The Corporeal Fantasy Read online

  Contents

  Martin Butler

  Acknowledgements

  About This Book

  Introduction

  Part One - Survival

  Part Two - Bondage

  Part Three - Freedom

  Part Four - The Dark Way

  THE CORPOREAL FANTASY

  Martin Butler

  If the road I have pointed out as leading to this goal seems very difficult, yet it can be found. Indeed, what is so rarely discovered is bound to be hard. For if salvation were ready to hand and could be discovered without great toil, how could it be that it is almost universally neglected? All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare. - Spinoza

  MARTIN BUTLER

  I’m always amazed that I ever manage to complete any task, let alone write a book. My impatience and hunger for an end product mean most things do not get completed. But I have been helped and pushed along by others in this task, and for that I am grateful.

  In my late teens and early twenties I studied theoretical physics. I was good at it (excuse the lack of humility). I got a first and went on to study for my PhD (which I didn’t complete - that impatience again). The subject for my PhD was “Space-Time Symmetries Surrounding Charged Particles”. This ruined me for life. Such elegance and beauty in human thought, and specifically Einstein’s thought was not to be matched until much later in life. Everything else seemed crude and shabby.

  Like many people, I have searched for meaning in this seemingly vain and futile world. Having stated my faults (my impatience), I should also state that I am like a dog with a bone. This search I embarked upon would either crack open through sheer persistence or I would crack. I would like to claim that such persistence is something I have nurtured, but it isn’t - I just happen to be like that.

  I studied Gurdjieff alone for over a decade. He seemed to offer a realistic assessment of life, but it wasn’t until I met Rina Hands that I realized we can do nothing on our own. The people who have helped me are listed in the acknowledgements. These days, as a man in his sixties, I do tend to work alone, and I focus on three philosophers almost to the exclusion of all else - Spinoza, Kant and Schopenhauer. This is unashamed greed. To study and understand just one of these is a lifetime’s effort. Even so I do intend to extend my reach at some point.

  If I could state what I have found through all this effort it would be that the things we consider to be real are unreal and the things that seem to have no solidity are the most solid. I hope this book helps some people on their own path - the pathless path where each person unfolds things in the way that is natural to them.

  Finally I should add that this book is challenging and strips away our most dearly held beliefs. Move on if you are looking for an easy ride - this is anything but.

  New material can be found at martinbutler.eu

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A book of this nature is not the result of a decision to sit down one fine day and start writing. It has been brewing in the background for decades. There are many people I need to thank for bringing this book into being, but none more than my wife Debbie and Dawn Miller. Debbie has given me constant encouragement and pushed me to do the thing I dislike most of all in the world - to focus on a single project for an extended period of time. It would not have been written without that encouragement. As for Dawn Miller - well, she insisted in the way that only Dawn can that the book be written, and to facilitate this she kindly offered to transcribe many of the podcasts I have produced on YouTube.

  As for the content, there are many people to thank and some of the most dear to me are no longer with us. Rina Hands, and Robin Bloor for introducing me to Rina. Rina worked with Gurdjieff, and over a period of several years I would visit her and she would guide me oh so gently away from my fantasies and delusions. Then there is Robert Ennis and Rob and Stuart. They dismantled my illusions and showed me another kind of existence - sometimes gently and at other times not so gently. Others include Collin and David, both in the Gurdjieff Society in London, and finally Louis Almeida, a lovely man who is a master at work on our emotional nature. Without him I would never have got to grips with Spinoza, even though Spinoza’s works had been on my bookshelf for over a decade.

  We all need help and I have been blessed to have known people who helped me through my own trials and tribulations. This book is in some way a thank you to all these people.

  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  The contents of this book come from two main sources - transcriptions of podcasts, and blog articles. The longer sections come from transcriptions and have a looser style than the blog articles. Obviously the transcriptions are more conversational in style and readers should bear this in mind - it is difficult to convert a podcast into a tight text.

  The material has been arranged into four main sections:

  Survival - an account of our basic driver, the survival instinct, and the implications of this in human behavior.

  Bondage - how our emotions and erroneous ideas hold us in bondage.

  Freedom - how we might liberate ourselves from the worst effects of unremitting desires and inadequate ideas.

  The Dark Way - a section to challenge some of our deeply held beliefs.

  There is some repetition in this book, but some things need repeating. However this is not a book that has just one idea that is then embellished until the reader puts it down in despair. There is a lot of content here - enough to disturb even the deepest of dreams.

  INTRODUCTION

  The corporeal fantasy is your life, a fantasy created by your senses, mind and desires. This fantasy has its pleasures and pains, and one fine day comes to an end. Animals live the same life, striving to survive, to procreate and then eventually die.

  We do not know reality. We know the sensations produced by our senses, the way our brains interpret those sensations, and we generally have no awareness of anything greater than our own well-being. These are not judgmental statements, it is just the way it is. However, if we are to increase our happiness in life it is useful to understand its dynamics. These are not necessarily pleasant to look at, since it might involve looking at the nature of our existence in all its brutal reality.

