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Peter’s Correspondence on Mailing List B Correspondent No 14
RESPONDENT: I’m wondering what total freedom would be. From our vantage point as beings moving physically through the World and all the worlds within it, what would we, if totally free, be free from? Fear? Attachment? Longing? Love? I’m sorry if this is very basic stuff. That’s where I am. PETER: The modern freedom is to be free of the illusion of thinking and feeling ourselves to be a spirit being trapped within a mortal flesh and blood body and thus become free of all illusion. To be totally free of a ‘self’ – both the ego and the soul – allows us to be what we are, not who we are or who we Truly feel we are, as in Self-realized. This allows us to be flesh and blood mortal human beings, free of any ‘self’ whatsoever. The problem with the Bronze Age spiritual wisdom that we modern humans still follow, is the very belief that who we really, truly are, is a spirit that inhabits the body and that goes ‘somewhere else’ after physical death. All of the nonsense of the spiritual path can be sheeted home to this single very ancient belief in spirits. A total freedom is beyond spiritual freedom, for it is a freedom of the physical body from the illusionary spirit and the associated instinctual passions, not an imaginary freedom of the illusionary spirit from the physical body. RESPONDENT: I used to think that total detachment was total freedom. I’m not at all sure that total detachment is possible, but certainly for me, it is no longer a goal. PETER: The practice of detachment from the physical, material world and renunciation of sensate, sensual experience is fundamental to entering fully into the more refined, ethereal, inner spirit-ual world. Methinks you have a fundamental problem. RESPONDENT: Does a totally free being no longer feel human emotion? Or are they free to not act in reaction to them? Free to choose their actions (or stillness) while awash in their emotions. I look forward to a response from anyone. PETER: There is overwhelming evidence that all of those who claim to be spiritually free are still subject to the full range of human emotions, both the tender and the savage instinctual passions. Any display of so-called bad emotions that do leak out – lust, anger, frustration, sorrow, etc. are usually deemed to be Divine emotions, God’s messages or some such excuse. The ideal of a spiritual perfection is a human invention based on the ancient notion of a perfect and good God – or a perfect and good God-man in Eastern religious belief. Freedom and perfection is only possible with the extinction of the animal instinctual passions in human beings – anything less always has, and always will, fail.
PETER: The modern freedom is to be free of the illusion of thinking and feeling ourselves to be a spirit being trapped within a mortal flesh and blood body and thus to become free of all illusion. To be totally free of a ‘self’ – both the ego and the soul – allows us to be what we are, not who we are or who we Truly feel we are, as in Self-realized. This allows us to be flesh and blood mortal human beings, free of any ‘self’ whatsoever. The problem with the Bronze Age spiritual wisdom that we modern humans still follow, is the very belief that who we really, truly are, is a spirit that inhabits the body and that goes ‘somewhere else’ after physical death. All of the nonsense of the spiritual path can be sheeted home to this single very ancient belief in spirits. A total freedom is beyond spiritual freedom, for it is a freedom of the physical body from the illusionary spirit and the associated instinctual passions, not an imaginary freedom of the illusionary spirit from the physical body. RESPONDENT: There may or may not be a survival of death by some component of me or by something much larger than me of which I am a component. I don’t know and honestly at this point in my life, it doesn’t really concern me. I’m not excessively interested in the future. If I later come to view myself as a ‘Spirit’, it will come from my own experience and not part of a legacy from the Bronze Age. If on the other hand, my experience leads me to see this existence as enough, I will also say yes, humbly. PETER: Only the Eastern Bronze Age religious tradition allows someone to view themselves as ‘Spirit’ or ‘God’. In Western Bronze Age religious traditions this realization would be considered sacrilegious in the extreme. To humbly say yes to seeing this existence as enough is but to surrender any chance of total freedom. * RESPONDENT: I used to think that total detachment was total freedom. I’m not at all sure that total detachment is possible, but certainly for me, it is no longer a goal. PETER: The practice of detachment from the physical, material world and renunciation of sensate, sensual experience is fundamental to entering fully into the more refined, ethereal, inner spirit-ual world. RESPONDENT: I’m trying to not see this as contradictory. I need help. PETER: It’s called the modern spiritual predicament – how to reconcile Bronze Age beliefs and superstitions with twenty first century knowledge and facts. * RESPONDENT: Does a totally free being no longer feel human emotion? Or are they free to not act in reaction to them? Free to choose their actions (or stillness) while awash in their emotions. I look forward to a response from anyone. PETER: There is overwhelming evidence that all of those who claim to be spiritually free are still subject to the full range of human emotions, both the tender and