Robert Priddy Exposed

Exposing The Anti-Sai Extremist And Ex-Devotee Of Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Robert Priddy's Penchant For Prevarication

Robert Priddy: The Anti-Sai-Baba Extremist

In addition to deleting his drug-induced hallucinations, Robert Priddy also deleted an article entitled "At Wistborough Lodge Prep. School" in which he related his penchant for prevarication tracing back to his childhood.

Robert Priddy related the following experiences (which he since deleted) about his tendency to tell lies, make up stories, act like a fool and gain sympathy by talking about committing suicide by jumping into a flood:
"One evening I found I could command the attention of most of the sixty boys in the dining hall by standing up and making faces behind the back of the duty teacher...

It turned out that I had a fairly lively fancy myself for I was able to convince my close friends of several stories that were quite untrue. I got a bit of a name for cooking up stories on our long and rather boring school walks at weekends. Once I tried a dramatic trick of putting myself at the centre of an account of hardy life in a croft in the northernmost wilds of Scotland near Wick amid snows and glens with red deer and polecats. It was a bit of a sensation and I had to tell all my friends in turn, then they wanted more of my experiences. I obliged as best I could and, when they were in doubt about the authenticity, I found it quite easy to counter their queries and doubts. The fact was, they wanted to believe me. So I was able to excite them with my exploits while living on the south coast (where I had only been on a few weekends) where I knew of smuggling runs and many things, the commonplace as well as the spine-tingling. They said that they hoped it was all true. For my part, I began to feel trapped in a complicated web I had woven, as I had done once before about having gypsy friends. It sprang of the desire to entertain and gladden, but I now knew somehow that it was also out of a sense of gaining some extra popularity. I had projected myself into those tales as if they were really true in order for them to seem true, and I even began to wonder where I had it all from myself. The stories, or the most tangible parts of them, must have come from somewhere...

On a school walk we were taken to see some dramatic flooding in the spring of 1947 when the excessive snow of that longest of winters was thawing. We stared down into the violent over-swollen brown flood waters in a branch of the river Arun only inches below the bridge we were on. The river banks were broken and huge torrents bearing debris crashed over a fall downwater from the bridge. I had recently received the news that my parents had moved away from our home at North Lodge in Roffey Park, and no longer had a house. Roffey Park and all it meant to me was irretrievable and I felt intensely the loss of the beauty of the lake and of every spot of the woods and fields I knew better than the back of my hand. Something told me that the home atmosphere in the cosy lodge, tea-times before the fire was gone forever. There was also the insecurity of not knowing why this had happened, where my parents would live next and a family crises beyond my ken that I must still have sensed somehow.

All this shook me up and made me feel quite forlorn as I stared into the flood. My closest companions noticed this and I eventually told them that I felt like jumping into the flood, more so as to dramatise my feelings than in all seriousness. They were shocked and frightened on my behalf and the whole thing became rather melodramatic. At length I had to reassure them that I wouldn't really jump in. Despite having moved twice and having had to part from friends at several schools, the loss of my Roffey home was the worst I had suffered...

Apparently, Robert Priddy's tendency to lie, embellish and tell stories originated from his traumatic childhood. When one listens to Priddy talk about Sathya Sai Baba, one is under the impression that he is still traumatized and he is resorting to childhood habits to cope with his current need for vengence and retaliation. Robert Priddy is sadly trapped in "projecting" his negativity on Sai Baba.

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Sunday, March 04, 2007

Sathya Sai Baba

New Blog: Sathya Sai Baba On Wordpress

A comprehensive blog with listings to various articles pertaining to Sathya Sai Baba and the Sai Controversy.

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Friday, March 02, 2007

Robert Priddy & LSD: A Vision Of Cosmic Energy

Robert Priddy: The Anti-Sai-Baba Extremist

UPDATE: Robert Priddy Attempting To Remove His Past Biographical Data From The Internet: Robert C. Priddy created his own Wikipedia page in which he publicly solicited himself as a notable person in relation to Philosophy and his former Indian Guru Sri Sathya Sai Baba. Robert C. Priddy released his biographical data on a personal website hosted by a free, online hosting company in Norway (home.no.net/anir/Nos/). On this free web-hosting domain, Robert Priddy personally disclosed biographical data that included stories of his experimentation with LSD, cannabis and other drugs as well as information about his early years. Robert Priddy deleted many of these public domain webpages after he defected from the Sai Movement (Ref). Although Robert C. Priddy is now attempting to remove his relevant, unsavory, public and self-disclosed biographical data from the internet, he (as well as his Anti-Sai associates) duplicated complete text content from Pro-Sai websites (including RadioSai) and added commentaries to them. When the same is done to him, however, he cries “copyright infringement” although the biographical material in question was released by him into the public domain as self-disclosure.

Ref: http://home.no.net/anir/Nos/cos.html
A VISION OF COSMIC ENERGY By Robert Priddy

The following describes as best I can an experience that happened to me in 1965:-

Firstly, I felt a tremendous wave of force pressing against me, like super gravity, which increased until I was as if blown out like a candle. It was an intensely painful sense of being physically and mentally nililated, yet it all happened so rapidly that there was hardly any time for fear. The result of this was that I suddenly felt weightless and immaterial... my whole awareness was absorbed in an astonishing and wonderful movement of waves of light-energy in space, extending as far as vision could extend in every direction. The room I was in 'before nihilation' was totally absent from vision, and from my thoughts too! The multiform luminous waves, all organised in perfect but incomprehensible symmetry, criss-crossed at any level I happened to focus on... they were very varied in movement, rhythm and pulse but were not coloured, though the effect was still somehow one of a brilliant multi-coloured display. They were an embodiment of ineradicable, secure, effortless power. No single epithet I know better captures the whole than Shiva's cosmic energy dance. The beauty was ineffable, conveying a great sense of awe. As far as I was able to register time, the whole revelation must have taken much less than a minute.

