Actual Freedom ~ Commonly Raised Objections

RESPONDENT: Reading the link you gave me, I still think that you are mixing dodgy Spiritual claims with descriptions of freedom (or actual freedom if you prefer) into one category and dismissing them all. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.

RICHARD: If I were to use your analogy then this is the ‘baby’ that got thrown out:

• ‘spiritual: of, pertaining to, or affecting the spirit or soul, esp. from a religious aspect; pertaining to or consisting of spirit, immaterial’. (©Oxford Dictionary).
• ‘spirit: the immaterial part of a corporeal being, esp. considered as a moral agent; the soul; this as a disembodied and separate entity esp. regarded as surviving after death; a soul; immaterial substance, as opp. to body or matter. (©Oxford Dictionary).

In other words all spiritual claims are ‘dodgy’ as there is no ‘spirit’ or ‘presence’ or ‘being’ (‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself) in actuality ... there are no gods or goddesses of any description in this actual world.

It is all so peaceful here.

RESPONDENT: For his own reasons, which I have speculated upon already, Richard insists on maintaining a hazardously unnuanced view of feelings, and hence, vitiates the qualitativeness of consciousness.

RICHARD: I will put it this way this time around: it is both the affective feelings and the identity (they are inextricably entwined) which vitiates the quality of the qualitative nature of consciousness.

RESPONDENT: He tosses the baby out with the bath water.

RICHARD: Oh, I am always chuffed whenever someone says that ... it means that they are starting to get the drift of what I am saying. Which, in a nutshell, is this: spiritual enlightenment is when ‘I’ as ego (‘the bathwater’ ) dies; actual freedom is when ‘me’ as soul (‘the baby’ ) dies as well.

Or, as I prefer to put it, identity in toto becomes extinct.

RESPONDENT: In knee-jerk, he’d probably say that he has no feelings to toss out, and plunge us back into his vague, irrelevant and apodictic statements.

RICHARD: Nope ... it is more relevant at this stage to point out that nowhere did you demonstrate that I have ‘become irrational’.

RICHARD: Where there is no ‘I’ whatsoever, the apperceptive mind is eminently capable of discerning for itself that there is no identity lurking about in the inner recesses of this body.

RESPONDENT: Well, I can read your words here all right, but you put forth no supporting argument. Which does not surprise me really, for what could you say? Again, as with the suggestion (I have made) that you may now be ‘pure God’, this can be nothing more than disbelief, which you are certainly entitled to embrace. The ‘I’, after all, could be even more cunning than ‘you?’ can imagine. Lets face it Richard, one would have to ‘know’ exactly what it is it isn’t to know it isn’t it. To say with certainly that you are not now pure God can be nothing more than nonsense, regardless of whether its true or not. You seem to be a reasonable person. I can’t imagine how you could not see the clear possibility you may be mistaken. Not that you are, but that you could be mind you. Based on your other writings, you appear to be retaining a healthy prejudice toward religion, and have tossed out the baby with the bath water. You haven’t explicitly claimed to be all-knowing, but you seem to be behaving so. Sounds God-like to me. This not to detract from the richness of what you have truly contributed here in these discussions. I’m eternally grateful.

RICHARD: Once again, it is not a matter of belief or disbelief ... it is a matter of knowing. This does not require great intelligence, it requires a total absence of the interfering ‘I’, because any sense of self distorts facts and actuality. Freedom from ‘I’ is freedom from distortion. Therefore, for me to say that I am ‘not now pure god’ is a statement of fact ... it is not nonsense and has got nothing to do with being ‘true or not’. People make something to be ‘true’ or ‘false’ by passionately believing something to be so – faith with conviction born out of belief. Etymologically, belief means ‘fervently wishing to be true’, which means that the something being believed in is not even true ... let alone a fact. And faith means ‘loyalty to that which is believed to be true’ ... to face a fact means someone must betray their ‘truth’, and people are so reluctant to be a traitor to their feelings. Yes, I have ‘tossed the baby out with the bath-water’ ... and my life is infinitely blessed by so doing.

The ‘baby’ was rotten to the core.

RESPONDENT: My first questions relate to what is (apparently) lost in AF. If there is no imaginative faculty, no mind-space at all in which to visualise objects and processes, how is it possible to understand systems and processes that do not occur right before one’s eyes? (...) More generally, if you are wholly immersed in the actual world 24/7, and have no ability to be otherwise, how is it possible to understand systems and processes whose meaning and purpose is only comprehensible at higher levels of abstraction?

RICHARD: What part of my response in regards to the query, three days ago, on this very topic are you having difficulty in comprehending? Vis.:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘(I suppose I am asking whether conceptualising is actual or just a feature of the identity).
• [Richard]: ‘I can intellectually conceptualise (formulate, configure, theorise, and so on) – as in 2+2=4, for instance, or ‘if this, then that’, for another – as it is the intuitive/imaginative conceptualising (visualising, idealising, romanticising, fantasising, and soon), which is a feature of identity.

