Please note that Peter’s correspondence below was written by the feeling-being ‘Peter’ while ‘he’ lived in a pragmatic (methodological), still-in-control/same-way-of-being Virtual Freedom before becoming actually free.
Selected Correspondence Peter Delusion PETER: Just to follow this most interesting thread a wee bit further – RESPONDENT No 22 to No 12 : If I may please, do you find it a reasonable to imagine there is some-thing called mind? And more if you will, do you find it reasonable to imagine a some-thing called ‘peter’ that might be the owner of said mind? RESPONDENT to No 22: Phew. Now you are getting deep. Um. I do find it reasonable to imagine there is some-thing called mind. It seems to me a good working approximation descriptive-formulation of the actual. Certainly such an imagining – that mind is a something that exists – can be discussed utilising logic and as such surely is inherently ‘reasonable’... the imagining (delusion?) can be ‘proved’ to be part of the actual, via the use of reason... thus it is reasonable.
PETER: Photographic evidence that a ‘some-thing called Peter’ does in fact exist. The photo was taken at a recent late-night meeting involving half of the nominal directors of the Actual Freedom Trust. RESPONDENT: Thanks Peter!! Nice humour. Of course I could argue that the photo only proves that it is possible to send bits over a telecommunications line that have the result on my monitor of certain pixels displaying certain colours which is suggestive to my brain that two ugg boots have been re-incarnated from the late-sixties. But I will not argue such. I will just leave the suggestion lying here.
PETER: And why, may I ask would you just leave the suggestion lying there? Have you not met the ‘some-thing called Peter’, seen him with your own eyes, in fact talked with him, shared a table at a coffee shop? What causes you to now vacillate from your previously stated observation made to Richard – [Respondent]: I am sure that living on this very planet rather than in the spiritual realms where a lot of folk live you know that existing as a body at a particular location in time and space is a fact. No 12 to Richard 22.11.2000 |

Could it be perhaps that to acknowledge the fact that a flesh and blood body called Peter – the wearer of the ugg boots in the enclosed picture – does in fact exist, would then put you at odds with one of your fellow cult-busters who has to imagine that I exist ... as well as having to imagine that human beings actually suffer.

I can see your reluctance to argue a position one way or the other ... to ‘leave the suggestion lying’. To agree with No 22 and follow his line of thinking would lead to being completely dissociated from reality as in ‘everything is unreal, man’, which could well lead into full-blown solipsism as in ‘Only I exist’. If, however, you pursued your line of thinking as per your post to Richard with sufficient intellectual vigour, it could well lead to the destruction of all of your spiritual other-worldly beliefs, which could lead on to ...

I do understand your dilemma for it is similar to the one that I faced a few years ago.

I was literally at a crossroad in my life when I came across actualism. The choice was both simple and clear. Do I stay on the spiritual path despite my misgivings, despite my doubt, despite the obvious failings and flaws I had seen and experienced? Turning back completely to the real-world was not an option for I had abandoned grim reality years before going off on the spiritual path. And the comfortably numb, Sunday-only type of spirituality never sat well with me – that half-half, foot in each camp, existence typified by such psittacisms as ‘be in the world but not of it’ or ‘take your meditation into the market place’. So I decided that the best thing to do was adopt a not-knowing position and I sat and very attentively listened to what Richard was saying, read and re-read his journal and correspondence in order to understand what actualism was.

I became sufficiently curious as to what was on offer to twist my mind around from being defensive of the traditional path and asked myself the question – what if Richard is right and everyone else, up until now, has got it wrong? What if there isn’t really a spirit-ual world? What if it is all a gigantic imaginary construct – born of ancient myths, legends and fairy stories and given credence by the universal capacity of human beings to indulge in passionate imagination? What if the venerated state of Enlightenment really is narcissism run amok – a massive delusion?

From the point of view of ‘who’ I was back then when I came across actualism, it required me to ‘suspend disbelief’ to even consider these questions, because I was so convinced that what I, and everyone else on the planet, believed to be true was the truth, a fact, and not a belief. How could the much-vaunted Wisdom of the Ages not be a fact? (...)

*

RESPONDENT: You are friendly this morning. wot happened?

PETER: It may have escaped your notice but I am always friendly nowadays. As for the humour, there is nothing more hilarious than to have a full-blown solipsist debating with a would-be solipsist as to whether they imagine that I exist as a tangible, flesh and blood, some-thing. Should I perhaps next send authenticated toe-nail cuttings?

Being an actualist is a hoot.

PETER: I know that in your current state you regard all that is physical, palpable, tangible, touchable, seeable, smellable, tasteable and audible as so insignificant as to be illusionary, so writing this to you is as meaningful as trying to sell coloured pencils to a blind man.

RESPONDENT: You will be better able to assist, and more honest in your answers, if you will make an effort to avoid drawing imagined conclusions about me. Thank you.

PETER: Could you perhaps point out where you think I am being dishonest in my answers, as I have done nothing other than rely on your own words in these discussions? In this case your quoted position is –

> [Respondent]: There is no objective standard defining real/unreal ... There is no objective anything. Respondent to Richard, 9.11.1998

Have you been wrongly misquoted perhaps? I have already acknowledged that my thinking was ‘wrong’ in your terms but that does nothing to alter the fact that you regard all that is physical as being illusionary – i.e. spirit-ual or ethereal in nature.

RESPONDENT: If you have specific questions about ‘my state’ I will be happy to assist you, however, if I may, I would appreciate not straying too far from the business at hand, namely, completing the advice ‘I thoroughly recommend the study of actualism’, and therewith determine the truth of the world view being called actualism.

PETER: I have no questions at all about your stated view of the world. You have been unambiguous, forthright and unwavering in your views over several years of correspondence with Richard. Given that I have already said that actualism is ‘the get-down and get-dirty business of investigating one’s own psyche in action’, any questioning of your beliefs, morals, ethics or exalted state is entirely your business. As for straying too far from the business at hand I do note that you have ardently, consistently and repeatedly rejected conducting any ‘self’-questioning of this type, so I fail to see how you can stray from a course you have yet to even consider beginning to undertake.

*

RESPONDENT: In regards to being aloof from, separate from, outside of, or, as is erroneously speculated to be ‘my’ case, above and beyond, the get-down and get-dirty business of investigating one’s own psyche in action; respectfully, if a psyche in action and ‘one’ who ‘owns’ that psyche, and there by can be aloof from it, separate from it, outside of it, or above and beyond it, and thus able to ‘study’ it can be demonstrated, please do so. Until the time such a demonstration is made, I will prefer to remain as peace and not bother with what must be the immensely stressful, frustrating, and quite dirty business of digging out of a hole.

PETER: You are obviously perfectly at peace as your Self, being one of the fathomless all-mighty God-men within the human condition.

RESPONDENT: *deep bow* Yes, of course. Why would there be the choice to exist as anything other than perfect peace?

PETER: Because there is a choice. The choice that is offered on the opening page of The Actual Freedom Trust website and that you are busy ignoring and denying – the choice to actually eliminate one’s own malice and sorrow.

RESPONDENT: The term ‘God-men’ is absurd and refers to no actuality.

PETER:

> God-man

> A person who is both God and man Oxford Dictionary

as in

> [Respondent to Richard]: ‘I is not inside anything – it is everything. I create what is by becoming what is. I am the intelligence that rearranges itself endlessly. This body, that body, the entire cosmos is but the evidence of I.’ Respondent aka Bodhisattva aka Mystic Media to Richard, List B, 1.11.1998

It is not the term God-men that is absurd – it is flesh and blood mortal human beings believing themselves to be God-on-Earth that is absurd. This would be an amusing aberration except for the fact that other human beings are suckered into believing them.

God-men are alive and well, though I hesitate to use the term ‘well’. The proof that ‘the term ‘God-men’’ refers to an ‘actuality’ is the proliferation of religions on the planet – each of them founded by a God-man, shaman, seer, messenger, spiritual teacher, sage, swami, maharishi, guiding light, Master, Son of God, or whatever other name.

Methinks thou art in denial of what is actual in the world ... yet again.

RESPONDENT: If the term human condition is referring to existing as malice and/or sorrow, it can be offered that I have never been malice or sorrow.

PETER: Ah. Perchance was yours an immaculate conception? Is this why you have never felt anger and never felt sad, even as a child?

But you didn’t say that directly, did you No 22. You are very careful only to hint at, allude to, offer, hedge or fudge, duck and weave while actually not saying anything meaningful about yourself as a human being.

Ambiguous duplicity is a typical God-man attribute and skill that has been refined and honed over millennia into a set of mind-bending and soul-beguiling platitudes that are an affront to intelligence and sensibility.

RESPONDENT: I can be the thought of no reason why existing as malice or sorrow would be chosen.

PETER: Because we humans had no choice in the matter.

Every human being created via the process of a sperm fertilizing an egg is born with a genetically-encoded set of survival instincts. From the Introduction to Actual Freedom, just a little further on from the 17 words you are so fixated on –

> Peter: All sentient beings are born with certain distinguishing instinctual passions, the main ones being fear, aggression, nurture and desire. They are blind nature’s rather clumsy software package designed to ensure the survival of the species.

> These species-specific instinctual survival passions were absolutely essential in the primitive days of free-roaming man-eating animals, rampant disease and high infant mortality and yet despite the fact that the species has not only survived but flourished, these same instinctual survival passions have transformed into a personal psychological and psychic ‘will to survive’.

> Thus it is that currently over 6 billion humans are still actively involved in a grim and desperate battle for survival against their fellow human beings – a senseless ongoing competitive battle solely fuelled by the brutish animal instinctual passions. Introduction into Actual Freedom, The Human Condition

Those who believe they were born via Immaculate Conception or those who believe they Created their own earthly existence will of course imagine themselves as exempt from this biological imperative.

To acknowledge the direct cause and effect relationship between genetically-encoded instinctual passions and malice and sorrow pulls the rug out from under the whole of the Good Spirit / Evil Spirit fairy story that is the very lynchpin of spirit-ual belief. Which is why God-men will be the most fervent resisters of actualism – their very identity and livelihood is at stake. God-men can be likened to Dinosaurs – their extinction as a outmoded species is inevitable.

*

RESPONDENT: In regards to being aloof from, separate from, outside of, or, as is erroneously speculated to be ‘my’ case, above and beyond, the get-down and get-dirty business of investigating one’s own psyche in action; respectfully, if a psyche in action and ‘one’ who ‘owns’ that psyche, and there by can be aloof from it, separate from it, outside of it, or above and beyond it, and thus able to ‘study’ it can be demonstrated, please do so. Until the time such a demonstration is made, I will prefer to remain as peace and not bother with what must be the immensely stressful, frustrating, and quite dirty business of digging out of a hole.

PETER: You are obviously perfectly at peace as your Self, being one of the fathomless all-mighty God-men within the human condition. As such, you do not even recognize, let alone ‘own’, your fear, anger, doubt, sorrow, frustration, aloofness or ‘above and beyond’ sanctimony. Which is why you prefer to remain within a delusion of your own creation and prefer to ‘not bother with what must be the immensely stressful, frustrating, and quite dirty business of digging out of a hole’.

As for ‘until the time such a demonstration is made’ – I am not here to demonstrate anything to you – what you make of what is on offer is entirely your business. Given we are still discussing the meaning of 17 words of the Introduction to Actual Freedom, I shan’t be holding my breath that anything could dent your Divine armour.

RESPONDENT: *deep bow*

The wrong thought has resulted in a wrong conclusion. Again, being respectful of the material under study, I will not offer here the truth of why I will not bother with what must be the immensely stressful, frustrating, and quite dirty business of digging out of a hole’.

PETER: I am the thought that your respect is but a poker player’s front to avoid laying your cards on the table, but then again ... it is only a thought. I’m just dabbling in a bit of God-man-speak, so don’t take this comment seriously.

RESPONDENT: If I may, remembering your offering ‘...I have zilch interest in indulging in meaningless dialogues with recalcitrant defenders of their own personal version of Godship.’ Wouldn’t it be preferable to spend less time creating and discussing images of me?

PETER: I don’t have an image of you at all, No 22. I have no idea what you look like – whether you are tall, stout, slim, bearded, clean-shaven, have green hair, or whatever. It is irrelevant because in this form of direct communication it is the words that convey meaning and what your words convey is Godship, as in –

> [Respondent to Richard]: ‘I is not inside anything – it is everything. I create what is by becoming what is. I am the intelligence that rearranges itself endlessly. This body, that body, the entire cosmos is but the evidence of I.’ Respondent to Richard, List B, 1.11.1998

These are your words, are they not? This clearly indicates a man – and I am presuming a man and not a woman – who thinks and feels that they are God, as in the creator of the entire cosmos.

I don’t know what image you have of yourself, but the words you write clearly indicate your own personal view of Godship or Godhood.

RESPONDENT: I am the interest in moving forward with completing the advice ‘I thoroughly recommend a study of actualism’ and these digressions into what is imagined, erroneously, about me are not aiding in that end, save for demonstrating a good deal of imaginative capabilities still present in your behaviour.

PETER: This sort of huffing and puffing does not work on me No 22. As I have said before ‘I don’t believe in God or Gods’ and therefore God-men fail to put the wind up me in any way at all. I am immune to the typical God-man ploy of diverting any questioning of His or Her exalted state by turning on the questioner. The emotional power-plays of the Guru-disciple system of psychic enslavement is an affront to intelligence and the antithesis of autonomy and freedom, peace and harmony.

To repeat, I don’t imagine anything about you No 22, I simply take your words literally, at face value.

RESPONDENT: May I suggest that from this point forward the conversation not include personal opinions, commentary on respective personalities, critiques of respective philosophy, nor any material not directly related to establishing or refuting the facts immediately under study? Thank you.

PETER: In my experience God-men are most reluctant to discuss anything about their private lives, ‘off-stage’ as it were and they fiercely resist exposing anything about themselves by maintaining a holier-than-the-rest-of-mortal-ignorant-human-beings-attitude. The good thing about not fearing God is that I am free from having to humbly cow-tow to His or Her continual demands for inequality.

I’ll just remind you that you are writing on The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List and as such, your demands that you have open slather to critique actualism but that I cannot critique God-men cuts no thrust here. The whole point of actualism is to explore all aspects of the human social and instinctual personality and investigate all the philosophies and belief-systems that constitute the human condition. This is what actualism is about and to suggest it be swept under the carpet or locked in the cupboard is nonsense.

In short, no subject is considered too sacred or too holy to discuss on this list.

