Have I understood you right in that you are saying that because of this male attitude of yours you are handicapped to ‘learn something of value’, to discuss anything in a sensible way because you only see ‘Ego Ego Ego in all these places’?

I do agree that ego, the male ego as much as the female ego, can be a great hindrance to sincere inquiry. However, I have found that it is possible to observe, examine and inquire into both my obstinate ego and my passionate soul so that they won’t interfere with my intelligence such that I can make sense of what it is to be a human being. The ‘self’ – both ego and soul – can be transformed in such a way that it agrees to and facilitates its own demise because ultimately that is the most satisfying thing to do in one’s life. It’s the only game to play in town, as we say around here.

There is no need to have an ego-fight or a soul-fight, defending one’s precious beliefs and convictions. I found it much more rewarding to question my every belief and conviction and investigate into the facts of the situation, because facts don’t need the confirmation or belief of anyone, including me – they are self-evident.

The other day I had a pure consciousness experience where I understood once again that the Human Condition of malice and sorrow is indeed the particular flavour of human beings on planet Earth. I experienced a broadened awareness that gave me an overview of planet Earth floating in space, observing all that is going on and seeing its common flavour of humanity, whatever the place, race, gender or age. Human beings, by their very nature are inflicted with the genetically-encoded instincts that produce malice and sorrow. They pervade every thought and action, are the fuel for every emotion and passion and make ‘life a bitch and then you die’. The social identity and the instinctual ‘self’ are intrinsic to and a result of the evolution that took place on this fair planet, the third rock from the Sun, in the Milky way galaxy, in the infinite universe. Yet now the evolution has reached a point where humans can free themselves from the now unnecessary ‘appendix’ of the social identity and the animal survival instincts. What serendipity!

In this PCE I could also see that even though a staggering six billion people think, believe, feel and act within these parameters of the Human Condition, the actual world is nevertheless infinite, eternal, perfect, silent and magical. The actual world is always and everywhere present underneath the doom and gloom of our ‘self’-centred perception and can be discovered any moment. In such a PCE I can see that it does not matter that right now there is only Richard who lives in the actual world 24 hours a day, every day. This blithesome, magnificent and benevolent actual world exists always and everywhere around us, it is always here, always now and immediately experienced when I leave all of humanity behind.

Out of this and similar experiences, I don’t need ‘to assume’ – I know the Human Condition in its totality, in myself and therefore in everybody, because I can see it from not being afflicted by it for a certain period of time. Such experience is the opposite of ‘egotistical’ because a PCE is only possible when the whole ‘self’ is absent – in spiritual terms, both ego and soul. And yes, such an experience, even for a short period of time is vastly superior to any experience within the Human Condition. That’s why I want to live it every day, 24 hours a day. I don’t need to ‘presume superiority’, I simply write from the memory of the superior state evident in a pure consciousness experience and from the ongoing experience of Virtual Freedom.

I don’t know where you got your definition of ‘EGO’ from, because it is neither from the dictionary nor from Mr. Rajneesh’s teachings. I’ll give you the Macquarie definition here: the ‘I’ of self of any person; a person as thinking, feeling, willing and distinguishing itself from the selves of others and from objects of its thought.

Ego is much more than just unawareness of unawareness! It is the little man in the head that controls our thoughts and actions. It is who we think we are.

I agree with your definition, however, I was not defining ego, but using the word ego to label a level of consciousness. According to my insights into this matter, the vast majority are unaware that their ego is operating according to the definition. They are unaware of their unawareness.

The question for me here would be, ‘who’ is the one that needs to state other’s unawareness of their unawareness to define one’s own ‘awareness’ of ‘unawareness’? Isn’t it the same ‘ego’, now merely feeling a bit superior to those ‘more unaware’? I found this spiritual superiority just another trap of the cunning entity inside of me to keep me firmly locked in the ‘self’.

You are very energetic and mechanical. It’s for me fucking unbelievable. Energetic and Mecanicallllll??????? You both fucking mind-fuckers are like unbelievable human-like computers!!! If you are human-beings. You are beyond my imagination.

What a funny way to say ‘I don’t wanna change’. Are you from Sirius, or the Pleiades or maybe the Little Prince from A. de Saint-Exupery, who tends his rose and his monkey-bread-tree on his faraway little planet – and now you are waiting for an other-worldly power to help you to be happy with your ego that you so excellently described?

It seems to me that Peter and I are the only Earthlings here on the list, saying what a wonderful planet this can be without the shackles of the Human Condition.

It would be all very amusing, if it wasn’t for the fact that people continuously fight and kill each other. I take it that your passionate writing is in response to the book review of ‘Zen at War’ that Peter mentioned to No 13, because in subject heading you wrote: No 13 re Zen.

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 prevent me from seeing a tree as a tree, a dog as a dog and a human being as a human being. Those overlaid emotions never let me experience the world as it is, there is always a ‘self’-related colouring that veils the clear perception. And once those both veils are taken off my eyes I can see the magnificence and magic in every tree, creature and human being. No emotion is needed to glorify it. This actual world is already perfect, it doesn’t need any enhancement by the ‘self’, the very sum of all our instinctual passions, 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 non-actual, everything that is not touchable, visible, audible, tastable or smell-able. Pretty radical, isn’t it!

Ha, ha, ha ...