Although I have never learned calculus, for instance, I did learn basic algebra and trigonometry and thus could expand my capacities if there were sufficient motivation.

As my interest (and thus expertise) lies elsewhere that is highly unlikely.

RESPONDENT: Most human beings have a fair degree of common sense and a desire to be happy, and they can discern between theory and facts, between what is sublime but non-existent and that which simply works and brings benefits.

PETER: Given that devoting one’s life to being happy and harmless is seen to be a foolhardy and irresponsible exercise, to then expect that one’s peers will be understanding and supportive of your efforts and of your successes is to court disappointment.

I had the wind knocked out of my sails regarding this expectation when I wrote my journal and gave some copies to my spiritual friends as I wanted to share my discovery with them. Not only were they not interested, they were dismissive and on one occasion when I asked why, I was told I was being both offensive and disloyal. When I tried to place a few copies in the local bookstores I was told it was too radical, that I was ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’. Although it was a shock at first, I soon came to realize that being a pioneer means having to run the gauntlet of peer apathy, disapproval, censure and on occasions hostility.

PETER: 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.

The range of the human condition of malice and sorrow is marked by resentment, frustration, anger, violence and warfare at one end and melancholy, sadness, depression, despair and suicide at the other.

The history of Humanity, both past and present, is essentially a history of continuous warfare between various tribal groups on the basis of territorial disputes, religious and ethical differences or acts of retribution. Human malice is much more vindictive and vicious than the innate aggression obvious in other animal species solely due to the unique human inventiveness, cunning and cognitive memory. In human beings much hatred, bigotry and spite is also passed down from generation to generation as a social conditioning that is layered on top of our instinctual animal passion for aggression. There is no evidence that human malice is abating – quite the contrary. This last century has been the bloodiest and most savage to date. To call the brief periods of ceasefire that occur between human wars and conflicts ‘peace’ is to completely misuse the word.

The other major feature of the human condition is the underlying feelings of sorrow and despair that continually threatens to overwhelm human beings. As humans, we are all subject to physical dangers, ill-health, accidents, earthquakes, floods, fires, etc. which can cause loss and pain. But to have, and actively indulge in, emotional suffering additional to the hardship is to compound the situation to such an extent that the resulting feelings are usually far worse than dealing with the facts of the situation. Indeed, being and feeling sad is held up as the essence of being human. ‘Life wasn’t meant to be easy’, ‘It was hard but I learnt a lot’, ‘No pain, no gain’ – all those sayings bear witness to the fundamental position that suffering holds in our psyche. As such, sorrow, sadness and despair are accepted as an integral unchangeable part of the human condition, and suffering is even lauded as a noble trait. To suffer rightly or deeply is held in high esteem and often evokes a bitter-sweet feeling. Compassion and empathy – our readiness to share in the sorrow of others and willingness to feel pity for others – are also universally held in high esteem for the solace and bitter-sweet feelings evoked. Human sorrow is based on the feelings of separation, loneliness, fear and dread and many people know only too well the sorrowful spiral downwards from melancholy to sadness, depression, despair and eventually to suicidal feelings. Introduction to Actual Freedom, The Human Condition

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 pure 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.

PETER: In the grim instinctual battle for survival that passes for civilization, it is important to maintain the feelings of empathy and compassion as a balance for indifference and selfishness – perpetuating an endless cycle of good and bad, right and wrong, feuds and conflicts, wars and suicides. No wonder most people turn, in utter despair to praying for some fairy-tale God for succor.

RESPONDENT: When I first came into contact with my scientists, they were talking about how they could not tell the difference between madness and creativity. I thought they were referring to the old cliché about genius being next door to insanity. It took me a while to comprehend that they were referring to the activity of neuro-transmitters in the brain: that fMRI scans of a normal brain doing a creative task was indistinguishable from scans of a schizophrenia-affected brain doing the same task. The problem was that they could not eliminate the madness without also eliminating creativity.

VINEETO: For instance, none of the Enlightened Ones has ever been reported as living with a woman in peace and harmony, equity and parity – it is not even on their agenda. The girlfriend of Mohan Rajneesh was so depressed in the end that she committed suicide whereas he is known to have indulged in blow jobs from a number of female disciples, Franklin Jones aka Da Free John is notoriously famous for his sexual orgies that included under-aged young girls, Jiddu Krishnamurti is reported to have had a longstanding secret affair with his best friend’s wife, a globe trotting guru from the town where I live has just separated from his wife and two children because of too many domestics, married man John deRuiter is said to have invited two additional wives into his home because the Truth told him so ... The list of dysfunctional human relations in the master-disciple-world goes on and on, if one is at all ready to see with both eyes open what a rotten and corrupt profession the guru business really is.

