Free as a wild swan

I well understand the urge to see the man not through his (person-less, selfless) karmic residue but as he seems to appear as a person. Curiosity is, of course, a divine, therefore necessary for survival function, which is why priests are dead set against it.*

My re-birth was on 1.12.1980, when I was 40 and a Buddhist monk. On that day I achieved initial liberation/enlightenment (to wit, ‘freedom from’) (Sanskrit: moksha, Pali: vimukti) and the cerebral orgasm that is liberation’s after-effect/payoff. In everyday terms, moksha/liberation happens as side-effect of problem solving, hence is no big deal.

Little did I know then that getting to the top of my (therefore also the ≈ any) mountain (≈ unresolved problem) was not the complete journey and not the complete liberation. However, I did understand that getting to the top of my mountain (i.e. initially solving my problem as mental simulation) was not a spiritual but perfectly natural act. And, moreover, that it needed to be completed as an actual act in the everyday world to achieve ultimate satisfaction and joy. As the ancients have said, ‘you leave your village in the valley to climb the highest peak. It’s a great view. But then you have to return down the mountain to your village (i.e. to manifest the view as bite of transmittable hardware/residue).

Some, of course, stay on top of their mountain and don’t return. Climbing the mountain is tough (for the unskilled), getting down is even tougher (for the unskilled). One false step and it’s over.’ That’s why already round about 800 to 600 BC the Indians called climbing the mountain, meaning recovering the Way, the Razor’s Edge Path. Once returned to the village, become a villager again, some (called saints) attempt to raise the village to the mountain top even if the locals resist because the valley is their comfort zone.

It took me another 19 years to grow real, meaning to return to the village, by sacrificing that initial and virtual liberation (i.e. the emotional orgasm of virtual enlightenment is real enough), for the final liberation, meaning a new bondage (i.e. ‘freedom to’) which, as the after-effect of liberation, is blissful; or, restated in the best Dublin jargon, it took a hell (sic!!) of a long time “to transform from being an unhappy sucker who wants out into a happy spitter who is happy within.”

At Miyajima/|Japan

In 1984 I walked a marathon a day for 67 days to force clarification of my initial enlightenment in 1980. Even sporting a Chinese beard failed to provide a better defined glimpse of my goal. I was still too ‘thick’ (i.e. slow) to respond …. to ‘the Guru (more precisely stated, in my case my Sat Guru in the guise of an apsara) who appears when the disciple is ready.’

Still undecided in 1986 I had another go at Raman Maharshi’s method (my 1^st visit to his ashram in Tiruvanammalai was in 1968). The Brahmin Maharshi’s method, and which he derived from his initial (albeit virtual) liberation (or moksha) as a teenager, i.e. as a naïve and incomplete re-take on the Upanishads, led into a pleasing cul-de-sac from which neither he nor his followers ever emerged. In other words, both he and his devotees remained on top the mountain (experiencing merely virtual moksha).

Painting a fantasy, as icon, of the experience of the great liberation/enlightenment.

The picture was eventually turned into a fibre model, about 14ft high, to be cast in bronze. It was intended as the centrepiece of Victor’s Way. The model arrived in Roundwood in 2002 but was destroyed because bronze casting was not feasible. The Nirvana Man, so to speak ‘the morning after the night before’ icon, took its place.

Seeking help from Lord Shiva, the ancient Indian exemplar of the Split Man, was a true waste of effort (2001). To achieve (tantric) consummation (and release) one has to go via (indeed miss by a hairsbreadth) the opposite (i.e. a differential), in my case a female apsara, meaning a local representation of the (universal) creation matrix (or Mother). That happened in 1999 when I was 59 years old and after 19 years of stubborn, persistent and sometimes sorrowful preparation for default readiness after the initial and merely virtual ‘birth/liberation’ (i.e. at 40). This, a second initial, virtual consummation > liberation > nirvana lasted only a few seconds, just like the initial liberation (and re-birth) at first consummation.

*… Avoiding priests as the plague gives the seeker (of consummation with, i.e. identity with) the Way, i.e. of the software od creation, a head start. This was the opinion of the ancient Indian Carvakas (or Lokayatas, emerged about 800BC) and who stated that priests/brahmins are greedy politicians (or con-artists) who make a good living by enforcing local superstitions and laws, i.e. safe and comforting holding pens, for the alleged welfare of all. By ‘penning in’ their charges to local belief systems (or placebos) they block access to the Way because the latter presents and proceeds prior to all ‘pens.

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