PETER: Having a good clear-eyed look at Humanity is an essential aspect of actualism for ‘I’ am Humanity and Humanity is ‘me’. When it becomes so blatantly obvious that it is human beings stubbornly maintaining and faithfully defending their sacred religious/ spiritual beliefs who cause such horrendous wars and conflicts in the world, it behoves you to rid yourself of every last skerrick of such beliefs – provided you are interested in peace on earth, that is.

GARY: I am not sure it all comes down to defending religious beliefs. I am not anti-religion. I do not want to be anti anything. Were I to take up a militant atheism that gets at the throats of religious people, it would be having another axe to grind, I would be committing the same mistake the religious folks do.

PETER: I found that I went through a stage of being appalled at the extent of evil disguised as goodness that existed in the spiritual/ religious world. I went through a stage of being angry at the Gurus and God-men for many were not so deluded that they did not know what they were doing. Other people I know of also went through this stage but it may well not happen to you.

GARY: It is belief, spurred by the sense of identity and being, and that in turn is related to instincts, that seems to be the culprit. Anything that human beings latch on to with ‘religious’ devotion is a potential source of warfare and violence, and that is true of political parties, nationalism (obviously), race, gender, etc., etc. It all seems to boil down again to identity, that sense of ‘me’, that this is ‘me’ and that is ‘you’. <Snip>

PETER: So to go back to your first sentence would you say it is the believer that is the culprit rather than belief per se being the culprit? No believer, no belief? Any belief is passive, whereas a believer is rarely passive.

RESPONDENT: I am amazed to actually see ‘in print’, that the Soul could be eliminated.

PETER: Yes indeed, ‘who’ we think we are and ‘who’ we feel we are both phantoms, to use No 7’s words. The spiritual search has traditionally stopped half way by only addressing the savage instinctual passions (aka ego) while dearly and desperately identifying with the tender passions (aka soul).

RESPONDENT: The physical form was created by the Soul, how can the creator be removed? The Soul is Eternal, it is an ‘individuation’ of the One Soul, that is the Source of All. To propound the dissipation of the Soul infers that that which is All, can be eliminated by some technique developed by ‘external consciousness’.

PETER: My stance is that God is a human invention and, as such, can be dispensed with as easily as the notion of Evil. Once this is done one’s own awareness – the brain’s ability to be aware of it’s own functioning, a bare awareness known as apperception – is perfectly capable of eliminating all illusion, all of one’s self and its associated instinctual passions.

RESPONDENT: When you get thru with all of these methodologies of consciousness, you are still left with ‘the witness’... ie, the Soul. The Soul is innocent; it is the ‘experiencer’ of the All That Is. It does not judge, it experiences. So it does not get into the idea of good and bad, there is pleasant experiences and unpleasant experiences, when the Soul decides it has had enough, it withdraws its focus from an area of experience and focuses ‘somewhere’ else to expand its experience of All That Is.

PETER: This process is called dissociation – an active withdrawal from unpleasant earthly experiences and a total focusing on pleasant ‘other-worldly’ experiences. As I said to No 8, all one is doing is splitting the ‘self’ in two, creating and reinforcing the idea of an earthly, mortal ego-self and a spirit-ual, immortal Soul-self.

RESPONDENT: In a reality that believes in beginnings and endings, that could look like a ‘death’ of a physical form, or in the case of a ‘master’, the ‘disappearance’ of the form. Note the scripture which refers to the taking on of incorruptibility. When one accepts one’s own ‘immortality’, and acts accordingly, your physical form goes thru a physical chemical process, which changes the form from carbon base to a crystalline base. All fear is ‘leached’ from the form, as well as, the ‘little me’. The Soul then stands forth, uncompromised by limitations of any kind. Flesh and blood is not what we Truly are. That, my friend, is what we have come to this limitation to show, the Truth of the ONE. Incidentally, I am a Master of Light and Love, I have already ascended this plane and returned. I Know of what I speak.

PETER: ... And thus darkness, evil and suffering are regarded as intrinsic to the human condition on earth where we human flesh and blood humans actually live. Personally I find this a deeply cynical view of human life on earth. Who, or what, God was so perverse to set this system up? Why do we insist on believing this scenario?

*

RESPONDENT: How could innocent beingness be an illusion if the being isn’t ‘doing’ anything other than observing?

PETER: If ‘innocent beingness’ is Real then everything else, such as the computer monitor you are reading these words on, and everyone else, such as me typing these words, must be an illusion to you. This is known as solipsism. I know this would be a shattering blow to your spiritual ego but perhaps, just perhaps, you might consider that both the computer monitor and this human being called Peter are factual and ‘innocent beingness’ is a delusion? To remain an observer is to miss out on the chance of being an active participant in the business of being alive as a flesh and blood mortal body in this very moment of time in this very place in space.

RESPONDENT: You are presupposing this state is some sort of psychological construct ... you are denying that it is possible be without an ulterior motive.

PETER: Eastern religious teachings and philosophy is based on the idea that the ego, or personal self is merely a psychological construct and the flesh and blood human body is merely a vehicle and this is best summed up by the phrase ‘I am not the mind, I am not the body’. The teachings claim that there is a real self, soul or Spirit who is the genuine product and one only needs to ‘realize’ this and one gets to be Divine, Immortal, Timeless and Spaceless.

