25.11.1998

RESPONDENT: I am fairly new to all of this. Fairly new, meaning that, as you had once looked for freedom (we all do in some way or another) I have been searching on my own, most of my life. After 18 years of being in metaphysics, which is a label is placed on anything that has to do with the spiritual, I had found information on Osho. It has only been recently that I was introduced to this spiritual master, by no one, I just stumbled into it.

PETER: For me the idea of being able to live with a woman in peace and harmony was something I wanted to do all my life, and had a few failed attempts. It seemed to me in the end that it was but an impossible dream. Like a lot of other seekers of freedom I put it on the back burner and pursued the spiritual path. On the spiritual path it is assumed that the search has priority over the relationship as can be clearly seen in the East with the emphasis on celibacy, retreat, monk-ship or nun-ship. Women mostly are servants to men, and are considered incapable of attaining Enlightenment unless re-incarnated as a man. The Masters and Gurus I met or read about all had or have relationships with women as their disciples – loving slaves who worship them. for me this was one of the things that first caused me to begin to the spiritual. How come the answer to it all does not include man and woman living together in peace, harmony and equity – not to mention sexual delight. It would all be a sick joke if paradise does not include this as an actuality.

Well I’m pleased to report and write about the fact that it does. When I first met Richard and contemplated trying this new path to actual freedom (as opposed to the spiritual) I wanted an actual way of determining if it works on the way. So I picked a woman ‘out of the hat’, literally by random except for a physical attraction. I’ve told the rest in the journal but the important thing I would emphasize is that I wanted to do it for me and it involved me focussing exclusively on changing me and not trying to change her. Vineeto wrote about the process of actively getting rid of everything that stood in the way between us. It has been a fascinating journey, the bulk of which was accomplished in 12 months of intense, exciting and scary times. We are both literally different people than when we started in that nether of us are malicious or sorrowful. We have not had even the hint of any disagreement or ripple of unease for 12 months or more. The change is permanent and is not dependant on us being together exclusively. We would each be capable of living with another in exactly the same way if the other had the same commitment – to investigate and eliminate in themselves everything that is in the road of peace and harmony. You do, of course manage to achieve what the Enlightened aim for the demolition and annihilation of the self as well – but that was my real aim anyway.

So maybe this is of use. If you are really interested it could be good to re-read the journal because unless your intent is pure and unless you make it the most important thing in your life, failure is guaranteed – you only have to look around to see the litany of failure of men and women living together. No wonder cynicism abounds.

7.1.1999

PETER: Just some comments on the quotes you posted –

RESPONDENT:

[Fred Alan Wolf]: ... All sensation will be the reconstruction of objects in space and time from apparent or virtual images of those objects recorded in the cortex. All that we sense as ‘out there’ is projected from our ‘witness’ of the recorded virtual images.’ – Fred Alan Wolf, Parallel Universes.

PETER: The presence of a psychological and psychic entity within the body creates the illusion that the physical world is an illusion, responded to with instinctual fear and aggression. ‘I’ look out through these eyes, ‘I’ hear with these ears, ‘I’ smell, ‘I’ touch, ‘I’ smell and as such ‘I’ feel lost, lonely, frightened and revert to extreme cunning in order to remain in existence (hence the insidious belief in, and pursuit of, a fictitious apparent after-life).

However, all is not lost. It is now possible to eliminate both these entities, ego and soul, and directly and intimately experience the physical universe with ‘senses bristling’, completely free of both psychological and psychic fear.

RESPONDENT:

[quote]: ‘Consciousness unfolds like a computer displaying its contents on a screen. A considerable part of that display comes from the past and is confused with the self.’ – Briggs and Peat, Looking Glass Universe.

PETER: Consciousness is what is happening when one is alive and awake and is epitomised by three faculties ... the sensate, the cerebral and the affective. Unconsciousness is what is happening when alive and in deep sleep, concussed or anaesthetised and is epitomised by oblivion.

