Some random articles I'm taking from the Actual Freedom site,
which I found to be good, there are many other good ones. The site
owner isn't Buddhist, but his experience is clearly in line with
Buddhism Anatta, and does not hold onto any notions of an
Atman-Brahman which is rejected in Buddhism.
Suffice to say, I do not agree with his position that all
religions including Buddhism does not go beyond the 'atman-Brahman'
experience/realization whether it is the pure objectless I AM or
the experience of a dissociative Witness (Thusness Stage 1)
up till the unity of of Subject and Object (Thusness Stage 4) which
is clearly not what the Buddha taught and has no scriptural basis.
This is clearly his misunderstanding of Buddhist teachings and if
anyone has any doubts just take a look at
Thusness/PasserBy's Seven Stages of Experience on Spiritual
Enlightenment or teachings by Buddha such as the
Bahiya Sutta, but anyway here are the articles, hope you find
it useful:
http://actualfreedom.com.au/richard/articles/abriefpersonalhistory.htm
A Brief Personal
History
My questioning of life, the universe and what it is to be a human
being had all started in a war-torn country in June 1966 at age
nineteen – when there was an identity inhabiting this body complete
with a full suite of feelings – and a Buddhist monk killed himself
in a most gruesome way. There was I, a callow youth dressed in a
jungle-green uniform and with a loaded rifle in my hand,
representing the secular way to peace. There was a fellow human
being, dressed in religious robes dowsed with petrol and with a
cigarette lighter in hand, representing the spiritual way to
peace.
I was aghast at what we were both doing ... and I sought to find a
third alternative to being either ‘human’ or ‘divine’.
This was to be the turning point of my life, for up until then, I
was a typical western youth, raised to believe in God, Queen and
Country. Humanity’s inhumanity to humanity – society’s treatment of
its subject citizens – was driven home to me, there and then, in a
way that left me appalled, horrified, terrified and repulsed to the
core of my being with a sick revulsion. I saw that no one knew what
was going on and – most importantly – that no one was ‘in charge’
of the world. There was nobody to ‘save’ the human race ... all
gods were but a figment of a feverish imagination. Out of a
despairing desperation, which was collectively shared by my fellow
humans, I saw and understood that I was as ‘guilty’ as any one
else. For in me – as is in everyone – was both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ...
it was that some people were better than others at controlling
their ‘dark side’. However, in a war, there is no way anyone can
consistently control any longer ... ‘evil’ ran rampart. I saw that
fear and aggression and nurture and desire ruled the world ... and
that these were instincts one was born with. Thus started my search
for freedom from the ‘Human Condition’ ... and my attitude, all
those years ago was this:
I was only interested in changing myself fundamentally, radically,
completely and utterly.
(Click http://actualfreedom.com.au/richard/articles/june1966.htm
to view picture).
This photograph was taken the day after the Buddhist monk
physically self-immolated in protest to the war I was engaged
in.
What the newly-shaved head indicates (definitely not a common
practice for a 19-year-old youth in the sixties generation) is the
very aghastness at what we were both doing.
For many years I sought genuine exploration and discovery of what
it means to live a fully human life, and in October 1992 I
discovered, once and for all, what I was looking for. Since then I
have been consistently living an incomparable condition which I
choose to call actual freedom – and I use the word ‘actual’ because
this freedom is located here in this very world, this actual world
of the senses. It is not an affective, cerebral or psychic state of
being; it is a physical condition that ensues when one goes beyond
Spiritual Enlightenment. In September 1981 I underwent a monumental
transformation into an Altered State Of Consciousness which can
only be described as Spiritual Enlightenment. I became Enlightened
as the result of an earnest and intense process which commenced in
the January of that year. At approximately six o’clock on the
morning of Sunday the sixth of September 1981, my ‘ego’ disappeared
entirely in an edifying moment of awakening to an ‘Absolute
Reality’. I lived in the Enlightened State for eleven years, so I
have an intimate understanding of the marked difference between
Spiritual Enlightenment and actual freedom.
I travelled the country – and overseas to India – meeting with
people from all walks of life in an attempt to discover why
Spiritual Enlightenment, which has been within the human experience
for thousands of years, had not delivered the Peace On Earth it
seemed to promise. As the process of becoming Enlightened is an
extreme test of one’s mettle, requiring nerves of steel, it seemed
that only a rare few humans were destined to become Self-Realised.
The question that commanded my attention was why this was so. I was
looking beyond the superficial and questioning even the most
closely held ideas and beliefs. Was there something more to
discover ... something that lay beyond Enlightenment that would
usher in the beginning of a genuine possibility of peace for all?
