Today I don’t consider this duality subtle anymore – it is, in fact, very crude and blatantly obvious. In my spiritual years I had to practice much denial and acceptance in order to fit all the fervent beliefs and nonsensical explanations into my poor confused brain and it was a great relief when the bubble of beliefs finally burst. I practiced denial for years, despite evidence and common sense, attempting to transcend my ‘bad’ emotions, my personal thoughts, my association with my physical body and tried to ignore all the real suffering, both my own and that of others around me. In return, I needed a lot of reassurance through feel-good energy, feeling superior by belonging to the Chosen Ones and the daily practice of meditation in the nursery of an isolated Ashram.

It is hard work to keep nonsensical belief alive, complete with moral control and the demands of one’s social identity. Although it requires a lot of effort and persistence at the start to investigate and eliminate one’s beliefs, feelings and emotions, living in Actual Freedom doesn’t need any effort at all because the actual world is already always here. One simply needs to remove everything that prevents the actual from becoming apparent.

It’s a superb bargain to exchange one’s beliefs, emotions and instinctual passions for the sensate actuality and magical perfection of the actual world.

Maybe you have already found the two diagrams relating to this subject – ‘180 opposite’ and ‘Who am I vs. What am I’?

Will this ‘I’-less state result in being slow, lethargic or will our natural body system of being active – passive self-regulate into a balanced state? There will be no more ‘I’ to psychologically motivate us and to influence the body to ‘get up and do something’ rather then, for example, to sit and enjoy a sunset. Or is being slow and lethargic an emotional state that will be weeded out by then?

If in asking the question of ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ I get the answer ‘lethargic’, I know that there is a feeling to be looked at and investigated. In my experience, lethargy was a reluctance to investigate a scary issue, to question a deep-seated dearly held belief, to sort out peer-group pressure and explore what I had deemed to be the truth for many years. Lethargy, for me, is the same feeling that Alan calls ‘stuckness’, a seemingly non-feeling dull state where feelings are kept under the carpet because they are too scary to acknowledge and explore. Lethargy is simply another word for not wanting to be here, for whatever reason.

What got me out of lethargy or stuckness or denial or melancholy was always the sensible thought that it is my time and my life that I am wasting and that the issue will not go away by itself – nothing will change unless I change.

PS: It is definitely a good idea to get out of the spiritual world. Here are two examples that I came across the other day that made the institutionalized insanity of spiritual belief-systems ever more apparent. The first is pure Buddhism from a Buddhist mailing list.

In my East Asian Buddhism course a student asked why the Dalai Lamas show human imperfections if they are reincarnations of Avalokitesvara. In other words: what is the doctrinal reasoning to explain the absence of a bodhisattva’s perfections in its human incarnation? Thanks for anyone willing to step up to the plate.

There are several ways of responding. An obvious one from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective is that apparent imperfections are only apparent, that is, that Dalai Lamas are fully awakened beings, and so our perceptions of their flaws are simply reflections of our own limitations. This response would be related to the guru yoga system, in which students are taught to visualize their teachers as fully enlightened Buddhas, even if they don’t seem to be. Students are taught that even if gurus have the flaws one sees in them, by perceiving in this way one develops the flaws oneself, but if one learns to perceive them as Buddhas, one acquires the enlightened qualities of Buddhas. Another perspective would be to think in terms of upaya (skill in means): from this perspective, any apparent imperfections, limitations, etc. are merely expedient devices skilfully used by Dalai Lamas for teaching purposes (even though these may be too subtle for ordinary beings to fathom). Thus, for example, the 6^th Dalai Lama decided that he didn’t want to live in the Potala and be confined by monastic restrictions, so he got himself an apartment in town and had numerous affairs with women. He wrote a number of poems about his love of romance and drinking, and these are generally viewed by Tibetans as examples of very subtle skill in means. The bottom line is that if one accepts Dalai Lamas as physical manifestations of Avalokitesvara, one is committed to the proposition that any apparent limitations or imperfections are not what they appear to be. Buddhist Mailing List

Isn’t it amazing to hear the opinion from an obvious expert on the subject matter. As a faithful student you are to put aside your common sense and practice denial and transcendence in order to become as much of a hypocrite as the Guru whose ‘apparent’ flaws you should not perceive. ‘Very subtle skill in means’ indeed!

• I need to be more careful about the terms that I use. I wasn’t talking about a higher self.
• Previous teaching is to be aware of what I am actually doing, thinking and feeling from moment to moment. This is helpful to me in understanding actual freedom.