The ‘self’ is who one ‘thinks’ and ‘feels’ oneself to be as opposed to ‘what one is’ – this flesh and blood body. As such ones emotional memories of the past provide an affective record of the existence of ones ‘self’ and is the direct cause of so much suffering. We wallow in past emotional memories, constantly re-running and re-interpreting the past in order to maintain our feeling existence. These wallowings of ‘me’ – both happy and sad – actively inhibit the direct experience of this, my only moment of being alive.

 RESPONDENT:

[quote]: Thought encloses itself in its own word’ What then is this activity from which one ought to abstain? It is the disordered activity of the mind which, unceasingly, devotes itself to the work of a builder erecting ideas, creating an imaginary world in which it shuts itself like a chrysalis in its cocoon.’ – The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

PETER: Eastern philosophy and religion deny and negate the innate intelligence and common sense operation of thought while giving full and unbridled reign to the affective and imaginary faculties. ‘Get out of your head and into your heart’ can be translated into ‘give up common sense and you can imagine and ‘feel’ anything you want to’. Feelings of Love, Oneness, God, etc. abound – varying only by the particular belief system one is influenced by at the time.

Hence Christians ‘see’ and feel Christ, Buddhist ‘see’ and feel Buddha, scientists ‘see’ parallel universes, etc. etc.

RESPONDENT:

PETER: And feelings and emotions form part of the ‘self’ – they are who we feel we are and as such ‘form a world of their own’ – very real and very substantial in that we kill and die for our passionate heart-felt feelings – and yet to date they have got off scot-free. It is significant to realise that feelings are most commonly expressed as emotion-backed thoughts – a fact easily observed in one’s ‘self’ is given sufficient awareness.

RESPONDENT:

[David Bohm]: ‘Insight is an intelligence beyond any of the energies that could be defined in thought. Insight directly transforms matter; it sort of by-passes thought as of little consequence.’ – David Bohm, in RE-VISION 1

PETER: Spiritual insights or Altered States of Consciousness (ASC) do indeed by-pass thought – and common sense as well!

RESPONDENT:

[Albert Einstein]: ‘There are moments when one feels free from one’s own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable; life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny; only Being.’ – Albert Einstein.

PETER: Good old Albert, hey. Many still regard him as a scientist who contributed to our understanding of the physical universe, rather than the Mystic he was.

He is famous mostly for theoretical postulations as to what could happen to matter, space and time if the speed of light is exceeded or if infinity is measured finitely. No wonder after some 80 years his theories still remain theories. I heard a scientist use the word ‘Guru’ the other day as he pondered on which current proposer of theories to follow.

 RESPONDENT:

[quote]: ‘Subtle, sparkling, dazzling, glorious, and radiantly awesome, in appearance like a mirage moving across a landscape in spring-time in one continuous stream of vibrations... That is the radiance of thine own true nature.’ – Bardo Thodol

PETER: Ah, the affectations and feelings in full flight, seductive as ever. Ever promising and ever failing to deliver except in fleeting glimpses, unless by supreme effort (usually suffering) one becomes fully deluded into feeling glory and awe. ‘Thine own true nature’ is of course to realise that one is ‘timeless, never-ending, always has been, always will be’

It is an enormous construct that has been built up over millennia and as such is not at all easy to begin to question let alone see through in it’s entirety. The only guide is the peak experience, or Pure Consciousness Experience (PCE), when one is able to directly experience the perfection and purity of the physical universe free of any ‘self’ whatsoever, free of a personal ‘self’ and free of the ‘Grand Self’. We tend not to recall these experiences or re-interpret them later as spiritual experiences, such is the instinctual cunning of the ‘self’ to remain in existence.

A Self is, after all still, a self, merely in a grander form, and a deluded one at that, as ‘it’ then believes it is immortal and will survive after physical death of the ‘body/mind’.

Everybody has got it 180 degrees wrong – such is the overwhelming power both of wishful thinking and passionate feelings.

It’s been such fun again.

1.2.1999

RESPONDENT: Peter, but you are always repeating yourself about the same issue. Every e-mail I read from you sounds the same in so many words. No matter what argument, no matter what question, it’s always the same answer.

PETER: Yes indeed, and I get the same objections back – I am either wrong, or I am saying the ‘same thing’ as everybody else has since time immemorial.

