realization did not sit well with him.

In ‘the years he was in the process of becoming enlightened’ he was immersed and enmeshed in the madness that is the human condition just like you and me and every other human being on the planet. Just because you don’t perceive the wars and ethnic cleansings and murders and suicides and depression and domestic violence and child abuse as being madness doesn’t mean that it isn’t madness. It is a madness that countries need armies to deter other countries from invading, that communities need an armed police force to maintain law and order amongst its citizens and that many people need medication to help them cope with their anger and depression and in some cases prevent them from committing suicide.

Not ‘reversed’ but ended. Given that Richard managed to free himself from the hallucination of enlightenment, there is no doubt that any enlightened one could do the same provided they are ready to pay the price – their precious immortal ‘Me’.

No 50: HA! That’s amazing how that works!

Richard: It is indeed ... and yet so simple too. And, speaking of simplicity, this may be an apt moment to provide the reminder that, by having already established feeling good (a general sense of well-being) as the bottom line for moment-to-moment experiencing then if, or when, feeling happy and harmless fades there is that comfortable baseline from which to suss out where, when, how, why – and what for – the feeling of being happy and harmless ceased happening ... and all the while feeling good whilst going about it.

Furthermore if, or when, there is a sinking below the bottom line, and feeling bad (a general sense of ill-being) is the moment-to-moment experiencing then, rather than trying to suss out where, when, how, why – and what for – the general sense of well-being (feeling good) ceased occurring, it is far more useful to first get to a stage of being neutral, because, when in the feeling bad position, feeling good can appear to be so, so far away ... indeed, at times, feeling good can seem to but a dream, a fancy, a chimera, a will-o’-the-wisp, from that position, and what’s the point anyway, that method didn’t work either (of course), it’s all stupid, life sucks, and ... and all the rest of those self-pitying, self-justifying, defeatist assertions.

Plus, as already mentioned previously, any analysing and/or psychologising and/or philosophising whilst one is in the grip of debilitating feelings usually does not achieve much (other than spiralling around and around in varying degrees of despair and despondency or whatever) anyway.

Needless is it to add that the step from being neutral to feeling good is not such a big step?

And then one is back on track again.

Ah … actualism is not about silly academic word games, it is a hands-on enterprise. I’m playing for keeps, the real McCoy. Beware, the wide and wondrous path is a one-way street, ‘I’ am instigating my own disappearance for the benefit of this body and that body and everybody.

No wonder, you perceive this as ‘delirium’ and ‘hallucination’. From the perspective of those within the human condition the door to an actual freedom has a warning sign on it which says ‘insanity, do not enter here’.

But once I had seen through and through, over and over, the madness of what is called sanity, this warning no longer holds sway. Funny, today I perceive the instinctual battle between human beings as ‘delirium’ and the search for a spiritual Higher Self as a particularly mesmerising ‘hallucination … a common symptom of severe mental disorder’.

‘Abandoning humanity’ in Actual Freedom terms stands for gaily taking the pen-ultimate step before self-immolation. After one has removed one’s social identity of being a son or daughter, a man or woman, an American or Englishman, a seeker, a writer, a doctor, etc. and has become an utter non-identity, one is then able to investigate the collective psyche, the result of the instinctual passions that all human beings have in common. Applying attentiveness and awareness to the instinctual passions as they arise enables one to stop acting as per the instinctual software in the brain and thus one can slowly, slowly reduce the automated reactive and emotional impact that instincts have on our feelings, thoughts and behaviour. In doing so one not only becomes happy and harmless but also stops being part of the biggest fold of all, humanity itself. One is no longer a member of the species that ‘nourishes malice and sorrow in their bosom’ to quote Richard’s expression.

Whereas ‘a disconnected feeling’ is clearly an affective feeling, arising out of the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. To have a ‘disconnected feeling’ has nothing at all to do with ‘abandoning humanity’; it is, on the contrary, common to all human beings and arises out of the Human Condition in each of us.

