|
Peter’s Correspondence on Mailing List B Correspondent No 27
RESPONDENT: Anything about the mind gets my attention ... That’s supposed to be some type of a joke, I think; OK, I’ll keep working on it. One thing strongly stressed by Papaji [H.W.L Poonja], was that the mind is not our friend; like a little bad-tempered dog, you might be able to get in a pet or two, but if you turn your back on it, it will bite you in that place. And I like his illustration, as I’ve been bitten a number of times by this ‘processing mechanism’ that I spent so many years training as ‘my best friend.’ PETER: In Eastern religions, it is thinking that gets all the blame for life’s woes, while feelings and emotions that arise from human instinctual passions have got off scot free. Simple attentive observation will confirm this fact in one’s moment to moment living in the market place ... if one is interested and willing to make the investigation. RESPONDENT: And something else comes to me to contribute to this whole issue of the ego: What if the whole subject can be EXPERIENTIALLY and FOR PRACTICE, grasped by becoming interested in something Andrew Cohen states, quoted in the book, ‘Freedom Has No History’, p.48 – ‘Simply through the discovery of the impersonality of every aspect of your personal experience, you find your own Liberation...’ PETER: This teaching points directly to avoiding personal responsibility for one’s own feelings and emotions. The classic spiritual dissociation from personal feelings is that it is not ‘my’ anger but ‘anger arising’, it is not ‘my’ sorrow but it is universal impersonal sorrow. By cutting off from what one is actually experiencing in this moment and aiming to become an Impersonal Self, one rises above it all, seeking to become some sort of superior spiritual/religious Identity. By doing so one retreats to a world of one’s own inner Reality and is forever cut off from the sensual delights of the actual world. All religious teachings point to going ‘there’ and not coming here where we humans really live – in the sensate-rich physical world of purity and perfection. The only qualification needed to experience the perfection and purity of the actual world is that one needs to be totally ‘self’-less. RESPONDENT: Somehow I am beginning to entertain the ‘sneaking suspicion’ that it is my unadulterated adulation of my own sense of personal, separate and special-ness that is at the heart of this EGO BUSINESS at least in life as currently experienced in this neck of the woods. PETER: Could you dare to entertain a sneaking suspicion that transcending your ordinary personal self and practicing ‘unadulterated adulation’ of your very, very special Impersonal Self was an utterly selfish and Self-indulgent business? Could you entertain that everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong? Could you entertain the idea that religion is rotten to the core, be it Eastern or Western? I know this is a bit radical, but if you have ever had a pure consciousness experience, the inherent rottenness of religion is startlingly apparent. RESPONDENT: On the intellect being a part of the Divine, well: All concepts could be considered valuable, especially as they lead beyond concepts into the realm of personal experience during meditation and beyond into contemplation of those things you can accept as Truths. PETER: And every other concept, discovery and experience must be therefore rejected if it does not agree with the Truth that there is a God, by whatever name, and that there is life after death. Spiritual/religious beliefs have such a stranglehold on Humanity because up until now the only other alternative was to accept that grim instinctual reality was all there is to human life. There is now a third alternative – an outstanding sensual, down-to-earth, actual freedom, that many know exists from their pure consciousness experiences. Purity and perfection does exist – it is under our very noses so to speak – it is only ‘I’ as ego, and ‘me’ as soul, that stand in the way. RESPONDENT: Some conceptual structures, of course, refer to God as Sat-Chit-Anand [Being – Consciousness – Love/Bliss] as I understand it, and this has helped me to personally stretch my intellect a bit ... PETER: Yes, God has a multitude of confusing and bewildering names in Eastern religion. So much so that when I was on the spiritual path, I was so confused by the language used that I failed to recognize that I was just being a faithful follower of ‘old time religion’. I was seduced by the poetry, platitudes and the overwhelming feelings into abandoning any common sense and adopting a cynical view of human life on earth – that human psychological and psychic suffering is essential and can never be eliminated. RESPONDENT: And all I can say about the ‘Who am I?’ question, is that it led me personally to an experience BEYOND the intellect and all other conceptions, to a place where there was not any personal ‘I’ that could be called a ‘who’ ... the experience was more like an enormous ‘IS!!!!!’ with lots of exclamation points, in caps of course, with something I experienced very briefly in a way my mind wanted to call Light. PETER: All of these religious experiences are culturally, socially and generationally predisposed. One invariably finds exactly what one is seeking – one is looking for God or Salvation, one is seeking the Light, one is desperately looking for the Meaning of life. This is not beyond intellect – this is merely following fashion, firmly locked into thinking and feeling exactly what every other human being who has sought freedom has found. Despite all these common-to-all adaptable inner experiences, the human condition is still epitomized by malice and sorrow and peace on earth is nowhere to be found. RESPONDENT: Human-ly, of course, this perhaps like when Lao Tzu referred to The Way as being beyond words and then – as one of his followers quipped – proceeded to explain that Way in 5,000+/- words... PETER: And you have explained the experience very well. There are thousands of sites on the Net with millions of words describing these same experiences. God is indeed ‘other-worldly’, as in non-existent in the actual physical world where we flesh and blood human beings live, but ubiquitously affective God-experiences have captivated Humanity for millennia and have always served to hijack every quest for genuine peace and happiness – up until now. RESPONDENT: I truly am becoming partial to the many and varied perspectives of ‘ya’ll out there. PETER: Have you ever stopped to wonder why there are so many varied perspectives of the Truth, of God and of the feeling ‘we are all one’? Why is it that there is so much confusion and contradiction, deception and duplicity in the spiritual/religious world? If those who have seen the Light and have the Answer, then manage to have so ‘many and varied perspectives’ – and this is only one of hundreds of mailing lists, and only one of thousands of religious groups and followings – how can there ever be peace and harmony in the world? Does this not make you just a wee bit suss of the veracity of spiritual Truth? I always used to wonder about that spiritual psittacism that ‘we are all Gods, we just have to realize it’. I would wonder what it would be like living in a world of 6 billion people, all acting as Gods. Who would worship who, who would follow who, who would drive the buses, who would farm the land, who would sit in the Masters chair, whose photo would be on the wall? If everyone became a God then there obviously would be no Evil left in the world, and no-one left in ignorance to feel compassion for ... so why would then everyone need to be God at all? If everyone became a God, there would obviously be no more re-incarnation because there would be no bad karma to work off and no souls returning, and with celibacy rife, the human race would quickly become extinct ... and everyone would be living in peace ‘somewhere else’ ... and thus, the spiritual dream would be truly realized?
Peter’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer |
