Please note that Peter’s Journal was written by the feeling-being ‘Peter’ while ‘he’ lived in a pragmatic (methodological), still-in-control/same-way-of-being Virtual Freedom before becoming actually free.

Selected Writings from Peter’s Journal

on Death, Immortality and Self-immolation

Two things in particular stick in my mind from the time of my son’s death. My ex-wife had wanted to see the body and the undertaker led us out to the little room in which the coffin stood on trestles, set up for our viewing. I remember looking at the body, which had been prepared to look serene with whatever skills an undertaker uses. What struck me immediately was the lifelessness of the corpse. This was obviously the dead body of someone who had abounded with almost frenetic energy when he was alive. There was a wail from beside me as my ex-wife put into words exactly what I had seen – ‘He’s not here, he’s not here’. After leaving the funeral parlour we drove aimlessly around the small coastal town, finally parking on the edge of the river estuary. As we wandered out onto the tidal mudflats, she looked up at the greying sky and shouted out his name several times. I looked up at the sky and clearly remember thinking, ‘No, he’s not up there either.’

I had experienced the death of both parents previously, but the death of one of my children, particularly one so young, completely shattered my nonchalant view I had of being alive. When I was seventeen, my father had died when he was only in his early forties. He had suffered a heart attack about two years before, but had continued to work very hard to fulfil his ambition of providing a house and some security for my mother. He died when it was half-complete, and I always saw the futility in his gesture, as my mother was lonely in the house without him and sold it a few years later anyway. I guess it was the only thing he knew to do as a husband, but it always seemed such a pointless sacrifice.

I also have a distinct memory from this time of my mother trying to find a priest who would officiate at the cremation. My father was a Lutheran, but the Lutheran minister refused to conduct the service, as my father had also been a Mason, which was objectionable to the minister for some reason. So, here was my mother ringing around to find anyone with a back-to-front collar willing to do the job. What my son’s death at such a young age did for me was to intensify the sense of urgency to find the meaning of it all – after all, I saw how short life can actually be. Here I was, my father dead, my son dead; I was still alive, in my early forties, and I was obviously living on borrowed time – as I saw it. And I knew that I was not even really living yet – there was fear, hesitancy, and that feeling of invisible shackles from which I yearned to break free. Peter’s Journal, ‘Death’

Within a few weeks, as we all assembled in the meeting hall for the evening talk, it was announced that Rajneesh had ‘left his body’ earlier that afternoon. His dead body was then carried into the hall and placed on the podium, and an emotional celebration was held. Here in front of us lay the body of the man who had been for me mentor, father and Guru! For the past ten years I had devoted my life to him and his vision. I had sat in devotion for hours and hours, had worked for his ideal, and had loyally followed him through thick and thin. Being his disciple and following his teachings had given my life meaning, direction and purpose. And now he was dead.

His body was then carried through the streets amidst much pandemonium, as by now the word of his death had spread around Poona. At the burning place by the river, the body was placed on a pit full of firewood. Ghee and various perfumes were poured on, more logs piled on top, and the whole lot set on fire. Several thousand of us were gathered in the firelight and the singing continued into the night.

As the crowd thinned, I watched the smouldering remains of the fire, wondering what would become of all our dreams, and what I would do, now that he was gone. The next morning I was awoken with a message to come to the ashram, where I worked with a crew all day and through the night to convert the marble bed we had completed only months before into an altar for his ashes. The huge bedroom I had helped build was now to become his Mausoleum!

Life in the ashram continued on, hardly missing a beat, with his chair ceremoniously carried in each evening, and a large screen lowered to play videos of his previous talks. We all believed he had only ‘left his body’ and ‘His Energy’ was still here. I stayed on in the ashram for a month or two, but since I was running out of money I returned to work in the West. I found a largely unspoken sympathy directed towards me because of my son’s death, and I became aware of a certain personal emotional investment in continuing my grief. The grief was to remain simmering just below the surface for some two years. I would often find myself feeling guilty, but eventually it became obvious that this was senseless, as I explored all of my actions and could see that in no way was I culpable. I realised some of the guilt was associated with the question: ‘Did I give him too much freedom?’ And the answer was always that it was better to have given him freedom than to try and tie him down. For the last six months of this period I would walk the beach near where I lived for hours and hours, miles and miles, trying to make sense of why he had died. In the end I wore out the question and accepted the fact that there was no answer – he was no more in my life. He was dead! Peter’s Journal, ‘Death’

Graveyard

During my investigations into death over this last year, I have become aware that the most shocking thing for human beings is that we are able to contemplate our own death. It is amazing that, of all the animals on the planet, only we human beings, with our ability to think and reflect, know that we have a limited life span and, further, that we could die at any time. We know this, we can talk about it and think about it. We see other people and animals die, and we see our bodies aging and dying.

