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Richard’s Selected Correspondence On Meditation
RESPONDENT: I have been meditating, reading and investigating for about 10 years. RICHARD: Okay ... do you mean ‘meditating’ as in the inapt translation of the Eastern Spiritual practice (as epitomised by the word ‘dhyana’) or as in the Western meaning: ‘think upon; consider’? There is a vast difference. In the West to meditate means to be thoughtful; to engage in contemplation about, to exercise the mental faculties, contemplate, think about, think over, muse upon, ponder upon, reflect on, deliberate about, mull over, have in mind, plan by turning over in the mind, fix one’s attention on, observe intently or with interest, concentrate on, consider, ruminate, study, intend, project, design, devise, scheme or plot. And meditation is continuous thought on one subject; a period of serious and sustained reflection or mental contemplation, consideration, reflection, deliberation, rumination, mulling over or being in reverie, musing, pondering or brooding. (Some examples of this use of the word are given by ‘The Oxford Dictionary’:
Whereas in the East to meditate means to be thoughtless; meditation is the action or practice of a profound spiritual or religious state of consciousness for whose description words are considered to be totally inadequate. It is the highest state of consciousness, associated with direct mystic experience of reality and cannot be experienced until a condition of mindlessness has been created through the deliberate elimination of the objects of thought from consciousness. The organs of sense perception are so controlled that they no longer pass to the mind their reactions to what is perceived. The mind loses its identity by absorption into a higher state which precludes any awareness of duality, although a form of unitary awareness of the conventional world is retained. Entering into Eastern meditation, one experiences the heart as being wider than the universe and experiences infinite bliss and immeasurable power exceeding any occult power. It is a yogic state of formless ecstasy when there is absorption in divine reality and a loss of body sense ... and the ego has been transcended. In this state one rests in highest consciousness ... one has become lord and master of reality. Very few spiritual seekers have reached this level for one is manifesting God in every second, both consciously and perfectly. There is identification with the transcendent, radiant being in which all phenomena are seen as temporary, non-binding modifications of this all-inclusive divine being. The divine self is realised beyond the view point of the physical body, or the mind or the independent personal consciousness. When phenomena arise to notice from this formless and unqualified presence or love-bliss there is ecstasy of perfect spontaneity. (Some examples of this use of the word are given by ‘The Oxford Dictionary’:
I would be interested to hear what meditating you have been doing. * RESPONDENT: For example, it is even a bit funny, but some time ago I became fascinated with some elusive bluish ‘aura’ about my hands. (I always wanted to see my aura because it was a measure of spiritual development, I thought. As is to develop strong, mesmerising ‘energy’). I felt very special until, after some time, I discovered that it is simply an optical illusion due to the fact that my skin is yellowish and the opposite colour of yellow in the spectrum is blue. An eye gets tired staring at an object and creates the illusion of the opposite colour just around any yellowish object! So much for my high spiritual advancement and aura seeing! RICHARD: Any spiritual advancement – with its associated manifestations of eldritch phenomenon – are also a product of the psyche. But not all uncanny materialisations necessarily produces a change in consciousness but does indicate that something is happening, something is stirring, deep down in one’s psyche. I had many bizarre things happen – electrical bolts of lightning dazzling on my eyeballs; pressure-pains in the base of my neck; surges of power travelling up my spine and up over the back and the top of my head down to the forehead; exalted states of consciousness; convulsive twitching of limbs; energy surges from the pit of my stomach up through my diaphragm into the chest cavity through to the throat producing intense nausea ... many, many weird things. None of them are important in themselves (some people get caught up in them and manifest psychic powers, thus never proceeding to the final goal), what is important that one takes them as a sign that a process is underway ... and to rev up the process with one’s active consent. The mark of success is to be willing to do whatever it takes, to proceed with all dispatch, employing much vim and vigour ... and have a lot of fun along the way. RESPONDENT: I have been meditating, reading and investigating for about 10 years. RICHARD: Okay ... do you mean ‘meditating’ as in the inapt translation of the Eastern Spiritual practice (as epitomised by the word ‘dhyana’) or as in the Western meaning: ‘think upon; consider’? There is a vast difference. I would be interested to hear what meditating you have been doing. RESPONDENT: I have been doing some dynamic meditative techniques designed by Osho (Rajneesh). RICHARD: Did they lead to anything like what I described in my previous E-Mail detailing what transpires in Eastern meditation? RESPONDENT: And I also practiced mindfulness as follows: I would maintain a diffused attention upon bodily sensations as well as on the sounds and visual stimuli from my surroundings. This could take form of a restful appreciation of a beautiful place, like for example, sunlight playing on the leaves of pot-plants in my apartment, or appreciation of a song. After a while, my thought processes became quite ‘transparent’ in the sense that thoughts often were given (by my brain) ‘same priority’ as other perceived objects and bodily sensations. RICHARD: You may be aware by now that I lay emphasis upon examining the feelings – affective feelings – that causes thought 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. I would suggest re-examining the whole concept of ‘mindfulness’ to see whether it is, in fact, a valid exercise. RESPONDENT: Occasionally, I would identify myself as a watcher detached from everything. RICHARD: Oh, dear ... as a psychological and psyche entity ‘you’ are already detached – that is the very problem – and to practice detachment is to be twice-removed from actuality. RESPONDENT: At times, I would lose myself spontaneously in the beauty, it the sense of wonderment. For example, driving to work, I would feel really relaxed – just driving, breathing, viewing. In this type of activity there are no problems; if some emotions arise they become part of this experience; my brain gives the same level of priority to them as to other things. Experiences like these are probably close to what you call a PCE (??) RICHARD: I do not gain that impression from your description ... unless the driving happened of itself. For example, I can recall 20 years ago, when I made a living as a practising artist, that ‘my’ greatest work came when ‘I’ disappeared and the painting painted itself. This exemplified the difference between art and craft – and ‘I’ was very good as a craftsman – but craft became art only when ‘I’ was not. It was this magical way of ‘creativity’ that led ‘me’ into this whole investigation of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being, by the way. ‘I’ desired to live my whole life like these utter moments of artistic creation ... ‘I’ wanted my life to live itself just like my paintings painted themselves. Consequently, here I am today ... and what an adventure it has been. RESPONDENT: I think that normally, emotions get priority no 1 in ones brain and they determine your behaviour. RICHARD: Yes indeed ... the entire affective faculty – which is identity itself – is the root cause of all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide that blights this otherwise fair earth we all live on. RESPONDENT: If my awareness is diffused over several objects simultaneously, there is a lesser chance that I will be compelled to react emotionally, explode with rage, anger, lust and hurt someone. I still have emotional impulses and sometimes I act upon them ... I know you don’t experience them at all. RICHARD: No, I certainly do not ... when ‘I’ was busy with all this seeking business eighteen years ago, ‘I’ did not diffuse ‘my’ awareness over ‘several objects simultaneously’ as there is a multiplicity of objects in the world of people, things and events. Instead ‘I’ developed awareness of existing only at this moment in time ... and the objects took care of themselves. RESPONDENT: You experience helped me to see through my spiritual ‘baggage’. Thanks! RICHARD: Excellent ... could you perhaps detail just what ‘spiritual baggage’ you have seen through so far? RESPONDENT: I am able to question my spiritual beliefs. For example, I am open to discuss any gurus. RICHARD: Good ... that is right up my alley. Of course, for all my exposé of the Gurus and God-men, I am very appreciative of all those brave peoples who dared to enter into ‘The Unknown’ ... if it were not for them leaving their written words behind I could not be where I am today. One does not have to rely only upon one’s own findings; it is possible, as one man famous in history put it, to reach beyond the current knowledge by standing upon the shoulders of those that went before. I would not be where I am today if it were not for all those brave people who went before me ... and I am so pleased that they left a record of their ventures. RESPONDENT: I stopped expecting any divine intervention to save me. RICHARD: There has been no need for a Supernatural Agency all along. The ‘Human Condition’ is such that it can readily respond to the do-it-yourself method; the ability is within the human character to fix things up for itself. The intervention of some Divine miracle-worker is never going to happen anyway, for there is no such creature. Human beings are on their own, free to manage their own affairs as they see fit. Whenever one thinks about it, would one have it any other way? If that fictitious Almighty Being were to come sweeping in on a cloud, waving a wonder-wand and putting everything to rights, would not one feel cheated? Would not one question why human beings had to wait so long upon the capricious whim of some self-righteous God who could have acted long ago? It is all nonsense, upon sober reflection! RESPONDENT: I became more sceptical as far as what other people say about these spiritual matters. RICHARD: Humanity has been living-out a gigantic mass-hallucination for aeons ... all the Gods and Goddesses, Devils
and Demons, all the battles that have raged throughout the ages are but a nightmare of passionate ‘human’ fantasy. * RESPONDENT: I am somewhat confused as far as the details of this self analysis go. There are several ways I have been approaching self analysis: 1. By paying attention to what happens inside me and outside me in ‘real time’ all the time. This stems from my former Vipassana meditations, I think. This state of alertness goes on sometimes for prolonged periods of time. It is difficult then to answer a question ‘what do I really want’ because the watching ‘I’ is satisfied by this watching activity. Everything happens in front of ‘me’. I am happy the way I am. Am I then in a dissociated state? RICHARD: Quite possibly ... but only you can know that for sure as I will only ever have your description to go by and would not presume to know your moment-to-moment experience. However, in view of your involvement with the Buddhist ‘Vipassana Bhavana’, if you had been successful in cultivating ‘Mindfulness’ properly, you would have been regularly attaining to the dissociated state ... else you have been wasting your time, effort and (maybe) fees. It is this simple: the word ‘mindfulness’ (which means more or less the same as ‘watchfulness’, ‘heedfulness’, ‘regardfulness’, ‘attentiveness’) has taken-on the Buddhist meaning of the word for most seekers (just like the word ‘meditation’ which used to mean ‘think over; ponder’), and no longer has the every-day meaning as per the dictionary. The Buddhist connotations come from the Pali ‘Bhavana’ (the English translation of the Pali ‘Vipassana Bhavana’ is ‘Insight Meditation’). ‘Bhavana’ means ‘to cultivate’, and, as the word is always used in reference to the mind, ‘Bhavana’ means ‘mental cultivation’. ‘Vipassana’ means ‘seeing’ or ‘perceiving’ something with meticulousness discernment, seeing each component as distinct and separate, and piercing all the way through so as to perceive the most fundamental reality of that thing and which leads to intuition into the basic reality of whatever is being inspected. Thus ‘Vipassana Bhavana’ means the cultivation of the mind, aimed at seeing in a special way that leads to intuitive discernment and to full understanding of Mr. Gotama the Sakyan’s basic precepts. In ‘Vipassana Bhavana’ , Buddhists cultivate this special way of seeing life. They train themselves to see reality exactly as it is described by Mr. Gotama the Sakyan, and in the English-speaking world they call this special mode of perception: ‘mindfulness’. Consequently, when the Buddhist practitioner carefully cultivates ‘mindfulness’, it is a further withdrawal from this actual world than what ‘normal’ people currently experience in the illusionary ‘reality’ of their ‘real world’. All Buddhists (just like Mr. Gotama the Sakyan) do not want to be here at this place in space – now at this moment in time – as this flesh and blood form, walking and talking and eating and drinking and urinating and defecating and being the universes’ experience of its own infinitude as a reflective and sensate human being. They put immense effort into bringing ‘samsara’ (the Hindu endless round of birth and death and rebirth) to an end ... if they liked being here now they would welcome their rebirth and delight in being able to be here now again and again as a human being. They just don’t wanna be here (not only not being here now but never, ever again). Is it not so blatantly obvious that Mr. Gotama the Sakyan just did not like being here? Does one wonder why one never saw his anti-life stance before? How on earth can someone who dislikes being here so much ever be interested in bringing about peace-on-earth? In this respect he was just like all the Gurus and God-Men down through the ages ... the whole lot of them were/ are anti-life to the core. For example:
It can be seen that he clearly and unambiguously states that he (Mr. Gotama the Sakyan) is ‘the eternally abiding,
unchanging, fine and mysterious essential body’ even to the point of repeating it twice (‘the Tathagata is eternally abiding without any
change’) and (‘the Tathagata eternally abides without any change’) so as to emphasise that ‘someone who is able to know that
the Tathagata is eternally abiding without any change ... shall be born into the Heavens above’. And to drive the point home as to just what
he means he emphasises that ‘the body that eats is not the essential body’ ... which ‘essential body’ can only be a
dissociated state by any description and by any definition. Whereas I am this body that eats ... and nothing other than this. RICHARD: [...] you have made it clear, both in your postings prior to that frontal
leucotome/ transorbital lobotomy email RESPONDENT: It’s not so much that I don’t want to do the necessary work it’s just that I cannot detect ‘me’ and thus I don’t have a grasp of this unreal being. It is like dealing with an invisible being. Thus how do I detect ‘me’? Can you give an example of what you did to detect ‘you’ on a regular basis before your ultimate demise? RESPONDENT No. 37: I had posted earlier that for someone who doesn’t have meditation background, it will be very hard to follow Actualism. RESPONDENT: I see what you mean. RICHARD: As to [quote] ‘follow’ [endquote] actualism is to put what is nowadays known as the actualism method into practice – the way to an actual freedom first devised and put into practice in 1981 by the identity then inhabiting this flesh and blood body it is to your advantage to re-read the following exchange:
Now, as I am the only person thus far to have obtained the full benefit of the actualism method then how do you equate that with what you replied ‘I see what you mean’ to? Furthermore, do you now comprehend how such discrediting tactics work? More to the point, however, are you aware of just what type of meditation it is which your co-respondent is promoting? * RESPONDENT No. 5: [...] I would suggest that you read this book ‘Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life’ by Jon Kabat-Zinn. [...] RESPONDENT: Thanks for that link to the book. I’ll be sure to check it out. RICHARD: Not surprisingly, that book fits into the self-help/ personal growth genre (the province of pop-psychology or pop-therapy) and, having been around since 1993, has many online reviews. As one such review begins with ‘I read this book after listening to Jon Kabat-Zinn on Oprah’s radio program ...’ I wonder if you are familiar with the term ‘The Oprahfication of America’ (as in the ‘no-fault moral universe of non-judgmentalism’)? For instance, an editorial review depicts the book as being about ‘... living fully in the present, observing ourselves, our feeling, others and our surroundings without judging them’. Indeed, on page 88 Mr. Jon Kabat-Zinn writes: ‘Meditation is a Way of being, a Way of living, a Way of listening, a Way of walking along the path of life and being in harmony with things as they are’. (As ‘things as they are’ of course includes wars, murders, rapes, tortures, domestic violence, child abuse, sadness, loneliness, grief, depression and suicide the lie of being non-judgmental is readily exposed for those with the eyes to see). So, how is one to achieve this sleight-of-hand? Simple: retreat from it all by going within to find your ‘soul path, a path with heart’ (page xvi). Or, even more to the point, on page 96 he says ‘Dwelling inwardly for extended periods, we come to know something of the poverty of always looking outside ourselves for happiness, understanding, and wisdom’. In regards to the ever-present problem of promoting a buddhistic mindfulness ‘dwelling inwardly for extended periods’ practice in a non-spiritual/ non-mystical way another editorial review says ‘The idea that meditation is ‘spiritual’ is often confusing to people, Kabat-Zinn writes; he prefers to think of it as what you might call a workout for your consciousness’. Regarding this ‘workout for your consciousness’ a customer reviewer writes ‘I read a lot of books on meditation, yoga, and buddhism, and this book doesn’t hold up to any of them’. Another one says ‘... because I have some familiarity with eastern thought I really didn’t connect with much in this book’. I could go on, and on, but I will leave you with what Mr. Jon Kabat-Zinn has to say on that topic instead: on page 264 he
opines that ‘meditation can be a profound path for developing oneself, for refining one’s perceptions, one’s views, one’s consciousness,
but, to my mind, the vocabulary of spirituality creates more practical problems than it solves’. And thus do the dilettantes spread the sickness
of the east. JONATHAN: What is the extra ingredient in the actualism method that is missing in meditation practices? RICHARD: As the actualism method is not a meditation practice in the first place there is no [quote] ‘extra ingredient’ [endquote] that is missing in them. JONATHAN: I should have said what is the main difference. RICHARD: This is what Peter wrote to you:
I am none-too-sure that I can put it all that differently but I will give it a go: put briefly, the main difference is that in meditation practices the aim is to bring about senselessness and thoughtlessness (as in become the witness) so that fancifulness and pretentiousness can reign supreme and ... !Hey Presto! ... a modishly much-aggrandised unearthly-like other-self manifests. JONATHAN: Awareness is a factor in both, but what you do with that awareness is different in actualism, right? RICHARD: Yes ... it is, in fact, 180 degrees different as the actualism method is all about coming to one’s senses (both literally and metaphorically) whereas meditation practices are all about going away from same (both literally and metaphorically). To explain: the word ‘meditate’ is the (inaccurate) English translation of what is known as ‘dhyana’ in Sanskrit
(Hinduism) and as ‘jhana’ in Pali (Buddhism) wherein there is a complete withdrawal from sensory perception and a cessation of thought,
thoughts, and thinking ... a totally senseless and thoughtless trance state which could only be described as catalepsy Apart from Mr. Venkataraman Aiyer (aka Ramana), in his early years, possibly the best-known example could be Mr. Gadadhar
Chattopadhyay (aka Ramakrishna): onlookers can see the body is totally inward-looking, totally self-absorbed, totally immobile, and totally
functionless (the body cannot and does not talk, walk, eat, drink, wake, sleep ... or type e-mails to mailing lists). JONATHAN: The idea that the spiritualist ‘be here now’ meant being in some mystical state never occurred to me. RICHARD: Okay ... this is what a dictionary has to say about the word ‘spiritual’:
And this is what a dictionary has to say about the word ‘spirit’:
Thus the word ‘spiritual’ essentially means (a) of, pertaining to, or affecting the immaterial part of a corporeal being ... or (b) of, pertaining to, or affecting a disembodied and separate entity ... or (c) of, pertaining to, or affecting immaterial substance, as opposed to body or matter. JONATHAN: When J. Krishnamurti talked about being choicelessly aware of this moment I took it to mean that he was talking about this moment in this world. RICHARD: Nope, not in the world but away from it ... for example:
JONATHAN: Words like Truth, Beauty and the such did not occur to me to be spiritual words. RICHARD: Spiritualists are prone to pinching spatial/ temporal words even when they have their own lexicon ... such as using the word intelligence, for instance, instead of god/ goddess and so on. JONATHAN: J. Krishnamurti also said something like ‘you are anger’. So it did not register with me that he meant that we were not our feelings ... RICHARD: Oh, he meant it alright ... for instance:
And what is the word most apt for the love which is ‘a total feeling’ and ‘complete purity of feeling’? Viz.:
And where does that passion come from? Viz.:
And here again in a similar vein:
Then there is this:
And this one explains all:
As does this one:
Finally:
In short: out of the passion of transformed sorrow comes compassion; passion also creates beauty; the feeling of beauty is the feeling of love; love is God/ love is not different from truth; I am God. JONATHAN: ... and so I did not try his choiceless awareness with that assumption nor the assumption that ‘this moment’ referred to a mystical state. RICHARD: Ahh ... there is nothing that can be more a mystical state than being a timeless and spaceless and formless god/ truth. * JONATHAN: It sounds like those spiritualists speaking above [now snipped] have the intent of being aware of this moment in the interest of peace and happiness. RICHARD: There are more than a few spiritualists who do not comprehend just what the goal of meditation practices really is (more on this at the bottom of the page). JONATHAN: I read a little of those spiritual books but always with a naturalistic view. RICHARD: You are not the first to do so ... and will not be the last. JONATHAN: If they said they were in some state I assumed they had tapped into something in the brain and just did not know what to call it other than God. RICHARD: You are not the first to assume so ... and will not be the last. JONATHAN: I never thought I was practicing anything spiritual in meditation. RICHARD: Back in 1968, when still in the military, I hired a black and white TV set for six months as, having been born and raised on a remote farm being carved out of a forest, television was a novelty and every now and again, whilst changing channels, I would come across a half-hour programme on something entirely new to me and called ‘Yoga’ which was conducted by a youngish women from India with, what I took to be, a large mole in the centre of her forehead (it was black-and-white television). What puzzled me at the time was that she kept on assuring her viewers that it was not necessary to be religious in order to start doing, what I took to be, the exotic physical exercises she was introducing into this country (daily doses of regular physical exercises were mandatory in the military). It was many, many years before the penny dropped ... and the Tai Chi introduced from China is another instance. JONATHAN: I guess that spiritual ideas are what the practice is based on so even with a secular humanist flavouring to the language it still takes one to the same place. RICHARD: Aye ... if only the western religions could package their prayer-practice in a secular disguise they too may gain many more converts. (...) JONATHAN: I am going to go back and read some of the commonly raised objections concerning this matter but anything you can offer would be appreciated. RICHARD: Okay ... given that you agree the goal of the actualism method just seems contrived then here is a question for you: what is the difference between solipsism and nondualism (aka advaita)? JONATHAN: I am not familiar with advaita. RICHARD: In which case ... essentially there is no difference between solipsism and nondualism as they are both totally, completely and utterly self-centred. JONATHAN: What does the question have to do with the actualism method being contrived? RICHARD: It does not have anything to do with [quote] ‘the actualism method being contrived’ [endquote] ... it has to do with you agreeing that [quote] ‘the goal’ [endquote] of the actualism method just seems contrived. Viz.:
Put succinctly: as the goal of a nondualist (even for a dilettante) is not peace-on-earth then, of course, the goal of the actualism method must seem contrived. * JONATHAN:
What I am reading here is, ‘good feelings along with bad feelings are minimized so that one is free to feel good feelings and thereby make a PCE more likely. Could you clarify? RICHARD: Sure ... the [quote] ‘good’ [endquote] feelings mentioned are the affectionate and desirable emotions and passions (those that are loving and trusting) and the [quote] ‘bad’ [endquote] feelings mentioned are the hostile and invidious emotions and passions (those that are hateful and fearful) whereas feeling good/ feeling happy/ feeling perfect are the felicitous and innocuous feelings (those that are delightful and harmonious). JONATHAN: So the meditation practices blow the affectionate and desirable emotions and passions up larger than life? RICHARD: That is one way of putting it ... the spiritualisation process involved is essentially one of sublimation and transcendence. JONATHAN: What do they do with the felicitous ones? RICHARD: As a generalisation: the felicitous (and innocuous) feelings are not experienced in their own right but are subsumed under the ‘good’ feelings ... felicity (and innocuity), rather than being the delightful experience of sensuosity and sensuality, then comes from feeling loving and compassionate (for instance). A conditional happiness, in other words, dependent upon the ascendancy of the ‘good’ feelings. RESPONDENT: I am definitely trying to practice actualism, but I have not received one answer to any of my questions I have posed to you. You know I don’t expect you to be some sort of guru or anything, just would like some info. Earlier you asked ‘where have I ever been evasive in answering direct questions to me?’ and it seems to me that my direct questions have been evaded. RICHARD: I have just now gone back through all twelve of the e-mails you have written to this mailing list and found the following three addressed specifically to me:
And:
And:
If all it takes is to not respond to each and every e-mail each and any person addresses to me in order to qualify as being evasive (synonyms: elusive, slippery, shifty, cagey, hard to pin down, equivocal, ambiguous, vague) in answering a direct question then all I can do is tug my forelock and say ‘guilty as charged, milord’ as there are an untold number of e-mails I have not responded to. You asked what I thought of you still doing Vipassana Bhavana – aka ‘Insight Meditation’ – in the way Mr. Satya Goenka made popular in the west (as in your ‘I still sit now’ phrasing), and whether I saw any conflict with that and actualism, plus what I thought of your proposal that it is accelerating the process of you trying your damnedest to be the body and every sensation that is a part of it. First of all, in regards to your query, here is what Mr. Ba Khin (Mr. Satya Goenka’s accredited Master) had to say:
Thus where you say you can ‘really experience the sensations’ whilst still sitting now (doing insight meditation the way Mr. Satya Goenka made popular in the west) then what you are experiencing – a stream of energy known as kalāpas – is impermanence or decay, and its corollary, suffering itself ... neither of which has anything to do with who you really are as you who are trying your damnedest to be the body, and every sensation that is a part of it (aka the kalāpas), are an illusion. And I say this, not only out of my own experience, but also because of what the very goal of Vipassana Bhavana makes crystal clear:
Hence where you ask what is wrong with sitting by yourself, and thoroughly enjoying the changing sensations that show up in the body, you are not only committing the cardinal error of trying to identify with that which is impermanence or decay (which, according to Mr. Gotama the Sakyan, is ‘dukkha’) but you who are trying to so identify are not who you really are anyway (the perfected saint who, at the termination of your life, will pass into an after-death peace). As to how all this conflicts with actualism: both who you currently are (an illusion) and who you really are (a delusion) can never be the flesh and blood body ... both the thinker (the ego) and the feeler (being itself) are forever locked-out of actuality. In regards to your professor defining beauty as complexity harmonised and, if harmony is not a fact or is subjective, then how peace is not the same: all I can say is that I have never said that harmony is not actual/ is subjective ... it is beauty itself – the very feeling of beauty – which has no existence in actuality. When I speak of living in peace and harmony I am referring to living in accord, amity, fellowship, and so on (and not as in
blending, balance, symmetry, and so forth). * RESPONDENT: I think Vineeto (and perhaps Richard) do not know what they are talking about when they speak of Vipassana: SC ‘body’. RICHARD: As I can only presume that by ‘SC ‘body’’ you are referring me to my ‘Selected
Correspondence’ topic labelled ‘Body’ And the reason why I suggest this is also because of this (in a recent post): ). As you not provide the text, where Richard describes the Vipassana Bhavana (aka ‘Insight Meditation’) Mr. Satya Goenka made popular in the west in a way which is ‘not at all’ what the technique you were taught is, there is nothing of substance for me to respond to. RESPONDENT: From what I have been taught, the teaching of Vipassana is to go beyond both body AND consciousness, or mind. RICHARD: Indeed ... here is but one instance (among many) where Mr. Gotama the Sakyan makes it abundantly clear that full release is beyond both body and consciousness:
RESPONDENT: (...) Are you sure actualism is 180 degrees opposite? RICHARD: Ha ... as I am this flesh and blood body only, and as this flesh and blood body being conscious – as in being alive, not dead, being awake, not asleep, being sensible, not insensible (comatose) – is what consciousness is (the suffix ‘-ness’ forms a noun expressing a state or condition), I am most assuredly not disenchanted with the body/ disenchanted with consciousness ... let alone fully released from same (and thus) discerning there is nothing further for this world. RESPONDENT: Maybe you guys just know Vipassana as taught by quacks. RICHARD: As the only occasion I am cognisant of, wherein you have read anything of what I have written
about the Vipassana Bhavana (aka ‘Insight Meditation’) Mr. Satya Goenka made popular in the west, is the e-mail I wrote to you
on Tuesday 26/10/2004 AEST Especially so as you specifically say that you [quote] ‘do not buy much of the theory handed down from
tradition’ [endquote]. * RESPONDENT: Ok – RICHARD: If I may ask? Are you saying ‘Ok’ (as in an assent or acquiescence in response to a question or statement) to my assumption that it is Mr. Ba Khin – Mr. Satya Goenka’s accredited Master – whom you are characterising as being a quack? RESPONDENT: Actually I was referring to your general description of Vipassana and the SC body
from Vineeto RICHARD: If you could provide the ‘general description of Vipassana’ of mine you are referring to where you think Richard [quote] ‘perhaps’ [endquote] does not know what he is talking about I may be able to respond constructively to your thought. Furthermore, as you do not provide the ‘general description of Vipassana’ of mine you are referring to, where Richard describes the Vipassana Bhavana (aka ‘Insight Meditation’) Mr. Satya Goenka made popular in the west in a way which is [quote] ‘not at all’ [endquote] what the technique you were taught is, there is nothing of substance for me to respond to. RESPONDENT: I just figured you guys agree on most of the things you say about actualism. RICHARD: Indeed we do ... however, as the Vipassana Bhavana (aka ‘Insight Meditation’) Mr. Satya Goenka made popular in the west is not, and never will be, actualism there is no reason to suppose that such concordance would extend to each and every detail of one of the multitudinous sub-sects of the multiplicity of sects which subsist in the religious denomination known as ‘Buddhism’. Speaking personally, I always leave sectarian disputes to the sectarians to deal with. RICHARD: Everything was already perfect, as it always had been and always would be. Yet I knew that I would revert back to being that entity – that ‘I’ – and work ‘my’ way through whatever stood in ‘my’ way to freedom. ‘I’ did not permanently ‘dissipate when seen through’ ... ‘I’ had to put in a lot of work before ‘my’ complete and final demise could eventuate. For ‘I’ was born out of the instinctual fear and aggression and nurture and desire that blind nature endows all sentient beings with at birth ... a rough and ready software package to give us all a start in life. There is nothing subjective about war and murder and rape and torture and domestic violence ... which is the inevitable outcome of blind nature’s gratuitous bestowal of the instinct for survival at any cost. RESPONDENT: If by work you mean meditative life, seeing with full attention or apperception, yes. But when it is asserted that ‘I’ have arrived at a me-less state, there clearly is divisive self-image. RICHARD: Not a meditative life, no ... I have never meditated
It was great fun and very, very rewarding along the way. ‘My’ life became cleaner and clearer and more and more pure as each habitual way of living life was consciously eliminated through constant exposure.