You see, in order to communicate about the possible advantage that Actual Freedom could have for your life, it is essential to not mix up the terms that we use with emotional or spiritual terms. For instance, ‘not-knowing’ is used by Buddhists and other Eastern religions as an expression for the highest achievable wisdom when one enters the ‘Unknowable’, synonymous for the ‘Truth’. Aspiring to or succeeding in achieving the ‘Truth’ and reaching a state of ‘not-knowing’ is well accepted in the ‘book of rules for humanity’. When achieving a state of ‘not-knowing’ one simply exchanges the illusion of the ‘self’ for the grand delusion of a higher ‘Self’.

*

Abandoning humanity is only possible after one has rid oneself of one’s social identity first and thus has the confirmation and confidence that the method works. Moreover, without experiencing the purity, magnificence and perfection of the actual world in a pure consciousness experience one’s abandoning humanity can only lead to feelings of dread and despair or the grand delusion of Oneness.

During my spiritual search, it has never been easy for me to locate this ego, to completely understand what it is I have to get rid of in order to become happy (enlightened). Once I came across Richard’s explanation, derived from his being enlightened and seen through the delusion it was, things suddenly made shocking sense: getting rid of the ego means wanting to keep the good bits and throw away the bad bits. And the sorting out the good bits from the bad bits made it so confusing.

Slowly I began to understand that the good bits – love – are only there to heal, cover up and balance out the bad bits. Once I really get rid of the bad bits, the good bits are redundant as well. They both colour the seeing of a tree as a tree, of a dog as a dog and of a human being as a human being. And once those both veils are taken off my eyes I can see the magnificence and magic in every tree, dog and human being. No emotion is needed to glorify it. It is already perfect, it doesn’t need any enhancement by what I call the ‘self’, the very sum of all human instincts, emotions and beliefs both ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Once I stop doing, feeling, proposing, interpreting, in short messing around, with the world as-it is, then everything is simply perfect. It is ‘I’ who is at the core of all the trouble. And this ‘I’ consists of ‘ego’ and ‘soul’, concepts and emotions, everything that is not touchable, visible, audible, tastable or smell-able. Pretty radical, isn’t it!

I see from our conversation that you seem to take Richard’s writing and his method as just another spiritual writing about how to get free from the ego. But his discovery has nothing, nothing at all to do with any of the familiar spiritual approaches whatsoever. His finding is not about getting rid of the ego, watching, and maybe becoming enlightened.

Richard was enlightened for 11 years and in an almost inhuman effort managed to work himself out of the massive delusion that enlightenment is. It is very hard when one lives inside the belief-structure, to see that the whole thing is only a belief-structure and not the ‘Truth’. For me, when I understood it for the first time with all its implications, it was like leaving planet earth in a spaceship and seeing it as a globe hanging in space for the very first time. A completely different perspective indeed.

I want to tell you about a movie we watched lately, called ‘Fearless’ by Peter Weir. I found it interesting for various reasons. First, it shows a near-death experience of the hero shortly before a plane crash. He encounters an altered state of consciousness, being fearless and driven to help people, mainly the survivors of the crashed plane. For me it is a good description of the delusion that enlightenment is and it stands out oddly because he is an American and lives in today’s Western society. One can see the ‘loony-ness’ of his state.

The only person not being impressed by his heroic efforts to save people is his wife – down to earth, common sense, practical – she can see that he is in severe danger displaying his fearlessness in silly ways. (He believes, he has already died and one can die only once). She then is able to convince the woman he is currently saving and they both try to get through to him.

He ends up seeing the point and in a dramatic second near-death experience he seems to come back to his senses. At least, that is how I would like to interpret his exclamation: I am ALIVE! It could very well mean something completely different! And this is how, unfortunately, the film ends. I guess that both the playwright and the director have no idea what happens when one comes to his senses! Peter sent him ‘Peter’s Journal’ to show that there is an option for life after delusion.

Now, I think, not many people understand that film like this. But that is definitely what I am planning for! Promptly I had a few sleepless nights after this movie, contemplating death. The days were sparkling and gay, but the nights brought up the fears.

