The Trial of Truth Strike - Part I

Clerk: All rise.

Judge: Please be seated.

Judge: This hearing is now in session and we will examine case 1,2847, the virtual community versus Mr Virus. Would the defence proceed to make their opening statement. I believe you will be representing your 'self' Mr Virus?

Mr Virus: No your honour, there is no self just a representation.

Judge: You impudent tone will cause me to hold you in contempt of court, are you aware of the grave allegations that face you?

Mr Virus: Yes sir, I am trying to be accurate, however, I have to grant that language is dualistic anyway and I promise not to let obstructions such as this interfere with my explanation.

Judge: Very well then, please proceed.

Mr Virus: Thank you your honour. Lets get straight in to it and ask why Truth Strike ran to a halt? This is probably the burning question on your mind, since at the end of 2012 we stopped accepting new members on to the site and we have let it stand dormant since. Naturally, there are a wealth of reasons why things have turned out this way and some exciting changes are coming up now which I want to share.

Before I answer the question I will outline what I hope to achieve in setting out the defence, and just mention that I am going to dig really deep to expose not only my own shortcomings, but also those of Truth Strike as an organisation and allow you, the good jury and court, to scrutinise every detail of this case.

Essentially, I am going to be turning the lance on to TS and Ghostvirus, and I am going to scrutinise the theoretical underpinnings and thought processes by using the very tool that we used for enquiry in to the self. No stone is going to be left unturned and whilst this is going to be damming, I believe it is absolutely necessary that there is a revolution in the way we go about doing things.

What I really hope to achieve here is expose the limitations of our approach and crack TS wide open to expose the hubris that was unchallenged from day one, and demonstrate how we are guilty of only compassion for humanity.

Then we will show what principles are worthwhile which we have always exacted ourselves to, and then demolish the rest.

Once this is accomplished I can set down the burden of TS and RT, safe in the knowledge that they were doomed to fail right from the start, and were the remnants of a strategy that bought so much negativity to the table, but were steps in bringing about the catharsis of an endeavour to explore new frontiers in human understanding.

I want to focus on the positives that have come out of Truth Strikes endeavours and all the good things we have achieved before we launch an attack upon it. To start with we all deserved a nice long break since we have been undertaking this research program for a long time without a hiatus. It takes its toll eventually and I think we had all ran out of steam and needed some time to recuperate.

Upon this well deserved break the TS staff have had some time to relax and step out of the frame, having been working on this project without stopping. In this sense, we have had time to assess what we have achieved and where we want to go next, having fulfilled one of our ambitious objectives. This objective was a bold one, but perhaps represents one of the easier objectives.

I think we can all congratulate ourselves on the success of our outcome because accomplishing this was no mean feat, although this should only be a sober celebration and perhaps we may have to hang our heads in shame?

I have to concede immediately; hand on heart, were the means justified by the end we accomplished? I will leave you, the members of the jury, to deduce your own conclusions, but for now we will ask what is this objective that we achieved?

Judge: Do go on Mr Virus.

Mr Virus: This point has marked a watershed for us and TS has really paid off as a project now, in this regard our endeavours over the past two years have been an outstanding success. What we have mapped out is a schema of the mechanism of human delusion from which we can now start to analyse and number crunch.

Throughout the work in TS and RT, what we have accomplished is perhaps one of the most unrestricted qualitative surveys in to the notion of self hood, that has ever been undertaken, and this has all been done in the public domain.

It is unique in the sense that not only has a phenomenological paradigm been championed by each fair enquirer who has stepped up to the plate, this enquiry has also been tempered by a discursive analysis.

In layman's terms phenomenology is simply looking at the mental phenomena that arise in ones experience, and by discursive I simply mean that an analysis of the discourse between people on the forum threads, where contradictions and assumptions were highlighted.

In this sense, a powerful tool has been forged, however, this does not mean it is exempt from theoretical problems. These will have to be discussed in future, in relation to qualitative methodologies, but this plays in to a broader discussion between proponents of certain psychological standpoints, and philosophical ideas, which I cannot hope to do justice to now.

This very issue has produced its own debates in the annuls of academic philosophy and I will assume that some of these will crop up again, however, I am satisfied that there are many arguments that grant validity to qualitative approaches in psychology, and it is to these that we could start to base any methodological underpinning on in future.

