Showing posts with label advaita. Show all posts
Showing posts with label advaita. Show all posts

Monday, 22 April 2013



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 23rd 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....

Tuesday, 1 May 2012

Part I here


Having highlighted our differences between the Eastern traditions, we are now in a position to consider the next part of the question. Been busy writing, so my blog has been neglected of late...

You asked me what I think you are doing.

I think you are going down the same route many Eastern philosophies are. You are trying to reach Nirvana by rejecting the 'I'. If this is indeed a faulty assumption on my part, then I am more than willing to be corrected.

It seems in the last part, I have unfairly put all spiritual seekers in with the annihilation mob. This is not true simply because not all seekers are trying to annihilate all their thoughts and emotions, it seems some misguided people are trying to do this but not all. Thanks for pointing that out to me, you know who you are :)

So if we were to be rejecting an I, we would have to identify exactly what it is we are rejecting. This is not really possible though since 'I' refers to nothing. In order to reject something it has to exist. In order to reject an 'I' which our accuser is suggesting here, assumes that we have identified something that needs to be rejected. This gets tricky here quite simply. I sit here writing and using 'I' as a valid pronoun but as the man says:

“One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language is the use of the word 'I.'” (Wittgenstein)

What we mean is that 'I' has no meaning other than as a pronoun. Like the hand gesture towards me in sign language, that is all it really represents. 'I' does not refer to the self who is behind the thinking or actions, we just take it to mean that it does because we tack on extra semantic meaning on to it.

Now, one cannot deny that the thoughts about an 'I' exist. Its true really when we start to think of no self people often believe that we are rejecting an apparent part of our reality. This is simply not the case and is a misconception. 'I' is a thought, it is not real. Thoughts are real, 'you' are not. 'You' is merely a disposition to think in terms as though there is some entity behind those thoughts and actions that arise from the body.

That is as simple as we can boil it down.

The whole point of looking is to see this is a fundamental truth in real life. It requires rejecting nothing apart from faulty beliefs you can discard after empirically falsifying them for yourself.

Next we start to move on to the idea that we are rejecting something that doesn't exist, which of course makes no sense. I guess certain people must generally assume we are trying to reject the thoughts that we encounter? 
This would amount, from our point of view, to denying a fundamental aspect of reality that is blatantly in our awareness. This in itself would be the very epitome of delusion. So know the last thing anyone should be trying to do is rejecting thoughts. This would merely be resistance to what IS.

So from this position, we can start to look at the supposed 'achievement' we are supposed to be chasing. What is Nirvana? Can we really conceptualise it? It seems that there are various definitions of what it is, from the literal translation of Heaven in Hinduism, liberation from Samsara and karmic bondage, It is also Buddha's description as:

'The state of mind free from craving and an enduring transcendental happiness, [that is] qualitatively different from transitory happiness derived from impermanent things' (Buddha)

With this in mind, we have a variety of ambiguous terminology we should pick apart.
  • On the definition of heaven, the Hindus refer to the realm of Shiva. Of course if you believe in gods then good luck to you but we can say we are not searching for a god, this is simply a representation of belief.
  • Assuming there is such a thing called Samsara and Karma, we would simply be trying to escape from metaphysical dogma. This would make us no different from some deluded religious believer.
  • Perhaps Buddha's definition would be worth investigating here, although I am led to believe that our friend here was referring to the former definitions. Needless to say, if I am going to pick a suitable position then it is incumbent on me to demonstrate why I would say that this would be a better description.

A state of mind free from craving would be desirable of course. Whilst I could say that I am free from craving this is only true in a strict sense, where craving can arise but I am free from it. This sounds like a weird contradiction in terms, so let me elaborate further here and define what I mean.

Desire is a natural part of human nature that is essentially part of our goal seeking mechanism which is not inherently bad in of itself. 
We may say I want to go to a party and then we describe this as having a desire to go. This seems to be accurate but it is not for the simple reason that intention and desire can be read differently. I have an intention to go to a party.

