General Correspondence ~ Peter with Barry Long
BARRY LONG: Peter, Many people have sent me their books or manuscripts, and I never read them. So I am returning your nice looking book unopened. Your persistence gives me the impression your are trying to teach me something or give me something that I have not asked for – a sure sign of guru-itis. Freedom, of course, is always actual (as well as within) and if you have discovered it, I suggest you just enjoy it and stop trying to impress me. Incidentally, as I mentioned before, the love you say you’ve discovered is an emotion, is not the love I know. Be well. PETER: I am a bit baffled by your response to me as I offered you a chance to comment on my discoveries about freedom and you refuse to even read them. I first sent you Richard’s manuscript and then a copy of my book and have had a summary dismissal both times. Why is it that all of the spiritual teachers seem unwilling or unable to discuss or talk about their Truth. And why is it that when someone even presumes to question their teachings they are treated with disdain, scorn or accused of being a Guru. You are the one who declares himself ‘Guru’ and a ‘God-man’, and yet you accuse me of showing signs of Guru-it is. If you had taken the trouble to read even a bit of my book you would have realized that the last thing I am is a Guru. Far, far from it – 180 degrees in the opposite direction in fact. I was always curious at your treatment of a former disciple and now a Spiritual Teacher, who freely acknowledges his debt to you as his teacher and yet you offer no comment, support, endorsement or anything. Has he discovered the same Truth as you? Is he a competitor, has he not got it ‘right’, is he somehow lesser? If anyone finds the Truth or God by being with you then what is their position? No doubt you will take offence by what I am questioning but this does not mean the questions are not valid. I always thought the Truth and its purveyors could stand a little questioning and I rather naively thought you might be of a different ilk, but it appears not. Your comment on your brand of freedom being actual is non-sensical in that your definition is ‘Actuality is the apparent world outside the head’. So you adopt the traditional Eastern position that the physical stuff of the universe is apparent only, i.e. an illusion. Rocks, sky, computer keyboards, food, air, human beings, etc. are, for you, all an illusion – for me they are actual as clearly evidenced by the senses. The freedom that you talk about is to realise a state of consciousness where this perception of the physical world is experienced as an illusion, leading to a temporary, false sense of well-being and bliss. Unfortunately, this misconception, when fully realized leads to a state of delusion where one becomes timeless, spaceless and immortal. And yet another Saviour of mankind is born, resulting in yet another Religion, depending on the numbers of disciples he can gather. Immortality is, of course, a grand play in the imagination, as in the actual world bodies die and rot and become compost. It is only in the psychic world that heaven and afterlife exist. Up until now there has only been one door to ‘escape’ from the bondage of having a psychological and psychic entity that fearfully perceived the actual world as an illusionary hell inhabited by evil spirits. The door was marked ‘Truth’, ‘God’, ‘Enlightenment’ or such. This involved transcending the ‘earthly’ realm for some mythical ‘inner’ world or higher plane. To fully step through this door was to become the Self, Divine Love, God or the like. Now for the first time there is another door that leads to an actual freedom where neither a self nor a Self exist. In actual freedom I am able to be what I am not who I am – this body, not this alien self inside. There is evidence that even the Enlightened Ones know this but they claim it is only possible to reach upon death, in some imaginary afterlife. That door, marked ‘annihilation’, is what I am now willingly rushing towards, now that I have sufficient actual evidence of the purity, perfection and fairy-tale like quality of the physical universe. And then fear – the very substance of self – will totally disappear and I can be me – this flesh and blood body only. This discovery of a new down-to-earth, non-spiritual freedom will now relegate concepts such as spirituality and Enlightenment to history – into the curio section. Then the planet will eventually be free of Religion, Spirituality, Gurus, religious persecution and religious wars. In short, there will be heaven on earth, here, now – not in some mythical realm after death. My persistence was to try and tell you of this new discovery. You are indeed ‘fiddling while Rome burns’ and as a fellow human being I thought it only fair to warn you, but twice you have imperiously swept my offer aside, refusing even to peek inside the cover of my book or Richard’s. So I’ll stop flogging a dead horse, as the expression goes. Peter’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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