Hardly anybody has bothered to consider that there might be something new under the sun.

Everybody insists that humans will be forever plagued by sadness, loneliness, depression, suicide, anger, violence, jealousy, dependency.

That there could not possibly be another way – other than turning away from the fact that we humans still, when push comes to shove, are driven by the base instincts of fear and aggression.

The solutions to date, trying to bring an end to all this malice and sorrow have failed miserably and the traditional turning away and finding God just leads to humans forming into gangs and fighting it out as to whose God is the best God.

Surely there has to be another solution – and now there is. Get rid of malicious and sorrowful feelings in you.

It has two benefits.

You become happy and harmless – no longer plagued by sadness, loneliness, depression, anger, jealousy, dependency – a personal peace that is pure, perfect and delightful.

You make an actual contribution to peace on earth. You do the only thing you can do if you are concerned about all the wars, rapes, murders, suicides, sorrow, abuse, domestic violence, religious wars, persecutions. You rid yourself of malice and sorrow. You put your money where your mouth is.

Feeling sorry for others, or blaming others is a cop out from fixing yourself up – from ridding yourself of the Human Condition, from having the courage to step out from Humanity.

So if anyone writes to me with more objections to being happy and harmless – I am always happy to talk to anyone about personal peace and peace on earth.

Such a lovely word – peace.

It’s a good thing I never get bored – I can’t even think how anyone could be bored with life as a human being on this planet in 1999.

The food, the technology, the comfort, the networks of services, the entertainment and information at the click of a mouse or touch of a button.

How could anyone object to being here or want to turn away back into sadness, loneliness ... or escape into an imaginary inner world of fairy tales and Gods?

Why not be free of the whole Human Condition?

*

P.S. If you are bored I would suggest you delete, and then you won’t have to write posts to me – then you will have less to delete – and nothing to be bored about.

6.2.1999

RESPONDENT: Here is something interesting... anybody use this stuff?

Take Charge of Your Life Using Feng Shui

Flushing Your Life Station

If you have a bathroom in any of your life stations, you will be flushing the energy of that life station down the drain. Remember to keep the toilet seat down before flushing. If you think this sounds ridiculous stand in front of the toilet and flush it. You will see that there is a counter-clockwise vortex created in the flushing (re-read the section on vortices). If you have a sink in a life station, place a red dot on the ceiling above the drain.

PETER: Just a note on your post –

Ah, I’ve discovered the Real Reason for my happiness.

The water in my toilet (and sink) has a clockwise vortex. So it follows that if everybody moves to the southern hemisphere there should, no doubt, be a significant ‘shift in consciousness’ on the planet. At the local market where I live there is a stall that sells big metal spikes as acupuncture needles that one bangs into the walls of one’s house to cure various ailments, keep at bay various evil spirits and energies and evoke the good ones.

I watched a program on TV. recently where a muzzled dog was given acupuncture to cure his ‘emotional’ problems. I suspect he was expressing his anger too overtly at the vet/healer who stuck needles in him, hence the need for even more acupuncture.

Makes you wonder about the New Dark Age we live in ...

[Peter]: ‘I remember after the Ranch I was living in a seaside town that had a small Rajneesh centre. Rooms were available providing various people a chance to offer sessions in past lives, tarot, astrology, psychic readings and other divinations. A friend and I would often look at the notice board, fascinated at the ever-increasing variety on offer. One day we decided, as a prank, to place a fictitious advertisement in the community newsletter offering ‘Capology – the Ancient Tibetan Art of Knee-cap Reading’. It went on to describe that the knees are a critical junction point for the flow of ‘Quong energy’. We also offered half price to pensioners and amputees! We gave the telephone number of the local Concerned Christians, a cult-busting group, which had occasionally given Rajneeshees a hard time. We thought nothing more of it until the editor of the newsletter bailed us up one day to tell us that the Concerned Christians had rung up to complain that they had had so many phone calls, and how come? Which made me think, even then, that people will believe anything. It just took me a while to admit to the fact that I was as gullible as everyone else.’ Peter’s Journal, ‘Fear’