You stated earlier that you ‘have been on this path of self discovery for 30 yrs now’

• I guess self-knowledge would have been a better word to use there although that doesn’t really fit either. I don’t want to discover a spiritual self.
• My previous teachings to me are about the actual. For example, a key ingredient of my previous teachings is about having a direct experience of the actual which I feel is necessary to having a PCE.
• Direct experience of the actual would be being with this monitor without having other thoughts about the past, etc. I’m not into any new age teachings. I clearly see the difference between sensual feelings and affective feelings.
• I wasn’t talking about a spiritual reality.

It took some time until the penny dropped but I have finally understood that ‘actual change’ and ‘radically new’ are obviously not on your menu. Out of this misunderstanding I have cluttered you with heaps of irrelevant information, but never mind. In order to ensure no change you are exactly on the right track. You might remember Peter’s equation that he introduced when reviewing Paul Lowe’s spiritual book:

‘Denial plus Transcendence Equals No Change’ (D + A = nc)

With the brilliant example of denial and applying the teachings of transcendence that you have given above you will have no trouble avoiding the dreaded actual change.

I have always found it fascinating to discover in the course of my correspondence, meeting people and reading New Age publications, that the new fashion in spiritual circles is now introducing words like ‘non-spiritual’, ‘actual’ and even ‘apperception’ into their current vocabulary, because it sounds good and ‘feels right’. The New Age search that started in the ‘sixties now needs a new polishing, as it has become a bit of a well-worn path that hasn’t delivered the desired results for millions of seekers. This re-vamping process can be compared to taking one’s rotten old Ford car, giving it a new paintjob and a flashy bumper-bar and re-naming it ‘Lamborghini’. Now one can show it again, all the while it remains rotten to the core. A face-lift, à la Hollywood, is accomplished by creating a few new terms and labels – and the spiritual search can continue on for another fifty years without being considered out of date.

Actualism writings are an excellent source for such face-lift words, particularly when applied in creative combinations. The postmodern Non-Spirituality that is evolving from the New Age Spirituality now reads like this (and most examples are not even invented by me) –

Flesh-and-blood body mindfulness, apperceptive presence, non-spiritual reality, direct actual experience of truth, factuality of one’s ordinary self, a feeling of pure consciousness approaching, direct divine experience of the physical universe, non-spiritual self, spiritual ... oops, non-spiritual intimacy, thoughtless perfection, emotional facts, virtual commitment, physical Being, ever improving perfection, extremely free, exploring beyond appearance into ‘actual reality’, the all-consuming universe experiencing the moment, personal sensate-only experience, such sensuous no-mind image, natural non-spiritual living, factual emotional remembrance, timeless sense of actuality, watching without being a watcher, unfragmented observed actuality, virtual facts, greater actuality, beyond the realm of the apperceptive mind-entity.

I am sure there are plenty more examples to describe the verbal assimilation that will take place in the transformation from Eastern Religion to New Age Spirituality to Post-modern Non-Spirituality. A hilarious and highly entertaining example of such effort can be found in Richard’s correspondence, List A, No 5. No 5 took a particular liking to the word ‘apperception’.

Richard sums up his experience of years of talking to people like this:

People do not want to be free of the Human Condition anywhere near enough. Until one’s search becomes what others would call ‘obsessive’ it is but dabbling. Peace-on-earth is something to dedicate oneself to with the whole of one’s being ... it is what is called ‘commitment’. Richard, List B, No 12

My previous teachings to me are about the actual. For example, a key ingredient of my previous teachings is about having a direct experience of the actual which I feel is necessary to having a PCE.

I am stunned that you can call Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s teaching being ‘about the actual’. If you had followed a bit of Richard’s extensive correspondence with many, many people on this very same teacher’s mailing list, you would at least have noted that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s concern is the transcendental and nothing but the transcendental. Vis:

‘If you have come this far in meditation, you will find there is silence, a total emptiness ... ... therefore there is a possibility for that which is timeless, eternal, to come into being ... ... the discovery of truth, or God demands great intelligence, which is not assertion of belief or disbelief, but the recognition of the hindrances created by lack of intelligence. So to discover God or truth – and I say such a thing does exist, I have realised it – to recognise that, to realise that, mind must be free of all the hindrances which have been created throughout the ages’. (The Book Of Life: Daily Meditations With J. Krishnamurti’, December Chapter. Published by Harper, San Francisco. Copyright ©1995 Krishnamurti Foundation of America).