The waves moved with serpentlike ease. They were of all different amplitudes, all shaped most regularly, just like the way we illustrate an electric wave of alternating current, yet they flowed in streams through one another in three-dimensional patterns - perhaps mostly at right angles - while some flowed easily against or through one another in opposite directions. This created centres of concentrated light where waves intersected at regular intervals in every direction. All this was simultaneous and symmetrical... any change in the whole vision seemed to arise solely from the change in my focus of attention, whereby a quite different patterning of the wave-forms became evident, as if I were looking into a new dimension. In describing these waves, I face what seems to be the same dilemma as physicists have had in respect of the particle vs. wave theory of light. The waves consisted somehow in energetic particles, yet the movements of these were so flowing and regular as to give the impression of waves of light, flashing on and off so fast that they nearly make continuous lines.

I call it a 'dance' of energy because, despite the regularity and symmetry at one level, the whole unfoldment gave no sense of anything mechanical. Rather, it was a living manifestation that gave a feeling of a supreme intelligence in or behind it. I felt my consciousness drawn towards it and I completely lost awareness of myself in it for some time, as if I were 'blown away' again, yet now without any pressure or resistance. Then I seemed to recover my sense of 'I' again and I was a mere witness to the dance again.

It was mesmerising and I believe I could have watched it endlessly without loss of fascination. But as I became more accustomed and the mind began to try to grasp this, the thought came to me, 'Who am I? Where is this?' I was feeling the need of orientation and security. Immediately, the room came into existence around me - as if superimposed on these energies of light by some means I can perhaps best call as 'assymetric cancelling'. There was a brief transition period while the room became more stable in my perception, rather as when one awakens and it takes some moments to collect consciousness of the surroundings. I was left with the impression that the physical perception of the room was but the awareness of a very small part of that plenitude of energy, a non-symmetrical part which arose only when all the rest was cancelled out. Further, the 'room-as-perceived' seemed such a meagre representation of the reality 'behind' it that the thought was there that many other scenes - perhaps any scene imaginable - was also 'contained' as a potentiality within that fullness.

The only comparable 'normal' or controllable experience to this I have since had is when concentrating the eyes very fixedly for at least some minutes on a point at the centre of a large symmetrical mandala image. As long as attention stayed on the centre-point, the symmetry was there as the background. But as soon as the gaze strayed a little to one side, a kind of 'cancelling' of the symmetry arose, giving the impression of irregular configurations of the many forms that made up the mandala. As if the design contained many other designs, according to which shape was made the focus - and consequently how all the other shapes that were no longer arranged symmetrically around the original centre - thus formed a different configuration as background. The room I 'returned to' was like one of these countless possible 'off-centre' perceptions.

An image comes to mind to illustrate how the room 'appeared' as part of the ocean of light: suppose a number of transparents are dotted with small opaque dots so that, only when all are superimposed exactly upon one another, does a full symmetrical design appear. Take out any of the transparents and you will have an apparently random configuration which has only part of the whole and exhibits little or none of its symmetry. Yet the room and its contents somehow arose in time and space through a very much more convoluted process than my image suggests. It was as through by the convergence of some part of the plenum of energies, a part consisting of various wavelengths moving at different speeds and rhythms.

Another image that may help to describe it is the photographic negative. Before seeing the image that develops in the chemical bath, the uniform film surface gives no hint of what possibilities are contained therein. Which image appears, and exactly how it turns out, cannot be known exactly until an actual print is made. For me, the return of the room I was in all the time was a surprise that might match that of a child seeing a film developed for the first time!

The vision was not quite over, because I was able by closing my eyes - and perhaps making some effort of concentration - very briefly indeed to glimpse that sphere of dancing light 'behind' the apparent room, even though my eyes were closed this time! Then it faded and I was quite unable to see it again.

A most perplexing 'fact' in all this was how a physical room could seem suddenly to arise - and depart - on such a' basis' by the mere act of perception. In recalling the room, it re-constituted itself or was 're-membered' in a flash, and the details of it I had registered before my 'departure' were present again and intact. This experience tends to support the thesis of mentalism or pure idealism, which makes everything depend for its apparent being on consciousness, not upon matter. If what we see is indeed but the product of consciousness, what then of the energy dance itself? It gave itself as being that upon which all else depends... the real screen behind the passing images of matter in its changing appearances. The sense that my awareness was temporarily lost, drowned in that sea of light, suggests that there is a close connection, even an identity in kind, between individual consciousness and that cosmic unfoldment. The experience supports, rather than refutes, the Brahmanic thesis that "All is Infinite Consciousness."

The referenced and attributed material on these webpages is duplicated in full under the premise of ‘fair use’ in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any such (and all) material on this webpage is distributed without profit and for research and reference purposes only.

- Robert Priddy's Copyright Blathering
- Robert Priddy’s “The Psychedelic Experience” (or View Archive)
- Robert Priddy’s “Truth, Being And Bliss” (or View Archive)
- Robert Priddy’s “A Vision Of Cosmic Energy” (or View Archive)

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Robert Priddy's LSD Trip Beyond The Mind

Robert Priddy: The Anti-Sai-Baba Extremist

UPDATE: Robert Priddy Attempting To Remove His Past Biographical Data From The Internet: Robert C. Priddy created his own Wikipedia page in which he publicly solicited himself as a notable person in relation to Philosophy and his former Indian Guru Sri Sathya Sai Baba. Robert C. Priddy released his biographical data on a personal website hosted by a free, online hosting company in Norway (home.no.net/anir/Nos/). On this free web-hosting domain, Robert Priddy personally disclosed biographical data that included stories of his experimentation with LSD, cannabis and other drugs as well as information about his early years. Robert Priddy deleted many of these public domain webpages after he defected from the Sai Movement (Ref). Although Robert C. Priddy is now attempting to remove his relevant, unsavory, public and self-disclosed biographical data from the internet, he (as well as his Anti-Sai associates) duplicated complete text content from Pro-Sai websites (including RadioSai) and added commentaries to them. When the same is done to him, however, he cries “copyright infringement” although the biographical material in question was released by him into the public domain as self-disclosure.
Ref: home.no.net/anir/Nos/trip.htm
TRUTH, BEING AND BLISS
AN AMAZING PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE DESCRIBED By Robert C. Priddy - British author & ret'd researcher and teacher in philosophy and sociology, University of Oslo, Norway.

