James: I have faced the fact of physical death and I am not afraid of dying. The fact of physical death is that it is the end – kaput. It is approaching and will be here sooner or later. I can’t stop it.
Since I have faced the fear of physical death I surely should be able to face psychological and psychic death of the ‘I/me’. Actually, it should be easy in comparison. Why is it not? What is stopping me?
What is stopping me is the ‘me’ itself. It is programmed to survive no matter what. What is the fact of ‘me’? I think the fact of ‘me’ is that it is a belief. In fact it is the ultimate belief. We have been programmed since birth to believe that it is real. In fact, we are even programmed to believe that it will live forever even after the death of my body.
This puts me in touch with the feeling of ‘me’. A feeler is what it is. I need the right open question to live with this feeler and expose it for what it is. It is a chimera as Richard would say.
The body is flesh and blood and that is what dies. The ‘me’ is a feeling. It is not flesh and blood. It is not actual. This brings me to the fact of ‘me’: It is real but not actual.
Possible open questions that seems right to me is: Can I do it? (Extinguish the {'I/me.) , Why can’t I do it? , How can I do it?
How can I do it?, seems the most relevant now. (link)
Hi James,
I remember you having asked that question before – “Can I do it? (Extinguish the {‘I’/ ‘me’}
JAMES: Isn’t it the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ investigating itself which brings one to the point of self-immolation and isn’t it the ‘I’/‘me’ that makes the decision to self-immolate?
RICHARD: Yes … only ‘I’ can do it as it is all in ‘my’ hands and nobody else’s hands (nor is it in the hands of any god or goddess either, of course, despite some popular postulations to the contrary).
JAMES: You said above that the ‘I’/‘me’ cannot eliminate the instinctual passions but then you next said that the body is released from them by self- immolation. I am just trying to get a clear picture of it.
RICHARD: Okay … I was just making the point that, although it is hypothetically correct that the elimination of the instinctual passions would be the elimination of ‘I’/‘me’, it does not work that way in practice (for reasons such as already explained further above).
Not only is it dangerous it is an impossibility … only altruistic ‘self’-immolation will do the trick.
Which is why I advise minimising both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ feelings and maximising the felicitous feelings – as far as humanly possible – as a salubrious modus operandi in the meanwhile rather than trying to eliminate them. Not only does this approach have the immediate benefit of feeling happy and harmless as one goes about one’s normal everyday life but it has the ultimate benefit of assisting in the rewiring of the brain’s habitual circuitry before the once-in-a-lifetime event happens which wipes out the identity in toto. (Richard, List B, James2, 22 Oct 2002)
JAMES: That is a good question. What comes to mind is I keep treading the same path over and over because that is what I know. That is what is familiar.
RICHARD: Indeed it is … so in order to successfully escape one needs to abandon the known path, the familiar path, the path that does not deliver the goods, so that the energy one is frittering away fruitlessly is available for the unknown path, the unfamiliar path, the path that does deliver the goods.
JAMES: Upon looking at it further it appears that I am addicted to ‘me’ (suffering) but that I am also addicted to the escapes from the ‘me’.
RICHARD: Okay … is the addiction to being ‘me’ stronger than the addiction to escaping from being ‘me’?
I only ask because if the addiction to being ‘me’ is the more powerful addiction then successful escape is the last thing ‘I’ am looking for (and thus ‘I’ will keep on re-treading the known path, the familiar path, the path that does not deliver the goods).
Whereas if the addiction to escaping is the more powerful addiction then successful escape can (and will) happen. (Richard, List B, James3, 1 Nov 2002)
RICHARD: I only ask because if the addiction to being ‘me’ is the more powerful addiction then successful escape is the last thing ‘I’ am looking for (and thus ‘I’ will keep on re-treading the known path, the familiar path, the path that does not deliver the goods).
JAMES: Actually, the known is ‘me’. That is what I know. I don’t know how to not tread the same path.
RICHARD: Is the reason why ‘I’ do not know how to not tread the same path none other than because successful escape is the last thing ‘I’ am looking for (and thus ‘I’ will keep on re-treading the known path, the familiar path, the path that does not deliver the goods)?
In other words: do ‘I’ not continue to temporarily escape from being ‘me’ because permanent escape from being ‘me’ is the last thing ‘I’ am looking for?
RICHARD: Whereas if the addiction to escaping is the more powerful addiction then successful escape can (and will) happen.
JAMES: The same escapes are also ‘me’. They are the known.
RICHARD: Perhaps if I were to put it like this: somehow, somewhere deep in the core of ‘my’ being (which is ‘being’ itself), ‘I’ already know, as ‘I’ always have known and ‘I’ always will know, just what it is that is to happen. In fact, all ‘I’ have been able to do, and all ‘I’ am able to do, and all ‘I’ will be able to do, is to keep on putting it off for another time … any other time will do, in all reality, provided that it not be now.
Yet when the time comes it will be now … because there is only now in all actuality. (Richard, List B, James3, 5 Nov 2002)
Perhaps the time has come now because you know with certainty that you can’t put it off much longer.
Are you willing, with utter sincerity, to give up the addiction of being ‘me’ and venture into the unknown?
Perhaps you can read this whole page now with new eyes and get a vital clue.
Geoffrey said this whole page of correspondence was one of his three favourite sources to study how to bring about self-immolation – he succeeded spectacularly.
Cheers Vineeto