In order to be able to say that Mr. Krishnamurti’s teachings to you are ‘about the actual’ you have to either ignore 90% of Krishnamurti’s teachings or twist the meaning of the word ‘actual’ into meaning spiritual and transcendental. ‘The key ingredient of [your] previous teachings is about having a direct experience’ of the divine, not the actual. Vis:

‘I have seen the glorious and healing Light. The fountain of Truth has been revealed to me and the darkness has been dispersed. Love in all its glory has intoxicated my heart; my heart can never be closed. I have drunk at the fountain of Joy and eternal Beauty. I am God-intoxicated’. (‘Krishnamurti: The Years Of Awakening’ Mary Lutyens; Avon Books, New York, 1991).

I have no problem with whatever name you might give to your goal and your experiences but denial and transcendence are a sure method of avoiding a Pure Consciousness Experience.

*

As you might have gleaned from Richard’s description, your ‘direct experience of the actual’ and Richard’s direct experience of the actual are two different pairs of shoes. The choice is always yours.

With pleasure. I have spent wonderful hours on the balcony the other night, watching the sky and listening to the different sounds of the night while contemplating about all the different instincts that I have encountered and learnt to understand on the path to freedom. So this is what I have come up with:

Fear We all know it at nauseam; it includes trickery, cunning, numbness, confusion, escape, denial, excuses, guilt and beliefs in all kinds of good (potentially helpful) and bad (potentially harming) spirits. And of course there is panic, terror and good old dread and the escape into enlightenment. But fear is also the doorway to courage, thrill and excitement to reach closer and closer to one’s destiny.

I just reread Richard’s account of a glimpse of actual freedom and ‘his’ final disappearance into the permanent state of actual freedom and the accompanying states of fear. Is it that I must ultimately accept so fully in the end that who ‘I’ am is fear – must ‘I’, in the end ‘identify?!’ with this fear so fully that ‘I’ as an observer or controller in any way ‘exit’ the ‘real’ world, finally through fear, the primal ‘stuff’ of which the self is made? Because any ‘me’ that is left now to manage these intense states of instinctual fear, any ‘me’ who desires to watch, escape, manipulate, alleviate this essential fear is that pesky little self again, doing tricks to keep saving its ectoplasmic butt. Ah well, next stop on this train of thought may be the twilight zone – so I think I’ll leave it at that.

In his chapter about Death, Peter has reported of the work of some researchers, and that they found five significant stages that everyone seems to go through when dying. They are denial, anger, bargain, depression and acceptance (although the last is better called resignation). I looked back on my process of the last 12 months investigating and approaching the death of ‘me’ and wondered if there are similar stages when the ‘self’ dies.

Denial is obvious. The first task was to admit that something was fundamentally wrong with human beings and with me in particular before I could proceed in investigating any solution.

Two weeks ago I had a conversation with one devoted meditator of my former tribe (Sannyas) which I found interesting in many aspects. First of all I was both happy and astounded at how well and easy the discussion went – I didn’t have to struggle with any of the vagueness, psychic confusion, doubts or fears that I knew so well from earlier discussions with spiritual people. In the conversation I could easily state that with Actual Freedom I know now where I stand, what I want and how I go about reaching that goal, while he maintained that to reach enlightenment you are supposed to give up the desire and certainty of ever attaining it! The perspective and understanding of the actual world is all so easy and simple, so obvious and transparent that the hazy, mysterious hocus-pocus of ‘Truth’, ‘That’, the ‘Grace of God’ or ‘Existence’ seem nothing but passionate and silly childish fairytales.

It was interesting that in the discussion we constantly needed to define the words we used. He had different connotations about ‘instinct’ as only meaning the physical startling response or the change of breath or heartbeat at imminent danger. So he could easily hold on to his belief that without instincts one would die, not be able to breathe, or maintain one’s heartbeat. When I asked him what he would call our instinctual reactions of anger, fear, sex or rage, he had no appropriate word at all. Similarly we had to different definitions of the word ‘emotion’. Emotion to him only meant a very strong feeling, easily noticeable as emotional outbursts like screaming, crying, fighting or being shocked. When I asked what he would call emotions like hope, trust, attraction or apprehension, those feelings did not seem to exist at all and had no specific name, but were definitely not emotions. Thus he could maintain that he hardly had any emotions and that they are not the problem with human beings, since they only happen ‘once in a while’.