From this research project we have developed some robust tools for enquiry and feel that we can provide the means to uncover every sticking point in an investigation to the self, and also every ad hoc variation of arguments for self hood that do not work.

Whilst this will be the next phase of our work, this leads us on to discussing our motivation for this whole project, and the reasons for maintaining and participating in TS.

Firstly, our primary goal was to put an end to greed, misery, and suffering in the world which was derived from the illusion of self.

Secondly, as an investigation in to the aspects of the core mechanism of human delusion.

From our primary goal or end game, we derived many other reasons to engage in 'liberating' people, but I think we can safely say that we failed completely on our primary goal of ending suffering in the world.

Lets face it, it was a far flung hope at best, more akin to wishing on a star. With a goal such as this for the basis of us facilitating enquiry, half of the foundations were built on sand and thus we see a disconnect from reality. It is of little wonder that the original RT mob were not interested in coming back to join us.

Hindsight is a good thing, but I think the absence of Laserpig, Kevin, Guilliano, Unison, Viv, Thassa, Chris, and numerous other screen names from the RT days who never stayed in the fray with us, speaks volumes about we were doing. Furthermore, many of those that we did liberate from the illusion of self had no impetus to hang around or get involved in our work.

Quite simply, this delusion, although based in doing something positive, was the basis of our entire approach and we should feel foolish for having stuck dogmatically to this ideology. To be fair, it was done with the best of intentions, however, I am sure Adolf Hitler had only good intentions for Germany before the madness took hold, and thus no such argument of good intentionality is sufficient to exonerate us for our dogmatically asserted ideology, which found its sources in none other than RT's old poisonous doctrine, which thankfully we can lay to rest.

In spite of this intentionality argument of mine carrying no weight, I still believe it is worth setting out the position we took in an attempt to construct an accurate reflection of the mindset involved at the time.

No self, in real life...

Our intention from the outset was to carry on the positive aspect of the work of RT, which was the fact that we were waking people up from their slumber. Rather than just giving up we still believed, that by running in to the road and smashing someone out of the way of an oncoming lorry, that we were doing the world a favour.

We were trying to foist this discovery on to everyone and even now, we still believe it has application for reducing cognitive dissonance, suffering and greed in the world. In a sense we are still motivated to carry on with our work even after the implosion of RT, and the initial lack of success with TS as a platform for freeing vast quantities of people, however, forcing the message down peoples throats is not going to cut it any more, and it is going to have to become open to scrutiny from all quarters.

The central claim we have made, has never been shown to be doubtful. Having seen the front cover of New Scientist, dated 23^rd February, it is plain that there is no self, and our main claim has been vindicated by mainstream science. From this point on there is no need for any of us to try and advance the proposition: there is no self, since not only is it philosophically iron clad, it has been empirically demonstrated that free will and all the other things that we believe are necessary for the self to play a causal role in life, are illusory.

In a sense, it felt great seeing that article knowing that everything we championed and all the ridicule we endured, was finally worth the price ultimately, and represents a massive blow to all the dualists and metaphysicians who went great lengths to pretend to follow the procedures of philosophy, and advance sophisms in the name of their religion or spiritual system. To be vindicated of our claim after all our hard work was great, but this is not the full story and our claim is not fully vindicated yet.

If any fair enquirer started to look in to the claim we made, most often they discovered that it appeared there was no self in real life. However, the difference between knowing this and experiencing this, was where people got trapped in the looking process and arrived at an intellectual understanding where they could not get the breakthrough. Hence on many of the threads in TS and RT, we had people trying to get this breakthrough of walking through 'the gate'. The intellectual understanding of no self is now vindicated in the most reputable mainstream science journal in Britain, and it is apparent that no more do we have to argue for the proposition; there is no self. However, our claim does encompass an experiential aspect that the intellectual understanding does not encompass alone, and it is to this aspect that we make a further claim.

It is possible to directly experience this characteristic of no self, and this represents a life transforming experience.