I define desire as having the intention to go to the party but having a further contingent goal in mind. For example people may go to the party and hope people think they are well dressed or they will meet a girl/ guy there. 
The mental object in these cases is representative of desire. Now we could add further conditions to this and then literally fantasise about the outcome of the party even to the point that we convince ourselves that we must achieve a particular outcome, which in this case is our object of desire.

This cascade of mental phenomenon, one encounters related to this perceived outcome, is what we can correctly call craving. I am sure you can think of times when you have craved food and cigarettes for example. Craving is simply a temporal perpetuation of this desire.

My view now, is that craving may slip in to my thinking now and then but it can simply be seen as transparent. For instance, I am looking for a job at the moment, so my intention is to get a job.

If I had a job my life would be 'better' for x reasons. This is a healthy level of desire, there is nothing wrong with this in of itself. 

I used the term better in the sense that having more money enables me to do more things. This is preferable to being able to do less things, despite the futility of this state and exchanging my time for money, we find ourselves inextricably bound to obtain money to go and do certain things. Within this you could identify with 'the position I get' but for me that level of identification has fallen away and there is just a desire to get a job.

Now, perhaps the job is not forthcoming at the moment and my salience could focus on the 'negative' aspects of not working. Perhaps I could focus on how dire the employment situation is in the UK and of course the thought 'will I ever get a job?'

This mechanism can be seen through but it may not be believed, be believed for a few seconds, a minute, or if Maya really creeps in a few days before it is seen as fantasising. So in that respect, this would be where liberation would not be abiding for me. 
However, once it is looked at, the structure collapses and it is seen as inert. It is just a force of habit that these things are identified with briefly and I sense it is slowly unraveling of its own accord.

This then leads us to question the next stage of inquiry. What would be beneficial now? 
Would it be to never experience these thoughts again, or to automatically see them as inert?

This I think highlights the dilemma of the annihilation mob. There seems to be a school of thought that has mistakenly taken the words of the Eastern philosophies literally. In my experience I have come across various people whose goal it was to destroy the capacity to think.

First, a Cambodian meditation school in Pnomh Penh, where they told me their ultimate goal was to slow down the chain of thoughts until they stopped completely and they had no thoughts. 
Secondly, I learnt meditation and martial arts in Thailand. My Kruu was preparing to go off in to the mountains in China to burn his ego in a few months time. He literally planned to be a solipsist cave dweller. Then of course this memorable quote by the guy who asked me these questions.

You are voluntarily reverting back to a vegetative state. No, that is not even true. Plants learn and adapt as well. You are reverting to a pre-vegetative state”.

What the guy said there was true. If you do not think then you are no better off than a plant - that is what the message is. This I think is the mistake that an alarming amount of people seem to make in thinking this is what enlightenment actually is.

I will tell you categorically here that this is nonsense. We are not trying to annihilate all thought, this is not actually what enlightenment is. 
By trying to annihilate and run away from your thoughts you are resisting what happens in real life. What we are trying to see is that we are of a disposition to think in illusory terms and really, these thoughts are merely fantasy.

This is where I think Ciaran fell short in his search. Ciaran heralded the 'heresy of annihilation' as something that was to be avoided. This guy here even sees it as:

'The problem with both Enlightenment and Liberation, is that it takes you out of the world. And you can read that in any way you want.'

I even believed it to start with but it seems to me that it is an inevitability of this journey whether I want to cling to it or not. It is plain that the construct is weakening bit by bit as time goes on and the egos ability to con this biological machine in to believing that it is controlling life is lessening. It just seems to be more in line with servicing humanity these days.  
Since there is nothing to annihilate I don't forsee a problem with this, the only way it cannot happen is by clinging and identifying it would seem. Since this is what we are weeding out, there is no rush to be enlightened this will come naturally as the illusion fades away.