Unfortunately this feeling of Godliness comes with a fatal flaw – the drive to spread the message that there is a real ‘you’ inside and all else is an illusion. The drive to be a Saviour of mankind is part and parcel of the delusion of Divinity and is nothing other than self-aggrandizement for to be a Saviour comes hand in glove with a hypnotic psychic power over any gullible human beings who are willing and eager to believe.

RESPONDENT: Where did the idea of ‘selfhood’ come from in the first place?

PETER: All human beings are born with a set of genetically-encoded survival instincts broadly fear, aggression, nurture and desire. These instinctual passions are instilled by blind nature to ensure the survival of the species. However in human animal these instinctual reactions are ‘self’-centred, as it is in apes – our nearest genetic cousins. Our instinctual-rudimentary ‘self’ is based firmly on the surge of chemicals arising from the primitive reptilian brain that give rise to causing automatic thoughtless and instinctual-emotional reactions. Thus this elementary ‘self’ is felt to be our instinctual ‘being’, at our very core.

‘Selfhood’ is not an idea – it is based on a genetic-encoded ‘self’ located in the primitive brain.

Further, this primitive ‘self’ is made more complex in human beings by our ability to think and reflect and to be conscious of that process. As such, we have a more elaborated ‘self’ consisting of ‘who’ we think ourselves to be and ‘who’ we feel ourselves to be. ‘Who’ we think and feel ourselves to be is a psychological and psychic ‘self’ – both a mental and emotional identity – that develops in the neo-cortex as a discordant and alien identity that appears to be located in the head (as ego) and felt in the heart (as soul) and the gut (as instinctual being).

RESPONDENT: Mankind is full of facts, yet it is known, facts are but the accepted opinions of a given time period.

PETER: A curiously good description of the commonly accepted opinion that God, by whatever name, does exist and the commonly accepted opinion that there is life after death, in whatever form.

RESPONDENT: What is the one immutable thing no being can deny? Easy ... one’s existence.

PETER: If you are talking about your physical existence as a flesh and blood human being, then I would agree. I have no trouble agreeing with you because you and I are having this conversation – you know, real fingers tapping on real keyboards, real pixels appearing on real screens. Now ‘who’ you think and feel you are is another thing – you claim that your existence is ethereal, spirit only, non-material, Self-centred and ‘immutable’ as in absolute, unchallengeable, supreme. Sounds awfully like a delusion of Grandeur to me.

RESPONDENT: If Freedom means anything, it means I am the sole responsible party for my existence, as well as, my only accurate historian.

PETER: Are you saying that you are the sole responsible party that caused the sperm to impregnate the egg that grew to be the flesh and blood body called No 12? If so, you truly are laying claim to being a creator being – the sole creator of your own existence.

Further, you are your own historian, as in creating your own history. In psychological terms this is the definition of delusion – the creation of an illusion ‘innocent beingness ’ from an illusion – the social/psychological and instinctual/psychic ‘self’.

RESPONDENT: Therefore all ideas ‘about’ existence and my personal being are under my own authority to claim or discard according to whether I determine they are ‘workable’ in my reality.

PETER: In other words, you are creating your own reality, or your own truth.

RESPONDENT: Freedom has nothing to do with ‘consensus’, it has to do with personal volition.

PETER: Are you saying Freedom is your personal volition – as in desire or choice – to create your own ‘ideas about existence’ and your ‘personal being?’

RESPONDENT: For any being to return to true freedom, that being must have the courage to jump out of the ‘herd’ and be honest enough to face everything that would restrict them in determining the meaning and experience of that freedom.

PETER: From where I stand in the actual world, I see two herds – those who suffer in the grim reality of the ‘real’ world and those who imagine and feel themselves to be above it all because they choose to believe in and create their own Greater Reality in accordance with Bronze Age religious/ spiritual beliefs and superstitions.

RESPONDENT: I am Still a Being of Light composition having a human experience, and no amount of well-formed phrases can change my birthplace. It is not wise to tell people that what they Know of themselves is faulty.

PETER: Indeed, even now on the planet people are being killed for daring to question the spiritual beliefs of others. The good thing about the Net is that punishment for daring to question and face everything is limited to flaming, cyber-censorship or cyber-execution.

RESPONDENT: Until one has developed full trust in the Love of All That Is, one has no real knowing on a conscious practical level, they remain in the 3/4 dimensional worlds of ‘faith and belief’. For example, I can move, at will, to any ‘location’ I so choose, dissolving and recombining these atoms and molecules into any form I choose, now that’s the freedom I talking about. Practical Freedom 101.

PETER: Excellent news. Then I can stop replying to your posts and you can ‘recombine’ on my porch and we can have an in-depth discussion about life on earth, as-it-is with people as-they-are. And you can tell me more about your ‘ideas about existence and your personal being’, ‘true freedom’, and about your own personal ‘reality’.