In wishing to write mostly from direct experience rather than theory or guesswork I try here to give as truthful an account as I can of what befell me in 1963. In the intervening 25 years I have continually been returning to that experience as as source of inspiration and in the hope that the fullest possible light may be shed on it for me. Decidedly the most intense experience of my life hitherto, it came without warning and without preparation on my part. Its outward circumstances and all the attendant questions it raises can and should I feel here be held quite distinct from its inner reality, which was above all of the nature of a genuine spiritual revelation for me. Therefore I describe the experience itself, not its cause or the reasons which led me into the situation through which it came about, which are summarised elsewhere.

Is it possible to experience an effective 'crossing out' of virtually all ego only for a temporary period? My experience forces me to conclude that yes, this is possible and it does not always occur from willing it or even purposefully working for it. Who can know why it is that one person who has led an exemplary life is not granted any truly deep transcendental experiences, while another who has not excelled is transported to the inner realm of unspeakably joyous bliss, awareness and amazing truth?

It was a brilliant morning in February, as if the light of the sun from the frozen crystal snow was penetrating everywhere. The first ominous sign of what was to come was great mental agitation that grew more and more intense. It was as if I were being forced to observe the normally restless or over-active condition of my mind while I was at the same time somehow and most frighteningly dissociated from myself. I appeared to myself from without, as it were, often in the light of unpleasant perspectives. My self-images were seen to be illusions, not only my cherished identity as I fondly imagined it to be, but also the most basic of body-feelings and identifications.

At one point in the process that was upon me, I even 'saw' my wrist break and the bones stick through my flesh. Many other unnameable sensations 'came back' to me from before anything my memory clearly knew. My mind became uncontrollable, rushing hither and thither with sickening speed into a vortex of thoughts. It was the disintegration of myself, while 'I' was nonetheless observing it all from within. If the state known as schizophrenia was like this then I really pitied the poor sufferers. "God help them!", I said aloud, doubtless really in the desire that He should also help me.

My mind was speeded, torn, 'deranged' and seemed to be left behind me and lost. Only then was I aware of it as if it were the cast-off clothing of my true being. The 'rabbit-runs' of the mind, the regular routes it had worn for itself through the field of experience which criss-crossed one another, yet which also left huge tracts of reality untrammeled and unnoticed. As I was being driven 'out of' my mind thus, I identified with it very strongly. It was mine, I thought it was 'me' and that I would be destroyed along with it. That was what was so threatening about this destruction of the ego, I did not realise that consciousness of the I remains nonetheless. It was fearful, but the speeding events mercifully at least gave me no time to dwell on this fear. How could I know that nothing essential would really be changed when everything was changing ultimately?

That abnormal or supernormal condition of duality, perhaps known as 'split-mindedness', was like being at once both the body-mind entity and merely the totally unattached witness of it (in other words, being a neutral observer of myself as an incarnated ego-self in a material environment) may well be what many schizophrenics experience with intensity. Looked at in another context, however, it is remarkably like the distinction in Indian philosophy or yoga between the Atma and the jiva. The Atma is a bodiless, timeless, unmoved witness of all events. The jiva is the incarnated and individual ego or personal self.

My own mind, my inner world, whirled me violently about... outwards then inwards, up then down. Brief visions passed through me with increasing velocity, each one grasping at me until I passed through them into the next... like a mirror gazer who falls into the void behind the reflection. Inner visions grew and fragmented, tearing me apart as they went. The mind, which seemed less and less to be mine - shattered into pieces again and again... like a chaos of broken mental staircases. It was impossible to gauge how long this took...

A plenitude of meanings flooded me, but there was no use in trying to comprehend any, for each time a new other world slipped out of my being, I found myself subtly altered, my perspective changing with this. My direction was uncertain and the ground was as if shifting beneath me, a chasm over which I was suspended. Impenetrable questions and possible answers seemed to slide beyond me into mental blind spots... though I also sensed that they might be storing up in some internal forum beyond the ring of awareness.

Eventually, the shattered shards of mind - of myself as I had imagined myself to be - were allowed to settle and coalesce without my involvement. I was not any of that, and I was carried on a wave of very welcome restfulness after the overwhelming rush of so incomprehensibly much. No map could ever chart the route I had traversed, nor was one needed any longer.

During that agony of mental disintegration, it was still very uncomfortable to be the witnessing 'I', which made me feel so alien to my 'normal' self. It was the sheer impossibility of remaining my normal self, the intolerability of it, that forced me out of myself. It was a genuine case of 'going out of my mind', but surprisingly enough also a 'coming to myself' in that I grew more familiar with that overall witness within me. In fact, that selfless 'I' eventually arose from the wreckage of my ego, like a phoenix from the flames, and became my identity. There was a warm, completely unruffled loving sensation that was I. The only special significance I could find in myself was my relative insignificance: that every one of billions of individuals are significant.

I was at first totally disoriented as to time, for hours of living seemed to have been compressed into minutes even. By the clock it could only have been about one or two hours before I at long last began to feel the enormous relief of finding the true core of my being. It was located, oddly enough, centrally in the chest and felt warm and completely open, a loving awareness that was free-floating and unruffled by anything. It was like being a new-born child, lighter than a ball of fluff flowing trustfully along on whatever stream of events arose and offering no resistance to anything.

What remained of me, then, when all the intricately-layered convolutions of my mind had been torn off was an indescribable vibrant and yet inexcitable joy. Where my mind had felt to be bursting, it had dissolved to allow the plenitude of infinity itself to overflow into me where I witnessed and embraced it For this was more real, more poignantly clear and conscious than anything previously seen, known or felt by me.