  Contrary to much that comes from various "spiritual" and self-help gurus, the key to greater happiness is understanding. Positive affirmations and meditation are not going to do it. They can help, but ultimately what we do not understand can be the cause of much harm. So we need to understand the fantasy and develop the necessary skills to navigate it for maximum pleasure. And don't misunderstand the way the word "pleasure" is used here. Simply seeking sensual pleasures ultimately causes misery. The pleasure that is being talked of is the pleasure that comes from being what we are, instead of the person we have been told we are by parents and society at large. We need to stare reality in the face and peel off the layers of conditioning that have been applied with the aim of making us acceptable members of society. To become what you truly are does not necessarily make us a good members of society, but it will give us pleasure.

  Perhaps the most dominant part of the fantasy is the illusion that each of us is the center of the universe, and our own welfare is the only thing that matters. Every sentient creature partakes in this illusion and it is the cause of much suffering. Animals will kill and eat eat other, and humankind executes this function on an industrial scale with the breeding and slaughter of animals numbered in the billions. Human beings also inflict pain on each other. Wars are an obvious example, but everyday domestic life is permeated with mutual harm - envy, hatred, derision, domination, and sometimes physical violence. All this behavior originates from a single root - the desire to survive in the most powerful way possible. Human beings, above all other species, ha
ve refined the art of survival, even if it involves massive violence to other species and to our own.

  This is where we start, with an honest look at the nature of our drivers and the behaviors they produce. It's not going to be pretty, but unless we do it we will continue to harm ourselves and the planet as a whole. Obviously this message, that we are out-of-control survival machines, will not be the least bit attractive to most people. But then again most people will live unconscious lives, completely at the mercy of fortune's favors and curses. By understanding the raw drivers that cause so much harm we can reduce their effect in our own lives.

  Virtually all our emotions come from the desire to continue with our existence, and it is said in the zen tradition that all our suffering comes from the desire to exist. We didn't create this desire, it is at the very root of us. We often become envious when someone else benefits from good fortune, and we pity those who are less fortunate. Both have the same root - the desire to exist in the most powerful way possible. Greed, fear, hope, pride, raw ambition, love, excitement, hatred - they all spring from the same root.

  Our emotional nature, our misinformed ideas, and our lack of understanding hold us in bondage. Depending on circumstances we are mechanically happy or sad, and the ideas we have ingested of what we should be create neuroses. Our lack of understanding means we are passive victims of our conditioning and emotional reactions. We have no power of our own, relying on external factors to lend us power - other people, consumer goods, travel, entertainment. At best these are temporary palliatives, and more often than not make our slavery to externals more intense. Without understanding, we are asleep, and the dreams we dream are determined by everything other than our own intent.

  For an animal there is absolutely no way out of this bondage, but for Homo sapiens the situation is different. We have a reflective consciousness - the ability to form ideas and concepts. This is a two edge sword. On the one hand it enables us to moderate the effects of the animal instincts. On the other hand we see too much, and particularly our own mortality. Nonetheless without this ability to reflect we have no means of navigating the labyrinth we find ourselves in.

  The driver for many people in this line of inquiry is the desire for freedom and relief from emotional pain. Some people believe that money can bring freedom. It brings freedom from want, but often increases emotional bondage. Others think that opting out of society will bring freedom, but life lets no one off the hook. Freedom from our emotional and conceptual bondage is the only freedom worth having, but there is a heavy price to pay. We have to see what we really are and be able to bear it. This is difficult work because our flattering self-image will be offended by the animal nature that is uncovered. But please note - we are not trying to change anything (that would just be another ego trip), we just want to see and understand. This alone is enough to bring a great deal of inner freedom. It sounds simple, but it is the most difficult thing a human being can undertake.

  This book is heavily influenced by the works of Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Lao Tsu and Gurdjieff. They saw the nature of life and tried, as best they could, to communicate it. The solutions to human unhappiness they propose are all very different on the surface, but look a little deeper and there are some striking similarities. Desire is the root of all evils. When our desires are satisfied we experience temporary happiness. When they are thwarted they create pain. It’s a roller-coaster that most of us have no control over. However, by understanding the nature of our desires and the effect they have on us we lessen their effect.

  There are no free lunches here. Understanding requires effort and perseverance. There is also a great deal of difference between understanding and knowledge. We understand through experience. Knowledge is an empty thing that is usually gained through second hand sources - books, videos, seminars etc. Unless knowledge is combined with experience it has no power. Above all else, what is proposed here is a way of life. We have to be what we understand, and we have to be willing to challenge many of our most deeply held beliefs. To see beyond the corporeal fantasy is a massive undertaking, and a lifetime’s effort. Even then there are no guarantees - slumber has its benefits.