Yes, I do understand what you are talking about. After all we are just a handful of pioneers compared to the whole world of believers. I had these doubts again and again, they usually took the form of doubting my effort, ‘am I really on the right track’?, ‘am I doing all that is needed’? or ‘what if I end up enlightened?’ Peter and I found a circle of emotions going round and round: fear – frustration – doubt – fear and the only way out was to muster our intent and investigate the facts of the situation. I take it that when you are ‘here’ there is no doubt that you are following a delusion?

No doubt at all. When ‘here’, I am absolutely sure I am following a delusion – only joking. When I am ‘here’ I could not care less whether I am following a delusion, an illusion, or raving lunatics. I know where I am – here – and whatever anyone else does is wholly a matter for them.

Well, that is our advantage compared with all the hundreds of religions and philosophies, isn’t it. When ‘here’, we experience, this is it, this is the obvious, actual, undoubted factuality, the bottom-line. That’s why I could finally give up the highly valued and cherished belief in Osho and Zen-mystics – I had a day of belief-less actuality and the experience was faaaar superior.

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.

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, when somebody asked me about Akashic Records, I experienced that bliss-state for about an hour, the state Mrs. Roberts seems to describe in her book. 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 TV set or is able to intuit into someone else’s, in this case Mrs. Roberts, religious imaginations. (I had read Bernadette Roberts, a Christian Mystic’s book, ‘What is Self?’ prior to this experience). 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 virtual, 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, 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 as a flesh and blood body, with the senses. Boy, 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.

*

One never knows how many actors are still waiting behind stage until they had their appearance. It is fascinating, when I think about it. The moment I discovered the ‘drama queen’, it lost its conviction. The moment I discovered ‘me’, the Truth-producing enlightened faculty, it became impossible to believe that produced ‘truth’. And the day I discovered the ‘believer’, the mechanism of believing I could not believe anymore – the mechanism was switched off and disappeared. I had to investigate the facts. One piece after the other fell off ‘me’, while at the same time taking the veil off the physical senses. The colours became more vivid, the sounds multi-layered, the skin awake to sense the air in temperature and consistency, the little hair on the forearm being touched by the soft breeze.

Good question, my search-light looking for ‘me’ is constantly switched on. As I described above, one objection has been that I thought I hadn’t quite properly understood these spiritual realms. But what a relief when I finally popped my head out of the delusion, back into here, leaving such collective imagination behind. Enough is left of ‘Vineeto’ to stage another insane mini-drama in the head. But, in the meantime, I am having a bloody good time.

I don’t think we got him wrong there. Commitment was not only during ranch-time a big issue, totality, as it was called later, was the main ingredient for the path to enlightenment. The story of digging only one hole, not 50, to produce a well, the stressing not to see other master as to not get confused are only two examples of his teaching.

‘Being happy here and now’ is only part of the teaching. It does not jell with the teaching of reincarnation, of enlightenment being the ending of the wheel of birth and death and the teaching of meditation to one day, after a lot of effort, become enlightened. Yes, when after all this effort you become enlightened, then you can laugh and say you were always here and now. But normal mortals were considered asleep and had to do dynamic and other exercises to wake up.

The other obvious difference between the spiritual ‘here and now’ and the actual ‘here and now’ is how Osho and eastern philosophy regards the body and everything physical. The spiritual concept is that the world is ‘may’, an illusion. Once you get it, you can be happy ‘here and now’. But you have to understand that you are the ‘watcher’, not the body, you have to be detached from the body and your senses to rise to your ‘true nature’. That ‘true nature’ is your consciousness, so they say, best to be achieved through meditation, which is in its purest form sitting motionless with closed eyes for hours on end. Then the identity is shifted to the ‘watcher’, Consciousness and one day one realizes that one is One with All, That, Universal Love etc. The delusion is complete. Yes, one loses one’s ego on the way, but the soul, the feeling part of the Human Condition stays not only fully intact, but is aggrandized to the extent that one considers oneself to be God or the Universe itself.