After I had left behind the mind, I still had 'identity', but it was identification with the consciousness that in some way pervaded entirely everything there is. I could review the 'old' identity, my name and status, with much irony as a delusive joke, a mirage that the mind made to hide awareness from itself. In trying to hold onto such penetrating insights as these, however, I was only causing the mind again to fixate the real and thus make for the same illusion all over again, if yet in a fresh way.

I was aware of my 'normal' surroundings whenever I looked or listened and I could converse with others, yet everything had the mark of eternal being in some form of intuition that I can neither explain nor recapture properly. What previously was being wide awake now seemed as uncertain as a dream had then seemed. The marvel of being welled up as intense but peaceful bliss. The body was an exquisite instrument of feelings, the imagination was unbounded awareness able to penetrate wherever it chose. There were no thoughts as such, nothing was separate from the unity of existence!

An acquaintance who was present asked me if I realised what I was saying when I spoke of infinity. Indeed, it was not a mere idea of it but the reality itself I was intuiting. By what means I do not know, yet I could directly perceive from his manner of talk and being that he possessed only an idea of infinity. For him to have the experience itself, I 'saw' in some indisputable intuition, he must somehow cross the deep internal gulf between his mind and the awareness that filled everything and of which I was then an integral part. That it could be crossed by long and sustained efforts was also evident to me, even though I had been forced across it in a brief period, for I had not attained it myself. Some force beyond my understanding was responsible, I knew.

Notwithstanding the transparent clarity of everything, nothing lost its value or entrancing meaningfulness, for all things still remained a great and inexhaustible mystery. Deep significance and sacredness were everywhere, constantly present in whatever I chose to regard. Breathing and moving in this element of all-pervading truth I realised that the truth simply is, it is not a means to anything else, has no special application or use. It is beyond all worldly concerns and yet it is also subtly in them. A seemingly-endless series of mental transcendences had taken place in emptying my mind, removing its screens and penetrating its self-delusive conjuring tricks before all could flow into and through me unhindered.

I did not properly understand how the mind became stilled so perfectly, in which way 'I' had entered such serene inner silence to allow for the timeless view calmly to arise and flow by. I was aware of the floating absence of bodily weight, but I could focus on the body above which 'I' had risen. To my great fascination I saw it was like a rhythm of perfected movements, an illumined and most intricate dance of itself, whatever 'it' did. As never before I felt the miraculousness of our bodies; highly-attuned and coordinated even the tiniest movements could be even without our offering it a thought! That there was such a higher selfless awareness constantly directing and coordinating its every function was certain.

Not only was all this evident to me, but also to my friend Eric Steadman, with whom I shared in perfect unspoken telepathic awareness from the start of the blissful period. We were capable of silent communication surpassing any other I had shared in. If we chose to say anything it was just gratuitous, or for other persons' benefit, for it was quite unnecessary for us. Nothing we could say could enhance the unity of mind we already shared. We could jokingly pretend not to hear or understand each other, knowing full well that neither of us could or would conceal anything at all, so natural and total was the sense of trust that had overwhelmed us.

Nothing seemed to matter, in the sense that there was no sense of self or distinction between myself and anyone or anything else that I had to defend or support. The many cares of ordinary existence were in complete abeyance, replaced by a carefree - or freely caring - interest in whatever the situation called for. My complete presence in the present, calm and very much myself, allowed me to share completely in any event that arose, were it a friend's comment or pure silence. I felt that this was how I had been in early childhood. Eric and I could relate as freely and without preconceptions as children at their innocent play, both to each other and to anyone else who came by. Once the famous words of Jesus came to mind: "Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein."

While I had been emerging from the confines of my limited mind I had noticed that the mind was itself a web of ingrained habits of thought and feeling, of response patterns that could be both conscious and subconscious. These were supported by my will, which was closely allied to the mental status quo. The mind was overcome and its routines were 'turned off', opening it to a freedom and clarity of vision that felt most exhilerating. Everything was far clearer than any clarity I had imagined possible. There was no mystery about the translucent joy of Consciousness I was steeped in. Yet, when the wonder of creation became most intense, I was prompted to seek its origin. Where did this come from? I 'looked up', not physically but inwardly and there I sensed something like a silent choir of celestial promises... but there was a veil, like a blinding light into which, or beyond which, I could not see.

"How on earth can we manage to remember all this, Eric?" I said. "It doesn't matter" was his reply. This struck me as being just the very thing we needed to remember; it was the perfect expression of the attitude that the mind must adopt to everything. Equanimity or serenity, was the message. As I began to analyse this thought I got lost in the profundity it opened up to my inner gaze. I forgot his words in a moment.
"What was that you said just now again?"
"It doesn't matter", said Eric, making me laugh heartily.
"That's it!", I went on: "We must write that down!"
"But it doesn't matter," he reminded me.
Later we agreed that in one sense nothing can ever matter once the cosmic vision can behold things but that some things matter very much before one can establish that vision. Above all, all of creation without exception is precious.

This episode was preserved on a tape recorder that I had switched on. Afterwards, when listening back, I heard myself say: "If one knows absolute truth, there is absolutely nothing one can do with it." Reflecting on what then lay behind those words I interpret them to mean that the ultimate purpose of each thing, object, event, act and so on is its gratuitous being, its intrinsic worth, but not any finite, human purpose we may attach to it. The real meaning of anything is thus not actually expressible, being above and beyond what importance and meanings we find or create in our everyday dealings with it. Perhaps the closest our languages can come to it is when we speak of the divine, of God's love and the love for God. I would not now say that I found The Truth, but that instead it came to me. Once known, it can never be entirely forgotten or distorted.

