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Peter’s Correspondence on Mailing List B Correspondent No 11
PETER to No 7: When I first came across the possibility of an actual freedom from malice and sorrow I thought it must have been a spiritual thing because only the spiritual people talked of freedom. It took me months until I began to understand that the traditional spiritual path offered a feeling of liberation for one’s spirit or soul before death prior to a final real liberation from earthly suffering after physical death. I see that some people on the list use the expression illusion of ‘self’ and others refer to the illusionary physical world which means what must be REAL is one’s spirit, soul, Self, Atman, Essence, Heart, etc. – a disembodied, non-physical entity. By concentrating on repressing sensible thought, denying the actual world as evidenced by the physical senses, and letting one’s impassioned feelings and imagination run riot a new detached, superior and holy entity is realized. To get to this state of complete dissociation is for most a very complex and torturous process and only a rare few manage to pull it off completely. The level of denial of the physical world alone requires an extraordinary effort. To regard all that we see, hear, touch, feel, smell, eat and breathe to be illusionary requires a mind-bending act of astounding tortuousness. It is because of the complexity and difficulty involved that most mystics had to renounce the obvious pleasures and delights of the physical world and go off to caves, monasteries, ashrams and lone wanderings and indulge in often bizarre practices such as meditation, yoga, chanting, whirling, special diets, celibacy, etc. in order to strengthen their fantasies. The ‘self’ (including all its cunning spiritual variations) is an illusion, not the physical, tangible, palpable physical world. The simple test as to what is actual is to place a peg on the nose, place some Gaffer tape firmly across the mouth and wait 10 minutes. As you rip the tape from your mouth and gasp for breath you will have an experiential understanding of what is actual and what is illusionary. When I had my altered states of consciousness experiences I couldn’t quite pull off the denial of the physical bit. Something always made me suss about the need for renunciation, the isolationism, the elitism, the head-in-the-cloud feelings. The grand and glorious feelings were sure seductive but thankfully I held on to my doubts and my common sense and didn’t trust my feelings. If you can recall having a pure consciousness experience you would remember that there is not a skerrick of rigid religiosity nor slippery spirituality in it at all. It is an experience where there is no psychological or psychic entity whatsoever present in the flesh and blood body. There is no ‘I’ to feel glorious, to feel Oneness, to feel Divine, to feel Whole. There is no Love, God, Essence, Source, etc. that is the grand reason, plan, creation, essence, energy, life-force, etc. that gives the psychic entity in the body a grand and glorious place or part to play. In the pure consciousness experience there is no affective faculty, nor any capacity for imagination in operation. So vast, so perfect and so pure is this physical universe directly experienced by the body’s physical senses that the immediate becomes vibrant, alive, sensuous, tactile and actual. There is no feeling of separation, nor any feeling of unity for it is obvious and apparent that I am this body, made of the same stuff of the universe, live cells made from the union of sperm and egg, sustained by eating the stuff of the earth, swimming in and breathing the air of the earth, surrounded by stuff made from the earth – and when this body dies the stuff left goes back to the earth. Finish, kaput, finito, gone, extinct, stuffed, no more. Perfect. Because a pure consciousness experience is a temporary ‘self’-less experience with no emotions or
feelings operating whatsoever there is no emotional memory of the experience afterwards. As such it can be lost in the memory or can easily be
dismissed as an aberration and not taken for what it is. RESPONDENT: You state ‘There is no Love ... no affective faculty ... spirits and other worlds are clearly seen as escapists nonsense?’ This is the other world, consciousness is not limited to our senses only, the mind in a perfectly clear state is an organ of vision, not hallucination; but inner (which is outer) vision. PETER: I have gone to lengths to describe the difference between what I am describing – a pure consciousness experience or peak experience as it is sometimes termed – and what you are describing which is clearly an altered state of consciousness known as a Satori or Awakening in Eastern religion or an Epiphany in Western religion An altered state of consciousness experience is not limited to the physical senses as the neo-cortex – the modern brain, capable of thinking, planning and reflecting – is swamped by chemicals from the ancient instinctual brain producing deep-felt euphoric emotions of salvation, gratitude, and grandeur. These feelings are usually accompanied by imaginary visions of a religious nature, dependant solely upon the person’s culture or current inclination. Thus it is that Christians can ‘hear’, ‘see’ or ‘feel’ the Lord or the white light leading to Heaven while Eastern religious followers feel Oneness, Wholeness, etc and feel Godliness, God intoxicated or whatever. The tell-tale clue of an altered state of consciousness experience is that the ‘new perception’ is always cultural or religious specific and it is always accompanied by powerful emotions triggered by chemical flows from the instinctual primitive brain. RESPONDENT: This is not a motivated state, but actual. PETER: Many altered states of consciousness experiences happen during a dark night of the soul when thoughts of hopelessness, depression, futility and even suicide are running. The very desperate near death thoughts can induce a near death experience that triggers a chemical flow to the body and brain that produces euphoric feelings. In this case the motivation may not have been to seek an ASC but they can occur and their nature is dependant solely upon the person’s culture or current inclination. Whenever a person is on a particular spiritual path, be it Western or Eastern they can often induce an ASC by various practices and the resultant euphoric feelings and ‘other’ worldly imaginations are most definitely motivated and indeed are eagerly sought after and highly prized. As for actual, the definition of actual is –
An ASC is undoubtedly real to the person experiencing it is experienced as both imagination (cerebral) and emotion (affective) – a powerful combination. What is missing, however, is any evidence that what is being experienced does exist in fact. Many people recently saw a spacecraft in the tail of a comet but this vision was found not to be factual, as in actually existing. Many people have heard prophecies of Jesus’ second coming but he is yet to materialize as a flesh and blood body. Many people feel we are all one but the facts of human existence on earth belie the actuality of these visions. Many people talk to and hear answers from long dead God-men and all are culturally influenced and many are contradictory or wrong in fact. ASCs, in whatever form they manifest, are indeed real, but they are certainly not actual – as in existing in act or fact, capable of being evidenced only by the physical senses of the human brain, practical as in being down-to-earth, active as in physically existing in this moment of time. RESPONDENT: If you keep ‘at It’ or rest in ‘It’ long enough, the Light above will appear, whether you like it or not, it is part and parcel of the human mechanism. PETER: And other people will see the Lord, and others will see spaceships in the tails of comets and others will hear prophetic messages and others will see the fires of damnation and others will see little men with egg-heads and almond shaped eyes ... and all of them are real to the person experiencing them. Imagination is indeed ‘ part and parcel of the (current) human mechanism ’ and is usually harmless enough but when combined with fervour and passion, religious fanaticism is the unfortunate and inevitable result. This capacity for imagination is imbibed with mother’s milk – the first stories we are told and the first view we have is of an ‘other-world’ of fairy stories, fictionary romance, heroism, tales of good and evil – all totally imaginary and having no relevance to the physical, actual world of people, things and events in which we live. We are, in fact, inducted into believing the imaginary world being primary and real, and subsequently to regard the physical, actual world as secondary and illusionary. This primary imaginary world includes both a ‘real’ world-view and its associated ‘spiritual’ world-view, neither of which are actual. This obsession with imagination, belief, trust, faith and hope offers a continuing haven of denial of the facts of the Human Condition and prevents us from getting up off our bums, or up from our lotus position, and taking the necessary action that will lead to the eventual elimination of malice and sorrow from this fair planet. RESPONDENT: If you breathe that Light it will rest in the Heart, no effort just natural breathing. It’s what the Tibetan Buddhists call the ‘compassion which rests in emptiness’ PETER: I think Mr. Siddhartha Gautama has a lot to answer for in his teachings of sorrow. Pity he is long dead for I wouldn’t mind asking him a few questions as to why he believes ‘Life is fundamentally disappointment and suffering’ – the first and fundamental principle of his Four Noble Truths. It is from this belief that suffering is necessary in the human condition that the feeling of compassion arises – the agreement to mutual suffering that prevents anyone from breaking out of the cycle even if they enter into the imaginary meta-physical world of religious belief and all that entails. No. 11, I have no doubt at all that your experiences are real and convincing for I have had many spiritual experiences myself. It is just that I have headed off in the opposite direction to tackle the illusion of darkness and Evil rather than settle for transcendence into light and God. The only reason I was able to do this was because I acknowledged the failure of any form of transcendence to bring peace on earth ... and I found something that works in that it confronts and eliminates all illusion.