the savage instinctual passions. Any display of so-called bad emotions that do leak out – lust, anger, frustration, sorrow, etc. are usually deemed to be Divine emotions, God’s messages or some such excuse. The ideal of a spiritual perfection is a human invention based on the ancient notion of a perfect and good God – or a perfect and good God-man in Eastern religious belief. Freedom and perfection is only possible with the extinction of the animal instinctual passions in human beings – anything less than this has always failed, and always will fail. * RESPONDENT: I truthfully do not believe in perfection. We are, surely, infinitely perfectible. Something to keep in mind when shopping for a guru. I think belief in our or someone else’s perfection has led to a great deal of mischief and misery in history. I limit my ideal to the top of the next hill. PETER: Yes, it is increasingly obvious that the teachers have all failed to live up to the teachings which does beg the question why we blame either the teacher or ourselves and never-ever dare to question the veracity of the ‘sacred’ Bronze Age teachings. RESPONDENT: I am interested in how one discovers for oneself what are ‘animal instinctual passions’ and what leads to their extinction and what is left when they no longer hold sway. What worries me is renunciation, which often leads to mere suppression and which rises naturally from a clinging to ‘perfection’. PETER: The animal instinctual passions are essentially fear, aggression, nurture and desire and are easily recognized as feelings and deep-seated emotions in oneself. The Eastern spiritual practice of transcendence is to disassociate from the savage passions of fear and aggression and identify with the tender passions of nurture and desire. As such, spiritual seekers are encouraged to suppress and deny fear and anger and feel only love and Godliness which gives rise to the illusion of oneself as being perfect. This ‘perfection’ is never actualized for the underlying instinctual passions have only been ‘transcended’ and not eliminated. Actual perfection and innocence is only possible with the extinction of the instinctual passions in toto. RESPONDENT: I’ll leave with a quote from a Zen roshi whose name I have lost. ‘Renunciation is not giving up the things of this world, it is accepting that they go away.’ PETER: And yet there is ample evidence that the practice of renunciation has failed to eliminate the instinctual passions in any of the so-called Holy men. The book ‘Zen at War’ (http://www.darkzen.com/) makes fascinating reading about the consequences of the Zen Buddhist practices of renunciation and dissociation.
RESPONDENT: So. No Spirit, no Self, no Ego, and interestingly, no instinct. PETER: Every human being born into this world has a pre-programmed instinctual ‘self’ that is fully developed by about age two. This instinctual ‘self’ is epitomized by the instinctual passions of fear, aggression nurture and desire, an automatic operating program instilled to ensure the propagation and survival of the species. The rudimentary animal instinctual ‘self’ or instinctual identity we are born with is then overlaid with a social identity, instilled since birth by our peers. This social identity consists of the morals and ethics that have been drilled into us from the time when we were first rewarded for ‘good’ and ‘right’ behaviour and punished for ‘bad’ and ‘wrong’ behaviour. We are thus taught to emphasize and highly value the ‘tender’ instinctual passions and repress and control the ‘savage’ passions. Our social identity is also made of our beliefs, prime among them being an atavistic belief in Gods, spirits, other-worlds and an on-going life after death for ‘me’, as spirit. Spiritual freedom is not a ‘self’-less state, as is sometimes claimed, but a shift in identity from self to Self or personal self to Impersonal Self or from mortal spirit to Divine Spirit. A freedom from the instinctual passions requires the elimination of all identity – both the overlaid social identity implanted as a ‘controller’ of the rampant passions and the instinctual identity, which is the very source of the instinctual animal passions. RESPONDENT: What is left? Surely not just flesh and blood body. Who’s at the helm? Pure awareness? PETER: Everybody has experienced a totally ‘self’-less state sometime in their life and these experiences are known as Pure Consciousness Experiences, nature experiences or Jamais Vu experiences. These are all pure experiences, where for a brief period of time, there is no ‘I’ as thinker or ‘me’ as feeler present, but there is a direct sensate-only experience of the actual world in which we live. This actual world is experienced as vibrantly alive, pure, perfect and effervescent in its immediacy. So encompassing is this direct experience, it is as though one has entered another dimension, or as though a veil has been lifted on all that one usually sees, hears, touches and smells, and one is experiencing the familiar in a new and astounding way. It is as though one has been previously living in a ‘self’-created dream and one experiences, as a flesh and blood body brimming with sense organs, the vivacious physicality and infinitude of this infinite and eternal universe. One’s senses are heightened, one’s thinking clear and one’s consciousness is unpolluted by any affective feelings whatsoever, be they ‘savage’ as in fear and aggression or ‘tender’ as in love, gratitude or compassion. In these ‘self’-less pure experiences, one is the universe experiencing itself as a flesh and blood