This is where our future endeavours will take us, but no more do we have to argue about the possibility of no self, since all it takes is a phenomenological investigation to test it out. In that respect, there is no need for any of us to defend anything, or promote a view point any more. The time for that has passed and it seems only pertinent that we jettison the baggage and make a clean break. If a fair enquirer chooses they are not interested in no-self, then it is no longer incumbent on any of us to convince them otherwise. We can lead a horse to water but we cannot make it drink, however, a horse can find water of its own accord and it is here where we will focus in future.

However, why did we try and take the other forceful approach in the first place? Why did we try to force this idea down peoples throats at all costs, and in the process make some serious mistakes?

Winding back the clock, you have to appreciate that we were merely a bunch of westerners who had a life changing insight in the beginning. The initial profundity was so strong that along with Ciaran, we believed that we had discovered the key to enlightenment and with that key it presented a real opportunity of ending suffering in the world.

The end of suffering... an opportunity in real life to end the suffering and misery of billions that arose at the hands of humanities foul and darkest side.

It is kind of funny now looking back that we genuinely believed this was the case. We actually genuinely believed that we had a shot at ending human suffering. So, we took it and gave it everything we had. Of course, we had no chance of accomplishing this goal and we were deluded for thinking we were, but I hold my hand up and admit that I actually believed in this possibility.

Why is it that we had no chance of accomplishing this goal at RT?

Resistance

Firstly, the resistance we met from the very enslaved we were trying to free was strong, the very notions of “kill the lie” and “you do not exist” were enough to arouse the strongest resistance in people. The only way to smash this resistance apart was to destroy their integrity and this encompassed vile and ruthless attacks on their identity, whilst delivering killer blows to their arguments by highlighting their circular logic. It was not pretty and it was unsustainable keeping the burning intensity up that was required to free someone for a long period.

It was a mammoth task and for every person we did free, we sent scores of others running for cover even to the point where we were branded as a cult, even though we did not court membership or have any kind of financial incentives. The resistance that we saw was circular logic in any case which could be crushed easily, and the abject delusion we saw in not only the spiritual community, but the world at large only served to fuel the fire of hatred towards what we perceived as a toxic lie that had enslaved humanity.

At TS, the culture was changed a little where we toned the character assassinations to a degree but they were still present, having authored much negativity with my hand. Simply trying to tone down this aspect at TS did not work, since the exact same principle was evidently displayed time and time again, and thus the results were always going to be similar. In order to change at a fundamental level, this aspect of our work must be completely demolished and purged from anything we do in future.

Divisions

Secondly, we drove deep divisions between ourselves and the spiritual community. Whilst I do think there is a lot we could have learned from various people, in many respects we delivered a wake up call to the masses of deluded seekers. This is not to claim that we are not deluded and they are, as that would certainly be an untenable claim for me to make, since I am fully aware that delusion resides in me that has not been removed. However, seeing people who had been chasing their tails for twenty years really highlighted the amount of falsity, hubris, and deceptions prevalent in the whole virtual spiritual community.

Seeing people spouting out their hippy peace and love crap and parroting Advaitan doctrine under the delusion that their gurus would save them from their misery was really sad to see. Whilst it may be a better alternative subscription to the hostility and negativity prevalent in our society, it was clear to see that they identified with seeking and wanted to passively transcend all the horrors and suffering in their lives, whilst failing to face up to the truth. Naturally, people don't like being told this and we created deep divisions between ourselves and the spiritual community. Similarly, we did not like being told we were deluded either and hence I make no claim to who is more deluded, we can just agree that the following proposition has universality to anyone engaged in enquiry.

People fall in to different traps and part of the process of facing up to the truth, is discovering the ways in which the mind deceives.

Clearly, “consciousness is”, “I am the universe”, “there is just this”, and every other ad hoc idiom, are just multiple realisations of the same indescribable nature. The worrying thing is simply that many who parrot this derive a spiritual self from it, because they do not have direct experience of no self, they merely hold it as a conceptual understanding. Even those who have experienced no self can easily get trapped in this mindset too, and cling on to the insight, much like I did.

Aside from correcting these lines of reasoning, there is much we could learn from those who try other methodologies in the spiritual community, no doubt. There were some who tried to reach out to us and we attacked them with great vigour, even those who wanted to point to the fresh tracks we were making in the sand, as we wandered off the road of possibility in to the barren desert of dogmatism. In that sense, with TS we started to see a gradual shift towards accepting people who were engaged in the honest varieties of spirituality instead of simply attacking them.