Thus ‘my’ days were numbered ... ‘I’ could hardly maintain ‘myself’ ... soon ‘my’ time would come to an end. An inevitability set in and a thrilling momentum took over ... ‘my’ demise became imminent. The moment of the death of ‘me’ was so real that it was experienced as being that one was going into the grave physically. That is how real ‘I’ am. * RESPONDENT: Attention that is prior to thought (meditation) perceives a dimension that is empty of form. RICHARD: Aye ... such attention is called imagination and such a dimension is called an hallucination. Speaking personally, I lived like this for twenty four hours a day for eleven years, so I know it intimately. Just as an experiment, try substituting some less exotic terms and see what your sentence looks like. For example: ‘Attention that is prior to thought (prayer) perceives a kingdom that is not of this earth’. RESPONDENT: That [dimension] inter-penetrates what is perceived as the physical world. RICHARD: This formless dimension is called ‘noumenon’ RICHARD: ... an ‘undivided consciousness’ means there is, literally, no observer and the observed (aka subject and
object) – the observer is the observed (aka ‘Tat Tvam Asi’/ ‘Thou Art That’) – wherein there is only observation (aka witnessing). In a
word: solipsism RESPONDENT: Would you please elaborate on the vital difference between such witnessing and the sensory ‘experience’ of the actualist? And is the mystical nature of the Witness, a la spirituality, its imputation of a non-material ‘essence’? RICHARD: First of all, there is no ‘the Witness’ in the state of undivided consciousness ... there is only witnessing (aka observation) because the witness (aka the observer) is the witnessed (aka the observed). Unless, of course, by ‘the Witness’ you mean God/ Goddess or Truth or Being and so on ... in which case another way of saying that is ‘I am everything and everything is Me’ (not the ego-‘I’, though, but the second ‘I’ of Mr. Venkataraman Aiyer fame) or ‘I am That’. The vital difference between that and the sensory experiencing here in this actual world – as evidenced in a pure consciousness experience (PCE) – is that, as this flesh and blood body only (sans identity in toto), one is not what is being sensorially experienced ... one is the experiencing of what is happening. To put that another way: as this flesh and blood body only one is the senses. RESPONDENT: Meditation then, is ordinary living when that living is not entrapped in paralysing and debilitating self-centredness RICHARD: As any ‘paralysing and debilitating self-centredness’ is caused by the presence of an identity,
then when this identity self-immolates ordinary living is revealed to be always perfect. Nothing extra needs to be done as one is already doing
what is happening ... no meditation is required at all. RESPONDENT No. 12: If you understood Krishnamurti, you would not have conceived of an unfragmented observer. That is like saying that there is an unfragmented fragment. RICHARD: I know it sounds strange ... that is because it is strange. Fragmented means nothing more
than consisting of fragments. If the observer becomes the observed, the fragments come together ... they are an integrated whole.
The observer experiences unitary perception of ‘centre-less seeing’. There is still an observer in existence ... now at one
with everything. RESPONDENT: Surely the observer cannot experience ‘centre-less seeing’ – for the observer is the centre. RICHARD: Centre-less seeing is when the observer has become the observed ... it is an holistic vision. This whole observer – unfragmented – is god. * RICHARD: That is why I wrote ‘unfragmented observer’ . That is what wholeness means, when all is said and done. RESPONDENT: Is it? Or can wholeness only take place when the observer is not? I don’t know what you mean by ‘unfragmented observer’. Isn’t the observer thought which has separated itself from other thoughts, which it calls the ‘observed’? The observer is therefore always a fragment. RICHARD: Do you really see ‘the observed’ as referring to thought which has separated itself from other thoughts, which it calls the ‘observed’? You do not consider that Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s use of the word the ‘observed’ refers to the world of people, things and events? Things like trees and mountainous and so on? The ‘observer’ quite obviously refers to an entity – a little person – inside the head looking out through the eyes as if looking out through a window to the world outside the house ... but to understand that the ‘observed’ is ‘other thoughts’ is stretching credibility a bit too far, is it not? Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti refers to the world of people, things and events ... for he said:
Or are you one of those persons who maintains that the objects of the world of people, things and events exist only in the
brain? That an object has no substantial reality ... as in being actual of its own accord? Because if you do, this is bordering upon solipsism Thus a devout Hindu will see a blue-skinned Mr. Krishna playing a flute and a devout Christian will see a fair-skinned Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene hanging on a cross ... and the Hindu will not see Mr. Yeshua the Nazarene and the Christian will not see Mr. Krishna. As they are both thus so obviously culturally derived truths – and not actual and substantial realities – then your version of understanding life is extremely subjective ... as I said, bordering upon solipsism. * RICHARD: If Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti had meant that the observer becomes extinct he would have said so ... he had a good
grasp of the language. But he talked of a state wherein the observer is the observed. He called that state ‘wholeness RESPONDENT: Not correct, Richard. Krishnamurti repeatedly stated that when the observer is the observer, there is then neither the observer nor the observed: Krishnamurti: ‘Isn’t there – I am just suggesting, I am not saying it is, or it is not, it’s for you to look to find out – isn’t there a sense of observation without the observer? Right? Do you understand? Which means there is neither the observer nor the observed. I wonder if you get this ... meditation means that there is neither the observer nor the observed. So the observer is not, only ‘what is’.’ RICHARD: There are two ways of reading this:
Of course, could be – and probably is – a mixture of No. 1 and No. 2 for he spoke about the same thing in another passage, saying that this was ‘the highest form of a religious mind’:
Where he says ‘That total silence in which there is neither the observer nor the thing observed is the highest form of a religious mind’ is why both Buddhists and Vedantists claim him as being one of them. That ‘total silence’ that ‘cannot be put into words’ is the ineffable ‘Truth’ of all mystical endeavour. And as Hindus and Buddhists are either Cosmic Pantheists (‘God is everything and everything is God’) or Acosmic Pantheists (‘God is beyond everything and everything comes from God’), you then understand what the source of the ‘Teachings’ are. This has been going on for century after century ... and there is still no Peace On Earth. RESPONDENT: I have tried ‘What am I’ and several other meditations. From your mails etc. I read you don’t need to meditate. If I don’t meditate my life gets clogged with intentions. The only ways to relieve myself are to sleep or to relax. Relaxation is a direct result from meditating. Another result is creative thought. RICHARD: Be it far from me to advise you to stop meditating ... Konrad is trying this at this moment with some interesting results. If you do, it is essential that you replace it with something else ... something better. As you say that your life gets ‘clogged with intentions’ then channel this energy into one big intention: what I call pure intent. Pure intent is derived from the pure consciousness experience (PCE) experienced during a peak experience, which all humans have had at some stage in their life. A peak experience is when ‘I’ spontaneously cease to ‘be’, temporarily, and this moment is. Everything is seen to be perfect as-it-is. One can bring about a benediction from that perfection and purity which is the essential character of the universe by contacting and cultivating one’s original state of naiveté. Naiveté is that intimate aspect of oneself that is the nearest approximation that one can have of actual innocence – there is no innocence so long as there is a self – and constant awareness of naive intimacy results in a continuing benediction. This blessing allows a connection to be made between oneself and the perfection and purity. This connection I call pure intent. Pure intent endows one with the ability to operate and function safely in society without the incumbent social identity with its ever-vigilant conscience. Thus reliably rendered virtually innocent and relatively harmless by the benefaction of the perfection and purity, one can begin to dismantle the now-redundant social identity. Diligent attention paid to the peak experience ensures pure intent continuing to operate. With pure intent running as a ‘golden