Compared to this illusory scenario, the actual ‘here and now’ is to be here in this moment of time, which is the only moment one can experience anyway. To be actually here is to be in this place which is no-where in particular in the infinitude of the physical universe. Coming from no-where and having no-where to go we find ourselves here in this moment in time in this place in space. To be here is to be the universe experiencing itself as a human being. Being here now is to ‘be doing what is happening’ with no sense of ‘I’ or feelings of ‘me’. To be fully here, now without a fearful ‘self ‘or a ‘Grand Self’ is to be innocent, perfect and pure, fully engaged in this only moment of being alive.

Yesterday we again saw Monty Python’s ‘The Search for the Holy Grail’, and one scene particularly struck me for its aptness –

King Arthur and his knights encounter the monster with the thousand teeth in the cave and are pursued by it, back and forth, on the screen. The chase is played out in a simple cartoon. There seems to be no way out for the knights, they surely will be devoured any minute, when suddenly the animator, who was busy painting the monster, dies from a heart attack. The monster duly disappears and the knights find themselves, alive and well, in 20^th century English countryside – here.

I had a good laugh, because that’s what I find myself doing – sometimes there is this ‘monster’ of fear chasing me until I find the cartoonist (‘me’) and the show is over!

The other thing that went through my mind was my story about me being a ‘Truth-Production-Machine’. I wrote about it at the time:

Later on that night I went into an exploration of what this enlightenment feels like from the inside. In all my years of spiritual search, I had been vitally interested as to exactly what enlightenment is. I had investigated descriptions from the different ‘holy’ men and spiritual Scriptures, but could never quite grasp this mysterious ‘state of being’. Now it was obvious. The intense pulsing of the heart, the love and compassion for each and everyone mixed with the grandeur of ‘Divine Love’ or ‘Universal Love’. It is a very seductive state with this cozy warm sensation filling the whole chest or heart area, continuously glowing and an utter at-ease-ness, because every aspect of personal concern, ego or self is non-existent. And there is no doubt, whatsoever. No doubt about any theory or philosophy running in my head as I try and make sense of this new state. In this cock-sure security I could write Scriptures, poems, treatises on each and every spiritual subject, make up an illusory world of heavens, hells and Divine Laws and ways to get there. As long as I keep the ‘Love’ flowing, there is no fear involved either. I am convinced I found the Truth – if only there wasn’t somewhere in the back this nagging concern that maybe I am cheating myself!

I recognize a satisfaction and pride of finally standing equal as a woman besides all those superior men I have aspired to emulate, copy, obey, surrender to, or at least understand. Now I know exactly where they are at. I was like Gangaji swanning into a hall of disciples, all-knowing, generous, compassionate, and full of the wisdom of all the ages.

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.

Still, one great realization after the other are floating in and out of my head, engulfing me with their convincing web. Suddenly I become aware of what is happening. I am a ‘Truth-Producing-Machine’! I am producing the ‘Truth of Freedom’ to maintain my ‘Self’.

What a bummer! Just call it the ‘Truth of Freedom’ and turn it into a spiritual belief-system! Very, very cunning indeed. Back into ‘old time religion’! This realization truly ripped the carpet from under my feet. While it crumbled I recognized the enormity of its implications. My certainty vanished while I desperately tried to maintain and understanding about freedom and death. What to do now? Where to go from here? The ground I was standing on as an identity shook considerably but didn’t disappear entirely. I was still trying to make sense of me and life.

And then I reach the door marked ‘insanity’ that Richard had been talking about. Fear reaches another crescendo and turned into stark terror. Frantically I try to at least keep up the reporting, the cognitive exploring entity. But I realize that if I want to go through that door, the ‘pioneer’, the ‘scientist’ and the ‘reporter’ will have to stay behind.

As I wake up after a few hours of sleep I am desolate. Frustrated and desperate that the ‘self’ is still in operation and control, that I am not able to reach my goal, I have to admit that I have failed. I had done everything I could think of, feel about and imagine – nothing has ultimately worked. All my efforts, all my so highly valued explorations and findings have not been able to set me free. No hope, no will, no passionate intent. I am lost, empty-handed in no-where-land.

I said to Peter: ‘Forget about everything that I was so cock-sure about the last days. I have no idea of anything.’

Peter: ‘So, you got out of your enlightenment-stuff then? Congratulations! Isn’t it amazing what goes on just in the head and the heart?!’