However, I did far too little to engage with these folks and didn't move round to this way of thinking fast enough, although, this transition would be evidenced on my blog post 'Eastern Promise' dated March 2012. I still shunned them away even after this blog post admittedly, when they were simply trying to reach out to me and I must confess, I can only appear utterly foolish for my ignorance.

Ignorance

Finally, the very notion of enlightenment we were initially arguing for was a myth. No self was genuinely perceived to be enlightenment at the time, such was the profound shift in our psychology. At the time we genuinely believed this was the case and it must have been evident to anyone else that we were far from enlightened. In fact, I am trying not to laugh at the very notion your honour as I say this. Even within the ranks of RT it soon became apparent that we weren't enlightened and this led to the notion of denying the reality of enlightenment itself.

Simply, if this was not enlightenment then enlightenment must be a myth was the premise upon which this reasoning was based. A fools errand quite simply, and this marked the down fall of RT since our claim was delusional. Things changed with TS however, since we started from a position that encompassed the fact we were not enlightened, unfortunately, we were still ignorant enough to believe that we should force this upon people.

What we should have done is made it available for those want to find an important part of the jigsaw puzzle of truth. No-self represents the corners, which are ultimately a piece, of a broader puzzle.

LOOKing at No-Self

The way in which I conceive the no-self insight after two years consists in the following points of reference, to which I will try and spell out plainly.

Firstly, it is not enlightenment, a claim that TS has been fortunate enough never to make. Anyone believing that no-self alone is enlightenment, has evidently been deceived by reason and one need only look honestly at their direct experience to satisfy themselves that they are not entirely free from delusion.

Secondly, it is what the Buddhist's call an 'arising and passing'. However, it is safe to say that the previous psychological structuring of beliefs and assumptions that filtered reality as 'I' perceived it, which was also believed to be permanent and immutable, was drastically changed forever. In this sense there is no turning back to life before having this insight, it is a one way ticket. For all intensive purposes, it is an earth shattering moment and it is easy to see how we fell for the illusion directly behind it at the time. It would be pertinent to say that I have never met anyone who regretted the no-self insight, and I would like to hear from anyone who believes it has had an adverse affect on them.

Moreover, the very notion of 'arising and passing' demonstrates that it must pass. Too often were we trying to cling on to the profundity of this insight, and we treated it as an end in itself rather than as a means.

Thirdly, it is a direct understanding in to one of Buddha's three characteristics; the characteristic of 'no self'. On this basis, one does not understand the three characteristics in their entirety, I merely have a conceptual understanding of suffering and impermanence, but realisation of the characteristic of no self. In this sense, there are many seekers who have been engaged in twenty plus years of seeking and are so hopelessly lost that they have not had this insight, which people are capable of mustering the honesty to see in less than a day in some cases.

This is not to say that they may not have had realisations about impermanence or suffering, which I have not, and any claim to who is more deluded is worthless in any case.

This leads me on to, I have to admit, a conjecture here. When asking why is it that some people cannot muster the honesty to LOOK, my only suggestion is that they perhaps need to investigate the other of Buddha's characteristics first. It is merely our assumption that anyone can get this with the requisite honesty, it may be that a deeper understanding of other areas may be required first. This seems to fit the observation, however, we cannot accept this without any qualitative, or objective grounding.

Essentially, our assumption of people simply being cowardly and dishonest is not really tenable and it never was in this respect.

When viewed as a lie that squirms about in its host and needs to be destroyed, viz Ruthless Truth, it may be pertinent to suggest that those that cannot see it are cowards. However, when viewed as a complex web of delusion it is simply that one is unable to LOOK honestly, and it is nothing to do with cowardice, since in my experience I can see that people really want to get this and they acknowledge their fear but want to get the process out of the way.

Only when smashing apart their identity and using a brute force method of liberation could it be right to term someone a coward. When the cowardice term was used it was simply a rhetorical device to drop a breeze block on a deluded chain of thought, and snap the seeker back in to reality. It may be true that they are being dishonest, but this led me to place a caveat on this assumption where I would state “we do not mean a conniving dishonesty”.