  Part One

  Survival

  THE WOLF

  One of the things very often talked about in real self-development groups is feeding our wolf. Now, we more highly evolved spiritual people obviously don't like to feel that we have a wolf, but in the main, we are 99% wolf. Drooling wolves, eager to get our way, to win an argument, to gain more money, to be more successful with the opposite (or same) sex, to be more successful at work, to get the promotion above and beyond others. The list of the behaviors that we manifest, that are genuinely animalistic is endless. You know, the thing that always pops into my mind is these nice mild-mannered people who go to work in arms factories. They go there and make bullets and missiles and goodness knows what else, that will be used to kill people. And they push the reality of that to the back of their minds. They do this because they are wolves, drooling wolves (despite the mild-mannered exterior), that are desperate to maintain their existence. And if producing armaments that are going to be used to kill other people means that they can exist and enjoy a good standard of living then they will go and do that.

  Back to the wolf. Now, the wolf is essentially only interested in one thing, and that is surviving. But, within that, there are two other primary objectives. One is to eat, to have enough food, and the other one is to procreate. The wolf is interested in pleasure, eating and having sex and procreating. And if the wolf doesn't get what it wants, then the wolf can get a bit nasty. How does the wolf get nasty? Well, let's take a common example, and I've seen this many times - people who believe that they're on a spiritual path and that they can only manifest kindness and goodness and gentleness and humility and all of those things that we read about in the various religions. What will happen is the wolf will become very, very angry and frustrated. And the wolf has to get out somewhere; it's to a large extent what we are. I shall go into what we're not or how we are slightly more than the wolf a little bit later. But the wolf has to be satisfied. If it's not satisfied, it will cause mischief. How does it cause harm? Well, we all know about the Catholic Church and the priests who abuse children. They've tried to tame their wolf by exercising vows of chastity but you cannot keep this wolf in, it's going to find it's way out somewhere. And it finds its way out in more aberrant behaviors - abusing small children. Not all priests do that, but there's now a reasonably well-established record of Roman Catholic priests being involved in child abuse. Another way it can come out; say we have some new-age spiritual group where people are told it's all love and light and so on but you know, somebody is getting a little bit more attention from their guru than maybe a few other people would like. Are they going to start feeling a bit jealous? Yes, of course they are, because there's a bit of limelight going on and the wolf likes the spotlight, it's ambitious. And so maybe they'll start acting a little bit bitchy towards that person that's getting more attention from the guru. And so the wolf will come out in snide little comments, in bitchy behavior and so on. If you try in any way to constrain the wolf, it will find some way to manifest itself; that is even more damaging than the behavior you're trying to limit.

  Consider people in the Gurdjieff work for example, you will find that a lot of them have so-called bad habits. Yes, I'll admit when I first got involved with various groups, I was surprised to see that a lot of them liked their alcohol. And a lot of them loved their cigarettes. I remember going to visit the Prieure in Fontainebleau near Paris. One of the guys reasonably high up in the London Gurdjieff organization said to me, can you get me some of those Disque Bleu cigarettes that Mr. Gurdjieff used to smoke? It turned out I couldn't get them, but I went into the tobacconist where Mr. Gurdjieff used to go, lovely tobacconist as well. Oh my goodness, if you like cigars and things, then that is just such a beautiful tobacconist. Well, I could wax lyrical about it for a long time, but it's a musty old tobacconist with humi
dors, and I could smell the cigars. The wolf had a reasonably good time in there. And you know I've known people in the Gurdjieff work who are philanderers. They will have sex with almost anybody, several at once if they can get away with it. The idea of some religious behavior that is constraining all these appetites is ridiculous. Now, it's such a contradiction, isn't it?

  On the one hand, we are given these images of saintly figures who have subjugated their animal drives, and we believe it's something to aspire to. And it isn't something to aspire to; it's very, very dangerous. If you want to get a relatively good account of all of this then Osho's book, The Book of Secrets, has a reasonably large section at the beginning where he talks about the Yogi's who have disciplined their bodies and their appetites and so on and he says these people become monsters. They do develop some kind of "I" within them, but this I is essentially a monster that is bullying and chastising the rest of their being. It's a horrible thing to create some violent entity within oneself like that. The "I" that Gurdjieff is talking about is not an I that is a bully. The I that Gurdjieff is talking about is something very light and something very fine. It is not the creature that we might create in ourselves by bullying our being, by trying to tame the wolf, which will not be tamed anyway. There's an excellent saying in a book called Zen Mind, Beginners Mind by Shunryu Suzuki. He says if you want to calm a bull give it a huge field. No, he's not saying put a ring through its nose and tie it to a post or beat the thing half to death. He's saying let it roam, and that will calm it down. Well, it's the same with your wolf. Whatever you try to do to calm the wolf will only irritate it. Having said all that about the wolf, you must feed the wolf if you want to make any real progress - because at any moment the wolf can devour the lamb. The lamb is the more delicate feelings and the more excellent thoughts you may have. If the wolf is abused, it will just simply eat the lamb. Do not turn your lamb into some monster that is trying to attack the wolf - because the wolf will always win. Look after your wolf, make sure it's happy, give it a large field, and then you can get on with some real inner work.