19.4.2000

RESPONDENT: Thanks for your letter, in which you said, ‘The pure consciousness experience clearly indicates that peace on earth, an actual end to malice and sorrow, lies in total self-extinction, both ego and soul, not an ego death only, as in an altered state of consciousness’. I agree with you that swapping an identification with ego for an identification with soul is only to exchange one prison for another.

PETER: Yes indeed, but I am talking about the extinction of any psychological or psychic identity whatsoever – ‘who’ one thinks and feels one is – not shifting what one identifies with as in identification. To use a simple, easily understood and experienced definition, I define ego as ‘who we think’ we are, which can be visualized as a little man or woman located in the forehead who is pulling the levers and controlling the flesh and blood body. On the other hand, the soul, ‘who we feel’ we are is felt as located in the heart and gut and, as such, is regarded as closer to the centre of our being, ‘me’ at my core, if you like. Spiritual practice is aimed at shifting one’s identity from the head to heart – thus one feels closer to the true, real ‘me’ at my core. Spiritual believers are continuously admonished to ‘leave your mind at the door, surrender your will and trust your feelings’ i.e. shift your identity from head to heart, from sensible thought and sensate experience to an inner feeling-only world of impassioned imagination. It is this newly created identity that regards the physical world that is evidenced by the senses as illusionary, Samsara, a dream or nightmare – and should this new identity lose all touch with sensible thought and sensate experience they can even become so deluded as to believe they are God-on-earth. When I was a kid, being bought up in a Western monotheist culture anyone who claimed they are God-on-earth would have been locked up whereas some 40 years later, given the current fashion for Eastern pantheism, human beings are envied, revered and worshipped as God-men or God-women in the West.

It’s a wonderful time to be a human being for we are each able to conduct our own thorough investigation into religious belief and the ancient wisdom that form the parameters of the Human Condition to date. To make our own assessment if it works and is it sensible.

RESPONDENT: I am not sure, though, whether I am misunderstanding your language, in which case I apologize, or whether you are suggesting that a true practice for peace is one that necessitates the extinction of the things the self takes as its referents (ego and soul in this case) as well as the extinction of delusion about self and things. If both then the logical conclusion is that liberation is only reached when all things have ceased to be, classical nirvana-without-remainder. The alternative is nirvana-with-remainder, or liberation whilst remaining alive to and engaged with the phenomenal world.

PETER: No, I am not talking of Buddhist philosophy. Mr. Buddha clearly didn’t want to be here on earth and couldn’t wait to get out of here. I am vitally interested in being here, now, in this actual physical world of vibrant delight and stunning perfection, where we flesh and blood human beings live.

RESPONDENT: (I take your point about not recreating ourselves in the image of some spiritual tradition but ‘nirvana’ is a shorthand for something we can experience. I am not quite sure what you mean by pure consciousness, so I hesitate to use it.)

PETER: I don’t understand your seeming agreement and then the but... ‘Nirvana’ is an affective/cerebral experience – as opposed to sensate experience – firmly within the spiritual condition. It is regarded as the ultimate state possible for one’s spirit, soul, atman, bundle of thoughts and memories, or whatever other name, while still in a flesh and blood body prior to a final release, upon the death of the body, into Parinirvana – the Buddhist version of Heaven. All religions are founded on the premise of a life after death and, as such, all religious passion is fuelled by the instinctual fear of physical death. The ancient fairy stories and mythical tales that there is an ‘other world’ where one’s spirit goes – the essence of spirituality – is a powerfully seductive lure that has held human beings enthralled for millennia. Surely it’s time to get our head out of the clouds and come down-to-earth where we human beings live. Then we can clearly see that humans beings are still battling it out with each other in a grim instinctual battle for survival.

All sentient beings are born pre-primed with certain distinguishing instinctual passions, the main ones being fear, aggression, nurture and desire. They are blind nature’s rather clumsy software package designed to give one a start in life and to ensure the survival of the species. While absolutely essential in the primitive days of roaming man-eating animals, rampant disease and high infant mortality, it is these very same instincts that we humans with our ability to think and reflect, have turned into a psychological and psychic ‘will to survive’, and this on-going overt and covert battle of wills now threatens the very survival of the species. Currently some 6 billion humans are still actively involved in a senseless, grim and desperate battle for survival, blindly fuelled by our animal instinctual passions. This instinctual program is no longer necessary – in fact, in these times when an ever increasing number of human beings enjoy unparalleled safety, comfort, leisure and pleasure, the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire are clearly redundant. The modern challenge is to evince a deletion of these redundant instinctual passions that are the substance of our instinctual self – ‘me’ at my core.

Self-immolation is an end to malice and sorrow and the pure consciousness experience – a sensate-only experience where the self is temporarily absent – is the proof that it is possible.