FURTHER INTERPRETATION OF THE ACTUAL EXPERIENCE
The great mystic of Hellenic times, Plotinus, who never wrote down his teachings, once tried to convey to the writer Porphry the idea of the One. It is beyond the realm of divisive thought and thus its essence cannot be expressed by words, which are also divisive. If one says that the One is light, then one excludes the shade, if one says it is both light and shade, then there are endless other aspects that are not included, and so on. Though I had previously read of mystical consciousness in books on Zen Buddhism and similar literature, they had provided me with no real intimation whatever of the actual experience. I could only recognise phenomena that the books had been referring to after the event.

The best that words can do is to lead one to the limits of one's own understanding and point from there towards the fathomless Beyond. At the silent apex of all this I literally glimpsed how the mind, my own mind, created the very illusion of things, of the perceived world and its artificial limits. I could not analyse this vision, only peer briefly into its mystery before the mind asserted its self-questionings. It appeared, however, that everything one could perceive, examine or desire was simply the product of mental activity. Each idea or feeling was a figment floating by on the river of time, a phenomenon illusively appearing to be as such and to be more real than the ceaseless generator itself.

Some persons may not need any deep spiritual experiences to make them aware of the ultimate goal. Their characters or souls may be so close to the last step that they need nothing to convince them of the path and the long, steady effort required. Others, among whom I must reckon myself whether I like it or not, must be shown so as to believe. I was one of those who needed the inspiration of a preliminary experience of the divine so as to recognise that there truly is a possibility of becoming illumined and penetrating beyond space and time.

The effects of mystical states on the individual's relationship to the body hold out great hope and incentive to the suffering. The evidence we have from the reports of a huge variety of persons in history and from the most diverse cultures who have used an amazing varieties of methods and disciplines to achieve what we recognise as super-normal consciousness gives us a far sounder basis than any physical science can ever hope to provide to understand the body-mind relationship. Whether or not these experiences involve direct awareness of the Atma is a matter beyond the range of mere discussion but they are almost invariably bound up with some form of independence of the physical body.

This was a real revelation to me during that first 'out-of-body experience'. Though I had fasted I was not in the least hungry. When it was suggested that I needed food and was offered some cereal, I could not summon any appetite. To please my host I tasted a tiny piece, no larger than a rice corn. It was overpoweringly strong-tasting and felt as if it filled my mouth and was crushing me. I couldn't even swallow it. I later read that this total lack of desire for food - even revulsion - was experienced for periods of up to a month or more by great mystics during the higher forms of samadhi, such as the case of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. It also relates to the mystical significance of fasting for very long periods, as in some Indian yogic practises.

Everything to do with the body seemed entirely irrelevant compared to the gloriousness of the incorporeal realm about me. It appeared that, while aware of this, no bodily pains or sufferings could ever penetrate to me; I could have tolerated them with complete dispassion. Though I did not put this to the test then and there, I have since come across many cases of exceptional individuals who can withstand what must be extreme pain. It is well known how fakirs and shamans can torture the body without showing any sign of suffering.

The return from that illumination was intensely saddening and painful in the extreme, for it was the loss of the closest I had ever come to absolute Realisation. As if sinking down into the clouds of unknowing that characterise the normal operations of the sane and wayward mind, I also felt that this world was familiar to me and there was some security in it. The security was nothing compared to the total lack of any need for security in the intensity of blissful marvel and loving truth I had been immersed in, yet it was where I had to be, the place from where I had to begin the journey I now knew lay before every soul. Where that journey must lead I could not assert once and for all, for the reality at the end of the rainbow is so overwhelmingly many dimensioned and indescribable that I only had the general idea of the destination. But though I was uncertain as to which manner of travel was effective, I at least knew the right general direction.

...may well be what many schizophrenics experience with intensity...I even 'saw' my wrist break and the bones stick through my flesh. Many other unnameable sensations 'came back' to me from before anything my memory clearly knew. My mind became uncontrollable, rushing hither and thither with sickening speed into a vortex of thoughts...My mind was speeded, torn, 'deranged' and seemed to be left behind me and lost...Inner visions grew and fragmented, tearing me apart as they went. The mind, which seemed less and less to be mine - shattered into pieces again and again... like a chaos of broken mental staircases...Eric Steadman, with whom I shared in perfect unspoken telepathic awareness from the start of the blissful period. We were capable of silent communication surpassing any other I had shared in...To please my host I tasted a tiny piece, no larger than a rice corn. It was overpoweringly strong-tasting and felt as if it filled my mouth and was crushing me. I couldn't even swallow it..."

These statements give me the creeps. This is the same guy who is attempting to "expose" Sathya Sai Baba. Enough said.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ABOUT LSD:
The most common dangers of LSD result from bad trips, including terrifying thoughts and feelings, despair, fear of losing control, and fear of death. These problems are especially common and severe in people with underlying mental problems like severe depression, schizophrenia, or bipolar disease.

Hallucinogens can cause extreme, long-lasting adverse neuropsychiatric effects, like flashbacks (post-hallucination perceptual disorders), relatively long-lasting psychoses, severe depression or shizophrenia-like syndromes, especially in heavy or long-term users or in people with an underlying mental illness. (Reference)

The referenced and attributed material on these webpages is duplicated in full under the premise of ‘fair use’ in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any such (and all) material on this webpage is distributed without profit and for research and reference purposes only.