It is not that a fair enquirer is dishonest at all, it is simply that they are reverting back to their programmed loop of reasoning and not applying honesty.

In that sense we can ask does it follow that a lack of honesty inherently means dishonesty? Indeed, if conniving intentions are abound then it would be, however, if there is no intention of dishonesty then the negative connotation that this word holds is not really applicable. If viewed as a “lie” that has enslaved its host then dishonesty seems the right word to use, but it seems that this way of looking at the false self is a situated knowledge, where the context of this view impacted upon our own view point, and as a result these negative connotations arose in the circumstances.

The truth is, one is simply not following the procedure correctly and reverting back to the programmed loops of thought instead of looking. When people are “looping”, they are simply stuck in a thought loop of belief that they have not tried to step out of by LOOKing. We could term this dishonesty, since it is the antithesis of honest enquiry but it is not an accurate reflection of what is happening, especially when someone is trying their best to crack the no-self insight. They have simply not worked their honesty to a sufficient capacity to enable them to do this.

Of course, one of the appeals of RT was that it was utterly ruthless and used negativity against the lie of self, and it caused such a furore initially, that it quickly gained momentum. This could not have been done with kind words and gentle encouragement if the truth is to be told, even though the LU crew managed to refine the liberation process to encompass this aspect later. Essentially, the early success of RT and the large exposure it gained was in part due to this negativity, and quite simply, the brute force leverage this method gave in liberating people and crushing their lies was a useful tool.

However, I don't think it is feasible anymore, although the many threads of some past liberations that included this negativity, would be useful for those who are trying to crack the no-self insight. There are indeed an abundant amount of abusive threads in the annuls of our forum and whilst this is a shameful thing, some good has come out of it.

Did the means justify the end? I fear I am in no position to make such a judgement but if it serves people in the future to get free then at least a positive aspect could arises from the hostility and to this end, it has helped to free people. But, we should not have to revert to this negativity again when this characteristic of no-self has so much benefit for humanity at large, and so much potential to be explored.

To this end, it marks an abject failure on my part as I have simply tarred a force for good and real change in the world with so much negativity.

Those that have difficulty seeing no-self would perhaps benefit from breaking down beliefs in other areas first. LOOKing is the simplest of things, it does require a bit of courage to step out of this looping, but so does bungee jumping. Given enough time and reassurance, one will take the plunge eventually, or will decide to back out, but by chanting coward at them it is not really conducive to being kind and encouraging. In this sense, the no-self enquiry represents a real step in the right direction for some, however, it represents the transition to the starting point of 'square one' on a long journey of discovery of facing up to the truth, one in which it is easy to stray from the beaten path.

Indeed, it is the start of a journey, and one where a fair enquirer has no grounding in any kind of spiritual practice, or other kind of discipline, so it can take a while to find those feet post-self and start to venture towards discovery.

Detached

One notion that was under represented from the inception of RT and certainly should have been viewed as a major benefit is the notion of non-attachment. The difficulty in trying to explain non attachment in real terms is particularly difficult but in order to conceptualise it, we can simply say that one no longer derives a sense of self from their attachments. Desire is apparently a real thing in folk psychology, although giving an objective definition is fraught with problems. I this sense we can characterise it as a heuristic motivational state and say that desire motivates us to do things.

We have a natural propensity to invest in to the accomplishment of our desires, however the insight of no self diminishes this level of investment. In this way one is still prone to have ambitions and desire, however, the attachment we derive from fulfilling our desires, or in other words, the self that we aspire to be through the fulfilment of our desires, is not seen to be as such an important consideration any more. Trying to characterise the 'gravitas' of the insight of no self is, perhaps, the hardest thing. Trying to describe how phenomena lack the weight the used to have, and how things we used to perceive as highly important no longer affect us in the same way is a very difficult description to make. Since in experience we can only use vague metaphors like gravity, intensity etc, the deficiencies of language for describing experience are only too clear.