RESPONDENT: It may be that we mean different things by ‘ego’. Ego is often used as a synonym for self, but to me ‘ego’ simply denotes a constructed thing in psychological space, in the same way that ‘house’ denotes a constructed thing in physical space. ‘Self’ is the supposed real and independently existing entity or being I take myself to be. That self rests on a sense of identity with some thing, or set of things – my house, my ego, my soul, my idea that I Am. In the course of practice, both material and mental things are seen to be neutral in themselves, fundamentally insubstantial and not capable of providing a convincing basis for a real self. There is no need to take quarrel with houses or egos or altered states per se as obstructions to freedom; the obstruction lies in taking these things to be real and substantive, us and ours. Since the sense ‘I Am’ is itself an idea, then the self can be dropped without the need to demolish anything other than the delusion that supported it: the thinker and feeler can be absent without annihilating thinking and feeling.

Rather than ego death, I think that for the practical purpose of living in the world, just as it is useful to have a house with walls and a roof to offer shelter against the elements, so it is useful to have a sound and mature ego structure to enable us to act with optimum wisdom and compassion, to express the goodness and Love of Truth with least distortion. What is not needed is the self arisen from identifying with the ego because that leads straight into conflict, greedy consuming, fighting and defending. Being free of attachment to substance and self in physical or mental things means we do not believe that the building defined by the walls of the house is independently real or absolute, we are not fooled into believing that the person defined by the egoic boundaries is a separately existing being. Knowing the true nature of things we can live peacefully and joyfully within the world, using everything skilfully for the welfare of all.

PETER: Well I don’t doubt the sincerity of your beliefs but the fact of the matter is people are not living peacefully and joyfully in the world.

It is well-documented that the last century was the bloodiest to date – over 160 million human beings were killed by their fellow human beings and over 40 million people killed themselves in suicides – and there is no end in sight to this human slaughter and bloodlust. These are real human beings, on this planet and not illusionary human beings, in an illusionary world. That means at least 200 million of today’s children will suffer a similar fate.

I know that while I was in the spiritual world I had the feeling that if only everyone could feel what I feel then the world would be awash with peaceful and loving people. But I eventually became aware that this feeling was still self-centred, ego-centric, me-oriented, ‘inner’, private, etc. It was after all, only a feeling that ‘I’ had, not a fact that I or anyone else I had met, or read about, was living. The other fact that shook me up was that a sincere Christian has the same feeling, a sincere Buddhist has the same feeling, a sincere Muslim has the same feeling and yet when push comes to shove people are willing and eager to kill and die for their beliefs – so passionately and fervently do they believe in their feelings and their Truth or God. This is not only a well-documented historical fact, it is clearly in operation today amongst the New Dark Age religions. In the town where I live the Rajneeshees are involved in public conflict with the Poonjarians, the Course of Miracle followers are squabbling with the Christians, and the splits and chasms that are inevitably forming amongst the followers within the various spiritual groups, particularly after their Guru dies, are anything but peaceful or joyful. When I was on the spiritual path I always felt that ‘my’ Guru, ‘his’ teaching, which became my Truth, was superior to everyone else’s belief – this is the very nature of spiritual belief for one is extolled to trust one’s feelings, have faith, and above all, don’t doubt (which means don’t dare question the teacher or the teachings).

I know that you have these affective experiences, knowings and feelings of goodness and Love of Truth (God by another name), for I have had them myself – I know them well. But the fact is that religion, be it Eastern or Western, actively contributes to malice and sorrow as is evidenced by the countless religious wars, persecutions, sacrifices, penances, recriminations, repressions, ostracizations, denials, retributions, perversions and conflicts that are ever ongoing ...

What has always been avoided up until now is the fact that the affective instinctual passions are the root cause of human malice and sorrow – the loves and loyalties, impulses and urges, ideals and beliefs that human beings are willing and eager to fight and kill for, or to suffer and die for. One’s own ‘self’-inflicted problems lie in the feelings and emotions that arise from the animal instinctual passions – and the PCE experientially confirms this fact.

The ancient eastern philosophers, being ignorant of modern empirical scientific research that establishes that fear and aggression, nurture and desire are genetically instilled characteristics, wrongly assumed that wrong or evil thinking was the source of malice and sorrow. Some 3,500 years on, in these modern times, we now know from the empirical research of LeDoux and others, that it is the instinctual passions that infiltrate thought and are experienced as emotions and felt as feelings are the source of human malice and sorrow. It is vital to explore and investigate the affective feelings and emotions that arise from the instinctual animal passions – both the supposed ‘good’ and the supposed ‘bad’ – for the secret to becoming actually free of malice and sorrow lies in this very exploration.

It is essential to understand and fully comprehend that one’s feelings and emotions are part and parcel of the Human Condition and not a personal fault, failure, stigma or ‘evil’. Fear, aggression, nurture and desire are innate passions that every human being is programmed with by blind nature. This program is automatic and often psychic in nature, it is programmed within the primitive or reptilian brain and ‘felt’ in the body due to the resulting chemical surges. This blind and senseless survival program can now be safely deleted for the human species has not only survived ... it is now beginning to flourish.

We humans simply need to abandon the old ancient mystical beliefs in ‘other worlds’ cooked up by long dead shamans to instil fear in others in order to maintain their power or inane philosophies dreamed up by fearful monks in order to while away their timeless hours. It’s time to stop praying for peace, roll up our sleeves and get stuck into the job at hand – to contribute to peace on earth in the only way possible by totally eradicating malice and sorrow from within ourselves.

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