RESPONDENT: Having been trapped in Rajneesh movement with the feeling to have lost years and years for nothing, you probably exaggerate the evilness of the so-called global spiritual world. We have a French proverb saying you ‘throw away the baby with the water of the bath’.

VINEETO: You are right when you say we actualists ‘throw away the baby with the water of the bath’. It took a long time but finally I had enough of the spiritual world with its promised castles in the clouds and altered states that then made ‘life in the marketplace’ even more difficult, so when the opportunity came along to throw out the baby with the bathwater I took the chance to investigate how to eliminate all of my imbibed beliefs – and eliminate all of my instinctual passions as well. I could see the sensibility of actualism, and once I dared to investigate a few cornerstones of my beliefs and found them rotten, the whole metaphysical construct eventually came plummeting down. I did not say that I was ‘trapped in Rajneesh movement’, particularly not ‘with the feeling to have lost years and years for nothing’.

I had a great time most of the time and I was in it of my own accord – as far as free choice is possible for a gullible person that I was, eager to believe anything metaphysical, however silly. I don’t at all have the feeling that it was ‘for nothing’, on the contrary, I have been able to learn a great deal from my full-on spiritual years – spirituality does not work, it makes you neither happy nor harmless. To be able to say this with unwavering conviction one needs to have put one’s heart and soul with 100% commitment into a live, hands-on investigation of the spiritual principles, methods and directives – otherwise one only ends up questioning and doubting one’s effort instead of the teachings and the teacher.

With Richard’s encouragement to go all the way in questioning the Tried and obviously Failed, I not only questioned my own teacher Rajneesh but all the antiquated wisdom from which Rajneesh drew his religious eloquence. Upon extensive investigation I found there to be hardly any difference in principle between Advaita and Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism, Sufism and Christianity – in the end it is always God, by whatever name, that one tries to please and that one relies on. Take the Metaphysical Caretaker out of the equation and every spiritual belief pops like a balloon – hot air and nothing to hold it together.

RESPONDENT: Like people judging the whole Christian civilization only from the Inquisition, the Opus Dei and the Borgia popes. I mention Ramana, Nisargadatta and Aurobindo and you reply with the ‘enlightened Ones Rajneesh, Da Free John and John deRuiter’. Please be honest enough to consider they don’t play in the same category. Please be honest to acknowledge you use caricatures.

VINEETO: Why do you think that Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj and Aurobindo Ghoose don’t play in the same category as Mohan Rajneesh, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Franklin Jones and John deRuiter’? Are they not all declaring themselves to be enlightened and are they not all offering their teaching as the solution to a suffering mankind? Do you think there is ‘good’ Enlightenment and ‘bad’ Enlightenment? Usually people have one or several pet gurus and a particular pet teaching, which is, of course, ‘better than everybody else’s belief’ in the typical competitive style common to all beliefs.

However, in order to investigate what those teachings have practically contributed to peace on earth, one needs to step back and look at the whole guru business per se. Upon honest inquiry you will find that no spiritual master has ever lived in peace, harmony, equity and parity with a woman and no Goddess has ever lived in peace, harmony, equity and parity with a man because of the holier-than-thou nature of Enlightenment itself. The companion of a master, if He or She chooses to have one, will always be a devoted disciple and willing servant, humbling and belittling themselves to earn shares in good karma by serving and pleasing God’s latest representative or God’s latest incarnation.

I am not using particular ‘caricatures’ but well-known teachers – or do you consider Jiddu Krishnamurti being a caricature as opposed to ‘Beedi Baba’ as Nisagadatta used to be called? It seems to me that you are stretching your case a bit thin here. However, if you investigate the Holy Men’s and Women’s lives you will become shockingly aware that living in peace and harmony with a partner is not even on their spiritual agenda – it is not part of God’s message, it is part of the ‘Maya’ that has to be transcended. The very principle of Eastern spiritual teaching is rotten to the core – every enlightened teacher is a caricature of a mythical non-existent God as in ‘an exaggerated or debased imitation or version (of), naturally or unintentionally ludicrous’ Oxford Dictionary. To say that some are better than others is to defend the indefensible.

Of course, at first, it is an enormous blow to one’s pride to have bet on the wrong horse, but then again, to be spiritual has been the only alternative so far to being normal. Now that there is a third alternative available, anyone who is willing can put God and his/her mind-numbing devotion for God’s Go-Betweens into the dustbin where they belong and get on with the business of becoming free from malice and sorrow.