The power of the mind in inflicting deceit is evident in the fact that one may be in pitch black because of a power cut, and drive themselves in to a momentary panic by imagining all sorts of things, perhaps even ghosts. It is plain that our fanciful ideas may affect us in various ways, but we can see that some thoughts do not have such an affect on us. It is to this comparison I can point in trying to describe how the phenomenology of a sense self is diminished in power, although this is not a static complex and it remains in flux.

For this reason if one attends to their phenomena one can see the foundations of these kind of attachments. However, if one leaves their ideas unattended, they may well see a sense of reality granted to these foundations, to which other ideas can be laid on top. It then takes some investigation to demolish these foundations again and remain attendant to the new ideas that may form.

In this sense, like Tetris, one needs to keep on eye on where the blocks fall and should we glance away for too long we start to have a structure that builds up since the blocks just keep coming, much like thoughts, and it takes a little more work to negate the structure than if we had focussed intently on the structure we were creating. However, if we start on the hard difficulty setting we see a pre-existing structure, to which we can try and negate by inserting the blocks in the correct places. Much like with our pre-exisiting beliefs, we can start to slowly break down this complex and this is done with 'acceptance' of things that may be uncomfortable, 'SEEing' the falsity of things that might be comforting, and also seeing the empty nature of phenomena, and the lack of inherent existence in the world.

A conceptual understanding is useless for this kind of work and here is where some good old fashioned honesty and looking is required. In that sense, one cannot stop LOOKing post self and one must be attended to all phenomena or else such a structure of belief may form, from which cognitions can begin to feedback in to thought. Whilst the Tetris metaphor is illustrative it in no way conveys any ontological (in relation to being) meaning, and for this reason it will only strike a chord with anyone post self. That aside, it makes sense to try and conceptualise the way in which being post self, you actually have an angle to start to LOOK at experience as it is and try to remove the falsity on which the mind relies on for support. For this reason, the view I adopted over a year ago is simply this.

The no-self insight reveals a valuable tool for enquiry.

The insight of no-self represents an investigative tool where one is more easily able to determine where the fictions of the mind are affecting the results of that enquiry. If one chooses to set aside their honesty, one can fly off beyond the bounds of experience to create fanciful metaphysical speculations. We need only to turn to the sophistry of certain spiritual teachings to see that this is evident in those who have been past this point in their enquiry. No self does not necessarily mean one can be honest, it is like a muscle that must be worked regularly or it will atrophy.

Greed

It is now pertinent to demonstrate the application of no-self to suffering and greed. As has been noted previously, the false self does represent the core mechanism of human suffering. This is not to say that seeing it as an inert cognitive structure means one can never suffer again but simply one's capacity to perpetuate negative thinking patterns is diminished in capability. Now, one has to hold themselves in some esteem, since we are dealing with complex social worlds and were we to remove the capacity for reflecting on our cognitions, in relation to others, then we would lack the facilities for deeming when our behaviour is appropriate.

In this sense, low self-esteem is actually a mechanism where our shortcomings are highlighted, in order for us to take steps to do things better in the future. Naturally, thinking negatively can result in downward spirals of this esteem, and we can further drag our opinion of ourselves down in relation to others and end up in cascades of negativity, which may lead to depression and the like. Essentially, the insight of no self allows one to step out of this cycle to a degree, and one is no longer chained to trying to maintain a charade to other people. Now this is not to say the process itself stops, but what I am saying that its power is considerably diminished.

Bearing in mind this aspect of the diminished power of representation that the mind inflicts on us we can now turn to the notion of greed, which we can characterise as a disproportionate desire that is not satisfied in a normal manner. The usual characterisation of greed is that of a rich banker, who despite his possessions, still strives for millions in bonuses. Of course, we can look to the fact that one is hardly going to not desire money, but we can point to a broken economic system that encourages this unhealthy desire, and a vain society that holds materialism as the ultimate end.

At no point is this desire satisfied in the banker, and basically the theme is simply unchecked motivation where the means becomes more important than the ends. The very notion of a perceived sense of self that one aspires to be is derived through the orientation of the false self and its vain accomplishments in the eyes of others. In this sense, we have a positive feedback cycle characterised as 'more wants more'. Greed is not limited to bankers obviously, we can look to the unchecked desires in ourselves and we need only look at the striving, the yearning, and the suffering of the modern world to see that greed is an endemic problem.

