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Peter’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List with Correspondent No 4
PETER: It’s good to hear from someone else out there. I did wonder the other day what was happening for the other people on the list – were they interested in what is written on the list, the writings on the web-site, and what were their experiences in life? It’s so good to be able to swap notes and experiences about the Human Condition in 1999. I am very aware that what is discussed on this list – freedom from the Human Condition – can be confrontational as most people are wont to take very, very personally any factual discussions of what it is to be a human being. It’s much more comfortable to go along or fit in with everybody else and accept the beliefs of whatever group one belongs to. It is understandable that few are willing to challenge and question beliefs and feelings, given that who we think and feel we are is nothing more than the sum total of our beliefs that form our social identity, and our instinctual passions that form our sense of being. Thus to replace our dearly held beliefs with facts and investigate and eliminate feelings and emotions is to actively contrive a ‘self’ demolition – not a very popular thing to do, particularly for those on the ‘self’-aggrandizing spiritual path. To turn 180 degrees in the opposite direction from Immortality to mortality, from Godliness to earthiness, from delusion to sensibility, from fantasy to factuality, from imagination to actuality has yet to become the ‘thing’ to do. So I’ll leap in and comment on your post. RESPONDENT: I am still with the list, though not contributed in last few months. I have been enjoying the mails anyway. In the last few months there have been quite a lot of uncertainties in terms of my career and location etc. and in fact, are still continuing. But I have learnt enjoying life mostly, so except a few occasional moments of depression, the life is still enjoyable. PETER: Ah, no small feat and definitely not to be dismissed lightly. Life for most people is a vale of tears, a struggle, a constant ‘battle’ fought within and without. I was chatting with Richard the other day about a couple of people who were interested in Actual Freedom for a while but then moved away. It seemed – although I readily admit to bias – that they have now become happier and more able to enjoy the world as-it-is and people as-they-are than they were in their spiritual days when they regarded the world more fearfully. So, it is good to get some similar feedback from you. I recently described the path to Actual Freedom as a journey out of sorrow, but it is not yet appealing for everyone as most people enjoy feeling sad (as well as feeling angry). RESPONDENT: Yesterday when I was contemplating on ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’, I realized that I am not really understanding the word ‘experiencing’. What I was asking myself was, in fact, ‘How am I feeling in this moment of being alive’. This is so because I was always coming out with answers like ‘happy’ or ‘not happy’ or ‘gloomy’ etc. Which are all feelings. PETER: Aye, indeed. And until ‘you’ leave the stage your experience of life will be an emotional, feeling interpretation of the actual. It can not be any other way – human beings are wired that way. The amygdala – the primitive lizard brain – is an organ that is designed as an early warning system to quickly scan the sensorial input for any real or perceived danger and react with fear and aggression. This constant ‘on-guardness’ can be seen in any of the animal species, and in the human animal it produces feelings of fear and aggression. The amygdala is also the source of instinctual nurture and desire producing feelings that again actively conspire to ruin our happiness. So it sounds as if you are starting to realize the primary role that feelings play in the Human Condition. ‘You’ as an entity, existing inside the flesh and blood body can only think or feel about the actual world, and the only direct experience possible is when you cease to exist – either temporarily in a PCE, virtually in Virtual Freedom or permanently in Actual Freedom. RESPONDENT: Then what is experiencing ? The only sensible answer which I can think is that experiencing is what one senses with one’s physical senses. So this seeing, hearing, touching, tasting is experiencing. PETER: Aye, indeed. You, the flesh and blood body called No 4, can experience this moment sensately – seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling and can think and reflect on the experience. The other thing that is going on inside your flesh and blood body is that there is No 4, the social identity that others have moulded and shackled to be a fit member of the madhouse called Humanity. Further, being a human animal, blind nature has fitted you No 4, the flesh and blood body, with a full-on set of animal survival instincts and self, constantly operating and ready, when push comes to shove, to cause you to rage, kill or be killed in defence of yourself or your fellow tribal or family members. But there is now something that can be done about both these programs – both the social identity and the instinctual passions. RESPONDENT: Then it occurred to me that I have not been experiencing life at all. What I was doing is the feeling which is generated after the experiencing. And experience can be done only in this moment. You can’t experience the moment just passed by. PETER: It is interesting that you say that you have been experiencing life as ‘the feeling which is generated after the experiencing’. Modern scientific experiments, of the type LeDoux is conducting, all point to feeling being the first and foremost experience. The instinctual physical reaction has been measured at 12 milliseconds, the instinctual emotional reaction – when the hormones flow – is slower at 25 milliseconds, and the sensible sensate reaction (if it happens at all) is far slower as it cannot operate while the hormone-generated feelings are still in action. A bit from the Instinct section of the Library will help to explain this – (Editorial note: This above assertion by feeling-being ‘Peter’ (that ‘the instinctual emotional reaction – when the hormones flow – is slower at 25 milliseconds’ and that feelings are hormone-generated) is at odds with what Richard reports (that hormones are triggered by instinctual passions):
 Richard, List B, No. 12, 16
January 2003 [emphasis added].
*
Does that make it any clearer? We humans are programmed to be feeling, emotional beings and it is a fact that cannot be ignored if we are to become free of malice and sorrow. It is only in the last 40 years or so that we are beginning to understand our neuro-biological functioning and even now the investigators have to face the disparagement and lampooning of those folks still fearfully devoted to superstition and tradition. RESPONDENT: However, this is still a new concept and I keep on going back to my feeling mode because of habit. PETER: Not because of habit but because you have been programmed by blind nature to function first and foremost on feeling mode – and survival-feeling mode to boot. On top of this you have been programmed by society to play your role in the game of battling it out for survival – to be a group member, a team player, a good man, a good citizen, etc. RESPONDENT: So I have now modified the question to ‘Am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ This has been quite useful in reminding me to experience rather than feel this moment. PETER: Well, I did it the opposite way. I became vitally interested in ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ And if that meant I was feeling angry, sad, melancholy, lacklustre, depressed, then I would track back to find out what it was that bought on that feeling. What was said, what happened, when did it happen? I wanted to understand feelings, their source, how they worked, what caused them to kick in, etc. Only by understanding them, could I begin to get free of their insidious grip. I also knew that until I was rid of the source of feelings entirely – ‘me’ – I would have to live with them. So best to understand them and best to aim for the felicitous and innocuous ones – and feeling happy and feeling harmless are surely the best one can aim for of the feelings. The other point is that conducting an active investigation into one’s very psyche is a way of neither expressing nor avoiding feelings – one simply waits with interest and fascination for the next feeling to turn up to be investigated. The very act of observation, investigation, contemplation, understanding and insight is the only way I, this flesh and blood body, can rid myself of the psychic and psychological entity that prevents my sensible, sensate experiencing of the infinitude of the actual world. So, my experience is to become fascinated with what you are feeling and why you are feeling it. It can be scary business to investigate feelings and emotions, for the Human Condition is an animal instinctual condition but the investigation is actually liberating. It could be useful to you, at this stage, to read I do like it when anyone begins to look at feelings and the role they play in preventing we humans from being happy and harmless. Your discovery that you experience life by feeling only is crucial, and what you do with the discovery is vital to your being permanently happy and harmless. Good Hey.
PETER: And it’s nice talking to you as well. It is very good to explore this business of how we experience the world. As I wrote in my last post, according to the Red Cross, some 1 billion human beings have been ‘affected’ by warfare and armed conflicts and the rest make the best of their lot within the Human Condition. What seems such a waste to me now is that so many people, who lead comfortable lives in ‘safe’ societies, are involved in an utterly selfish spiritual search for a fictitious immortality and turn away from the sorrow and malice inherent in the Human Condition. How more selfish and superior can one get but to seek to become a God on earth – to ‘transcend’ the world as-it-is and people as-they-are. RESPONDENT: Yesterday when I was contemplating on ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’, I realized that I am not really understanding the word ‘experiencing’. What I was asking myself was, in fact, ‘How am I feeling in this moment of being alive’. This is so because I was always coming out with answers like ‘happy’ or ‘not happy’ or ‘gloomy’ etc. Which are all feelings. PETER: Aye, indeed. And until ‘you’ leave the stage your experience of life will be an emotional, feeling interpretation of the actual. It can not be any other way – human beings are wired that way. The amygdala – the primitive lizard brain – is an organ that is designed as an early warning system to quickly scan the sensorial input for any real or perceived danger and react with fear and aggression. This constant ‘on-guardness’ can be seen in any of the animal species, and in the human animal it produces feelings of fear and aggression. The amygdala is also the source of instinctual nurture and desire producing feelings that again actively conspire to ruin our happiness. So it sounds as if you are starting to realize the primary role that feelings play in the Human Condition. ‘You’ as an entity, existing inside the flesh and blood body can only think or feel about the actual world, and the only direct experience possible is when you cease to exist – either temporarily in a PCE, virtually in Virtual Freedom or permanently in Actual Freedom. RESPONDENT: In last two or three days, what I have found is different. To me it looks like that I can experience the actual world sensately, even while ‘I’ is alive and is in charge most of the time. Both ‘I’ and I can exist simultaneously at least for some time. My proposition is that if I focus more and more on experiencing and less and less on feeling, ‘I’ will dissolve gradually in due course of time. It may be boots and all approach, but I think it is working for me. The best part is that I don’t have to wait till ‘I’ completely annihilates itself, I can enjoy the sensate physical world right now. It doesn’t happen for 24 hours, but even those few moments when I can really enjoy the physical world are satisfying enough. And I am not even talking of peak experience. I don’t have any. I am talking of ordinary events like while sipping my tea, my taste buds enjoying the warmth of it and my nose enjoying the flavour. Or while taking a bath, my skin enjoying the cool water drops falling from the shower. PETER: It seems that you are saying that the traditional spiritual approach is going to work for you. It didn’t work for me after 17 years on the spiritual path, and once I acknowledged the fact of the failure of this approach to eliminate sorrow and malice in the world I dropped it like a hot brick. I realized that literally billions of people had ‘practiced’ being happy and good for millennia with nil result. This last century has, in fact, been the bloodiest in history. When I first came upon the spiritual path I remember practicing being here and being centred and focused, but my relationships still failed, I still got pissed off, annoyed, melancholic, irritated and occasionally angry. Later I got into Vipassana meditation and then the ‘food queue syndrome’ kicked in – blissful sittings that eventually ended, which meant returning to the real world populated by ‘un-meditative’ people. This approach did nothing to address the primary, central role that instinctually-sourced feelings and passions have in producing malice and sorrow. But I don’t want to get into a right and wrong discussion with you – I just went with the facts and what worked and what didn’t work. For me that meant focusing on feelings with the intent of eliminating malice and sorrow. Your approach is to focus less and less on feelings. I fail to see how the instinctual passions are going ‘to dissolve gradually in the due course of time’. It hasn’t happened over the 3,500 years of recorded spiritual history, in fact, quite the contrary has occurred. The instinctual passions have been co-opted into appalling battles between good and evil and as for ‘‘I’ will gradually dissolve’ – history has it that when this method of dis-association is practiced, ‘I’ become Self-realized – for the few, or ‘I’ become self-centred, self-satisfied, humble, grateful – for the many. When I talk of a sensible, sensate only experience I talk of it at the end of some 2 years of intensive effort aimed at eliminating the debilitating effects of having a social identity and having an instinctual self. I am talking of an experience whereby I have so totally and thoroughly changed myself to the point where feelings and instincts play no role in my life. * RESPONDENT: Then it occurred to me that I have not been experiencing life at all. What I was doing is the feeling which is generated after the experiencing. And experience can be done only in this moment. You can’t experience the moment just passed by. PETER: It is interesting that you say that you have been experiencing life as ‘ the feeling which is generated after the experiencing. ’ Modern scientific experiments, of the type LeDoux is
conducting, all point to feeling being the first and foremost experience The instinctual physical reaction has been measured at 12 milliseconds,
the instinctual emotional reaction – when the hormones flow – is slower at 25 milliseconds, and the sensible sensate reaction (if it happens at
all) is far slower as it cannot operate while the hormone-generated feelings are still in action. A bit from Does that make it any clearer? We humans are programmed to be feeling, emotional beings and it is a fact that cannot be ignored if we are to become free of malice and sorrow. It is only in the last 40 years or so that we are beginning to understand our neuro-biological functioning and even now the investigators have to face the disparagement and lampooning of those folks still fearfully devoted to superstition and tradition. RESPONDENT: Oh, well, the point I was making was that I can see sensate experiencing different from feeling. PETER: And the point I was trying to make is that every spiritual practice ignores the scientifically proven fact that humans are emotional beings and that the primary source of those emotions are the instincts of fear and aggression. Merely to attempt to be good, while a noble ideal, will do nothing to alter this fact. Only a total, radical and complete change will do. As I said in the bit which you snipped – ‘These two facets – reducing the influence of feelings and emotions – both the supposed ‘good’ and ‘bad’ – and demolishing the social identity, the ‘guardian at the gate’ ultimately brings one’s bare awareness to focus on the Amygdala and its instinctual programming. The focus is then on the instincts in operation both in the body and in the brain – with minimal psychological and emotional effects.’ I encourage you to make the journey into your feelings rather than ‘focusing on them less and less’. Actualism is most definitely not a new theory about having no feelings, or that feelings are bad – men have played that game for centuries, whether it be hiding in caves, practicing celibacy, by intellectual wanking or indulging in rationalism. Denial, repression and controlling emotions has failed to work. Indulging, expressing and emotive therapizing has also failed to work. There is a third alternative for the sincerely curious adventurer. A bit from Richard about feelings, that I always liked, may be of use to you –
For men (and women) this investigation of feelings and emotions is brand-new territory, particularly so for the spiritually- conditioned male who has been trained to suppress the bad feelings and indulge the good feelings – the traditional failed religious approach of both the East and the West. * RESPONDENT: So I have now modified the question to ‘Am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ This has been quite useful in reminding me to experience rather than feel this moment. PETER: Well, I did it the opposite way. I became vitally interested in ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ And if that meant I was feeling angry, sad, melancholy, lacklustre, depressed, then I would track back to find out what it was that bought on that feeling. What was said, what happened, when did it happen? I wanted to understand feelings, their source, how they worked, what caused them to kick in, etc. Only by understanding them, could I begin to get free of their insidious grip. I also knew that until I was rid of the source of feelings entirely – ‘me’ – I would have to live with them. So best to understand them and best to aim for the felicitous and innocuous ones – and feeling happy and feeling harmless are surely the best one can aim for of the feelings. RESPONDENT: In fact, for some time, I was also trying to do the same as you described. The problem was that I was already feeling happy most of the time. This happiness was generated by ‘winning’ over most bad feelings, by simple spiritual techniques like Vipassana and deep breathing. Indeed, compared to most people around me, I was much happier. But I was finding myself stuck with this and somehow I had a feeling that there was nothing positive about it. It was just an absence of ‘bad’ feelings. Especially when I realized the trap of love and gratitude. But now with this the direct experience in my fold, I decided not to worry about ‘me’ being happy or not. Instead, let me enjoy whatever moments I am able to, of sensate experiencing. Perhaps it is too early. It may be just be a childish enthusiasm on my part. Let me see how long it lasts. PETER: For me the clue was in my aim to be happy and harmless. Even in my spiritual days I wouldn’t have described myself as unhappy. Probably that I was reasonably happy, particularly when things were going well. But what I had to admit, almost force myself to admit, was that I was not harmless. Well-meaning, yes, but when push came to shove, or when things weren’t going my way – certainly not harmless. My inability to live with a woman in peace and harmony was ample testimony to this fact. When I read Richard’s journal for the first time it was the first chapters on ‘living together’, ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ that pricked up my ears. It was to prove to be my test of fire. I asked myself a simple question. ‘Could I live with a woman in peace and harmony?’ The honest answer was ‘no’. The next question was – ‘Why not?’ The answer to that question took me off on a 12 month investigation into the beliefs, emotions, passions instinctual programming, morals and ethics of gender, sex and living together. As a man, I was fascinated to discover the extent that my social and biological programming actively conspired to prevent anything remotely resembling intimacy – hence the need for the feeling of love to bridge the chasm. As a practical example – the feelings of male superiority, again the result both of social and instinctual programming, was a shocking thing to discover in myself – but it is universally a part of the Human Condition. It is a belief, covertly reinforced by men, and it is a feeling but not a fact, and therefore possible to eliminate. It proved, for me, to be a large and necessary step to live with a woman in peace, harmony and equity. This step towards intimacy was the direct result of being in touch with my feelings. Actualism is the practical implementation of scientifically and historically proven facts – a radical departure from the myth of spiritual celibacy, transcendence and ‘watching’. It is implementation, not avoidance. It is involvement, not detachment. It is change and action, not acceptance and procrastination. It is sensible, not silly. So, to be reasonably happy is relatively easy. To be totally harmless – to have no instinctual fear or aggression – to be actually free of malice and sorrow is an evolutionary leap. The stakes are high in this game ... but so are the rewards. I am not at all discouraging you from ‘enjoy(ing) whatever moments I am able to, of sensate experiencing’ – quite the contrary. What I am pointing to is a way of having more of those moments and then stringing more of them together and one day being able to live that way 24 hrs. a day every day – in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. RESPONDENT: Nice talking to you Peter. (I think it is my first direct mail to you). BTW, I have read your journal and enjoyed it a lot. That was how I was introduced to the Actual Freedom site. That time I was looking for someone who had broken away from Osho’s organized religion called sannyas. PETER: And what you found was someone who has broken away from the spiritual world entirely and headed off in the other direction. I wrote the journal as the story of my journey out of the spiritual world and into the actual world. But you have to get out of the spiritual world first, there are no shortcuts – there is no clip on a bit of ‘actual’ and motor on the spiritual path. The spiritual path is for the Luddites who selfishly settle for the ‘feeling’ of freedom – a pathetic substitute for the actual. Not for the boots and all, sincere actualist, who will settle for nothing less than an actual freedom. I like what you have written. You are obviously beginning to be concerned with ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ It is a question that will bring you to being concerned with, and interested in, all sorts of aspects of the Human Condition. It is useful to remind yourself continuously that who you think and feel you are is a social identity, that you had no part in the forming of, and that you are an instinctual being by birth. These facts can free you of the need for guilt, blame, resentment and the like. The Human Condition is common to all, whatever nationality, gender, intelligence, etc. The point is to look around at the Human Condition and see if you like it or if you want to get free of it. Then you look at how the Human Condition operates in you and you set about eliminating it – becoming free of it. It’s a fascinating exercise – one that is brand-new, never been done before and never been capable of being done before, for humans have had to operate on survival-mode up until now. Another point that helped me to get free from the spiritual was the realization that Richard is no Guru – in fact, the discovery of an actual freedom from the Human Condition is only possible because Richard broke free from the delusion of Enlightenment and Guru-ism. But he is an expert, an authority on Actual Freedom. He is an ordinary flesh and blood mortal human being, as am I, and as is everyone on the list. Actualism is for anyone who is willing and interested – it requires nothing special, nothing extra-ordinary other than sincere intent. We have recently amalgamated our Web-sites to offer a combined, comprehensive and detailed explanation of Actual Freedom and how to do it – freely available for anyone. We have our own domain – www.actualfreedom.com.au – and have established a firm base of writings and correspondence to try to seduce people out of the real world and out of the spiritual world and into the actual world. It’s an excellent product we are giving away – peace on earth being as good a product as there is! Actual Freedom is the beginning of the end of malice and sorrow on earth, and it is so good not to have missed the bus to freedom and to be in the actual world. And I do like it that you are interested.
PETER: After our last post about being happy and harmless I was doing a touch of Glossary editing again and got to ‘Harmless’. I remembered a TV. show that I had seen about Chicago that had made me sit up and take notice, so I included it in the updated version. I’ll post the lot as you may find it as interesting and informative about the Human Condition as I did.
Well, that’s it from me. I do like the particular little stories that stood out for me and made the Human Condition so apparent as to be impossible to ignore. They were like a peek through the fog, or a veil lifted and, all of a sudden, one can see the enormity of the Human Condition and your own social and instinctual role in the play. Then, you put your feet up for a while and contemplate or write or talk, and all sorts of things can happen ... as one strings some thoughts together. As you journey, each time, a little further and deeper than you normally do, the discoveries are profound and the consequences life-changing. And, after all, the aim of an actualist is nothing less than total and radical change.
PETER: A further thought about our correspondence the other day about sensate experiencing. I do like it when something on the list twigs me to muse and write about a particular aspect of the Human Condition. Writing has been an invaluable tool for me in becoming free of the Human Condition. I find the act of writing provokes a daring, evokes a discipline and produces a clarity that I find lacking in thought or speech alone. From the earliest days on this path I would jot notes in a book or a scrap of paper, particularly in times of a PCE – or even as a way of inducing a PCE. And it was always cute to go back to see what I had written and see if I was living what I had understood – was I putting my money where my mouth was? It is also way of stretching oneself and exercising that wonderful organ – the brain. Sensible thought, intelligent observation and un-emotive reflection have been so suppressed and derided by the Gurus, priests, teachers, parents and one’s peers that it is astounding what has been achieved to date by the human species on the planet. This was driven home to me when I watched a TV program that investigated the extent of genetic research into eradicating genetically inherited diseases and weaknesses causing tendency towards disease. One scientist spoke enthusiastically of the possibility of screening and eradicating many genetically inherited diseases but when questioned about the ethics of conducting such research, let alone its implementation, he said ‘Of course, we have to do what is the right thing to do, not what is the best thing to do’. In other words we should be careful in interfering with nature, albeit blind nature, for that is God’s territory. In other words, we should continue the suffering, pain and disabilities on the planet because human suffering, pain and disabilities are part of the ‘Master Plan’. In other words, even although we are capable of stopping it we shouldn’t. In other words, even if I am capable of stopping suffering and pain, I won’t? Well – not for me. ‘Of course, we have to do what is the right thing to do, not what is the best thing to do’. I think that one sentence sums up the fact that it is clearly the perfect time for human beings to begin to put an end to needless human suffering. It will not happen collectively or by mutual agreement or by prayer or legislation or social or political movements or the pursuit of ‘higher consciousness’ or by Alien intervention. It will happen incrementally as each of us frees ourselves of the shackles of dearly-held beliefs and our socially and religiously instilled virtuous morals and righteous ethics, and then digs in deeper to acknowledge and work towards eliminating the instinctual passions in ourselves. And why not? Only because the Gurus, priests, teachers, parents and one’s peers all say you shouldn’t or you can’t? We all know ‘shouldn’t’ from our childhood. It comes along with ‘who do you think you are?’, ‘don’t get smart with me’, don’t get too uppity’, ‘this is right’, ‘that is wrong’, ‘this is bad’, etc. etc. etc. Morals, ethics, values and psittacisms. As for ‘you can’t’ – if one human can do it – then the door is clearly open for whoever else wants to. Evidence of genetic mutations, behavioural modifications, environmental adaptations and evolutionary change abound in carbon-based life forms. One of the most stunning recent discoveries involved growing plants from seed in the weightlessness of the space. Standard, un-modified seed grew into a plant that immediately adapted a different growth form – the cells that formed the outer casing of the stems had arranged themselves to form in a thinner layer because less strength was needed to support the leaves in zero gravity. This was no divine plan or master intelligence in operation that oversaw the change, nor was the change the result of a slow progression over eons of time. The change was immediate, the adaptation an appropriate response to the change of physical circumstance. The Japanese scientists who were monitoring the experiments were astounded at the results and were literally bubbling with excitement at the discovery and its implications for our views as to the speed of adaptability and extent of changeability of carbon-based life-forms. So the point for me became – can I radically and irrevocably change to adapt to a new situation, here and now, that has SFA to do with Mr. Buddha’s times and bugger-all to do with my father’s time. Of course – it’s scientifically possible, one man has done it, a handful are actively doing it, a handful are intellectually interested and a further handful are cautiously curious – so who am ‘I’ to stand in the road! ‘I’ end up small, so mean, so utterly selfish and rotten, that to stand in the way is an impossible tenure. That was quite a loop, so I’d better get back to ‘sensate experiencing’, which was the starting point of this post. You have probably seen the new ‘180 degrees diagram’ by now, so you will have a picture to expand on the multitudinous words describing and articulating the difference between spiritual and actual. One of the many things that the spiritual path fails to address is human sexuality and sensuality. Denial of the instinctual sexual passions is rife – after all we are talking of the ‘wisdom’ of cave-men – and sublimation as the principle of celibacy is common. For the less-evolved, moralistic control, as in Tantric practices or ‘love’-making, is practiced but is considered a lesser path. Ignorance, superstition and fear are intrinsic to both normal and spiritual understanding of sex, human reproduction and sexual pleasure. When one dares to lift the lid on all this nonsense and get stuck into the whole business of human sexuality one can discover a sensate experience that is deliciously sexual – free of instinctual drives and wallowing in sensuality – free of the necessity for prudish morals and restrictive ethics. And sex is but the icing on the cake, an abundant extravagance, on top of everyday sensate experience. For an actualist, everyday sensate experiencing is sensual, luxuriant, lush, abundant, prolific, verdant, extravagant, profuse, ever present, immediate, right here and now. By the way, the Oxford Thesaurus lists only two antonyms for the word sensual – Antonyms: SPIRITUAL; ASCETIC . Need I say more? Probably not, so I’m off for a little sensual lie on the couch. So, I will add the word sensual to sensate experiencing from now on so as to make the distinction between what is actual and what is spiritual. It’s good to lay down an accurate description in words of the experience of actualism – after all, it is a totally new human experience.
PETER: It’s nice to hear from you again. You commented on something I wrote to Gary – RESPONDENT:
I can understand the first two changes you described, but I have difficulty in understanding how did you bring about the third one. When I look at my self now, I can sense a ‘self’-centredness of ‘my’ normal cerebral experience’. What I mean is that because of conscious effort of being aware of ‘my ticking’, I find myself more concerned about myself than everybody else around me and it looks a bit selfish. I think it is also a fall out of the first two changes viz, sense of autonomy and stop blaming others for my state. PETER: I can remember having the same sense of being selfish in the early stages of becoming obsessively ‘self’ aware. After a bit of sensible contemplation on the fact that my sole motive for becoming ‘self’-obsessed was to become happy and harmless I came to see that my motive, or intent, was altruistic and in no way selfish – after all, anybody who deliberately sets out on a process of ‘self’-elimination can hardly be selfish. I’ve dug out a few bits from my journal that are pertinent to what you are saying which, given they were written some years ago, are much closer to when I was involved in this issue and therefore much fresher and vital than I could write from memory –
And another piece on the non-selfish nature of actualism –
Vineeto wrote something in my Journal which is also very relevant to your question, so I will post this as well –
RESPONDENT: I will be interested to know how did you manage to replace it ‘with a rock-solid sensibleness and sensuous ‘self’-less experiencing of the actual world ‘ PETER: If you set about questioning and demolishing your spiritual beliefs and begin backing out of the spiritual world there are several things that can happen to you. Some people I know who have had a taste of actualism have backed out of the excesses of following spiritual belief and gone back to being normal in the ‘real’ world again. They have benefited from this as they are more able to cope with the ‘real’ world as they are a bit more sensible and don’t go round with their head stuck in the clouds so much. Others who have been initially attracted to actualism seem to imagine or feel that by abandoning their cherished spiritual beliefs they will only end up in cold stark reality or even in some sort of hellish realm – the traditional old dualistic thinking whereby the opposite of human morality of good being the human morality of bad, the opposite of the human created grim reality being a human created Greater Reality, the opposite of the human-imagined God being the human imagined Devil, and so on. In order to allay this fear it is vital to remember that what is on offer in actualism is the opportunity to step out of grim reality and its antidotal spiritual unreality and step into the actual world. Those who are committed actualists are those who have a memory of a pure consciousness experience as a guide or have managed to induce a PCE by their own intensive inquires into the nature of their own psyche and/or the human condition in general. This ‘self’-less experience is what I am referring to when I said ‘a rock-solid sensibleness and sensuous ‘self’-less experiencing of the actual world’. If you haven’t had this experience yet, it will come as an inevitable result of committing yourself 100% to the process of actualism – one cannot demolish one’s social programming without at some stage bringing about a temporary crashing of the whole psychic and psychic faculty leaving only a bare awareness and sensuous delight as one’s experiencing. The only proviso I would make, and it is an important one, is that it is vital to have substantially eliminated one’s dearly-held spiritual beliefs lest one ends up having an altered state of consciousness experience whereby ‘I’ claim the experience of perfection and purity as ‘mine’, resulting in totally narcissistic feelings of Godliness, divine love, omnipresence, omnipotency and the like. Some suggestion come to mind as to how to encourage the ‘replacing the fickleness and ‘self’-centredness of ‘my’ normal cerebral and emotional experiencing with a rock-solid sensibleness and sensuous ‘self’-less experiencing of the actual world we humans live in.’ PETER: One needs to start to become sensately aware of the physical marvellousness of this planet we live on – the extraordinary abundance and variety of life, the astounding things that human intelligence has fashioned solely from the matter of this planet, the ever-increasing amazing safety, comfort, leisure and pleasure that human beings should now be enjoying instead wasting their time bitching and complaining about life, arguing, competing and fighting with each other, feeling needy and greedy and being sorrowful and miserable. One needs to crank up wonder and amazement at this physical infinite and eternal universe, whilst being aware not to get into feelings of awe or gratitude. One needs to devote time for sensual contemplation, whilst being aware not to get into self-centred meditation. One needs to really take on board how utterly senseless it is to waste one’s time – meaning this very moment, the only moment you can experience being alive – by feeling miserable, bored, worried, sad, lonely, upset, annoyed, resentful, angry, God-realized, omnipotent, etc., when it has been startlingly obvious to everyone at some stage in their lives what a paradise this actual physical world really is. Actualism is about being here in this physical sensual paradise where we flesh and blood humans actually live – 180 degrees opposite to the traditional escapism of going ‘there’ to an imaginary metaphysical paradise supposedly peopled by spirits, souls, Gods, Godmen, Goddesses and the like. It takes quite some verve to dismiss all of the traditional wisdom of humanity as tried and failed, decrepit and well passed its used-by-date but a clear-eyed overview of the senseless woes of humanity, both past and present, should leave a reasonably intelligent, caring and concerned person no other option but to take the path never travelled before. There is a dare in actualism that should prove irresistible to those who feel they have nothing left to lose.
PETER: I can remember having the same sense of being selfish in the early stages of becoming obsessively ‘self’ aware. After a bit of sensible contemplation on the fact that my sole motive for becoming ‘self’-obsessed was to become happy and harmless I came to see that my motive, or intent, was altruistic and in no way selfish – after all, anybody who deliberately sets out on a process of ‘self’-elimination can hardly be selfish. RESPONDENT: I don’t find myself driven by altruism. For me the basic driving instinct seems to be greed. When I ask myself why I am interested to experiment with actualism, the answer is because I want to be happy every moment I live. This to me looks selfish. But let me clarify that I don’t think there is anything wrong about being selfish if it means being happy and harmless. PETER: Okay. But maybe if you give equal weight to the harmless part of ‘being happy and harmless’ you may well find yourself a wee bit less ‘self’-centred ... unless you fall into the traditional trap of becoming ‘Self’-centred, that is. * RESPONDENT: I am not a committed actualist in the sense that I am not asking the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’, 100% of my waking time. Yes PCE is what I am interested in. I don’t have any such experience but recently I have come very close to having ones. PETER: I find it difficult to understand how you feel you have come very close to something you have never experienced or never remembered having experienced. RESPONDENT: I can clearly see at times that it is ‘I’ which is standing in the way of perfection of the actual physical universe, but I am not able to suspend ‘myself’ even temporarily so I don’t have any full blown PCE as described by many others on this list and elsewhere. I will be interested to know if anybody else has had similar ‘close to PCE’ experiences. PETER: And I would be very interested where the ‘elsewhere’ is where people are describing ‘self’-less experiences, or PCEs, to use the actualism jargon. * RESPONDENT: I do try to take time to ‘become sensately aware of the physical marvellousness of this planet we live on’ but to me what seem to work more is contemplation on various issues like ‘what is actual’ or ‘ what makes me tick’ or ‘how the universe would look like I remove myself’ etc. PETER: I see you are using the word contemplation as in theorizing or imagining – however it is impossible to think your way to becoming free of the human condition, assuming that is what you are interested in. RESPONDENT: Nice talking to you. However I have problem in dealing with the long posts because I am not able to decide which portions to snip and the single post becomes bigger and bigger. So I request you to help me and snip the portions of your writings, which you think might not add value to future correspondence if remain in the same post. PETER: I went for one-liner replies this time – I wouldn’t want to add to your problems in dealing with long posts.