Some Masters hinted at and alluded to ‘Going Beyond Enlightenment’
... yet their Teachings remained exactly the same. Some disciplines
suggested that such a condition existed after physical death: when
the soul ‘quit the body’. The Hindu Mahasamadhi and Buddhist
Parinirvana are two examples of this kind of thought.
Over the eleven years I had numerous experiences of a condition
that seemed so extreme that one must surely die to attain to it. To
go beyond Enlightenment seemed to be an impossibility whilst still
alive and breathing. Then at midday on Friday the thirtieth of
October 1992 a curious event occurred, due to my intense conviction
that it was imperative that someone evince a final and complete
condition that would ‘deliver the goods’ so longed for by humanity
for millennia. Just like my ego had dissolved, back in 1981, my
‘soul’ disappeared. I was no longer a ‘Self’ existing for all
Eternity and transcending Time and Space. I no longer had a feeling
of being – or ‘Being’ – and I could no longer detect the presence
of The Absolute. There was no ‘Presence’ at all. Since that date I
have continued to live in a condition of complete emancipation and
utter autonomy ... the condition is both permanent and actual. This
is different from Enlightenment in that it is most definitely
substantial: there is no longer a transcendence, for I have neither
sorrow nor malice anywhere at all to rise above.
They have vanished entirely, leaving me both blithesome and benign
– carefree and harmless – which leads to a most remarkable state of
affairs. The chief characteristics of Enlightenment – The Presence
of The Absolute, Union with the Divine, Universal Compassion, Love
Agapé, Rapturous Bliss, Ineffable Ecstasy, Exalted Euphoria, The
Truth, Timelessness, Spacelessness, Immortality, Aloneness,
Oneness, Pacifism, Surrender, Trust, Beauty, and Goodness – being
redundant in this totally new condition, are no longer extant.
Herein lies the unmistakable distinction between this condition,
which I call actual freedom and the Enlightened State: I am no
longer driven by a Divine Sense Of Mission to bring The Truth,
Universal Love and Divine Compassion to the world. I am free to
speak with whomsoever is genuinely interested in solving the
‘Mystery of Life’ and becoming totally free of the Human
Condition.
Thus, after The Altered State Of Consciousness has manifested
itself, the soul is still present as ‘The Self’. No matter how
Enlightened or Liberated one may be, an ‘I’ is still in existence
... Timeless maybe, but still an ‘I’, still in the body. The soul,
as ‘The Self’, is a psychological entity identifying as being an
Enlightened Master. The ego is only half of one’s identity; the
other half is the soul. When the ego dies, one has dispelled an
illusion – the illusion of a personal self – only to wind up living
in a delusion – the delusion of an impersonal Self. To take oneself
to be ‘The Self’, the ‘Immortal Soul’, ‘The Supreme’, ‘The
Absolute’, or ‘God On Earth’, is nothing short of institutionalised
insanity. The delusion must be dispelled in order to be actually
free: along with the ‘death of the ego’ there must be a
corresponding ‘death of the soul’. Then ‘I’ – the self or ‘The
Self’ – do not exist, psychologically speaking, in any way at all.
Then the Eternal Present also vanishes – along with all that other
capitalised nonsense. Surpassing the Altered State Of Consciousness
is the third alternative ... an actual freedom.
Spiritual Enlightenment has been around for some thousands of years
... and there is still no peace on earth. Nowadays I know,
experientially, why Enlightenment does not deliver the goods ...
and, of course, I now know what does. I am not an ‘Enlightened
Master’ sitting in an exalted position ... and what a relief that
is. I am a fellow human being, who happens to live in a condition
of perfection and purity, offering my experience to whomsoever is
interested. We are all fellow human beings who find ourselves here
in the world as it was when we were born. We find war, murder,
torture, rape, domestic violence and corruption to be endemic ...
we notice that it is intrinsic to the human condition ... we set
out to discover why this is so. We find sadness, loneliness,
sorrow, grief, depression and suicide to be a global incidence – we
gather that it is also inherent to the human condition – and we
want to know why. We all report to each other as to the nature of
our discoveries for we are all well-meaning and seek to find a way
out of this mess that we have landed in. Whether one believes in
re-incarnation or not, we are all living this particular life for
the very first time, and we wish to make sense of it. It is a
challenge and the adventure of a life-time to enquire and to
uncover, to seek and to find, to explore and to discover. All this
being alive business is actually happening and we are totally
involved in living it out ... whether we take the back seat or not,
we are all still doing it.
In spite of the fact that every single human being has had at least
one pure consciousness experience (PCE) – and usually more – in
their lifetime, they somehow can not differentiate between that
peak experience of apperception (wherein ‘I’, the thought and felt
‘being’, temporarily quits the scene and the actual world becomes
apparent) and their pre-conceived notions that everyday reality is
an illusion disguising some metaphysical ‘Greater Reality’. The
Glamour and the Glory and the Glitz of the Altered State Of
Consciousness has a tenacious grip upon the minds and hearts of a
benighted humanity. It is indeed strange, to the point of being
bizarre, that so many persons will turn their backs on the purity
of the perfection of being here – of being alive – at this moment
in time. Here in this actual world, which is where this flesh and
blood body is living anyway, is the peace that everyone says they
are searching for. All that is required is that one comes to one’s
senses – both literally and metaphorically – and spend the rest of
one’s life without malice and sorrow. One will then be blithe and
benign.
It is, of course, a bold step to forsake lofty thoughts, profound
feelings and psychic adumbrations and enter into the actuality of
life as a sensate experience. It requires a startling audacity to
devote oneself to the task of causing a mutation of consciousness
to occur. To have the requisite determination to apply oneself,
with the diligence and perseverance born out of pure intent, to the
patient dismantling of one’s accrued social identity indicates a
strength of purpose unequalled in the annals of history. It is no
little thing that one does ... and it has enormous consequences,
not only for one’s own well-being, but for humankind as a whole.
With an actualism spread like a chain-letter, in the due course of
time, global freedom would revolutionise the concept of humanity.
It would be a free association of peoples world-wide; a
utopian-like loose-knit affiliation of like-minded individuals. One
would be a citizen of the world, not of a sovereign state.
Countries, with their artificial borders would vanish along with
the need for the military. As nationalism would expire, so too
would patriotism with all its heroic evils. No police force would
be needed anywhere on earth; no locks on the doors, no bars on the
windows. Gaols, judges and juries would become a thing of the
dreadful past ... terror would stalk its prey no more. People would
live together in peace and harmony, happiness and delight.
Pollution and its cause – over-population – would be set to rights
without effort, as competition would be replaced by cooperation. It
would be the stuff of all the pipe-dreams come true.
But none of this matters much when one is already living freely in
the actual world. In actual freedom, life is experienced as being
perfect as-it-is here on earth. One knows that one is living in a
beneficent and benevolent universe – and that is what actually
counts. The self-imposed iniquities that ail the people who
stubbornly wish to remain denizens of the real world, fail to
impinge upon the blitheness and benignity of one who lives in the
vast scheme of things. The universe does not force anyone to be
happy and harmless, to live in peace and ease, to be free of sorrow
and malice. It is a matter of personal choice as to which way one
will travel. Human beings, being as they are, will probably
continue to tread the ‘tried and true’ paths, little realising that
they are the tried and failed ways. There is none so contumacious
as a self-righteous soul who is convinced that they know the way to
live as revealed in their ancient and revered scriptures ... or in
their much-prized secular philosophies and psychologies. So be
it.
I live in peace and tranquillity, beholden to none. With no loyalty
to bind me, I have nothing to defend. With nothing to defend I have
no need to attack. I have no sense of mission to ‘change the
world’. I am not driven by mystical forces to evangelise, to
proselytise, to convert. If anyone is genuinely interested in
finding out what the reason for their existence is, I am only too
happy to participate in their enquiry. Nevertheless, I can only
help those who wish to be helped in the only way that I can help. I
am free to be here in the world as-it-is. Unadorned and
unencumbered, I can stand on my own two feet, owing allegiance to
no-one and nothing at all. I am supremely content with life
as-it-is, for perfection can be found in what others call
imperfection ... and I have no desire to change anything. To be
here, intimately here in this moment in time, where this actual
world is such a marvellous place to be alive in, is a satisfaction
and fulfilment unparalleled in the chronicles of antiquity.
Actual intimacy – being here now – does not come from love and
compassion, for the affective states of being stem from separation.
The illusion of intimacy that love and compassion produces is but a
meagre imitation of the direct experience of the actual. In the
actual world, ‘I’ as ego, the personality, and ‘me’ as soul, the
‘being’ – both subjectively experienced as one’s identity – have
ceased to exist; whereas love and compassion accentuates, endorses
and verifies ‘me’ as being real. And while ‘I’ am real, ‘I’ am
relative to other similarly afflicted persons; vying for position
and status in order to establish ‘my’ credentials ... to verify
‘my’ very existence. To be actually intimate is to be without the
separative identity ... and therefore free from the need for love
and compassion with their ever un-filled promise of Peace On Earth.
There is an actual intimacy between me and everyone and everything
... actual intimacy is a direct experiencing of the other
as-they-are. I am having a superb time ... and it is a well-earned
superb time, too. Nothing has come without application – apart from
serendipitous discoveries because of pure intent – and I am reaping
the rewards which are plentiful and deliciously satisfying. Actual
intimacy frees one up to a world of factual splendour, based firmly
upon sensate and sensual delight. The candid and unabashed
sensorial enjoyment of being this body in the world around is such
a luscious and immediate experience, that the tantalising but
ever-elusive promise of the mystique of love and compassion has
faded into the oblivion it deserves.