thread’ through one’s life, reflective contemplation – not meditation – rapidly becomes more and more fascinating. It is a matter of coming
to one’s senses – both literally and figuratively – and one does this by understanding that only this moment is actual. When one is totally
fascinated, reflective contemplation becomes pure awareness ... and then apperception happens of itself. With apperception operating more or less
continuously in ‘my’ day-to-day life, ‘I’ find it harder and harder to maintain credibility. ‘I’ am increasingly seen as the usurper,
an alien entity inhabiting this body and taking on an identity of its own. Mercilessly exposed in the bright light of awareness – apperception
casts no shadows – ‘I’ can no longer find ‘my’ position tenable. ‘I’ can only live in obscuration, where ‘I’ lurk about, creating
all sorts of mischief. ‘My’ time is speedily coming to an end, ‘I’ can barely maintain ‘myself’ any longer. * RESPONDENT: Since I meditate and sometimes experience actually what my reality is, be it for a brief moment, I am inclined to disregard those experiences altogether, for they are not beyond any enlightenment. RICHARD: No, indeed not, for meditation can produce only versions of reality – not actuality – and as everyday reality is a grim and glum business, one strives to attain to a loving and compassionate Greater Reality in order to ameliorate one’s situation. It is all due to the intuitive faculties – powered by passionate thought – that activates those psychic adumbrations so beloved of the metaphysical fraternity. The mind can be a fertile breeding-ground for hallucinations, for emotional and passionate thought begets the esoteric world, the suprasensory domain of apparitions and shadows. The mind, held hostage by humanity’s ‘wisdom’, is indeed a productive spawning-ground for fanciful flights of imagination, giving rise to the fantasies and phantasms so loved and revered – and feared – by humankind. One can easily become bewitched by the bizarre beings that populate the Supernatural Realms; one becomes beguiled and enchanted by intuition’s covenant with clairvoyant states of extrasensory perception. The closest approximation to the actual that ‘I’ can attain via prescient means can only ever be visionary states produced from utopian ideals that manifest themselves as hallucinatory chimeras. And it all has to do with the persistence of identity. So, instead of meditation, what about apperception? The Oxford dictionary defines apperception as being ‘the mind’s perception of itself’ . It is where ‘I’, the identity, cease to function as a perceiver and perception happens of itself. This PCE is a remarkably obvious peak experience wherein everything is seen to be already perfect – it always has been and always will be – and that ‘I’ have been standing in the way of the perfection being apparent. Apperception is a pure awareness. Normally the mind perceives through the senses and sorts the data received according to its predilection; but the mind itself remains unperceived ... it is taken to be unknowable. Apperception happens when the ‘who’ inside abdicates its throne and a bare awareness occurs. The PCE is as if one has eyes in the back of one’s head; there is a three hundred and sixty degree awareness and all is self-evidently clear. This is knowing by direct experience, unmediated by any ‘who’ whatsoever. One is able to see that the ‘who’ of one has been standing in the way of the perfection and purity that is the essential nature of this moment of being here becoming apparent. Here a solid and irrefutable native intelligence can operate freely because the ‘thinker’ and the ‘feeler’ are extirpated. One is the universe’s experience of itself as a human being ... after all, the very stuff this body is made of is the very stuff of the universe. There is no ‘outside’ to the perfection of the universe to come from; one only thought and felt that one was a separate identity forever seeking union. With apperception, what one is (‘what’ not ‘who’) is these sense organs in operation: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is me. Whereas ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body: looking out through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’ tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated, alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the magnificence of the world as-it-is – the actual world – by ‘my’ very presence. Any identity whatsoever is a delusion. Without ‘me’, the immediate is the ultimate and the absolute is the relative ... here on earth and now in time. * RESPONDENT: For example: You do not acknowledge meditation. RICHARD: No indeed I do not. Why would I? Nor do I countenance prayer. Nor self-flagellation. Nor fasting. Nor chanting a mantra. Nor ... many, many things. RESPONDENT: As I was saying before: ‘sometimes I realise my actual reality’. RICHARD: If you did, in fact, experience the actuality of this moment in time and this place in space, you would not be objecting to what I write. So, obviously your ‘actual reality’ is not the same thing that I talk about. As ‘reality’ is a belief system, it can never, ever be actual. RESPONDENT: Don’t you see, at such a moment every intent has gone. That’s because an attachment is dissolved. That is the functioning of meditation in actual perception. RICHARD: But there are thousands of attachments to dissolve ... who is busy being attached? Dissolve ‘him’ and you are done with having to meditate and dissolve an attachment again and again in what you call ‘actual perception’. Normal perception is an illusion and metaphysical perception is a delusion. Neither is actual. Just by putting the word ‘actual’ in front of your normal metaphysical terminology does not, all of a sudden, change it into what I am talking about. I wrote about ‘apperception’, not ‘actual perception’. When I wrote about apperception, I made it clear that the perceiver disappears ... not some thing that ‘he’ is attached
to. RESPONDENT: You tend to be too pedantic, and, I think miss the essence of a discussion. RICHARD: I am more than willing to discuss the issue of Richard being pedantic (synonyms: finicky, plodding, obscure, arcane, dull, doctrinaire, sophistic, hair-splitting, precise, precisionist, exact, scrupulous, overscrupulous, punctilious, meticulous, over-nice, perfectionist, formalist, dogmatic, literalist, literalistic, quibbling, hair-splitting, casuistic, casuistical, sophistical, pettifogging, nit-picking, intellectual, academic, scholastic, didactic, bookish, pedagogic, donnish, highbrow, pretentious, pompous, egghead, formal, stilted, stiff, stuffy, unimaginative, uninspired, rhetorical, bombastic, grandiloquent, high-flown, euphuistic, highfalutin) if you are interested enough to pursue the matter. As for ‘missing the essence of a discussion’ – and please correct me if I am in error – the essence of what you are saying in this post (and a previous one where you talked reverently of ‘the silence between two thoughts’) is that you trust intuition to instinctually accept what is ‘true’ and instinctually reject what is ‘not true’ ... irregardless of facts. This way, what ‘me’ as soul (the ‘feeler’) wants, ‘me’ as soul (the ‘feeler’) gets ... and what ‘me’ as soul (the ‘feeler’) wants is for ‘I’ as ego (the ‘thinker’) to get out of the way so that ‘the silence that speaks louder than words’ (such as the silence between two thoughts) can reveal itself for ‘the truth’ that it is (irregardless of facts). Which would be why you want for me to read what you have to say with a ‘meditative mind’ ... by which you would mean ‘meditative mind’ as in the inapt translation of the Eastern Spiritual practice (as epitomised by the word ‘dhyana’) rather than as in the Western meaning: ‘think upon; consider’. There is a vast difference: in the West to meditate means to be thoughtful; to engage in contemplation about, to exercise the mental faculties, contemplate, think about, think over, muse upon, ponder upon, reflect on, deliberate about, mull over, have in mind, plan by turning over in the mind, fix one’s attention on, observe intently or with interest, concentrate on, consider, ruminate, study, intend, project, design, devise, scheme or plot. And such meditation is continuous thought on one subject; a period of serious and sustained reflection or mental contemplation, consideration, reflection, deliberation, rumination, mulling over or being in reverie, musing, pondering or brooding. Whereas in the East to meditate means to be thoughtless; meditation is the action or practice of a profound spiritual or religious state of consciousness for whose description words are considered to be totally inadequate. It is the highest state of consciousness, associated