RESPONDENT: That is what I am on this planet to remind folks of, their God given rights, the Right to Love and Be Loved. When Love is embraced and allowed to work its magic thru the Heart, all of mankind will again be free ... free to create an even grander vision for themselves. Perhaps, they will even move from this world, flying into the stars giving living testimony, as to the nature of Love.

PETER: From where I stand in the actual world it is those who have suffer from an Altered State of Consciousness such that they believe themselves to be Saviours of mankind that have led ‘herds’ of followers to think and feel that they are the Chosen Ones and believe in an ‘other-worldly’ freedom and peace. This man-made delusion is the basis of all religious and spiritual belief and the cause of all the religious conflicts, wars, retributions, persecutions and vilifications.

It’s time to dare to question everything ...

PETER: You posted this as a general post to the list, so I presume it is your teachings. I thought I would comment.

RESPONDENT: When you are dreaming and you wake up in your dream and realize you are dreaming and that everything that exists is a figment of your imagination, what do you do? How do you act in that dream world where nothing is real and you are accountable to no one but yourself? It is your dream and you discover whatever you want, whenever you want it.

There are no rules. No good or bad. Just you living in a dream, knowing it is a dream and there is only you. Nothing else. Everything is you. Everything is yours. No restrictions.

PETER: An excellent description of the spiritual delusion whereupon a human being becomes a God – the centre of it all, where only You exist and everything and everyone else is but Your creation. This is utter self-centredness, utter self-ishness taken to the extreme of solipsism. One’s personal self is diminished to such an extent that only a grand and glorious Impersonal Self exists.

RESPONDENT: What do you do? You walk about witnessing strange events. You have volition now, you have choice. You are no longer a distant observer. You are a participant. You go when and where you want to go. You do whatever you want to do.

You see suffering and lechery. Possessiveness and pain. You see great joy and friendship. You see love and selflessness. You see everything and you know that you made it all up for your own benefit. What do you do? How do you participate in all the things around you?

PETER: The existential dilemma of all God-men when they find themselves living in a dream-world of their own creation.

RESPONDENT: In this world of illusion you have only one venue, one method of existence: your actions.

PETER: The existential dilemma of all God-men when they find themselves a Divine and Immortal being still trapped within a flesh and blood body on the planet.

RESPONDENT: How do you act? Which action within all the realm of infinite possibility best expresses the Truth of who you are? You are free. There is no one and nothing else. Just you and a world of vast illusion that you create. What will you do? Will you be destructive? Will you love? Will you hate? Will you be weak? Will you be strong? Will you help the people you see, or crush them like bugs? You can do whatever you want. It is your dream. What will you do? How will you act? Who are you?

It seems that in all the infinite realm of possibility you have only one choice: to be who you are and act according to that Truth.

PETER: You nearly had me interested as to what you were going to do in a practical sense, but I see you have settled on the traditional ‘only choice’ – being who you really are i.e. God on earth, and to act according to that truth, i.e. act as if you are a God.

The Gods are so predictable – so impersonal, so Self-indulgent and so demanding of gratitude and adoration ... and equally capable of crushing people who they don’t like or want to dismiss. I have seen this supercilious behaviour in many God-men and Wannabes – it is an appalling arrogance, demeaning of others, malicious in its intent and has done immense harm and suffering to countless followers.

Divine passions are simply normal human passions freed of any sensible consideration, responsibility or moral limitations by a blinding act of delusion. The delusion of Divinity does not eliminate one’s personal malice and sorrow – it merely gives it a perverse God-like twist.

RESPONDENT: This planet-plane of existence, is a fixed point on the experiential road to self and God realization. It is predictable in its function. In a simple sense, it is like an obstacle course designed to open our individual ‘inner’ reality. A catalyst. There are many who are trying to fix it. It is divine love that creates those obstacles in the first place which provide the agony and trauma through which we grow.

PETER: So you are saying it is divine love that creates all the agony, trauma, suffering, wars, murders, poverty, rapes, domestic violence, child abuse, corruption, etc. on this planet-plane simply in order that a few may realize that they are God? If this is all the creation of divine love it does seem a Self-ish creation to me. Could it be that your realization that human beings are but cannon-fodder in some great divine plan is not some spiritually/ culturally influenced creation of your own ‘individual ‘inner’ reality’?

As a kid, when I heard the Christian stories of God, I always thought it was such a cruel and sadistic story if you weren’t born a Christian and could achieve redemption and salvation. Much later in life I found myself enmeshed in Eastern religion and eventually came to be aware that its fundamental premise is that earthly existence is meant to be suffering – a meaning of life vision that is equally cruel and sadistic.

RESPONDENT: It is true that we each will become free, but only when we graduate. The ‘undergraduate’ always goes through a stage where he believes the curriculum and infrastructure needs changing. It is a great awakening to realize that all is perfect, even these well meaning and painful attempts to alter the ‘status quo’.