The search for meaning amidst the debris of the much-vaunted human
hopes and dreams and schemes has come to its timely end. With the
end of ‘me’, the distance or separation between ‘me’ and ‘my’
senses – and thus the external world – disappears. To be the senses
as a bare awareness is apperception, a pure consciousness
experience of the world as-it-is. Because there is no ‘I’ as an
observer – a little person inside one’s head – to have sensations,
I am the sensations. There is nothing except the series of
sensations which happen ... not to ‘me’ but just happening ...
moment by moment ... one after another. To be the sensations, as
distinct from having them, engenders the most astonishing sense of
freedom and release. Consequently, I am living in peace and
tranquillity; a meaningful peace and tranquillity. Life is
intrinsically purposeful, the reason for existence lies openly all
around. Being in this very air I live in, I am constantly aware of
it; I breathe it in and out; I see it, I hear it, I taste it, I
smell it, I touch it, all of the time. It never goes away – nor has
it ever been away. ‘I’ was standing in the way of meaning.
This is an actual freedom. It is possible to be actually free, here
on earth, as this body, in this life-time.
Appendix No. 1
Description Of Becoming Enlightened
In 1980 I had a peak experience wherein I saw that everything was
already perfect as-it-is and that ‘I’, the psychological entity,
was standing in the way ... and no-one else was preventing me from
achieving the ultimate goal of being a human. In that peak
experience I saw ‘myself’. ‘I’ was the end product of society and
nothing more. ‘I’ was an emotional construct of all of the beliefs,
values, moral, ethics, mores, customs, traditions, doctrines,
ideologies and so on. ‘I’ was nothing but an emotional-mental
fabrication ... a sense of identity with its conscience. I also saw
that ‘I’ was a lost, lonely, frightened – and a very, very cunning
– entity. Just as those Christians who are said to be possessed by
an evil entity and need to be exorcised, I saw that every human
being had been endowed with a social entity ... and it was called
being normal. To say that I was amazed rather fails to adequately
describe the feeling of relief that after all there was a solution
to the human situation here on earth. I was ecstatic.
That proved to be my undoing – as far as actual freedom is
concerned. Ecstasy led to euphoria and euphoria led to bliss. In
the blissful state I manifested and became Love Agapé which led to
an emanation of Divine Compassion for all living beings who were
suffering and in sorrow by virtue of the fact that they were
ignorant of the Divine Order of things ... for an Absolute had been
revealed to me in that Love and Compassion – it was that Love Agapé
and Divine Compassion – and I had been chosen to bring this
self-same Love and Compassion to earth. I was to go through a
process, when I returned to normal, that would result in my being
well-prepared to usher in this new age of peace and prosperity to
all humankind. As this revelation continued, I saw a new ‘me’
coming into existence ... a grand ‘Me’, a glorious ‘Me’ and a
spiritually fulfilling ‘Me’. I was the Saviour Of Humankind!
(As all this was happening, a passing thought occurred to me, which
was briefly contemplated ... then banished: Who or what was it that
was observing these two ‘me’s – the social ‘me’ and the grand ‘Me’?
This trifling question was to be of immense benefit years later
when I realised that I was living in a delusion and that there was
an actual freedom lying beyond ... but I jump ahead of
myself).
Three nights later I had a similar experience and what I had
witnessed on the first revelation was confirmed. Then nothing
untoward happened for the next five months – this had been in late
July 1980 – until on the first day of January in 1981 when I began
a ‘process’ that was to last for nine months, culminating in my
Divine Awakening on that September morning. The ‘process’ was both
prosaic and extraordinary: on the one hand I began undoing all the
social conditioning that I had been subject to since birth and on
the other hand I generated love for all and sundry. I examined all
the social traditions and customs etc., one by one, and released
myself from their iron grip. I diminished hate and anger and
sadness and loneliness by surrendering to and living in love and
oneness ... which is the best that a normal human could do by
virtue of the socialisation process. I moved in and out of Sacred
States of Heavenly Bliss and Love Agapé and Divine Compassion and
immersed myself in the entire ‘process’ with dedication and
resolution. I adopted the principle of pacifism (‘turn the other
cheek’) and developed Goodness of the highest order. I cleansed and
purified myself of all impure thoughts and deeds and worked both
hard and industriously in my daily work. I practised honesty and
humility in all my interactions with other people and pondered the
significance and ramifications of the Divine Order.