human being. Often people who have these experiences claim them as ‘my’ experience and then the experience is transformed and distorted into an affective experience, generally known as an Altered State of Consciousness. In affective experiences, depending upon one’s religious/ spiritual inclinations or practices, ‘I’ feel humbled or grateful to God for being able to experience His creation and His love, or in Eastern terms, ‘I’ feel at one with all that is experienced, ‘I’ feel I am not separate from all that is experienced or, in a full-blown delusion of grandeur, ‘I’ feel I am God and all this is ‘My’ creation. Affective experiences are so seductive and ‘self’-gratifying and so treasured and glorified in the spiritual world, that scant attention has been paid to the pure experiences that hold the clue to the ending of human malice and sorrow. Pure Consciousness Experiences are the proof that it is possible for the flesh and blood body to become actually free from the social and instinctual identity – ‘who’ we think and feel we are. PCEs are the proof that perfection, purity and peace already exist on this paradisiacal planet – and it is only ‘me’ who stands in the way of it becoming actualized as this body. RESPONDENT: How is this accomplished? I have a reasonable idea of what you’re opposed to, but I’m unclear about what you are recommending, in real terms, in this world, in this moment. PETER: To answer your second point first – what I am proposing is peace on earth, as this flesh and blood body only, in this lifetime. Unless one is vitally interested in this proposition then it will obviously be impossible to accomplish the ending of ‘me’, as an identity dwelling in this flesh and blood body. The ending of one’s instinctual ‘self’, and the associated animal passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, firstly requires a vital interest and passionate yearning to make sense of and be fully involved in this business of being a human being on this planet. The second requirement that is vital for success, is to fully take on board the fact that this moment is the only moment that you can experience being alive and, as such, ... if you’re not happy now and if you’re not harmless now, then you are wasting this moment of being alive. * I am aware that in-depth posts are not the usually preferred style for mailing lists, so I might
interrupt this now and continue the thread in a post to
RESPONDENT: Thanks for the in-depth post. I understand more clearly. PETER: It took me months and months to begin to grasp that there could be another state of freedom other than a spirit-ual freedom and that the spiritual world does not in fact exist, other than in the heads and hearts of human beings who desperately cling to a belief in a life after death. This passionate fantasy has been on-going for thousands of years and is so fervently believed, so hopefully yearned for, that it takes nerves of steel to extradite oneself from this belief. To be an agnostic or a fence-sitter about spiritual/religious belief is one thing, but to actively dismantle this atavistic belief in one’s own psyche to the point of becoming free of it, is quite another. RESPONDENT: You do seem though, to believe in something you call Impersonal Self or Divine Nature as opposed to self. PETER: I don’t believe in it anymore, for I have personally experienced it as delusionary state whereby ‘I’ was Love, God-intoxicated, etc. ‘I’ was the very centre of all that existed and the world about me appeared to be a dream-like state that existed for ‘my’ benefit. ‘I’ was both timeless and eternal and ‘I’ was a pure feeling being located in the heart of my body, which was also part of the dream. It is a very, very seductive state indeed – and it appears to be very real and all-encompassing as ‘my’ new and glorious identity overpowers any meagre identity that existed before. What saved me from venturing further on this path was a confirmation from an Enlightened One that this was indeed an experience of Enlightenment – the dearly sought-after prize of the spiritual search. As I contemplated my future fate, I realized that if I continued on the spiritual path I would soon end up Enlightened myself. I had seen enough of the Enlightened Ones, their lifestyles, their psychic powers, how they were with their women, the insidiousness of the Master-disciple system, etc., to begin to seriously question whether this was what I really wanted. I also knew deep-down inside that I was copping out and that there was something seriously wrong with this dream-like state simply because it was dream-like and that it was a completely ‘self’-centred state, despite ‘my’ feelings of Love for all. In the end it was integrity that turned me away from the spiritual path and spiritual belief. RESPONDENT: I have no need to label this spiritual, but what is it and what is its source? PETER: You may have no need to label these beliefs and experiences as spiritual, but that does not change the fact that it is as spiritual as all get out. What I am talking about is the elimination of all spiritual and real-world beliefs – to bring an end to the very act of believing for, as the pop song went, ‘I’m a believer’. RESPONDENT: I’ve never been comfortable with the division of the cosmos into the material and the spiritual and their supposed opposition unless I see this as an accurate description of how we can feel. Metaphor or poetry. PETER: Well, if you go by feelings as the sole arbiter of your existence as a human being on the planet you will inevitably be attracted