I see that all of my ‘death-experiences’ up to now have been induced by willing death. It worked, to go into the world to enlightenment, to demolish the personal self. But it failed to rid myself of the psychic entity; the psychic survival-instincts are still fully operating inside, inventing one scheme after the other to keep up the illusion that I was indeed getting closer to the desired goal. Willing death was necessary but not enough, because the ‘who was willing it’ stayed untouched.

The impact and the very paradox of this revelation was devastating. I cannot do anything but something still needs to be done. Squirming about in despair, I could only face the facts. And the fact was death, death of all of me, death of ego and soul and the sense of being. Nothing less than the inconceivable, it stood there. The only thing to do was to stop denying the fact of ‘my’ inevitable death.’ Vineeto, Exploring Death and Altered States of Consciousness

As I see it today, there was an experience of ‘getting it’, understanding the Power and Glory of the heartfelt, chest-filling experience of Enlightenment and I then stepped out of that drama of the ‘Self’, I abandoned this particular belief / imagination / emotion. But in the frantic and desperate attempt to survive the ‘self’ jumped to the next possible identity: ‘I’ had seen through this immense illusion, ‘I’ have greatly understood, ‘I’ am the hero again. And with the ‘I’ claiming the honour of the realization for its identity, a Pandora box of new imaginations, fears and identities is given full reign.

I have no idea how big the effort would be and I have no intention to check it out. But I know that it takes a stubborn intent to keep going in the face of all the instinctual fear that has surfaced. Other people climb Mount Everest or journey to the North Pole to get their excitement and sense of achievement – I just do it on the couch.

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.

I don’t know what you mean with ‘the other’. Once I am out of the self, there is no other, just this body and brain functioning perfectly and experiencing the world around me intimately, with all my physical senses, fully alive and marvelling at my surroundings. While I am writing to you, Peter is clicking away on his keyboard, the computer is humming quietly, the night still and magic with the full-moon high in the sky. My fingers find their way from the letter to making words, my body still tingling from sex.

Life is wonderfully easy without the burden of the self. It was never the body or the senses or the brain that were the trouble, it has always been the ‘self’, which corrupts both thoughts and senses. This self is responsible for all the misery around the planet, the murders, wars, rapes, poverty, greed and hypocrisy. By dismantling and extinguishing it bit by bit I am able to live here, now, in this actual physical sensually experience-able world. I don’t need to escape into a fantasy-place where the ‘self’ does not exist. I came to see the fairy-world of enlightenment as a big, big fairy-land and quite a few people have been deluded into it, although rarely anybody succeeds in staying there permanently (a Buddhist pundit quotes 0.0001% of seekers make it). But in the end enlightenment is an Altered State of Consciousness, but nevertheless a construct of passionate imagination.

I did experience this enlightened self from the inside – called Satori, I guess – and from the outside – seeing the grand belief and emotions of the delusion – and I know the difference of quality when there is no self at all operating. All Enlightened Ones still have an identity; it is called ‘I am God’ or ‘I am one with God’. It still is an identity, very grand, universal but still with the one at its centre who claims to be God. The Enlightened Ones loose their ego but keep their soul, the identity merely shifts from the head to the heart.

Yes, I agree with you, it is an ongoing devastation for the ‘self’, for who we think and feel we are.

I don’t agree with you here. Once I got rid of my ideas, beliefs, emotions – in short all of my identity – there is no-one there to be an asshole or call anyone an asshole. This is not pretended humility. When there is no asshole in me, I also see no asshole outside of me.

As long as I swanned around like one of the enlightened ones I felt superior, and everyone else needed my compassion or wisdom. It took me a week to fully get out of that seductive delusion. It is part and parcel of becoming enlightened; it comes with that ‘energy’ filling one’s heart, one is being swamped with ‘wisdom’, the greatest imagination the Self can produce. One is hooked into the collective ‘wisdom’ of humanity and thus perpetuates the suffering and morals that have been our heritage from the very beginning. ‘Good’ is only the backside of ‘bad’.

The name of the game is to throw the whole coin of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ out the window. The name of the game is freedom from good and evil, right and wrong.