So what else is there to say on the matter? Well I was going to lay in to karma and Samsara but I feel I have covered this eastern angle for now and I am at a loss to explain how since there is no division that anything can have a foundation to carry the karmic conditions that loop round in Samsara. 
That is a real mystery perhaps I will look in to it one day but there again, we all have better things to do than talk about metaphysical conjectures ;)

In this series I think I have unravelled some of my perceptions of the Eastern traditions and how they relate to us, and also from the exchanges I have had with various people my thinking has been corrected and my misconceptions have been highlighted to me. 

Part III saw the RT dogma surface but I am thankful that was highlighted to me and it seems that it was misdirected but there was an element of truth to it in the sense that we are inevitably breaking our conditioning. 
This has opened my eyes alot more for sure and I am not anti spiritual as I was initially, however as a caveat, if you want to discuss spiritual notions they have to be grounded in reality! 

Sunday, 25 March 2012

This is part III of an answer to the question:  You asked me what I think you are doing.

I think you are going down the same route many Eastern philosophies are.

For part I click here


Where we have argued with spiritual folk in the past, has been on the merits of our status in relation to the main traditions. Now we can start to outline some conceptions and address them.

Of course we would be ignorant to say that seeing no self is the end of our search and we are fully truth realised, or whatever criteria you may think it takes to say we are fully 'enlightened'. 
This is evident, since we are trying to establish a post self framework and we will certainly admit that after seeing no self, the work really begins in coming to terms with your new found freedom.

Learning how to live life again post-self requires facing up to the truth, which seems to be just as important as realising no self. This is because what we have always lacked, was the de-conditioning work that the other traditions such as Buddhism and Advaita have focussed on.

No one has doubted that we have undergone a paradigm shift in the way in which we see the world. I think this can be clearly evidenced by the fact that what we say is consistent, coherent and also dovetails with the insights of all the spiritual traditions perfectly. 

What we say across our blog roll, our clarity of vision and our penetrating insights, would all point to the same thing.

Were there to be an element of untruth about what we had experienced, then there would certainly be chasms of ambiguity in what we were saying and we would have been torn to bloody pieces by our critics. 
Whilst we are exploring the post self world, we do sometimes make mistakes as we explore our new found freedom, however, the core of what we have said is unshakeable, and these critics have more often than not galvanised the strength of this insight, and made us realise the power of this insight.

We can always point to one simple truth every time which is the notion that the self is an illusion.

So are we enlightened by Buddhist and Advaitan standards?

The simple answer is no.

Do we care about becoming enlightened?

The simple answer is no we do not care.

However, if we were to break down our conditioning further, then it maybe that we would be enlightened by their same standards, which are; annihilate your ignorance, and see the self for what it really is. 
The reason we do not fulfil their criteria presently is because we have not removed our conditioning, and have only started to demolish the complexes of hubris that we have accumulated through our lives.

Also, we do not accept the auxiliary metaphysical assumptions that they do. We are peeling the layers of old complexes away still and it is safe to say we still have some questions to ask. 
By Zen and Neo - Advaitan standards though, we certainly seem to conform to their version of 'enlightened'.  





We fully acknowledge that we have not done the de-conditioning work that Buddhist and Advaitan proponents have done in demolishing their accumulated ignorance. The thing is, there is no quick fix for anything. 
It is not a simple case of seeing no self and your ego vanishes. It is a case of measuring everything against the standard of actual reality and not our preconceived notions of what reality is.

That is the most important thing post-self, and this is where your false beliefs and judgements are challenged.

In this respect, we operate backwards to Buddhism and Advaita, where we see the final realisation and then work on our conditioning afterwards.

One thing we have maintained from the very beginning is this one thing.

Nobody has an exclusive monopoly over the truth.

We need to be crystal clear on this aspect. For all that anyone has said detractor or otherwise, nobody can have exclusive access to the truth. Maybe they offer different methodologies to access the truth but truth is universal to anyone who is willing to look in real life.