- Robert Priddy's Copyright Blathering
- Robert Priddy’s “The Psychedelic Experience” (or View Archive)
- Robert Priddy’s “Truth, Being And Bliss” (or View Archive)
- Robert Priddy’s “A Vision Of Cosmic Energy” (or View Archive)

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Robert Priddy Psychedelic Drug Years

Robert Priddy: The Anti-Sai-Baba Extremist

UPDATE: Robert Priddy Attempting To Remove His Past Biographical Data From The Internet: Robert C. Priddy created his own Wikipedia page in which he publicly solicited himself as a notable person in relation to Philosophy and his former Indian Guru Sri Sathya Sai Baba. Robert C. Priddy released his biographical data on a personal website hosted by a free, online hosting company in Norway (home.no.net/anir/Nos/). On this free web-hosting domain, Robert Priddy personally disclosed biographical data that included stories of his experimentation with LSD, cannabis and other drugs as well as information about his early years. Robert Priddy deleted many of these public domain webpages after he defected from the Sai Movement (Ref). Although Robert C. Priddy is now attempting to remove his relevant, unsavory, public and self-disclosed biographical data from the internet, he (as well as his Anti-Sai associates) duplicated complete text content from Pro-Sai websites (including RadioSai) and added commentaries to them. When the same is done to him, however, he cries “copyright infringement” although the biographical material in question was released by him into the public domain as self-disclosure.
Ref: http://home.no.net/anir/Nos/lsd.htm
THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE
On how I came to psychedelic experiences By Robert C. Priddy

There is a fullness of being that thought cannot capture or fully comprehend. The mind lives on direct experience and yet it can come to feed more and more on secondary or vicarious thoughts. The ideal of Western culture, inculcated in us from school to the highest education, is information, generalities, theory and civilised opinion. Since all this is obtained at second hand, personal experience and the practice of knowledge in life can usually only come after the end of education, if then.

Despite my involvement in a wide variety of practical jobs or activities before taking university education, my mind had continued increasingly to process everything according to mental attitudes and approaches gradually adopted from childhood onwards. This became a 'mental burden', something from which many who go through our over-conceptualised education suffer unknowingly. The mind was largely pre-programmed and often functioned as a reducing valve or advance filter, pre-forming and so distorting experience even before it had sunk in. 'It' did this even before the fullness of a perception had time to register properly, translating raw sensory facts into ideas so fast that I had lost sight of the gaps between ideas - or perhaps of the true links between percept and concept. In this way it is possible for the mind to become like a prison, working too independently of consciousness with a quasi-life of its own. Anyhow, I had come to construe the natural world of things and people too easily and was often unable to get directly involved with them.

I discovered some of this ailment in myself by using the psychedelic agents cannabis and later, in a shockingly convincing and exhaustive way, with the chemical mind-altering (or mind-suspending) substance LSD 25, which showed me that there was a gap between perception and thought, and that re-opening it led to wonderful experiences of a much higher consciousness than anything previously encountered by me. A proper training in meditation might possibly have done the same more smoothly and securely, though doubtless only after many years of constant practise.

Then 26 years old, I was a student of philosophy and sociology at the University of Oslo. Though I found the subject of psychology mostly irrelevant to understanding people, myself or anything remotely like the psyche (Gr. 'soul'), I had become interested in mental illness and schizophrenia from a wider viewpoint than psychiatry adopted.

My mother was still working at a progressive mental hospital, where I had also lived in and worked briefly. I had also worked day and night during my first months in Norway looking after some very disturbed youth at a treatment home. Besides this, much of the literature that currently interested me, from Kafka to Jean-Paul Sartre, raised the question of the 'split-mindedness' of the 'normal or well-adjusted' member of current society and thus the sickness of modern society itself. I had also recently been impressed by Aldous Huxley's essays, The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell, about his experiments with the biochemical mescaline, which evidently had opened the doors for him to what he regarded as the highest insights of his not-inconsiderable life.

When I heard that the health authorities themselves had sent a psychiatrist I knew large samples of an extraordinary substance very similar to mescaline for experimentation, I was interested in a chance to try it too. A friend, Eric Steadman, had already taken a dose of it and recommended us taking some together. After 18 hours of fasting I took five blue capsules of Sandoz LSD-25 ... a mere 125 micrograms!

Despite the preliminary reading and some previous trials with cannabis, I was really totally unprepared for the earth-shaking scale of the inner upheaval that came. I had not even imagined that psychosis, which LSD has been said to simulate, could be anything like as disasterous as what overtook me during the first hour or so of 'hell'. Nothing in my previous life was even remotely as intensely beautiful and awe-inspiring as the 'heaven' that superceded it.

For some few yet limitless hours I knew that a true, undying perfection and purity is within and that it is supra-personal. That it was covered over by the habitual activities of the mind was a certain insight of which I never really lost sight afterwards. In that living presence, that expansive present moment of translucency without beginning or end, I could not doubt that we all essentially are that pure awareness. Only temporarily are we alienated from our authentic nature , good and whole ( even 'holy'), while lost to ourselves in the vast and bewildering realm of matter and mind, space and time.

I hope that I shall never again have to undergo the intensity of sadness and inner pain that came when I had to return to the worldly sphere, sinking slowly down layer by layer into increasing forgetfulness of that immanent all-encompassing joyfulness! It was in a sense a rebirth, back to bodily constrictions and the material world, back to its old problems and to very much my same old self too. Still, there were marked differences, for a new basic trust and hope was engendered; a case of believing through seeing. Indeed, I think I appreciate how much more fortunate or talented they must be who can believe sufficiently to discipline their activities towards such realisation without having had such proofs.

The assurance that one's being is totally secure, that my identity is the soul that itself cannot ever get lost inspires one with trust and gives the growing intimation of great meaning and purpose in or behind creation. The mysteriousness of life, the miracles of being that are so naturally taken for granted that they can appear mundane, boring... yes, even depressing, are made clearer and sharper when seen through the focussed lens of faith. By faith is here meant an inner reliance on there being a spiritual source, wherever it be, whatever form it may be imagined to take or by whatever name it might be called. Many would call it belief in God, of course, even though an agnostic or a so-called atheist could also sometimes be strong in the faith to which I refer (i.e. not involving blind beliefs).

Being only 26 at the time, and being without any persons of exceptional insight around me who could advise me, I had to face the labyrinth of errors of the contemporary world in which I lived. The world-view or ideas of reality inherited or adopted from my English background, the whole orientation of all I had learned and experienced since then was completely shaken up afresh.