I totally believed in and had supreme faith in The Absolute and its
ability to bring about the Peace On Earth so long promised. That I
was to play the central role in this Divine Plan no longer came as
a surprise to me, as I began to realise that I had long yearned to
be part of the Salvation Process. I understood that I had to die
and be reborn and, consequently, went into a catatonic state that
resulted in my being carted off to hospital and kept under
intensive care for four hours until I came out of it. I was never
to be the same again, as Divinity had been working on me whilst I
was catatonic and from that date forward I was permanently in a
state of human bliss and love ... I could do no wrong. About six
weeks prior to the sixth of September 1981 I had a revelation that
I was going to really die this time, not become catatonic again,
and that I was to prepare myself for it. I mustered all of my faith
and resolution, renewed all of my trust and dedication, and awaited
the day. The night before I could hardly maintain myself as a
thinking, functioning human being as a blistering hot and cold
burning sensation crept up the back of my spine and entered into
the base of my neck just under the brain itself. I went to bed in
desperation and frustration at my apparent inability to be good
enough to carry this ‘process’ through to its supreme
conclusion.
The next morning I awoke and all was calm and quiet. Expressing
relief at the cessation of the intensifying ‘process’ that had
reached an unbearable level the night before, I lay back on my
pillows to watch the rising sun (my bedroom faced east) through the
large bedroom windows. All of a sudden I was gripped with the
realisation that this was the moment! I was going to die! An
intense fear raced throughout my body, rising in crescendo until I
could scarcely take any more. As it reached a peak of stark terror,
I realised that I had nothing to worry about and that I was to go
with the ‘process’. In an instant all fear left me and I travelled
deep into the depths of my very being. All of a sudden I was
sitting bolt upright, laughing, as I realised that this that was
IT! was such a simple thing ... all I had to do was die ... and
that was the easiest thing in the world to do. Then the thought of
leaving my family and friends overwhelmed me and I was thrust back
on the bed sobbing. Then I was bolt upright once more laughing my
head off ... then I was back on the pillows sobbing my heart out
... upright, laughing ... pillows sobbing ... upright laughing ...
pillows sobbing. At the fifth or sixth time something turned over
in the base of my brain – in the top of the brain-stem. I likened
it to turning over a L.P. record in order to play the other side
... with the vital exception that it would never, ever turn back
again.
It was over. I had arrived. I had become Awakened to the Greater
Reality. I was Love Agapé and Divine Compassion ... there was no
separation between me and The Absolute. I had a Divine Sense of
Mission to spread The Word and I embarked on fulfilling my Sacred
Duty, gathering some disciples on the way, until 1984. Then I
started to question just what I was doing and just what had
happened to me. Something seemed to be wrong ... this had all been
done before by other Masters and Messiahs, Saints and Sages,
Avatars and Saviours, to no avail. In fact, instead of bringing
Love and Peace, they had left in their wake much bloodshed and
hatred ... and I was one of them! Accordingly I travelled to India
to find out for myself exactly what was amiss with this whole
Enlightenment business by meeting some of these hallowed Gurus and
imbibing the centuries of Eastern Spiritual Tradition for myself,
instead of merely reading about it in books.
It was to take me eleven years to get out of this massive delusion
I was living in and go beyond it to arrive at where I am today. It
was eleven years of coming to terms with the understanding that
what I was living was a massive delusion of grandeur ... and that
it was what every human being believed in, in some way, shape or
form ... but that is another story. Today, I am no longer an
Enlightened Master living in an Exalted State of Being ... I am
me-as-this-body only, a fellow human being who has no sorrow or
malice whatsoever to transcend; hence I am both happy and harmless.
I am what I was on that fateful night in 1980 when I asked the
question: ‘Who or what was it that was observing these two ‘me’s –
the social ‘me’ and the grand ‘Me’?’ I am these sense organs in
operation: this seeing is me, this hearing is me, this tasting is
me, this touching is me, this smelling is me, and this thinking is
me. Whereas ‘I’, the identity, am inside the body: looking out
through ‘my’ eyes as if looking out through a window, listening
through ‘my’ ears as if they were microphones, tasting through ‘my’
tongue, touching through ‘my’ skin, smelling through ‘my’ nose, and
thinking through ‘my’ brain. Of course ‘I’ must feel isolated,
alienated, alone and lonely, for ‘I’ am cut off from the
magnificence of the actual world ... the world as-it-is ... by ‘my’
very presence.
Any identity whatsoever is a delusion.