Whilst no-self is not an off switch, I hold firm to the claim that the capacity to fool ourselves in this way is diminished, and the ability to deceive ourselves to stay in patterns that support this type of pattern is severely negated.

A world with less greed than we see now is a more realistic aspiration, and highlighting the shaky grounds upon which our political and economic systems are based, would better serve grounds for an open debate about how the notion of individualism in society, is grounded in fiction.

Whilst the individualist paradigm does have valid points, we do have individual ontologies after all, it also makes fictitious claims that when exposed may well undermine our society as it is. It may turn out that this is the best way to organise society, however, it might be fun, or even very dangerous, finding out what foundations will collapse, and what institutions would burn.

This is a voyage of discovery that may not be pleasant, however, it is necessary as human beings to completely tear down that which no longer serves us, and clearly the state of affairs as a consumer society, is a deluded and unsustainable aspiration, no matter how much we want to believe that it is not. I make no claim to any political leanings, but a system based on honesty and reality would serve us better than the set of foundations we currently have.

In summary, post-self one can see that thought feeds back in to cognitive patterns and their severity becomes amplified if not attended to. What I noticed initially, was that I was able to circumvent negativity by denying that the thought was happening to anyone. Essentially this is a bypass where one is evading their thoughts instead of facing up to them, a mistake pointed out by Adyashanti.

Over time, I have developed my skills in honesty, and I have had to face up to problems in my life instead of avoiding them. Basically, all that is perceived as negativity, is actually conducive to ones drive for survival. Instead of categorising it as bad, one must see these things as necessary. For instance, you feel bad for not getting a job, this is the catalyst to prepare better for next time. When seen in this regard, we view negativity, when not in a spiral of dysfunctional thinking, as a necessity of human existence and this does not have to cause suffering because of attachments to our desires.

In my eyes, this is how I see the insight of no-self and I have tried to be as critical as I can to attend to the weaknesses in my past approach.

Naturally, I plead guilty on the charges of dogmatism where indicated, and I hope the court will take this in to consideration.

Judge: You realise the significance of this admission, it may harm your case?

Mr Virus: Indeed your honour, but I swore to uphold the truth and if the jury are to make an informed judgement then they must be aware of the facts whether the facts are conducive to painting a good picture or not. That aside your honour, I think we can be satisfied that we achieved our secondary goal in mapping out our phenomenological investigation and I would like to say thank you and well done to all the staff involved at TS for all their hard work and perseverance in this joint endeavour, which we all achieved by focus and commitment.

I will, in due course, give a full critique of our methods of procedure and the application of this study which has been two years in the making. It requires a degree of number crunching, categorisation, and conclusions to be drawn from group discussions and trials of these ideas, but rest assured I will also be turning the critique on the epistemological aspect of this project and highlight its own shortcomings, failings, and of course where it really shines and why this is one of the most unique studies ever accomplished, for reasons beyond the freedom paradigm that we championed.

Prosecution: Objection, the defence has no such critique at the moment, therefore it should be inadmissible in this case.

Judge: Sustained, may I remind you Mr Virus that you are only to refer to exhibits in this court room.

Mr Virus: Very well, this is an exciting achievement, however, as I mentioned this should be a muted celebration as we look upon the trail of destruction that we have left in our wake, and it is to this matter now that we stand accused, and to which we must now face up to serious allegations of misconduct.

Clearly, the many threads of delusion we have evidenced on TS, and some of the pitiful rebuttals in the face of absurdity, have shown the degrees in which people unconsciously construct elaborate deceptions. We can look to those engaged in metaphysics who attempted to masquerade as philosophers by donning its disguise and imitating its procedures. We can also look to those in the spiritual community who were engaged in wanton acts of deception and sophistry, not only with themselves, but with others who wanted to transcend the suffering in their lives.

Watching people following these gurus blindly, knowing full well that they were being led down the garden path, did make me sad, but that was a horrifying reality to which we have seen evidenced countless times. I will demonstrate under cross examination that, in fact, we made no claim to be teachers and any such allegations are completely groundless.

The defence rests its case....

Judge: Thank you Mr Virus, would the prosecution please call their first witness to the stand.

Prosecution: I call Mr virus to the stand please.

To be continued....