The reconstruction in memory and extended understanding of that experience has continued at periods throughout my life. (See my fuller 'blow-by-blow account') The trials of my faith have been many, for my mind persisted in investigating, weighing, criticising, comparing all sorts of evidence both for and against the above-mentioned doubt. Now - at the millenium - I still regard this was a necessary process for me to refine and secure the conviction I had at the high point of my vision. There is no question of falsifying memory, but in 'capturing' it. At the time I most likely did not have the means of fixating and expressing what I glimpsed, and it was one experience among many others that was laid aside at first among the many impressions that overwhelmed me and on which I concentrated in the months directly afterwards.

There was virtually nothing in Western culture to help one integrate the intimations of a transcendental consciousness and all that this implied for life and not least what lies beyond life. There were many attractive avenues of investigation and so-called 'self-improvement' that turned out only to be dead ends. Social movements, intellectual theories, artistic and literary endeavours as well as dozens of different forms of self-indulgence were the order of the day all around me. Later I discovered that Indian philosophy and religion are full of references to the type of experience I had, sometimes referred to as the 'raising of the kundalini shakthi' or 'sleeping serpent power', which is not a physically-measurable energy and which, being the basis of conscious life itself, is normally expended through sexual activity and thus is only seldom raised to the higher levels of consciousness.

My spiral of meta-thoughts and powerlessness of mind and body, the depths of nausea and everything that happened to me in the first 2 hours or so, were - in a word - doubt. Doubt as to the will on man, that we are made in the image of something far greater than ourselves. The doubt became intolerable, quite simply. And thereby the powerless that ensues from it was removed. From saying 'I can't, I can't' I moved to the realisation that this was not true. Some vast power had lifted me, despite myself, towards myself in a higher sense. [No pun intended]

The same power afforded me a glimpse into myself which I cannot say I had earned, except perhaps in that it became my due because of the sufferings through which I had to go - despite myself - to receive it. That glimpse - an intense view of staggering depth and beauty of the teeming realities of the mind and the incalcuable beyond - lasted for the infinite space of not more than two hours of earthly time. During the height of this view, something caused me to look upwards, figuratively speaking. The thought occured to me since I then realised how I had been going around in disbelief and great ignorance of the vast potential of the human soul and that which lies beyond in the realms of the spirit... even though I had had plenty of opportunity to learn of its presence from the mystical, religious and philosophical books I had read. Since I was tasting the reality of my own soul, I asked what might lie beyond and above. So, looking upwards, I caught a glimpse - admittedly fleeting and unclear, but awesome and magnificent - of an endless and truly cast hierarchy of realised consciousness (perhaps beings?) receeding into the distances of inner space... further than I was strong enough to gaze into.

Feeling as though I had lived a lifetime that day, I went to sleep most peacefully in an aura of light-hearted wonder. I awoke from an intense and perfectly-clear dream:-

I climbed up a snowy mountain, moving up along a majestic ridge where high winds blew across the huge heaven. I knew it to be Mount Everest. Together with Eric, I soon stood exultantly and marvelled on the peak. Before us was a final mound of a few feet in height. This we did not ascend. Then I heard a voice of perfect authority, resonant and certain, which I knew immediately to be God's own. He said "I have brought you up here. The way back down you must find by yourselves." So I set off in one direction and saw Eric take another route. There were huge, spherical boulders lodged here and there in crevices I must pass on the descent. That the dream was an authentic message to confirm the nature of the experience I have never doubted. That God had taken us there I do not doubt. I certainly felt that I had been saved from a vortex of anxiety and danger of madness, though I had not known how or why. At the time it seemed that I had to go through what a dying person would. Not until I 'gave up the ghost', so to say, and surrendered myself willingly to whatever might come, did I experience a regeneration. That I had gone through a radical ego-death prior to spiritual rebirth was very evident to me then, though quite how it had been achieved I was far from clear, I realised, when I tried to repeat this without the psychogenic stimulus.

Concerning the last mound on the peak of the world, I remembered having read that early expeditions to Everest had taken vows with Tibetan lamas at a monastery below to place food offerings to God at the foot of a mound they would find on the peak! On no account were they to mount it for it was revered as 'the home of God'.

Years later, when I learned about the Vedantic teachings concerning the highest forms of consciousness or samadhis, that last mound seemed exactly symbolic of the last, almost negligible line, the crossing of which takes the individual finally and eternally away from the illusory universe and into Godhead.

After some years I did occasionally try various strong bio-chemicals and also LSD-25 again with varying results, both hellish and heavenly. I did not become addicted, the experience being so powerful as to have a most subtle long-term draining effect on my spirits. There was also the growing realisation that the results were less inspiring as time went on and progress towards making such awareness permanent was not noticeable.

On one occasion the effect of LSD-25 on me was extremely unpleasant indeed for the larger part of the 8 hours. Instead of finding any clarification of perception, I was plunged into a whirlpool of eternal repetition from which all things seemed infinitely hopeless and without rhyme or reason of any sort. There seemed to be no hope of escape, a very terrible condition indeed! This lasted "for ever"... except that I recovered and found that about six hours had passed. For anyone who is trapped in that sort of sphere (definitely qualifying as one of the hells that make up the lower spheres of existence in Eastern spiritual pantheons) I must say that suicide must sooner or later become attractive. Fortunately, the episode ended well, as I have described elsewhere.

For better or worse, then, the veil of incarnate ignorance is sometimes lifted, and lifted very drastically and forcibly, also so fast that one cannot possibly follow what is going on until the veil is gone. The efficient cause of it can be one or another psychoactive agent. This explanation will suffice for those who are of a materialistic turn of mind but doubtless not for those who have pursued the fundamental philosophical question of the apartness of appearance and reality to its furthest reaches in more than a mere academic fashion.

Physical events are, after all, but appearances that come and go in time and space and are themselves subject to a higher ordering. Just as the creation of energy or matter in the very first instance requires a Creator, whether considered to be external or internal to creation, so must cosmic consciousness require the same agency. I was saved from the horror of disintegration and taken to the top of that mountain on the first occasion. Perhaps it was the only way I could be saved from the consequence of my own ignorance in taking that risk. When I reflect over the many aspects of it that present themselves to my mind's eye, I cannot be other than convinced that it must have happened through divine agency.