PETER: An ASC is undoubtedly real to the person experiencing it is experienced as both imagination (cerebral) and emotion (affective) – a powerful combination. What is missing, however, is any evidence that what is being experienced does exist in fact. Many people recently saw a spacecraft in the tail of a comet but this vision was found not to be factual, as in actually existing. Many people have heard prophecies of Jesus’ second coming but he is yet to materialize as a flesh and blood body. Many people feel we are all one but the facts of human existence on earth belie the actuality of these visions. Many people talk to and hear answers from long dead God-men and all are culturally influenced and many are contradictory or wrong in fact. ASCs, in whatever form they manifest, are indeed real, but they are certainly not actual – as in existing in act or fact, capable of being evidenced only by the physical senses of the human brain, practical as in being down-to-earth, active as in physically existing in this moment of time. RESPONDENT: If you keep ‘at It’ or rest in ‘It’ long enough, the Light above will appear, whether you like it or not, it is part and parcel of the human mechanism. PETER: And other people will see the Lord, and others will see spaceships in the tails of comets and others will hear prophetic messages and others will see the fires of damnation and others will see little aliens with egg-heads and almond shaped eyes ... and all of them are real to the person experiencing them. Imagination is indeed ‘ part and parcel of the human mechanism ’ and is usually harmless enough but when combined with spiritual fervour and passion, religious fanaticism is the unfortunate and inevitable result. This capacity for imagination is imbibed with mother’s milk – the first stories we are told and the first view we have is of an ‘other-world’ of fairy stories, fictionary romance, heroism, tales of good and evil – all totally imaginary and having no relevance to the physical, actual world of people, things and events in which we live. We are, in fact, inducted into believing the imaginary world being primary and real, and subsequently to regard the physical, actual world as secondary and illusionary. This primary imaginary world includes both a ‘real’ world-view and its associated ‘spiritual’ world-view, neither of which are actual. This obsession with imagination, belief, trust, faith and hope offers a continuing haven of denial of the facts of the Human Condition and prevents us from getting up off our bums, or up from our lotus position, and taking the necessary action that will lead to the eventual elimination of malice and sorrow from this fair planet. RESPONDENT: If you breathe that Light it will rest in the Heart, no effort just natural breathing. It’s what the Tibetan Buddhists call the ‘compassion which rests in emptiness’ PETER: I think Mr. Siddhartha Gautama has a lot to answer for in his teachings of sorrow. Pity he is long dead for I wouldn’t mind asking him a few questions as to why he believes ‘Life is fundamentally disappointment and suffering’ – the first and fundamental principle of his Four Noble Truths. It is from this belief that suffering is necessary in the human condition that the feeling of compassion arises – the agreement to mutual suffering that prevents anyone from breaking out of the cycle, even when they enter into the imaginary meta-physical world of religious belief and all that entails. No 11, I have no doubt at all that your experiences are real and convincing for I have had many spiritual experiences myself. It is just that I have headed off in the opposite direction to tackle the illusion of darkness and Evil rather than settle for transcendence into light and God. The only reason I was able to do this was because I acknowledged the failure of any form of transcendence to bring peace on earth ... and I found something that works in that it confronts and eliminates all illusion. RESPONDENT: In regards to ASC you wrote ‘what is missing is any evidence that what is being experienced does in fact exist.’ The proof of existence is when the ASC is actively communicated to another individual. In Buddhist terms, Transmission. Spirit consciousness in relationship. I have experienced this event from both sides of the coin. No illusion. And if the experience is Real then to deny it is an expression of fear. PETER: What you are pointing to is the fact that the psychological and psychic entity that dwells within each human flesh and blood body has three ways to experience the world – cerebrally, affectively and sensately. In the spiritual world, primary emphasis is placed on affective experience – feelings, emotions and the tender instinctual passions – while common sense thinking and actual sensate experience are actively denigrated. By solely identifying with one’s feelings and passions, a potpourri of psychological imaginations and psychic experiences are available to the spiritual seeker, the nature of which will be dependent upon the culture and religious tradition one is immersed in. These traditional psychic experiences, visions, transmissions and the like, are atavistic in nature – so ancient and so deeply ingrained as to be overwhelmingly convincing Someone else wrote to me from the mailing list talking of psychic experiences, and I will post my reply as it relevant to your experience –