For him the problem lies in the mind, in thoughts, which start, trigger and continue emotions. Out of this reasoning he had to deny that children have any emotions at all before they develop the ability to think. They only suffer physical pain, but no emotional pain. I was simply astounded by such ignorance and stubborn denial. Even monkeys have been observed to suffer when their mother dies to the extent that they grieve to death, even at an age where they could easily survive by themselves.

From the premise that thought is the source of all evil it was only logical to conclude that meditation is the right method to stop the inner dialogue. By persistently watching the mind, the mind is supposed to disappear on its own accord. As with all spiritual believers, he was of the firm conviction that once one succeeded in stopping one’s thoughts there will be perennial peace of mind, no-mind as in dead mind. When I reported that I had succeeded in eliminating 95% of my inner dialogue by investigating emotions as the source and breeding ground for my ‘troublesome’ thoughts he exclaimed: ‘But I don’t want to investigate. Investigation is an activity of the mind and I don’t want to strengthen the mind.’

This statement made it clear to me again why so few spiritual people are willing to investigate their beliefs, feelings and emotions. The very word ‘investigate’ is evil, the very action of contemplation is considered the ultimate no-no. And one doesn’t even have to bother to change one’s malicious or sorrowful behaviour, because that is only one’s ‘personality’, which won’t interfere with the ‘higher self’ of enlightenment – so why investigate one’s personality or want to change it in the first place?

This conversation reminded me of an advertisement that I found in a woman’s magazine for meditation. It said: ‘Close your eyes, slow down your pace and tune into your true instinctual self’. Pretty clear, eh.

Mind is a fascinating word. By using it the way the East has used the word, it means you are to throw out your whole thinking capacity, stop thought in whatever form and then, one day, you will be in bliss and live forever in Union with the Universe and the Universal Mind.

And yet, there was something in the understanding that ‘mind’ should be the problem that appealed to me – that’s why I went to become enlightened. ‘Mind’, when applied to the social and cultural conditioning, to belief-systems, to fixed thinking patterns, to self-centred behaviour and self-centred outlook is certainly an essential reason for unhappiness and violence. The ‘self’-part of the mind needs to be tackled.

But ‘mind’ consists of more – it is also the capacity for common sense, for intelligent reflection, for practical investigation. But for that you have to remove the psychological and the psychic entity residing within yourself in order to ascertain the clear functioning of the brain.

The self-centred neurosis of Human Nature is identified in the East as the problem with humans but they attempt to eradicate only half of the problem. Eastern religions aim to eradicate the ego, the ‘mind’ (who we think we are), while ignoring the soul, the ‘feelings’ (who we feel we are). The resultant attack on, or repression of, all thoughts and thinking (not just the self-centred neurosis) eventuates in the complete denial of intelligent thought such as can be readily seen by the East’s lack of technological progress, appalling poverty, repression of women, theocratic empires, and a disastrous standard of health and environment.

*

What you are trying to tell me is just a psittacism of Eastern teaching. That does not make it a fact.

What you might call the witness or the watcher is just the state of being without thought. It is consciousness, being without thinking!

I take it that this sentence is supposed to be an answer to my last letter to you where I wrote:

The self-centred neurosis of Human Nature is identified in the East as the problem with humans but they attempt to eradicate only half of the problem. Eastern religions aim to eradicate the ego, the ‘mind’ (who we think we are), while ignoring the soul, the ‘feelings’ (who we feel we are). The resultant attack on, or repression of, all thoughts and thinking (not just the self-centred neurosis) eventuates in the complete denial of intelligent thought such as can be readily seen by the East’s lack of technological progress, appalling poverty, repression of women, theocratic empires, and a disastrous standard of health and environment.

This ‘state of being without thought’ is exactly the problem. The affective identity of this ‘thoughtless being’ is fully alive and kicking, causing even more havoc now that all sensibility and thought are removed. Nobody up to now wants to acknowledge that it is ‘feeling’ that is the main problem with the Human Condition, and nobody has even bothered to acknowledge the instinctual emotions of fear and aggression at the very core.

You may not yet be aware that my emphasis is upon examining and eliminating the feelings – affective feelings – that cause though to dominate awareness the way it does. Thought – the only tool that can bring about peace-on-earth in this life – is denigrated so much ... and the feelings that infiltrate thought get off scot-free. Maybe re-examining the whole concept of ‘mind’ would give you some insight into the actual world as opposed to the spiritual and affective world of ‘no-mind’.

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.

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