Though this particular biochemical eventually gave many people such glimpses or 'trips' into the realm behind the cosmic illusion known as maya in Vedantic thought, its effect most evidently differs in clarity and scope (depending on the person and many variable circumstances) and is always short-term. After eight to twelve hours one was 'back to normal reality', however much one disbelieved in its ultimacy or remembered that it is but a troubled dream of impermanant nature.

There were also those who were unfortunate and spent their time only in an inner hell and often failed to return to reality for some time. Seldom that this was, some very few persons found themselves in mental wards and a handful of them never came to themselves again, while in a few others it reportedly released states of psychosis, depression and intense paranoia during which some even committed suicide. On the other hand, most reliable reports from most highly-reputable clinics document many wonderful cures from the most ingrained and otherwise incurable obsessions and paranoias.

The psychedelic drugs have also been blamed for the destruction of genetic material and brain cells but, from the point of view of the philosophy of science I must confirm what even intelligent laymen can reckon, that the scientific evidence so far - where it is not concocted according to strong preconceptions - is flimsy indeed. Some of these agents may well cause physical degeneration of various sorts, but the case is far from being proven, as many investigations have clearly been heavily biassed from the start. Despite all this, I believe there are other reasons why all psycho-chemicals of this nature should be avoided.

Among the strongest reasons are the normally-invisible effects it seems that they can have upon other means by which our bodies, and even our minds, are otherwise protected, as well as the long-term psychic and social consequences that follow on their use and which can prove very serious if one has found no reliable protection and guidance. That standard Western science and medicine do not recognise super-physical phenomena and sticks to the gross body alone does not alter the evidence from literally countless independent sources throughout world history and culture of subtle life energies, sometimes called auric sheaths and energies.

Because physically-induced expansion of consciousness can only be temporary and can often lead to an unbalanced life in disturbing the step-by-step progress of personal development and spiritual growth, it is neither advocated by most psychologists nor spiritual teachers. Such expansions of awareness can only eventually be consolidated through gradual evolution of the psyche by controlled moral and mental discipline in living. Results cannot be expected without long and sustained efforts that always require the greatest patience. The use of bio-chemicals like LSD-25 to alter consciousness is like reaching for 'plastic grapes'. They do not allay one's hunger. They can also create an illusion of knowledge and power and that can be harmful.

I must admit that, in my own experience, there were some long-term disadvantages for me, as I see it all now. The sense of difference that comes of having been able to see through normal motives and narrow ideas - was a problem for me, because it tended to alienate me from people who were unable to understand or accept that any sublime experiences could occur, however they may be attained. Working as an academic and living in Norway where, with its very undifferentiated puritan culture of the most pragmatic and down-to-earth sort, any such experiences were virtually unknown. Anything that sounded like mysticism was regarded with blank suspicion and mistrust, so the natural need of sharing experiences with like- minded persons was frustrated and became limited mostly to other foreigners in the country. Though this would most likely have applied in any case due to my background, the gulf of difference was widened considerably by having undergone such consciousness-altering experiments.

That striving for the experience of higher consciousness by both artificial and 'natural' means is well illumined in Indian religious lore. Even the attempt to attain such super-consciousness and the powers inherent in them is fraught with real dangers unless one has a perfectly-realised master who has trodden all the ways in advance. It is also advised against as being a selfish aim; putting one's own liberated happiness before that of the world, which inevitably also eventually works against oneself.

However one may classify the type of consciousness that arises, and by whatever means or techniques it is reached, it can not be more than a preview of what can be fully attained only by living a pure, devoted life. Though bio-chemicals did not give a short-cut onto the heavenly highway, they did sometimes allow a brief crossing of that highway. My egoism was not removed nor my soul purified, yet I certainly was torn out of the cloud of self-oriented unknowing that afflicted me before.

Robert Priddy’s glorification of his drug-induced experiences as being “wonderful experiences of a much higher consciousness than anything previously encountered by me”, actually promotes drug use and would be particularly encouraging to those seeking to have such types of altered experiences. As a matter of fact, Robert Priddy had the following to say about his drug-induced hallucinations in his Pro-Sai book “Source Of The Dream” (pg: 16-7, Chapter 2: ‘When the Soil is Ready’):
A totally mind-shattering and subsequently most wonderful and intensely ecstatic experience befell me one day, as if from out of the blue. Much could be said on the subject, as it is an almost entirely misunderstood one and thus very controversial, but I do not believe doing so would appreciably enlighten anyone who has not actually had the very same experience. I am certain that no words can capture the vital nature and truth of such an experience of transcendental consciousness. I mention it because, without its having befallen me, I cannot guess how I might otherwise have been able to realize the value of pursuing spiritual development and exerting any measure of the determination, and one-pointedness that such a course eventually requires. The experience probably did not improve me much outwardly, if at all, but inwardly it altered my life in various quite crucial ways. I could simply no longer manage to regard normal worldly experience as the be-all and end-all of life. Having been forced to see my usual self and the mind literally from outside, with merciless clarity, through knowing and temporarily becoming the sheer all-pervasiveness of a sanctified joy, peace, and unrestricted awareness that underlies everything, I later came to know how that experience both consoled me and yet set me apart. Like a two-edged sword, it strengthened my insight, yet isolated me for many years in lonliness, for I had the burden of both incommunicable experience and a certain spiritual pride.

Does Robert Priddy’s description of his drug-induced experiences sound like ones that discourage drug use? I didn’t think so.

The referenced and attributed material on these webpages is duplicated in full under the premise of ‘fair use’ in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any such (and all) material on this webpage is distributed without profit and for research and reference purposes only.

- Robert Priddy's Copyright Blathering
- Robert Priddy’s “The Psychedelic Experience” (or View Archive)
- Robert Priddy’s “Truth, Being And Bliss” (or View Archive)
- Robert Priddy’s “A Vision Of Cosmic Energy” (or View Archive)

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