It is so good to be free from spiritual belief. Not just Rajneeshism, but free from all spiritual belief – all belief in any God by whatever name, in life after death, in good and evil spirits or in the supposedly theomorphic nature of our planet. This freedom from all spiritual belief gives one dignity for the first time in one’s life.

RESPONDENT: What I understand as love is not born out of thought or time.

RICHARD: Agreed. It is a thoughtless state of being wherein the passions have overtaken intelligence. It cannot be ‘timeless’ because the sun still moves through the sky and day follows night as do the seasons follow each other. Enlightened people have a dickens of a job convincing even the gullible that this physical world is not actual. When they can persuade them into to believing that ... then they will believe anything at all.

RESPONDENT: No, you are throwing out the baby with the bath water. There is no denial of time operating in the physical world. You define what it is and then say that is false. I agree what you describe is false. The physical world of solid objects is real but it is not all that can be seen.

RICHARD: Then what baby is it that I am throwing out? The baby that produces the delusion that it exists in a timeless realm, of course. There is no ‘timeless realm’ here, in actuality. Living here, at this moment in time, there is only this moment that is actual. As it is already always this moment, to the unaware it appears to be ‘timeless’. It is not. This moment is hanging in time like this planet is hanging in space. Just as the universe’s space is infinite, so too is this universe’s time eternal. There is no beginning or end to the infinitude of this universe’s space and time, therefore there is no middle, no centre. Thus, one is always here and it is already now. And here and now is nowhere in particular.

This sure beats immortality any day.

RESPONDENT: In the psychological realm there is real separation, no entities existing inside anything.

RICHARD: I cannot make out what you are getting at here.

RESPONDENT: There is a sensitivity that is without cause, without motive. It is effortless.

RICHARD: Physical sensitivity as in tactile sensation ... yes. Sensitivity as in consideration for the other simply because the other is a fellow human being ... yes. Sensitivity as in pity, sympathy, empathy, compassion and love ... no. Such sensitivity is born out of mutual sorrow (etymologically the word ‘compassion’ means ‘suffer with’; ‘passio’ is Latin for the Greek ‘pathos’). Thus it has a cause ... it is not without motive and is thus not as effortless as it may seem to be. I can not relate to a person in sorrow for I do not have the faculties – or the capacity – for pathos. Just consider the fact that where one has the ability to be able to feel pity, sympathy, empathy, compassion and love, then it is a case of the blind leading the blind. One must be totally free of sorrow – and malice – in order to be of substantive assistance to those who are trapped within the Human Condition. Life is wonderful where one is bereft of both sorrow and malice. All the terror, all the horror and all the dread are expunged when ‘I’ and ‘me’ become extinct. The slate is wiped clean, as if nothing untoward has happened. A faint intellectual memory, like a distant dream, is all that remains of distress and destructiveness. In this time and place where one is genuine, no mental or emotional or psychic scars are carried. Stress, so vividly experienced in reality, has no substance here in actuality. One has to be completely free from the grip of reality – the Land of Lament – to actually be of benefit to the one who is suffering. A person who is actually free does not offer a palliative. Such a person extends the possibility of ultimate release.

RESPONDENT: Again, you give dualistic definitions of love or compassion, and argue that they are false. Of course they are! What do you expect to find in dictionaries other than dualistic explanations of terms? That is all the authors could understand. If you will read Krishnamurti with an open mind, you will find that he uses ordinary terms like love or ecstasy or contentment but goes on to discuss that he does not mean something that has an opposite. If there is no freedom from sorrow, there is no genuine love, no compassion. This is precisely what Krishnamurti pointed to!

RICHARD: If there is freedom from sorrow, there is freedom from love ... be it genuine or not.

I have read Mr. Jiddu Krishnamurti with an open mind ... because I wanted to know, for myself, if this ‘Love’, this ‘Compassion’, this ‘Beauty’, this ‘Truth’, this ‘Goodness’, this ‘Intelligence’, actually had no opposite.

• He is on record a stating something to the effect of: ‘I have always felt protected. There is a reservoir of Goodness that Evil is always trying to get into. One has to be ever vigilant’. So, his ‘Good’ had an opposite.
• He is on record as saying: ‘there is something beyond compassion’ ... and compassion is not the be-all and end-all as his compassion was born out of his sorrow – he called it universal sorrow – for he oft-times wanted to ‘cry for you all’. So, his compassion has an opposite.
• He is on record as saying: ‘there is something beyond love’ ... and his love likewise has an opposite.
• He is on record as describing his intelligence as ‘universal intelligence’ and ‘cosmic intelligence’ ... was there something beyond that?

Yes ... and I wanted to know for myself what was beyond all this. Vis.:

• He is on record as saying there is ‘that’ which he called ‘the origin of everything’.

Speaking personally, I found it well worthwhile to investigate ... experientially.