We know that death is an inevitable fact. This is the fact of the situation, but we have avoided this fact largely by making ‘Why are we here?’ and ‘What happens after death?’ into great religious, philosophical and scientific questions. Indeed, for many humans the pursuit of the answer to these meaningless questions is deemed to be the very meaning of life. The search for what happens after life becomes the point of life and the Search is endless. One is forever on the Path. One never arrives.

That always seemed some sort of perversity to me. All that the religious and spiritual meanings of life have offered us is that they point to life after death – that’s where it is really at! ‘When you die, then you can really live!’ Peter’s Journal, ‘Death’

Denial of the fact of death is to believe in a Heaven, a place where we go to after death. This is common to all religions, with the Eastern religions adding the belief of reincarnation to somewhat muddy the water. Enlightenment, with its altered state of consciousness, is a denial of death in the sense that the Guru believes Him or Herself to be in a state of Timelessness – a delusion that they are beyond death. Denying the fact that the body dies and rots, they claim the body is but an illusion. ‘I am not the body’ is a common belief. A separate entity from the physical body – the Soul, Self, Atman or whatever – is self-created, that which lives on and cheats death. Thus, even the Enlightened Ones have their place to go to after death – the various Eastern versions of Heaven.

Added to the denial of death, the denial of life’s sensual pleasures, sex, comfort and leisure is entrenched in all the religions. In fact, suffering and sacrifice are deemed great virtues in both religion and spirituality. The curious thing I was to discover about the spiritual path was that at the core of the teachings, exactly like in the Western religions, lies the desire to achieve a ‘state of immortality’, and I had not seen it while on the ‘path’. Somehow I had managed to blind myself to these facts, as I was originally attracted to spirituality for the goal of personal ‘peace of mind’ in this life – to hell with the next one. This led me to believe that Eastern Spirituality was something other than, or better than, the ‘old-time Religion’ that I had known, and rejected as silly, in my youth.

Anger in the face of death is a common reaction, and it is obvious to all of us that many people live their lives in anger. It has never been a particular resentment for me, but I do know of people who are angry at having to be here. Most of this anger seems to be blindly and wildly directed at authority, and those who people see as responsible for the mess in the world. The so-called peaceful protests, movements and demonstrations are, in my experience, mainly an outlet for this anger. When people get together to combine their anger the results can be horrific, often deadly.

Bargaining is perhaps the most insidious reaction to the fear of death because it involves the belief that one can indeed cheat or avoid death. This is, of course, nothing but a delusion, for death is an undeniable fact. Some people seek a form of immortality by producing children, or consider power and fame as some form of immortality – ‘at least I will be remembered’. The most common bargain is the religious and spiritual pursuit, with its promise of some kind of life after death. Thus a bargain is made with one’s God or Guru – I’ll support, follow, love and devote myself to you and in return I get a ticket to the ‘next life’.

Indeed, this is trading time, happiness, leisure, sensual pleasure and freedom, which is available right now, for time and effort involved in worship, meditation, prayer, devotion and suffering, in the hope for some ‘good spot’ in a supposed afterlife.

The other price paid lies in the necessity of complying with the moral and ethical codes of the particular spiritual or religious group in which you believe – the necessity to comply, conform, love, and unquestioningly trust results in a tangible and palpable restriction of freedom. It seems an appalling price to pay, given that there has been no actual authenticated report back of any life after death from anyone who has died.

Depression is not something I am very familiar with in myself, but I have seen in other people the feeling of exhaustion and futility that comes with realising there is no escape from death and indeed from the suffering of life. Those people I know who suffer from depression, ultimately see no way out of the continuing cycle of sorrow and misery. Even the time honoured methods of hope, trust and faith seem to fail them as they struggle to keep their heads above water. At the bottom of the pit, below despair, forever tempting, lies suicide. Peter’s Journal, ‘Death’

Acceptance is deemed the last stage in the usual reaction to imminent death. It seems to me that a more accurate description of this state would be resignation. I remember my father going back to his particular church for a time after he had his first heart attack, to make his peace with God. He lasted for a few months before giving up and lapsing back into what I now see as resignation. People’s acceptance of life and its inherent suffering is summed up in phrases such as ‘making the best of it’ or ‘that’s life’, or the classic ‘life wasn’t meant to be easy’. The description I used for myself when in this state, was of being ‘comfortably numb’.

The Human Condition is exemplified by the universal and inviolable acceptance that human life is typified by malice and sorrow and the only possible ‘solutions’ are spiritual or religious, all firmly based on Ancient Wisdom. Life on earth ‘is the way it is’ and there is nothing one can do about it. Acceptance is praised in the spiritual world as understanding that the world, the body and indeed even death itself, are an illusion. The most insidious teaching that now seems to be emerging from the East is a form of ‘it doesn’t matter what you do – it is all an illusion anyway’. For me, my son’s death ruled out the option of accepting that ‘this was all there was to life’. I wanted to be sure I got the most out of my life – to actually live the promised freedom, right here, right now, as this flesh and blood body.

What I have found is that all of the religious and spiritual doctrines and concepts about death are simply intricate fairy-tales retold and reinforced for millennia. They require constant injections of Faith, Hope, Trust, Devotion and Surrender to effectively maintain the belief in an afterlife – all to keep the underlying fear of death at bay.

Never Born Never Died

I remember when Rajneesh died we selected a piece of marble and had an Indian stonemason chisel on it: ‘Never Born, Never Died, Only Visited This Planet…’ as the epitaph on his tomb. Rajneesh had dictated this to his secretary some months before his death. It seemed curious to me at the time, because I thought I had understood that the whole point of the spiritual search was the dissolution of the ‘self’ – in other words, ‘peace of mind’ or freedom for me, on earth. And here was Rajneesh proclaiming that he was only a ‘visitor’ here anyway, and even hinting that maybe he went somewhere else in the physical universe. There arose in me more questions than answers, but at the time I took it as was merely ‘par for the course’, given the inconsistency of his teachings. Now, of course, I am able to clearly see that the denial of living as this body, on this earth, at this moment of time, of all the spiritual teachers is both legendary and well documented – if one bothers to investigate.  Peter’s Journal, ‘Death’

Acknowledging the fact of death has also had a curious effect on how I experience time. Knowing that death will come, it will just be another event to respond to the moment it occurs. It simply makes no sense to fear a fact – it is how it is, it is a fact. This frees me from the fear that I am running out of time – that I am in a hurry to fit everything in. This is not to be confused with the feeling of intensity that people falsely call ‘being here, being really alive’, a frenetic feeling which is fuelled by the fear of death. For some people this intensity is induced by a near-death experience, when they see life as ‘precious’ and not to be wasted on ‘petty things’. (...)

Being free of the belief in an after-life, I am now free to actually be here, fully acknowledging the fact that before the sperm hit the egg I wasn’t here, and when this body dies, I die, since I am this body. What else could I be? A walk-in, like Rajneesh? Having no belief in a past or future life enabled me to tackle the issue of my behaviour, my actions, my feelings and emotions, and, of course, my happiness and my harmlessness, right now. I have no second-chances at living, this is it, so I have to be the best I can be now. This understanding was crucial in order to be able to fully embrace the responsibility I had to free myself of the psychological and psychic entity and the ensuing malice and sorrow that was shackling my enjoyment of life. It didn’t allow me any room for denial, bargaining or accepting a second-rate life. I simply could no longer postpone or avoid. It made the question of ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ so vitally intense to me and meant that the process of becoming free was guaranteed of success.

Success in being free means a life led without the fear of death. No psychological or psychic fear of death, no feeling of running out of time, no spiritual belief in an after-life or ‘other-world’ distract me from fully living this moment of time. With no ‘sense of continuity’ – as Vineeto calls it – each moment is fresh, and I am doing what I am doing for the first time. This does not deny the fact that what I do is largely repetitive. I get up in the morning, have breakfast and do whatever I do and then go to bed at night-time – exactly as I have done every day for forty-nine years. Frankly, the idea of immortality appals me – I think the present arrangement is perfect and I see the attempts of human beings to alter it, or to try to ‘cheat’ it, as plain silly. I desire no ‘remote control’ to fast-forward time, slow it down, replay it, or ‘change channels’. I am firmly and safely located in time, in this moment, the only moment I can experience, doing whatever is happening now.

I am finally on the way to becoming an autonomous human being, happy and harmless, delighting in being alive. I simply wasn’t here before I was born. And I simply won’t be here (or anywhere else) after I die. I will be like the parrot in John Cleese’s sketch: ‘dead, extinct, finito, kaput, stuffed, no more, finished, obliterated’.

Exactly as my father, my son, my mother, Rajneesh, Krishnamurti, Jesus, Buddha, and all the billions who have been on this earth before me.

I had lived in fear of death and tried to avoid death and the suffering of life by ‘getting out of it’ spiritually. But, in the end, by fully investigating the beliefs around death – finding out the facts for myself – I was able to acknowledge the fact of death. To acknowledge the fact of death is an essential prerequisite to begin the journey to becoming free of the Human Condition of malice and sorrow. It meant that I could no longer turn away from the facts of my mortal life in this actual physical world.

A genuine freedom from the Human Condition has to be an actual freedom, easily and readily liveable by anyone, in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are, and not some imaginary escape or transcendence into a ‘spiritual world’ peopled with ‘higher-evolved’ ethereal beings.

Actual Freedom is, per definition, both non-spiritual and down-to-earth, and as such, is both a freedom from the need to believe in an after-life and an authentic freedom from the fear of death. Peter’s Journal, ‘Death’

Peter’s Selected Writings

Peter’s Journal

Library – Death

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