Appendix No. 2
Description Of A ‘Glimpse’ Of Actual Freedom
I was coming to the end of a time I went through in an endeavour to
purify myself which I call my ‘puritan period’. I retreated
altogether from civilisation to a group of uninhabited islands in
the tropics off the north-eastern Australian seaboard where I
stayed for the best part of three months in total silence, on my
own, speaking to no one at all and moving from island to island at
whim. I had whittled my worldly possessions down to three sarongs,
three shirts, a cooking pot and bowl, a knife and a spoon, a bank
book and a pair of nail scissors ... I was homeless, itinerant,
celibate, vegan, (no spices; not even salt and pepper), no drugs
(no tobacco, no alcohol; not even tea or coffee), no hair cut, no
shaving, no washing other than a dip in a river or the ocean. I
possessed nothing else anywhere in the world and had cut all family
ties ... whatever I could eliminate from my life that was an
encumbrance and an attachment, I had let go of. In other words:
whatever was traditionally seen as an impediment to freedom I
discarded. It was there I finally discovered that it was ‘Spiritual
Enlightenment’ which was at fault and that I could ‘purify’ myself
via these ‘Tried and True’ means until the cows came home ... to no
avail.
I was already in an Altered State Of Consciousness (this was in
1985 and my ego had dissolved in 1981) and living in what has been
described as the ‘Unknown’. I had had some serious reservations
about the validity of this as an ultimate state and had been to
India the previous year to see if I could ascertain why. My
discoveries there had led me to consider the possibility that
Enlightenment was not the final stage, so I was ripe and ready to
plunge into the ‘Unknowable’. I was able to experience what lay
beyond Enlightenment several times ... the first of these
experiences occurred at maybe three in the morning (I had no watch)
and was accompanied by a sense of dread the likes of which I had
never experienced even in a war-zone – made all the more acute
because I had not experienced fear for four years (I was living in
a state of Divine Compassion and Love Agapé which protected me from
malice and the underlying fear). This dread contained the
existential angst of discovering that ‘I’ was nothing but a
contingent ‘being’ and that ‘I’ would cease to ‘be’. Then the
condition I went on to experience had the character of the ‘Great
Beyond’ – which I deliberately put in capitals because that is how
it was experienced at the time – and it was of the nature of being
‘That’ which is attained to at physical death when an Enlightened
One ‘quits the body’ ... which attainment is known as ‘Mahasamadhi’
(Hinduism) or ‘Parinirvana’ (Buddhism) and so on.
It seemed so extreme that the physical body must surely die for the
attainment of it.
To put it into a physical analogy, it was as if I were to gather up
my meagre belongings, eradicate all marks of my stay on the island,
and paddle away over the horizon, all the while not knowing whence
I go ... and vanish without a trace, never to be seen again. As no
one on the mainland knew where I was, no one would know where I had
gone. In fact, I would become as extinct as the dodo and with no
skeletal remains. The autological self by whatever name would cease
to ‘be’, there would be no ‘spirit’, no ‘presence’, no ‘being’ at
all. This was more than death of the ego, which is a major event by
any definition; this was total annihilation. No ego, no soul – no
self, no Self – no more Heavenly Rapture, Love Agapé, Divine Bliss
and so on. Only oblivion. It was not at all attractive, not at all
alluring, not at all desirable ... yet I knew I was going to do it,
sooner or later, because it was the ultimate condition and herein
lay the secret to the ‘Mystery of Life’.
The ‘death of the ego’ is only for the orthodox-minded people; it
is for those who are easily seduced by the Glamour and the Glory
and the Glitz of the much-touted Altered State. This is why pure
intent is an essential prerequisite to ensure a guaranteed passage
through the psychic maze. With pure intent one will not rest until
one has gone all the way. One will not be bewitched by the psychic
Power and Authority, either. All these allurements are but welcome
food for the cunning entity, which wanting only its own survival,
readily sublimates itself into The Spirit. With the clarity born of
pure intent one can see this play for what it is and move on freely
and willingly to what lies at the end of the wide and wondrous path
... the end of ‘being’. With pure intent one will not settle for
second best, for it has been seen in the peak experiences that the
very best is possible, here on earth. One sees that ‘I’ must
disappear entirely. There will be no transcendence, no
transmutation, no metamorphosis ... not any of these. For one who
goes all the way, no phoenix will exist to arise from the ashes –
nothing Metaphysical will remain. There will be no ‘being’ at all.
‘I’ will become extinct.
I use the word extinct deliberately for it carries a definitive
meaning. Physically, death is the end of an individual member of
the species, whilst extinction is the ending of the species itself.
The psychological annihilation of ‘I’ – in its entirety – is the
psychological ending of the species known as ‘humanity’. It is the
end of ‘being’ and the end of an illusion. It is also the end of
‘Being’ and the end of delusion. The Human Condition, with all its
appalling sorrow and malice, can come to an end. All those would-be
wise people who state: ‘You can’t change human nature’ are,
fortunately, wrong. Because it is possible for ‘me’ to become
extinct, thereby releasing the body from the ‘being’ within, I can
walk freely in the world as-it-is ... this actual world. I, as this
body only, can live in that perfect purity twenty-four-hours-a-day.