Once I got rid of ‘who I am’ and simply live ‘what I am’, this flesh and blood body, there is only silly and sensible, a practical, down-to-earth, delightful enjoyment of the perfection of this benevolent universe. This is when peace on earth is possible.

Yes, you observed it right – the flavours of Papaji and Gangaji are very different, they have got the heart in it.

The whole issue of actual freedom is the freedom from the instincts, passions, feelings and emotions. ‘Heart’-felt passions have been the source of both religious and tribal wars, of domestic violence, and of the misery and gulf between men and women. Any questioning of the love and devotion that the followers have for the enlightened ones and the religious leaders has led to emotional responses which you can now see happening on the sannyas mailing list.

Richard was indeed the first one to question the state of enlightenment because it did not match the way he experienced the world in the peak experience. In arduous years of investigation he discovered the massive delusion that enlightenment is and, by eliminating not only the ego but also the soul, all the heart-felt emotions, he managed to get himself out of this delusion. What was left after the complete elimination of ego, soul, identity and being was simply the physical human flesh-and-blood body, perfectly functioning in this magical fairy-tale like world. Without the Human Condition, without the overlaying fear, aggression, nurture and desire this world is experienced as-it-is, benevolent, friendly, easy and magically delightful.

As for your notion of us looking down on others – that is a curious matter. Of course, the actual world is superior to any state of enlightened delusion in that it is not merely a creation of human imagination but factual, obvious and perfect, as evidenced by the physical senses. If you have experienced it once in a peak experience – or remembered one you had, you would easily agree with me. Many people seem to have peak-experiences, if only for a short period of time. In my writing I am simply sharing the joy of having been able to clean myself up with Richard’s method and becoming virtually free. It is possible for everybody because I am nobody special. Everybody with enough intent and courage can indeed become happy and harmless.

So, you say one is imagining all this and it is not happening or is an illusion, and further that you are only witnessing it from some inner world which cannot be talked about – but only felt.

The cultivation of a spiritual ‘watcher and the subsequent Self-realisation is a mere delusion (an illusion fabricated out of an illusion), whereby the psychic entity ‘feels’ it is Immortal and Eternal. Spiritual freedom is imaginary, cerebral, fleeting, emotive (loving), compassionate (sorrowful), and woe-fully corrupted by power and authority.

Actual Freedom lies 180 degrees in the opposite direction to spiritual freedom. It is actual, sensate, tangible, ever-present, delightful, pure and perfect and available to any who is daring enough to free themselves of both the psychological and psychic entities within.

Not only me or the ‘actualists’, nobody has lived before or will after – they may imagine that they are eternally alive as ethereal spirits, but that is only an imagination born out of the fervent wish to be immortal. Therefore all the ‘Truth’ perceived from eternal souls, past lives, divine visions etc is a delusion (an illusion born out of an illusion).

Yes, everything that is said or written is interpreted and perceived through the filters of the Human Condition. But nevertheless, one can sort out the facts about the past achievements of man from the beliefs and interpretations. Without the ‘self’ which is doing the distortion, one can sort facts from fiction. I discovered ‘me, the believer’ – now the very act of believing is impossible.

Watching a film on WW II, I was completely overwhelmed by the feeling of the collective sorrow, guilt, depression and dread that made up the ‘dark part’ of the ‘German soul’. The feeling became so bizarre and threatening that I started to desperately look for something to bring me back here into the actual world. At the same time I was curious to experience and explore this new intensity of feeling.

I seemed to be standing at the edge of an immense abyss of hell, which emanated all of the terror and dread of humanity, stretching endlessly into a grey dead infinity with no hope and no way out, ever. My eyes were searching for something physical to anchor on. I stood at the window, repeating to myself, ‘this is a fence, this is grass, this is a flower.’ The bright redness of the bougainvillea outside in the garden penetrated a little into this powerful magnet of dread that was threatening to swallow me for eternity.

Above the abyss of dread appeared enlightenment, seductively blinking, promising bliss as the solution to this overwhelming hopelessness and sense of ‘evil’. But as I had seen through the illusion the enlightenment option only a few days before, I was not convinced to go down that land of imaginary bliss – I wanted freedom from illusion, any illusion.