The truth cannot be hidden by obscure concepts, riddles and systems of worship any more, once it is realised the truth was always there right in front of us the whole time. We have simply found a short cut to seeing this truth, obviously some people are not going to like this fact, particularly when it undermines their religion.

If you were to deliver a very uncharitable analysis of our insight, you could accuse us of discovering a life hack where you are able to:

  • Live a life without being bound tightly to the ego
  • Have the ability to see that your notions of suffering are the result of fantasy
  • Have the ability to dissolve negativity before it arises by measuring it against reality
  • Be free from the need for bolstering a flaky self image and self esteem
  • Be non attached to outcomes and desires
  • Have a degree of serenity and clear insight in to the human condition
  • Live an authentic life in line with your basic drives


If you wanted to give us the most charitable interpretation, then you might say we are 'enlightened'. The reality I think, is somewhere in between these two extremes, because we can draw many parallels between us and the east but we can also openly admit and embrace where we differ. 
You can choose, maybe you are not enlightened but you have the above benefits? Sounds like a worthwhile life hack to me, if that is as uncharitably as you want to interpret it.

Since we began this journey, we have been surprised by the number of people who had never encountered any spiritual teachings in their life, but had already realised the insight of no self, before they had come across us. We were also surprised by the number of people from the spiritual community who were dead against us freeing people, and would rather wallow out contemplating the lilly, while the rest of humanity was left to suffer. 
We were surprised further by the fact they either shrugged their shoulders and admitted that they didn't care, or tried to claim that what we were doing was dangerous and only they had special access to the truth.  


Truth realisation is not confined to spiritual believers any more, it can be realised by anyone who is willing to gather a shred of courage to look and is willing to test their beliefs in the light of reality. 
This is not always pleasant but when people act courageously, they get themselves free by simply looking in real life and applying the light of reality to their belief system. In that sense we are starting an autolysis of sorts, where our misconceptions are demolished by the truth.

Upon seeing no self, there is further to go and the autolysis does not stop, although it becomes a bit more relaxed than scrutinising no self against reality daily, until you 'get it' that there is no self.

Post-self we have to focus on scrutinising our beliefs against reality and see if they hold true. This is a learning curve for everyone, and it is like learning to live all over again within an entirely new paradigm.

That is the post self challenge, and here this aligns us with the traditional conceptions of enlightenment in Buddhism and Advaita, in that we have to break down our old conditionings. 
It could well be easier to do when you have already seen the truth of no self, because you have a laser focus on reality that you do not get by simply meditating. Whether our method is more effective in the long run we will have to wait and see, and I would certainly not say meditation does not have its uses.

One thing for sure, we are not trying to annihilate all thought, repress our emotions, nor are we trying to become enlightened in their sense of the word.

We simply see the false self cast in its true light, we see it as the transparent illusion it really is.

In this, we see the truth of no self not as an axiom in which to live our lives by, but as a new paradigm in which to live. This paradigm gives great clarity and a distinctive quality of simply 'being' that was not available to us before we saw this. We clearly see that we had mistakenly believed that we were our thoughts for most of our childhood and adult lives. The realisation is that there is nothing more than simply being. The question what is the point in life? Is already answered for us.

From here we can conclude that whilst certain parallels can be drawn, and some of what the sages say is insightful and prudent, it is evident that we openly do not embrace Eastern methodology and we do not embrace their metaphysical claims.

We do not desire to destroy all our thoughts and emotions, we actually have found a genuine alternative to spiritual enlightenment, that affords you the freedom to be authentic and use reality as the final arbiter of truth, without having to buy in to a formalised methodology and set of metaphysical beliefs that involves ten years of meditating.

It may not be the bells and whistles state you thought it would be, what we are offering is simply the truth. Its not spiritual, its not enlightenment, it is simply something that is universally true, it just seems that there are many parallels we can draw with the Eastern tradition.

Admittedly most people do not care about the truth, they often want to chase an ideal they were falsely sold. Jed Mckenna was bang on the money in that aspect of his book.


Part IV Here



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