I can live in a state of benignity, which means a kindly and
harmless disposition. Life is a sincere and yet playful game and
one is then free to enjoy it all, every moment again.
‘Humanity’, which gave birth to ‘me’, is being sustained by ‘me’
remaining as a ‘being’. ‘I’ am forever fettered by the Human
Condition. The species known as ‘humanity’ has searched for an
Ultimate Fulfilment within the arena of the Human Condition for all
of history. Such a search is endless and futile, for it is a search
within an illusion. Only further illusions – further states of
‘being’ – can be found there ... or delusions. Becoming Divine is a
delusion – a state of ‘Being’ that is actually an insult to
intelligence. ‘I’ will never find the ultimate fulfilment for ‘I’
am standing in the way of the ‘Mystery of Life’ being revealed.
There is no way out, ‘I’ am doomed. ‘I’ must, inevitably, cease to
‘be’. Instead of bemoaning ‘my’ fate and vainly searching for an
escape, ‘I’ can see ‘myself’ for what ‘I’ am. This seeing is the
beginning of the ending of ‘me’. The extinction of ‘me’ is the
ultimate sacrifice ‘I’ can make to ensure the possibility of
peace-on-earth for not only me but for all humankind.
Ultimate fulfilment lies beyond extinction.
Appendix No. 3
Description Of Becoming Actually Free
In late September 1992 a woman, who had been coming to see me on
and off for some time, earnestly asked that she be taken on as a
disciple ... she seriously wished me to be her master. I was
astounded, for I had been at pains to explain that I was not
interested in being anyone’s master, for I considered the entire
system of the master-disciple relationship, with its attendant
surrender, trust, worship and obedience, to be not only insidious,
but pernicious as in regards to another person’s freedom. I
declined, of course, yet I had to question just what I was ‘putting
out’ to people to precipitate such a request. What was my part in
all this? What was I doing – indeed what was I being – to encourage
another to consider taking this step? I had been dismantling
various aspects of the make-up of the Altered State Of
Consciousness that I was living in – a state of Spiritual
Enlightenment that I called Absolute Freedom – and had thought
myself to be virtually free of all that hocus-pocus that goes on in
the name of freedom. I asked myself what turned out to be a seminal
question:
‘What am I in relation to other people?’
I asked the question in such a way so that I would not get a
carefully thought-out and reasoned answer. I wanted an experiential
result – and I kept the question burning in the depths of my
psyche, discarding any intellectual answers that inevitably
popped-up in the course of the next five or six weeks. It troubled
me deeply that I was in such a situation because I seem to be
driven by some force to ‘Spread the Word’ and that was never my
intention all those years ago when I first had what is known as a
‘Peak Experience’ which initiated my incursion into all matters
Spiritual, culminating in the ‘death’ of my ego and catapulting me
into this Absolute State. My intent back then had been to cleanse
myself of all that is detrimental to personal happiness and
interpersonal harmony ... in other words: Peace on earth in my
life-time. Instead of that rather simple ambition, I found that I
was impelled on an odyssey to be the latest Saviour of Humankind in
a long list of Enlightened Beings ... and this imposition did not
sit well with me, as they have all failed in their Divine Work.
After something like five thousand years of recorded history,
humanity is nowhere nearer to Peace On Earth than before. Indeed,
instead of the much-touted Love and Peace, much Hatred and
Bloodshed has followed in their wake. This abysmal fate is
something I wish to avoid repeating, whatever the personal cost in
terms of losing this much-prized State Of Being. My diagnosis was
simple: if I were driven by some force – no matter how Good that
force be – then I am not actually free.
Then in the late afternoon of the day before Friday the thirtieth
of of October 1992, whilst out in an abandoned cow-paddock planting
tree seedlings, I was struck by the curious fact that at the
beginning of my life I had been engaged in chopping down trees to
turn the land into cow-pasture. Now the needs of the situation were
sharply reversed and so I paused in my task and stood erect,
looking about me in this little sub-tropical valley that the
ex-dairy farm was nestled in. As I looked I idly mused upon the
irony that the change in human needs regarding physical survival
had wrought such radical transformation in the attitudes toward the
environment during the forty five years I had been upon this
planet. In a flash of a moment a vast understanding of the enormity
of the Human Condition transfigured my comfortable comprehension of
what it was to be an Enlightened Master ... a Self-Realised Being.
My entire affective and cognitive configuration – my highly prized
state of awareness – was seen at a glance to be nothing more than a
passionate mental construct. In other words, my world fell
apart.