So I fixed my eyes on the red flowers, until slowly, slowly the dread lost some of its power and turned into the familiar feeling of fear. But it was far from being over! I started to look for more actuality, longing for the taste of coffee in my mouth, for sounds in my ear and wind on my skin. Nothing else would get me out of this powerful collective and atavistic passionate dream.

Peter had told me about a similar experience that he had had just a few days earlier and had seen that there is no solution to be had in feeling everyone’s dread, everyone’s hopelessness. So I activated all my willpower to manoeuvre myself back into the physical world of the senses, where neither dread nor enlightenment exist – and I eventually succeeded. The experience left me shaking for another day, and I am glad to know that the door marked ‘dread’ is as much a dead-end-road as the door marked ‘enlightenment’. Quite a Rocky Horror Picture Show, just more real – and yet, all happening inside one’s own head!’

This drama was one of the many that I encountered when I dismantled the psychic entity in me, the very ‘who’ I thought and felt I was. It is an enormous drama, played out on the stage and along the script of humanity’s past. The more the ‘self’ felt exposed and threatened, the more the drama turned from the personal into the vastness of the collective psyche. It was an incredibly fascinating time discovering the emotionally compelling, yet dreamlike fantasy world that the Human Psyche is capable of producing.

As one piece after another of the psychic construct fell off ‘me’, it simultaneously removed another piece of the dulling and distorting veil from my physical senses. The colours become more vivid, the sounds multi-layered, the skin awake to feel the temperature and consistency of the air, the tiny hairs on the forearm being touched by the soft breeze, everything is alive, throbbing, delighting in the smorgasbord of the unending sensual pleasures that this world presents.

Everybody teaches, believes and hopes that love and compassion are the remedy for misery and hate, and nobody told us that it is as much part of the disease as the rest of the Human Condition. To free oneself from the whole disease of the Human Condition, the Psychological as well as the Psychic World, is to arrive in the actual world of people, things and events. A body innocent of any ‘being’ whatsoever is benevolent, free of both good and evil, delighting each moment in the infinite magnificence of being here.

If you actually understand what Richard talks about you would realize, Good Friend Vineeto, that to post a response to such an obviously emotional offering is the height of folly and the furthest thing from the unencumbered intelligence that one must be if they have been applying the method that he (Richard) has described on the list many times since two years, with great success.

According to your logic talking to anybody would be ‘the height of folly’ because every human being is an emotional being, genetically programmed with instinctual passions. The silliness I responded to was the pretence of No. 00 and No. 1 not to understand what Richard is talking about, whereas it is such a simple statement that one can permanently get rid of one’s whole identity, both ego and soul.

It is such a degrading, particularly female, conditioning to play silly instead of simply stating that ‘I disagree’.

Namaste Good Friend Peter, A pleasure to communicate with you.

I take it from your silly reply that you disagree.

Perhaps you would show where the logic is incorrect? It is as follows:

Oh Dear. It’s let’s be tricky time, is it – all this nonsense started with your initial false premise that

If you actually understand what Richard talks about you would realize, Good Friend Vineeto, that to post a response to such an obviously emotional offering is the height of folly.

This is, of course, nonsense, given that Richard himself has spent an inordinate amount of time responding to an obviously emotional person, namely you. You can posit ‘til the cows come home but meanwhile I’ll write and talk to whomever I please.

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I wonder what Good Richard would think of the claim of ‘great success’ with his offerings? From here, I can see no space for there to be any particular level, great or poor, of success in what Richard offers. It is all or nothing, yes? There is no intelligence in the thought of a partial suicide, yes? Much Love

‘From here’ , your spiritual world, is the wrong place to get the whole view. From the actual world where I live I have experienced increasing success ever since I started to apply the method – I am living with a man in perfect equity, peace and harmony for 24 hrs a day and I am having a perfect day 99% of my time.

Please, I would claim no ownership Good Friend. ‘Owner of’ is an identity.

Ah, so you don’t own your spiritual world, you just create it.