The psychic world of communication between people is a fascinating, bizarre and bewildering phenomenon that acts to bind human beings into fearful groups, forever in competition with other groups on the basis of imaginary morality of good and evil and arbitrary values of right and wrong. This form of psychic radar, communication, intuition, transmission, or whatever other name, while appearing very real to those indulging in it, is not actual. As for ‘and if the experience is Real then to deny it is an expression of fear’ – all these experiences are indeed very real, and sometimes very Real, but they are not actual. The only thing that traps people in this psychic spiritual world is fear of their deep-seated fears. Rather than dare to explore these psychic fears and our dark side, the traditional path has been one of transcendence into the psychic world of good, God and Light. Given that the animal survival instinct is genetically-encoded in our brain, our underlying primal emotion in any situation is fear, both psychological and psychic. The only way to eliminate fear is to investigate it experientially in order to trace its roots and understand it’s functioning. As Joseph LeDoux, a leading scientist currently mapping the instinctual functions in the human brain, says –
As can be seen, it is only by being afraid of fear that we fail to deeply investigate fear at its instinctual roots, which is why we remained trapped in our inner psychological and psychic worlds, unable to be here in the actual physical world of sensual delight. RESPONDENT: Will this ‘experience’ bring peace on earth? Only if it brings lasting peace within, yes, but also as an expression of the individual. As one poet put it: ‘Peace within myself, peace within my family, peace within my community...’ PETER: Was this merely a poet writing poetry or talking of his on-going experience? I have yet to see any evidence that relationships between spiritual people are fundamentally different to those between ordinary people, while any relationships that the theomaniacal Enlightened Ones have with other human beings is decidedly inequitable, undignified and bizarre. As for peace within spiritual communities, the facts speak for themselves as to the endemic covert kowtowing infighting, jockeying, cronyism, power battles, etc. that lay beneath the surface of all communities. And when the Master dies, as he / she inevitably does, overt feuding factionism always erupts. RESPONDENT: In your rejection of all religious theory, practice, and experience, I think you are throwing the ‘baby out with the bathwater’. PETER: Yes, you have got it. The fact that the last century was the bloodiest to date proves that the traditional solutions of instilling morals, ethics and values into humans by carrot and stick, or the spiritual solutions of praying to mythical gods for salvation or humbling ourselves before deluded God-men are clearly not working. We need to do something radical different, something that acknowledges and addresses the essential issue – that human malice and sorrow is the direct result of genetically-encoded animal instinctual passions. If this daring to tackle the problem head-on is seen as ‘throwing the baby out with the bath water’, then so be it. RESPONDENT: Yet I agree that present day religions are corrupt, and of those masters of the past: who’s to know what they actually stated? PETER: Again a heavily qualified agreement, which means you don’t agree at all. Which of the religions of past days weren’t corrupt? Some evidence for your statements, please. If, as you say, we don’t know what the masters of the past actually stated, how do we know the religions of the past were not corrupt? All the historical records not only point to corruption but to despotism and exploitative theocracies, sacrificial practices and bizarre rituals, repression and suppression, ignorance and superstition, oppressive codes of conduct and enforced loyalty, enslavement and entrapment. RESPONDENT: But, there is a path or way to become more than mere human and yet not reject one’s humanity. PETER: In Eastern religion, the path to ‘become more than mere human’ means the path to feeling Divine and Immortal – nothing more and nothing less. The spiritual path has traditionally seduced those seeking genuine peace, freedom and happiness into an imaginary psychic spirit-ual world – even further removed from actuality. Each new spiritual/ religious group that emerges on the scene does nothing but reinforce and contribute to the plethora of competing religions which has caused unimaginable suffering, conflicts, recriminations, persecutions, vitriolic conflicts and religious wars that are ever ongoing. As for not rejecting ‘one’s humanity’ – the most treasured attribute of ‘humanity’ is that we are proud of being feeling beings. These same cherished feelings we share in common with our closest genetic cousins, the chimps. Thus human affective feelings are firmly based upon the instinctual animal passions, the main ones being fear, aggression, nurture and desire. Despite our trumpeting and championing the tender qualities of love and compassion, the most striking, persistent and enduring attributes of the human condition are malice and sorrow – both at a personal level and a global level.