I entered into a repeat of what I had first experienced on an
uninhabited island some seven years previously and nervousness and
apprehension mounted to a fear that moved rapidly through terror
and horror to the dread that I knew so well from long ago. This was
what my seminal question had produced and, turning weak at the
knees, I sank to the ground ... to no avail. I could not escape my
destiny, for I was situated in a living nightmare of what I swiftly
came to see was nothing short of institutionalised insanity. Any
altered state of consciousness was a delusion born out of the
illusion of self ... but only because of humankind’s ignorance. It
is truly dreadful to be trapped in a massive delusion for eleven
years, unable to find any way out and knowing that no other human
being can help, for the altered state has been held up for
millennia as being the Summum Bonum of human existence. All the
literature on the subject praised the state of consciousness I was
in (Enlightenment, Illumination, Moksha, Samadhi, Satori, Nirvana,
Sunyata and so on) and yet I just knew it was a mirage that I was
living.
I had no choice but to retire to my bed for a sleepless night of
frozen immobility ... which continued throughout the morning of the
next day. I knew that I would – I must – proceed, but how could I
be right and all those ‘great’ and revered masters be wrong? Who
was I, a mere boy from the farm, to set himself up to be the
ultimate arbiter of human experience? The agonizing doubt was
virtually unbearable ... I would not wish this upon anyone ... I
would want no one to follow in my footsteps, for I had to run the
full gamut of dread to break through to what lay beyond the
deception. I realised, at about nine in the morning, that eleven
years ago I had inadvertently surrendered my will to a god ... the
‘Absolute’ that I cunningly considered to be ‘That Which Lay
Beyond’ had turned out to be Divinity in disguise. I took myself up
the hill into a pine plantation that I particularly favoured as a
contemplative place and spent an hour and a half digging deep into
my psyche to regain my ‘surrender’ ... to get my autonomy back.
With a shaky will somewhat in place I returned to my home and,
mounting the verandah steps, collapsed in a heap on the bare
boards. Unable to move, to think or to feel I could but lie there
as my very soul fell away. It was about midday when the process was
over and I came to my senses – both figuratively and literally. For
along with the dissolution of my soul, my feelings – my emotions
and passions – disappeared, never to return. My psyche
disintegrated and the second ‘I’ died ... ‘I’ became extinct.
The Altered State needs to be talked about and exposed for what it
is so that nobody need venture up that blind alley ever again.
There is another way and another goal. The main trouble with the
Altered State is that whilst the ego dissolves, the identity and
soul remain intact. No longer identifying as a personal ego-bound
identity, one then identifies as an impersonal soul-bound identity
– ‘I am That’, ‘I am God’, ‘I am The Supreme’, ‘I am The Absolute’
and so on. This is the delusion, the mirage, the deception ... and
it is extremely difficult to see it for oneself, for one is in an
august state. This second identity – the second ‘I’ of Mr.
Venkataraman Ramana fame – is a difficult one to shake, maybe more
difficult than the first; for who is brave enough to voluntarily
give up fame and fortune, reverence and worship, status and
security? One has to be scrupulously honest with oneself to go all
the way and no longer be a someone, a somebody of importance. One
faces extinction; ‘I’ will cease to be, there will be no ‘being’
whatsoever, no ‘presence’ at all. It is impossible to imagine, not
only the complete and utter cessation of ‘me’ in ‘my’ entirety, but
the end of any ‘Ultimate Being’ or ‘Absolute Presence’ in any way,
shape or form. It means that no one or no thing is in charge of the
universe ... that there is no ‘Ultimate Authority’. It means that
all values are but human values, with no absolute values at all to
fall back upon. It is impossible for ‘me’ to conceive that without
a wayward ‘me’ there is no need for any values whatsoever ... or an
‘Ultimate Authority’.
Thus I find myself here, in the world as-it-is. A vast stillness
lies all around, a perfection that is abounding with purity.
Beneficence, an active kindness, overflows in all directions,
imbuing everything with unimaginable fairytale-like quality. For me
to be able to be here at all is a blessing that only ‘I’ could
grant, because nobody else could do it for me. I am full of
admiration for the ‘me’ that dared to do such a thing. I owe all
that I experience now to ‘me’. I salute ‘my’ audacity. And what an
adventure it was ... and still is. These are the wondrous workings
of the exquisite nature of life – who would have it any other
way?
I am this infinite and eternal universe experiencing itself as a
reflective, sensate human being.
INDEX OF ARTICLES
RICHARD’S HOME PAGE
The Third Alternative
(Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood
Body)
Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing
Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of
Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry,
metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony),
anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its
paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held
humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered
that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be,
for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living
in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.
Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust 1997-2001