Contrary to spiritual teaching where there is only one end-result, if one removes one’s concept of one’s parochial self, actualism is about instigating actual change and that actual change shows instant success in my life and my relationship with my fellow human beings with every facet of identity, be it spiritual, social or instinctual, that is being demolished. It is not a feeling of success but success based on tangible results.

But Good Friend you offered this social identity: ‘I am living with a man in perfect equity...’

Oh, dear. Obviously you don’t know what social identity is in daily life –

Your social identity is a psychological creation manufactured by society to act as a guardian over the wayward instinctually driven self you were born with. With the pure intent to become utterly happy and harmless one’s culturally-imposed social identity will gradually become redundant and can easily be eliminated. With an almost non-existent social identity one can live with another human being in perfect equity, peace and harmony 24hrs a day.

Your idea of social identity is nothing but a cerebral concept and has nothing to do with actuality.

You can keep focussing your attention on my use of a personal pronoun if you wish, but the real content of what I am saying is in the rest of the words of the sentence. Do you always miss the point of what is being said by getting stuck on the first word? Maybe we can move on to ‘am’ now?

... and spiritually you offered your identity to be the owner of time; ‘I am having a perfect day 99% of my time’.

‘Owner of time’, my foot. No 4, have a look at the clock, or your watch if you wear one. You don’t mind me using a personal pronoun or should I use an impersonal pronoun when addressing you. Do you see how the little hand moves as you watch it? This is called time. Now do you see after it has moved 5 of those little spaces. Well, that is 5 seconds more of your life ticking away. Is that too complicated to understand or should we discuss the matter for a few more posts?

As for ‘spiritually you offered your identity’ – this is again your spiritual conjecture because there is not a skerrick of spiritual belief in me, I am hosting no spirits whatsoever, and I don’t believe in any life after death.

Maybe your ‘deep bow’ position is responsible for your bent interpretation of straightforward words?

There is nothing then, ‘overlaying and corrupting the experience of the purity and perfection of the physical universe.’ It is the energy of that universe itself as the human mind, which is ‘cleansing’ itself of the contamination of both genetically and socially based cause/effect reaction; or – using Krishnamurti’s metaphor for the occurrence – there has been a mutation of the brain itself, the same occurrence we see anywhere else in nature when some obstruction to the most optimum capacity of organismic function has reversed itself or has developed out of its own disease or imbalance.

‘That universe itself’ ... ‘cleansing itself of the contamination’ is the perfect expression for God, which in Eastern religion is an aggrandized ‘Me’ that feels itself to be the universe itself, cleansing itself. This perverted and ‘self’-centred view of the workings of the physical universe is the result of the spiritual practice of dissociation and identification with the greater whole. Whereas what I said was that I investigate into the genetic/instinctual and social/spiritual programming in me that is overlaying and corrupting the experience of the purity and perfection of the physical universe. Therefore my statement and your idea of ‘Krishnamurti’s metaphor’ are 180 degrees opposite – I, this flesh and blood body, am actively dismantling both my social and instinctual ‘self’ while you are suggesting that the ‘the energy of that universe’ aka God ‘is cleansing itself’ .

It is god to you when you are conceptualizing it. When it is What you ARE it is simply what is happening, it is simply consciousness without the illusion of separateness, of division, such as PCE, actualism, atheism, etc. You expend far too much energy trying to define what you hear in your own terms, which terms themselves are nothing but ‘eastern religion’ reduced to ‘this flesh and blood body’ which is what YOUR god is.

No, there is not conceptualizing needed. An illusion can be seen as what it is when one is not caught up in the feeling of being ‘that universe itself’ ... ‘cleansing itself of the contamination’. Just as one can recognize an unconscious behaviour by diligently observing oneself and then step out of it, it is also possible to recognize a passionate belief as nonsensical and non-actual and step out of it. When I investigated that overwhelming feeling of ‘What you ARE’ , I had to admit that, although very convincing and gratifying, it was only meta-physical and thus I was able to step out of it and leave that part of my ‘Self’ behind. This is not replacing one belief with another; this is removing the believer and entering the actual world of sensate and reflective experiencing.

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