PETER: Would you tell the children in Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Angola, Northern Ireland, North Korea, Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine, Eritrea, etc. that they should just realize ‘all is perfect’? This ‘all is perfect’ philosophy was invented in the East by reclusive monks who were provided with money, wealth, food and sustenance by others and then spent all day in sheltered seclusion from the evils of the world looking ‘inside’ for perfection.

This is called denial and dissociation and is now practiced in the West by spiritual seekers who ‘turn off’ their television sets, if they own one, ‘tune out’ from the world of people, things and events and ‘tune in’ to an ... ‘individual ‘inner’ reality’ ... to use your words.

*

PETER: You also wrote to me in a separate post –

RESPONDENT: Every hive needs a queen, workers and drones, they are all inextricably linked.

PETER: It must feel very good for those who are born average normal human beings to eventually realize that they indeed are a queen and thus not one of the workers or drones.

RESPONDENT: When I started to ‘see’ I began criticizing the apparent foolishness of various roles, particularly from a religious perspective. The sheep need a shepherd, just as much as the shepherd needs the sheep.

PETER: Are you saying you ‘stopped criticizing the apparent foolishness of various roles, particularly from a religious perspective’ because you now realize ‘the sheep need a shepherd’? Are you saying you have now become a shepherd with a flock of your own? Why is it that all seekers of freedom, peace and happiness who go all the way on the spiritual path end in the role of being yet another shepherd, desperately gathering yet another flock, in yet another field?

RESPONDENT: The sheep may safely graze, and the shepherd has a sense of purpose. ‘Just love honey glazed lamb’, hahaha.... All is well.

PETER: How is it that I am accused of being cynical on this list? I find the universal acceptance of the inescapability and unchangeability of human suffering, anguish, violence and torment that is written into ancient wisdom – as in, ‘it is all God’s will’ – to be a deeply pessimistic, undignified and ultimately demeaning view of the existence of the human species on this paradisiacal planet.

Of course, if one believes in this theo-centric viewpoint, and everyone does, then the only way to be free from suffering, apart from suicide, is to pay homage to, and surrender to, one’s God – or better still, to rise to the top of the spiritual hierarchy and believe that one is a God in one’s own right.

Thank goodness there is now an alternative to this impassioned madness.

RESPONDENT: Each human has a soul or psychic entity? So you too then? If not aren’t you human then? It’s no use speaking in general terms is it?

PETER: The soul or psychic entity is an illusion, but very real in its affective presence in the human body. The primitive self combined with the instinctual programming of fear, aggression, nurture and desire is overlaid with the beliefs that have been instilled as our social identity and forms a feeling of ‘me’ trapped inside this body, looking out on the world. The feeling of not quite fitting in, lost, lonely and frightened – an alien. In the past two years since meeting Richard, this illusionary alien entity within me has been reduced by sincere and honest effort and serendipitous events to the point of non-existence. I say ‘to the point of’ deliberately, as I have yet to experience what Richard experienced as an affective psychological death. Given that my affective capacities are virtually nil, it may well be a whimper rather than a bang. So yes, I am not ‘human’ in your terms in that I am virtually free of the Human Condition of malice and sorrow.

See my chapter Evolution if you are really interested in finding out.

RESPONDENT: I for one don’t desperately believe in an after-life but don’t deny it either, it’s a no-issue.

PETER: So you don’t care one way or the other. You are also on record as saying –

RESPONDENT: ‘To care whether a soul exists or not is to be worried about this life on earth’.

PETER: Methinks that if you are not worried about this life on earth and you are an active follower of a spiritual Master who taught the doctrine of another world, another dimension, another life after death, you do indeed have both feet in the spiritual world.

RESPONDENT: You also say that if a person says he is god he has ego. I do not agree.

PETER: How Big can an ego get that calls oneself God? Maybe Supreme God is bigger than God ... or God of Gods?

When I was a kid they locked people up in asylums if they went off ranting that they were God, or the Saviour returned. I remember a couple of them used to be on Hyde Park corner in London with signs saying ‘The End Is Nigh’, and ‘follow me and ye shall be redeemed,’ and I regarded them at the time as having a bit of a screw loose.

RESPONDENT: A person may be ego-less and yet have discovered his own godliness (or god nature) within him or her and is sharing it. You have to be very aware to see if the person is speaking with an ego or not.

PETER: Yes, if only we know what the ego is – in my experience it is used in the East as expressing the fact that some-one still has a personal self and has not yet realised his or her Divine sense of self, or that they are God, or at One with God.

RESPONDENT: How can you judge if a person is free of ego? Are you really free of ego? I very much doubt it...

PETER: Yes, from your point of view I am not free of ego, unless I call myself God, Enlightened, That, at One, etc ...

What I am (in a pure consciousness experience) is this physical body only, there is no psychological and psychic entity inside, no ‘I’ – the little man inside my head who was controlling things.

There is also no ‘me’ as a psychic entity, no feeling ‘me’, no soul or spirit, that will live on after I, this body, dies.

That is why I say that everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong.