If you are noticed my real intentions in my previous post, you are actually worth of anybody’s respect. My previous post was full of shit. Pure egoistic exercise. Sorry but how can I resist the opportunity to be a great, wise one from time to time. If my intentions were totally honest that post would be for your eyes only, not for the mailing list crowd.

I like your sincerity about yourself. It is a good start to take stock, and see what you want to change in you, isn’t it?

Still I expected an answer from you, but I am very much surprised with your reply. I expected something like ‘Go to hell’ or one sincere and juicy ‘Fuck you asshole’...

What you call a ‘sincere and juicy fuck you’, I call spite. This re-labelling with the new-age language is really to confuse everyone.

...and I expected it directly to my e-mail address, but what we have here: a very kind intelligent and loving person or a person lost in the sea of his own thoughts. So much lost that he isn’t able to see a simple provocation when is there!

What’s the point of answering a provocation with a ‘fuck you’, as you suggest. It was a good question of yours, after all. Provocations don’t have any effect on Peter or me – and we had a great deal of provocation in this business of trying to ‘tickle’ people into being happy and harmless.

My ego is 100 tons weight. I want to make it perfect cause it hurts, man. It hurts very much! So sorry, man. Most things you said in your reply make sense. I’m honest now. The exercise is over now. Why should I lie to you. I will probably never see you. You probably know very well that everybody has a very unique and very complex personality, and if I want to know something about your personality, your ego, it is only to forget at least for few minutes my own monster.

Part of those 100 ton-ego is also that you beat yourself up for it. It is of no use. Much better, to see your actions, what you said, done or thought, and do it better next time.

The trouble with the ego is that you can never make it perfect. You can only dismantle it bit by bit and eliminate everything it consists of. And not only the ego, but the soul, the emotions and instinctual passions as well. Then you are as perfect as the rest of the universe. This is exactly what we are discussing on this list now – to live one’s life happy and harmless, perfect and pure.

You say ‘More and more I fail to understand people’s emotional reactions, their psychological reasoning or the psychic vibes...’ I think I understand what you are saying – that you can no longer ‘empathise’ with others. I have found that the actions of others becomes more and more easy to ‘understand’, when one is lacking this ‘empathy’. Being driven by the human condition means ‘their’ actions and responses are very obvious and, oft times, very silly – and one is not thanked when one points this out!

Yes, I automatically empathized with people as a main tool of communicating, whereas now I am rather bewildered about certain actions or reactions of people. I can say that I understand the Human Condition in principle, how it works and how it worked in me, but I cannot understand anymore why someone wouldn’t apply intelligence and awareness instead of getting angry, sad, silly or spiritual. I cannot put myself into ‘their’ shoes anymore, so to speak. The advantage of this experience is that I have to actually inquire what is going on, instead of attempting to assume, guess, intuit or fill in the details myself.

I also noticed a change in how I perceive information about human beings, how they cope and try to make sense of their lives. Watching reports on TV, for instance, I more and more fail to understand what is going on in their minds and hearts and I have given up trying. Watching the different aspects of people’s lives all over the world I am amazed, astounded, astonished and impressed by the variety, the complexity, the wide range of human life on earth.

On one side there is this amazing technology that is galloping in many areas such as computer technology, engineering, medical science, biochemistry etc. and I see the intelligence, the effort, the altruism and heroism that people show. On the other side there is immense suffering and violence, brought close up through TV with story after story from all over the world. Every single human being suffers, in one way or another, all six billion of them. I am only able to fully acknowledge this fact because I know and pursue the only sensible way out. Seeing the immensity of the unnecessary, instinctually driven suffering only intensifies my intent to make my contribution for peace-on-earth.

Another outcome of not being able to empathize with others is that I start seeing the funny side of beliefs and emotions, particularly when I read Richard’s correspondence on other mailing lists. There is definitely a learning curve how not to be stumped by doubly twisted stupidity soul-d as deep wisdom, the latest spiritual insight, silly psittacisms and atavistic humbug. How is this for a sample –

What is identified by all the world religions and modern psychology as Ego is a consequence of encrustation of the primordial human soul, may be as yet fertile and productive at the social and psychological level and only at these levels, but nonetheless, a coagulation. Through loss of spiritual (thermal) dynamism, unity and spontaneity of the soul have been fractured and over time, the surface of the soul has become rigid, brittle, gross, dark and impervious. It may be not be incorrect to conclude that ego is harmful at spiritual level but is extremely necessary to live in a social organization centred around production of food and all the rest, even if the city was as simple and small as the earliest townships established ten thousand years ago.

The origin of human soul is the Divine Sun of the Spirit from where it was separated through centrifugal push. The act of creation is itself beyond time (beyond the lunar orbit). The primordial human nature is accordingly eternal. However, Not being the Sun, the hot molten earth, with time, through inevitable dissipation of heat, would lose its thermal dynamism. A crust, thin as it would be, will be developed. This is ego. Spiritual Mailinglist

Or this one from Richard’s latest –

Respondent: The ego, which is not real, attempts to persuade the Mind, which is real, that the Mind is the ego’s learning device, and further, that the body is more real than the Mind. No one in his right Mind could possibly believe this, and no one in his right Mind does believe it’.

There is no point in trying and understand this, it is simply a load of fervent imagination. The only way out is common sense –

Richard: As both ‘the ego’ and ‘the Mind’ are illusions and/or delusions anyway it is moot as to who persuades who as to who is more real or who is learning for who or who is believing who or what, or when, or where, or how or why. This is such fun, eh? Richard, List C, No 7

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