with direct mystic experience of reality and cannot be experienced until a condition of mindlessness has been created through the deliberate elimination of the objects of thought from consciousness. The organs of sense perception are so controlled that they no longer pass to the mind their reactions to what is perceived. The mind loses its identity by absorption into a higher state which precludes any awareness of duality, although a form of unitary awareness of the conventional world is retained. Entering into Eastern meditation, one experiences the heart as being wider than the universe and experiences infinite bliss and immeasurable power exceeding any occult power. It is a yogic state of formless ecstasy when there is absorption in divine reality and a loss of body sense ... and the ego has been transcended. In this state one rests in highest consciousness ... one has become lord and master of reality. Very few spiritual seekers have reached this level for one is manifesting God in every second, both consciously and perfectly. There is identification with the transcendent, radiant being in which all phenomena are seen as temporary, non-binding modifications of this all-inclusive divine being. The divine self is realised beyond the view point of the physical body, or the mind or the independent personal consciousness. When phenomena arise to notice from this formless and unqualified presence or love-bliss there is ecstasy of perfect spontaneity. RESPONDENT: If you don’t mind my saying, reading your posts the expression that comes to my mind often is: ‘the operation was successful, but the patient died’. RICHARD: That is my very intention ... only when ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul altruistically self-immolate does the already always existing peace-on-earth become apparent (which is the only ‘success’ worthy of the name). Thus the ‘operation’ is not yet ‘successful’’ eh? RESPONDENT: Glimpsing from a structure is different than dropping the structure. RICHARD: The immediate question that springs to mind is who is dropping the structure? And please ... do not tell me that it is the mind merely imputing a ‘me’ ... we have flogged that subject to death. It is male bovine faecal matter and you know it is. RESPONDENT: No position to view from. No one to enter or leave. No one to land anywhere. Nothing to do and nowhere to go. Yet it is time to go make breakfast. RICHARD: Ah, yes ... the ancient Japanese art of the Tanka (sort of). Not being a poet myself, I will build upon an associate’s lampooning, for how else can I respond in kind? Sitting quietly RESPONDENT: If they give you one injection of adrenaline, will you be able to control your angriness? RICHARD: What ‘angriness’ are you talking off? There is neither anger nor anguish in this flesh and blood body ... do you really take an actual freedom from the human condition to be a suppression, or even a repression, of the affective feelings? Just for the record, however, when I have a dental injection to anaesthetise the jaw I always make sure the dentist uses a procaine mixture which does not contain adrenaline, which most such mixtures do, because its effect is psychotropic (just as caffeine, a chemical cousin to cocaine, is). RESPONDENT: Sometimes, I read that meditation is damaging the brain. RICHARD: I do not, and never have, meditated. RESPONDENT: Does not mean that somebody becomes crazy, but can alter the feelings functions. RICHARD: As spiritual enlightenment is patently pathological it all depends on what the word ‘crazy’ means
to you: as the word ‘meditate’ is the (inaccurate) English translation of what is known as ‘dhyana’ in Sanskrit (Hinduism) and as ‘jhana’
in Pali (Buddhism) wherein there is a total withdrawal from sensory perception and a cessation of thought, thoughts, and thinking – a totally
senseless and thoughtless trance state which could only be described as catalepsy This is because a never-ending ‘meditation’ (‘dhyana’ or ‘jhana’) – wherein the body is totally inward-looking, totally self-absorbed, totally immobile, and totally functionless (the body cannot and does not talk, walk, eat, drink, wake, sleep or type e-mails to mailing lists) – would result in the body wasting away until its inevitable physical death ... as a means of obtaining peace-on-earth it is completely useless. Speaking personally I find the word ‘crazy’ far too mild an epithet ... it is quite simply an institutionalised
insanity. RESPONDENT: Original link: www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/godonbraintrans.shtml (snip) NARRATOR: What is almost certainly true is that religious experience is far more complex than can be explained simply by activity in one area of the brain. Dr Persinger's work is only the beginning. Many scientists now suspect there must be far more to the relationship between the brain and belief. A research team has come up with a unique way of exploring this relationship. They examined what happened at the precise moment the brain had a genuine religious experience. It was the mind of Michael Baime that provided the moment of insight. DR MICHAEL BAIME: You could describe this experience of meditation, of really deep meditation, as a kind of a oneness. NARRATOR: Michael is a Buddhist, a faith that requires its followers to enter into the spiritual through medication. BAIME: As you relax more and more and let go of the boundary between oneself and everything else begins to dissolve, so there's more and more of a feeling of identity with the rest of the world and less and less separateness. NARRATOR: Researcher Dr Andrew Newberg set up a brain imaging system that could for the very first time track exactly what happened inside Michael's brain as he meditated. DR ANDREW NEWBERG (Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania): When the subject first comes into our laboratory, what we normally do is bring them into a fairly quiet room. They would then begin the mediation. We were normally not even in the room so that we would actually minimise any kind of distractions to them. The only way that we had some kind of contact with them is that they had a little piece of string that would sit next to their side. They would tug on this string a little bit which meant that now they were beginning to head towards their peak of meditation. (snip). RICHARD: What I find cute, in the above portion of the transcript you provided, is that in order to facilitate the ‘a kind of a oneness’ which the Buddhist Mr. Michael Baime says he can have via meditation – ‘a feeling of identity with the rest of the world’ – the only representatives from the rest of the world then actually present in the room absented themselves so as to not distract him from dissolving the boundaries he had in order for there to be less and less separateness from them ... so much so that his only contact was via a little piece of string. It does give a whole new meaning to the word ‘intimacy’, eh? A married couple of many years, in a marriage which has waned to the point of separate bedrooms, could sit mediating on their individual beds at night – connected via a little piece of string across the hallway – and signal to each other, as they each head towards the peak of their meditation, to indicate when their respective moment of oneness is nigh (as their respective boundaries are dissolving and their respective separateness is becoming less and less) so the other can know that the other’s feeling of identity is about to expand and encompass the rest of the world ... string-tugging moments of conjugal bliss such as this might very well save many a marriage from its creeping ennui. I am reminded of a photograph in the ‘National Geographic’ (page 84, September 1994)
taken in Japan of four monks sitting in a row meditating: they were all seated, cross-legged with eyes cast down, before a blank wall and thus with
their backs to the world, so to speak, as they sought their original face The words ‘a feeling of identity’ says it all. RESPONDENT: I haven’t written for a long time and I want you to know I am still practicing Actualism, reading the website over and over, running HAIETMOBA and reading what’s sent to Topica. My stumbling block is being felicitous, as usual. You’ve already coached me on this, I know it’s up to me to do it. I think also I am fairly detached, too, and what I have taken for a ‘good’ day is really more of a day of ... calmness, but a sort of contrived, finessed calmness. I feel stuck in the mud partly because I’m not having any PCE’s, the voice in my head will not shut up (It didn’t used to bother me, maybe I was not aware of it) and also the problem of felicity. Also, inquiring into the root of emotions is tricky to do by yourself (my mind wanders) and I find myself in my head so much it is irritating as hell. I don’t think my self is getting any thinner, it seems to have co-operated up to a point and then put on the brakes. I will not give up, though, because I’ve experienced what is right under my nose four times now. If you have any input, I’m listening. RICHARD: As Vineeto has already responded to your e-mail. It is no wonder you are experiencing ‘a sort of contrived, finessed calmness’ ... the main problem in life is that peoples everywhere are already separate from the actual world and to practice detachment is to be twice-removed from actuality. Viz.:
For an example of detachment leading to dissociation (known as ‘vippayutta’
It is not for nothing I say everyone has been going 180 degrees in the wrong direction. CLAUDIU: I thought I’d share something with the list seeing as how a few people reading this still seem interested in becoming free from the human condition. What helped me most recently is what you wrote here:
Though I had noticed this in my own experience, I hadn’t formed it quite so succinctly in my mind. I noticed that, thanks to many months of training myself to do so following the advice written in MCTB and given to me by the DhO participants, is that I had reduced everything to physical sensations – touch, sight, sound, etc., with thoughts thrown in as well (though there was debate as to whether thoughts can also just be reduced to one of the five senses). RICHARD: Surely a debate, as to whether thoughts can also be just reduced to physical sensations, could be resolved by recourse to the same place – the buddhavacana (‘the word/ teaching of the Buddha’) – from which the advice ‘written in MCTB’ and given to you by ‘the DhO participants’ came from, no? I only ask as the initials ‘MCTB’ are a shorthand way of referring to a book entitled ‘Mastering The Core Teachings Of Buddha’ and if that reduce-everything-to-physical-sensations advice, which is at the very core of that pragmatic/ hardcore dharma practice, is not drawn from the buddhavacana then that title is obviously a lie. (Apart from that: perhaps a somewhat more accurate title, anyway, might be ‘Mastering The Core Teachings Of Buddhaghosa’ as modern-day Theravadan Buddhism stems mostly from him and his ilk). CLAUDIU: Thus, when I felt something unpleasant in my body, or some persistent tension, the only recourse, meditatively, was to put my attention on it, and notice it as being ‘impermanent’ (that is, as according to MCTB, vibrating in real-time at a certain frequency), ‘not-self’ (that is, as according to MCTB, happening on its own without a ‘self’ involved), and ‘dukkha’ (that is, according to MCTB, unsatisfactory in some fundamental way). The affect itself is taken completely out of the picture. It is noticed, but it is noticed strictly as a physical sensation, and the solution is to do something about that physical sensation. Here is where entering altered states of consciousness helps as it made the psyche more readily able to do something with those sensations. RICHARD: I cannot help but observe that, when you put ‘my attention’ on it vibrating in real-time at a certain frequency (and thus attentively notice ‘anicca’, ‘anatta’, ‘dukkha’), both ‘my attention’ and ‘me’ (whose very attentiveness it is) are not included in that noticing of ‘anicca’, ‘anatta’, ‘dukkha’. CLAUDIU: However, I had always noticed that if I was distracted by doing some work or being engrossed in a movie or engaging in a conversation or simply doing something fun, the tension would disappear. It would only come back when I went back into my default meditative state. Of course, the advice was so pathological as to indicate that one should be meditating in some manner even during such activities. I did do so to a large degree but I could never bring myself to do it 100% because I knew that those persistent tensions and unpleasant feelings were being accentuated, if not caused, by that very meditation. So, although I would tell people that I was ‘always meditating’, which was somewhat true in that I was almost-always cultivating an altered state of consciousness, I would still distract myself quite often to get away from the pain. RICHARD: In regards to continuing the meditative practise during activities, are chairs, desks, buildings, windows, sidewalks, bricks, rocks, trees, flowers, mountains, and so on, all independently (in and of themselves) vibrating in real-time at a certain frequency as well? I only ask because I am sitting here, currently sipping from a glass of water in one hand whilst typing with the other, and I am unable to notice – via being this very tasting, touching, smelling, seeing and listening – either the glass or the water to be vibrating in real-time at all (let alone at a certain frequency). Or is it, perchance, an intuitive noticing (meaning that only an identity has that capacity)? CLAUDIU: After seeing the ‘affective feeling –> hormonal production –> physical reaction’ bit above, however, it’s become clear what was happening. By focusing exclusively on the physical reactions, what is happening is that the affect is being purposefully ignored. RICHARD: An affective ignorer purposefully ignoring affect, via exclusive focus on physical reactions, is more a sure-fire method of ‘self’-survival than anything else. CLAUDIU: Thus there seems to be a tension with a weird and unknown cause because that very cause is something that one is denying exists. The tension is painful in and of itself but is made further painful by actively identifying it as unsatisfactory. This naturally leads to aversion and one tries one’s hardest to make those sensations go away however one can, which ends up being an attempt to suppress the affect. This then leads to ‘dark nights’ which one then tries to get oneself out of by being equanimous to those sensations – that is, a lack of caring that they hurt anymore. This does ‘work’ temporarily but the ‘dark nights’ come back to bite you again and again, as is amply documented in MCTB and on the DhO. I put ‘work’ in scare quotes because the problem was self-caused in the first place – a direct result of not realizing what affect is! I found that, although I understood after my visit to Australia that affect is something besides a physical sensation – rather it is that intuitive felt sense manifesting in any number of ways – I was still plagued by tensions that wouldn’t go away. RICHARD: That ‘intuitive felt sense’ you are referring to is those conjoined twins hedonic-tone (vedāna)
and agnition (sāñña); every experience or state – including its emotions/ passions and sentiments/ moods – has hedonic-tone (a degree of
affective pleasure or displeasure) CLAUDIU: The only thing I could do was distract myself by doing something fun – which I did do and which helped a lot. No more tai chi and no more meditation freed up more time to do things like hang out, play video games, solve puzzles, watch TV shows, drink with friends, etc. The tensions were still there when I was not doing anything in particular, though, thanks to my aforementioned months of mental training. I found, though, that if I simply asked myself what the problem was, I would soon get an answer! I had noticed this before but it hadn’t quite hit home in the same way – whenever I felt that tension it simply meant that something was bothering me! It was remarkably difficult at first to figure out just what that was, though. The overwhelming unpleasantness of the physical tension made it hard to keep a cool head and actually look at what was going on. It was a fear of seeing what was actually wrong, likely because of the suppressive nature of the meditation I had been doing (even though I was self-describing it as not being suppressive). I found I thought of a metaphor wherein I had to undunk my head from my body in some intuitive way – to back off morbidly focusing on the physical sensations – to allow the affect to be felt. This took some active doing but it was well-worth it. RICHARD: It reads as if you have found a way to extricate yourself, or back out from, what some key pragmatic/ hardcore
dharma proponents have called the ‘Insight Disease’ (aka ‘Dharma Disease’) because previously the only way out of it was to ‘get this
done’ CLAUDIU: And the message of yours I quoted above, Richard, served to remind me of all that again and to clarify the above even further. I still experience these tensions occasionally but now I’m actually able to say as much without causing the tension to arise/ get any worse. Now I know that whenever something like that starts up, there’s simply something bothering me, and it’s just up to me to either sit down and figure out what it is on the spot, or, if I’m too tired or unwilling or lazy, to distract myself and put it off until later. The latter option is becoming less and less appealing as time goes on, however. RICHARD: I will copy-paste here what I wrote in Message No. 11929
RETURN TO RICHARD’S SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE INDEX The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.
Richard’s Text ©The
Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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