In order to be free of malice and sorrow we need to reject this perverse view as to what it is to be human – this overwhelming concept of a forever-suffering Humanity, instinctually and blindly driven to battle it out in grim and senseless and battle for survival, no matter how safe, comfortable, leisurable or pleasurable our lives become. To do so, we need a radical new approach that goes far further than the mere transcendence of the ‘bad’ savage instinctual passions and selfishly pumping up the ‘good’ tender ones for this does not do the job. We each need to conduct a personal on-going investigation of the instinctual passions as they manifest moment to moment such that we are able to actuate a permanent irrevocable change in our behaviour towards our fellow human beings. Few spiritual believers are prepared to make a deep investigation of their feelings, emotions and instinctual passions for they see that if they dare to question the spiritual ‘good’ feelings they will simply end up back in the ‘real’ world from which they have been desperately trying to escape. Some see that to question spiritual beliefs is to go towards the devil or evil while others see it as ending up in a sort of robotic catatonic state of non-feeling. What belies these fears is the PCE where the purity, perfection and benevolence of the actual world becomes magically apparent as having been here all the time ... if only ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul were not present to act as spoiler. The incremental transition from being an emotional, feeling self to the free functioning of apperception and sensuous delight requires a sincere intent firmly based on the peak experience. Ridding oneself of the emotions arising from the instinctual passions is a shocking concept to human beings, an anathema to what we regard as our very human-ness. But therein lies the secret to becoming actually free from the human condition for those courageous enough to face the illusionary demons and dragons, and the objections of others, on the way. Peace on earth does not lie beyond ego-death – the shift of identity from a personal self to the delusion of an impersonal self – as we now well know from examining the lives of the Enlightened Ones. Peace on earth lies beyond both psychological and psychic death – the extinction of both ego and soul, to use the common spiritual terms. It is something that many spiritual people know, including the Enlightened Ones, but few are willing to broach the topic for fear of losing their psychic power over others. Thanks for your post, No 11. It is vital to examine these matters and, as you can see from the mailing list, few people are even willing to discuss these matters at any depth for fear of raising doubts about their faith and for fear of other’s reaction within the group.
RESPONDENT: Universal life, Oneness includes all dimensions of being, to try denying anything is to live in fear of it ... including your emotions. PETER: I see you have reduced your position about peace on earth to a simple one-line statement. I do appreciate you clarifying your position. By the term ‘Universal life, Oneness’ you are no doubt referring to a universal force, energy or unifying feeling – i.e. God by another name. By the term ‘all dimensions of being’ you are no doubt referring to ‘all that is’ on the planet – including all the wars, rapes, murders, tortures, conflicts, poverty, tyranny, corruption, religious persecution, sadness, depression and suicides. By the term ‘to try denying anything is to live in fear of it’ you are espousing the Eastern religious and philosophical view of acceptance of all that is. I don’t know if you have been to the East but this attitude of acceptance is typified by a shrug of the shoulders, a wobble of the head or a vague waving of the arms to indicate a helplessness at being able to do anything about one’s lot in life or to change anything. Acceptance runs deep in the East and includes the hapless and helpless concept of re-incarnation in an endless cycle of earthly suffering. Your stated position about peace on earth can be summarized as – God is everything and we therefore should accept everything as it is and not try and change anything. What everyone misses when they take on Eastern belief is that this act of acceptance of the way things are includes denying that we humans are able do anything to change the way things are. Acceptance always comes hand in glove with denial of the possibility of changing the way things are. And as you said – ‘to try denying anything is to live in fear of it’. The fear of change runs deep in humans particularly when it involves radical and fundamental change. To accept all the wars, rapes, murders, tortures, conflicts, poverty, tyranny, corruption, religious persecution, sadness, depression and suicides as simply the way things are and thus deny the possibility that peace on earth is possible is a deeply cynical outlook on life. A constant theme in your posts is your use of the statement that to ‘deny anything is to live in fear of it’. What got me off my bum and my head out of the clouds was that I stopped denying the fact that I was as mad and as bad as everyone else on the planet.
By taking this fully on board it became glaringly obvious to me that only a complete, utter and radical change would bring me peace on earth in this lifetime and the only thing stopping me was fear. And, as you know, complete utter and radical change is ‘self’-immolation and not the usual finding solace and succour in religious belief and spiritual experiences. It’s enough to put the wind up anyone, really, but the rewards are commensurate with the fear faced, for actual peace on earth lies beyond psychological and psychic death. Good, Hey
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