So much confusion exists in Eastern teaching about the ‘ego’, and generally it is put out as an admonishment to surrender your ego to God (or the Master). And once you have surrendered your will to anyone, or anything, you are really stuffed ...!

Good to chat ... good subjects to get out in the open – ‘on the table’, so to speak.

But, one can get into torturous semantics with all this stuff about ego and soul, while simply setting your aim in life to become happy and harmless cuts right through the lot.

RESPONDENT: So much words that I can only ... pay you respect cause: Your Ego is 100 tons weight and you have very, very strong neck in order to carry this monster. Almost alone against all that people on the list for about how much time – 3 weeks? Even if I actually don’t agree with you in many points I still pay you respect ... or maybe your endless arguing with people on the list is helping you to ripe your Ego, to make it perfect ...

PETER: What I see is, that someone who swans around being at one with God or God-realised with worshipping disciples is on the Grandest of all Ego Trips. And we let them get away with it because we are instinctually driven to follow the herd, to want to make someone else a leader so we can meekly follow.

It’s such a poor excuse not to look at what anyone is saying to do the old ‘your just ego-tripping’ thing. In this country we call it the tall-poppy syndrome – any one who sticks their head above the crowd gets it cut off.

That’s why I like the times we live in – the Net allows a conversation like this for the first time in human history – where one is able, with reasonable safety, to challenge the Wisdom of the past. I did sit down for a long while to contemplate the safety of doing what I am doing but I also figure that who I am talking to may be riled, but only aggressive with words. I remember a childhood rhyme that went ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me’.

PETER: Have you ever tried to write a personal story about yourself without the first person pronoun I?

RESPONDENT: Yes.

PETER: What do you call yourself then?

RESPONDENT: No 11, this one, this writer...

PETER: Well I must admit you (sorry the writer) have thrown me (oops ... a personal pronoun) into a quandary. In the interests of keeping us on the same level in that the writer (meaning you) doesn’t think that I am being superior or egotistical, I will adopt your terminology. By the way, does the writer (meaning you ... suppose we call you writer 1 for clarity) adopt the terminology ‘the speaker’ when the writer 1 is speaking to others. Krishnamurti used this terminology while lecturing.

*

PETER: So, one who is truly free is one who is not merely pretending, I take it from the first bit. There are about 6,000 religions who all believe that they have the ‘true’ version of Truth, or Liberation, or Freedom.

RESPONDENT: The operative word is ‘believe’... one who knows has no belief.

PETER: So the writer 2 (meaning me) take it that the writer 1 ‘knows’. Maybe the writer 1 can tell the writer 2 what it is that the writer 1 knows. Or is it that it can’t be put into words. It seems that we (writer 1 and writer 2) cannot communicate at all then.

Knowing is such a woolly concept to writer 2.

RESPONDENT: The truth is such a woolly concept it seems to me.

PETER: That’s funny, the writer 2 said that, and yet the writer 1 posted it as though the writer 1 had written it.

PETER: I take it then that you believe there is Divine Love, or are you saying that The Divine (God) is a fact. I take it that you are saying you believe in God.

RESPONDENT: Why would your take it that one who knows would have a belief? It is illogical.

PETER: The writer 2 has got it at last .. a sudden realization. Whatever it is that the writer 1 ‘knows’ is a fact and not a belief. And whatever it is that writer 1 knows cannot be put into words ... and therefore the truth (sorry, what the writer 1 knows) cannot possibly be challenged, because it is a fact.

*

PETER: A Gnostic is one who claims to have ‘superior knowledge’ of spirit-ual things (Godly matters) and therefore believes in Gods and spirits.

RESPONDENT: Why do you continue to equate ‘knowledge’ with ‘belief’? Gnosis is not the same as belief at all. Do you know the experience of ‘sex’ or after having had it, do you believe in it?

PETER: The writer 2 has got it now as the writer 2 said above. Whatever writer 1 ‘knows’ is a fact and not a belief. It is getting really clear to the writer 2 by now. The writer 1 seems to have a different definition of Gnosis from both the Britannica and the Oxford, but the writer 1 ‘knows’. Maybe the writer 1 should set Britannica and Oxford straight on his knowing.

PETER: To get rid of the ‘ego’ only, is to let the feelings and passions run rampant, such that one will readily and willingly kill for ‘love’ of country, God or leader and one will readily sacrifice or surrender one’s life for country, God or leader.

RESPONDENT: You would have to drop your ego to know that you are incorrect here. It is only ego that kills, ego being the identification to something other than what one is. Nobody identifies with what one is, simply a human being. They identify with football teams, etc.

PETER: Oh, boy. Now you are saying that no-one identifies with what they are – simply a human being. But you are claiming a higher level of consciousness – doesn’t sound like ‘simply a human being’ to me. And Rajneesh proclaimed himself a God-man, hardly your ‘simple human being’. Your twisting and turning and distortion of facts and words in order to fit your scenario is quite astounding. Are you trying to ‘clip on’ a bit of Actual Freedom on to your philosophical and spiritual views perchance? A few have already tried with ego-deflating results.

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