to the spiritual world for there is no more grandiose a feeling than to feel as though ‘I’ am Love, or ‘I’ am Divine Nature, etc. You will also be attracted to the mind-numbing sweet poetry and metaphors of spiritual teachings for it is specifically designed to be music to one’s soul. Passionate feelings are the cause of so much imagination, delusion, ‘self’-centred grandiosity, supercilious twaddle, conflict, feuds, fights, bloodshed and mayhem that it is time to deeply question and investigate, moment to moment, exactly how your feelings and emotions prevent you from being happy, peaceful and harmless to others. RESPONDENT: Still I am trying to understand what you feel this Self might be. PETER: Have you not had spiritual experiences whereby you experienced your true nature, your real ‘self’, the real ‘me’ deep down inside? This is the very reason for turning ‘inside’ in such practices as meditation and right thinking. If pursued with single-minded purpose these experiences can become stronger to the point that one can see the Light, experience one’s true Self, one’s Impersonal Self, etc. The use of capital letters is common convention to express Divinity or God and is oft used in spiritual writings and teachings for the same reason. Some more slippery teachings that swing with the fashion have abandoned the convention but a little reading will soon discover that they are pointing to an experience of feeling as though one is God ... by whatever name. RESPONDENT: Have you studied much about traditional Zen thought? I’m wondering how your views would differ? If you substitute ‘buddha nature’ for ‘impersonal Self’? PETER: There are many terms used in the multitudinous spiritual/religious teachings for God, soul and life after death. Buddhism is about the headiest of the Eastern Religions with their emphasis on ‘right’ thinking, high moral principles and aesthetic practices. The essential teaching is that ‘life is fundamentally disappointment and suffering’ and that by being a good and right-thinking person one can dissociate from the evil of the material world – and one’s own evil. By practicing diligently it is possible to attain a state of Nirvana aka Enlightenment, etc. and, upon the ‘death of the body’, enter into Mahaparinirvana, aka Heaven, etc. When you poke around a bit you will find all religion, be it Eastern or Western, runs the same basic fairy story. RESPONDENT: Still I’m in the dark about how one would achieve a state like this. Are there specific practices? Otherwise it seems like an intellectual game or merely a belief system? PETER: The reason that few are interested in this third alternative is that it firstly involves the active demolishing of one’s dearly cherished morals, ethics, spiritual and real-world beliefs – one’s social identity – such that one can ‘get down and get dirty’ and look at the raw crude instinctual passions in operation in oneself. This investigation will lead one to discover the insidiousness of one’s instinctual ‘self’ – blindly driven by fear, aggression, nurture and desire. I have written about the method so I won’t repeat it here, but maybe you are already engaging in the preliminaries of it by questioning your spiritual beliefs and looking into what investment ‘you’ have in keeping them, what feelings arise when you question them, what fears arise, what defences you mount, how passionate you are in defending your beliefs, if you get angry or upset when someone else questions your beliefs, etc. I say maybe, because finding out what causes your sorrow and malice may not be something that is a priority, or a passion, for you in your life. RESPONDENT: Like you say, we’ve all had this experience of getting out of our own way, but can we stay out of the way? PETER: If you mean by ‘we’ve all had this experience of getting out of our own way’, that we have all had a pure consciousness experience where ‘I’ as thinker and ‘me’ as feeler was temporarily absent and a direct, unfiltered experience of this extraordinary physical actual universe became apparent, then I would agree with you. However, most people usually forget these ‘self’-less pure experiences immediately after, or too easily dismiss them, because there is no affective feeling ‘me’ present at the time and ‘I’ therefore have no affective memory of the experience afterwards. On the other hand, what is most common is that sometime during a pure consciousness experience, or immediately thereafter, ‘I’ jump in and claim the experience as ‘mine’. Thus, instead of this flesh and blood body only having a direct sensate experience of the infinite and eternal actual universe, ‘I’ feel as though ‘I’ am eternal, infinite, timeless and spaceless – which is to feel like God, for one seems to be omnipresent, omni-powerful and immortal. This is the mightily ‘self’-aggrandized feeling state known as an Altered State of Consciousness and has proved irresistible to the seeker of freedom, peace and happiness ... up until now. But the ‘nut has been cracked’, and the sham of an Altered State of Consciousness experience revealed for what it is. A way has now been pioneered to avoid the instinctual ‘self’ making a grab for power and glory during pure consciousness experiences ‘of getting out of our own way’ temporarily and eventually to ‘stay out of the way’ permanently – i.e. to actively bring about one’s own ‘self’-immolation. Then one gets to live the pure consciousness experience 24 hrs. a day, every day.
Peter’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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