PETER: I can remember having the same sense of being selfish in the early stages of becoming obsessively ‘self’ aware. After a bit of sensible contemplation on the fact that my sole motive for becoming ‘self’-obsessed was to become happy and harmless I came to see that my motive, or intent, was altruistic and in no way selfish – after all, anybody who deliberately sets out on a process of ‘self’-elimination can hardly be selfish. RESPONDENT: I don’t find myself driven by altruism. For me the basic driving instinct seems to be greed. When I ask myself why I am interested to experiment with actualism, the answer is because I want to be happy every moment I live. This to me looks selfish. But let me clarify that I don’t think there is anything wrong about being selfish if it means being happy and harmless. PETER: Okay. But maybe if you give equal weight to the harmless part of ‘being happy and harmless’ you may well find yourself a wee bit less ‘self’-centred ... unless you fall into the traditional trap of becoming ‘Self’-centred, that is. RESPONDENT: To me it does look ‘self’-centred, because what I am working on is ‘self’. PETER: Perhaps another way of saying what I was trying to convey is that an actualist needs to become aware of the morals and ethics that one has been taught because it is these aspects that one first needs to question if one is to become genuinely harmless and therefore genuinely happy. An example of this is as you yourself said – ‘I don’t think there is anything wrong about being selfish if it means being happy and harmless’. So if you throw away any moral guilt that ‘you’ as a social identity have been instilled with, and that others will try and laden you with, then you take another step forward towards becoming more harmless and happy. This is exactly what is meant by dismantling one’s social identity so as one can at least become virtually free of malice and sorrow – an essential stepping-stone to becoming actually free of malice and sorrow. The outer layer of one’s ‘self’ needs to be peeled away first and this outer layer is made up of all the morals, ethics, beliefs, viewpoints, wisdoms, truths and psittacisms that every human being has inevitably absorbed since very early childhood. The moral of ‘thou shalt be unselfish’ by whatever cultural/religious terminology, has been implanted by one’s peers along with all the other morals as a way of trying to keep under control the brutal instinctual animal programming for self-survival, at whatever cost. Given the fact that each and every human animal body is genetically programmed for self-survival, it is this programming that ultimately gives rise to what is known as the human condition – the ‘dog-eat dog world’ of 6 billion humans living on a planet of cornucopian abundance, all the while going ‘me’ first because ‘my’ survival is essential. Each and every human being is genetically programmed, through no fault of their own, to be utterly ‘self’-centred. When push really comes to shove, any moral teaching of ‘be unselfish’ flies out the window and humans instinctually revert to animal mode, hence all the malice in the world – all the wars, rapes, murders, tortures, child abuse, corruption, rage, anger, frustration, aggravation, resentment, etc. – and all the sorrow – all the suicides, desolation, despair, depression, sadness, empathy, etc. The only way out of this mess is to get out of this mess – and the way to get out of the mess is to get rid of the social and animal ‘self’ that is the real cause of all human malice and sorrow. To do this one first needs to be very sure that this is what you want to do with your life. If so, you make becoming happy and harmless the most important thing in your life. By making becoming happy and harmless the most important thing in your life, you then can’t help but become aware when you are not happy or when you are blaming someone else or something else for your unhappiness – in other words, you start to become more and more aware of how you are experiencing this moment of being alive. You start to become aware of all of the little things that stand in the way of your being happy and
harmless. You start to see that everybody believes that ‘life’s is a bitch’, that ‘suffering is good for you’ or that ‘life is fundamentally disappointment and suffering’. And this do-it-yourself process of becoming free of the human condition starts with peeling away the outer layer of one’s social programming – in this case the issue we are talking about is the universal and unliveable moral teaching of unselfishness. This conversation reminds me of one I had with Gary some time ago on the topic of intelligence where we nutted around the issue for a while so as to make sense of it. We questioned the commonly-accepted views, attitudes and beliefs that give rise to human beings lauding and cherishing the feelings that arise from the animal instinctual survival passions while simultaneously denigrating and scorning the very human-only intelligence that is the physical universe itself in action. For an actualist it is vital that all of the ancient ‘tried and failed’ morals, ethics, wisdoms and beliefs be questioned, exposed for what they are, and then be discarded if one is to become free of the human condition of malice and sorrow. These type of conversations are the very stuff of actualism – becoming aware of, investigating and making sense of the failures of the past efforts of humanity to bring an end to malice and sorrow and becoming aware of, investigating and making sense of how one can become genuinely happy and harmless. We are doing the process of actualism, right here and right now on this mailing list. RESPONDENT: I fail to see any big impact on the world as a whole as I become happy and harmless. PETER: An excellent observation in itself. What is often overlooked is that the traditional search for freedom goes hand-in-glove with a desire to have an impact on the world, to change the world, to become a Guru, to become a world Teacher, etc. I went through exactly this stage on the way to becoming virtually free of malice and sorrow and I wrote about it in my journal. By going through this stage and having these deep-seated emotions, I came to understand experientially that the lust for power over others and one’s own narcissistic cravings are very powerful urges that arise from the self-survival instincts. I found it interesting that I had to pass through this stage and leave it behind, as it were, despite the fact that I had thought I had given up spiritualism, but then again it was only by giving up my spiritual beliefs that I was able to clearly understand and experience the fundamental tender and savage instinctual passions that give rise to the ancient spiritual belief in good and evil spirits. On the traditional paths to spiritual freedom, the lust for power over others and one’s own narcissistic cravings can bring on altered states of consciousness whereby the ‘self’-centred victim becomes so deluded as to imagine themselves to be a Self, the Saviour of mankind, God-on-earth, the Maitreya, the Master of Masters, God’s chosen messenger, or whatever other name. I won’t elaborate on this subject here but there is more on this aspect in my Journal in the God chapter which you may well find useful. Also, I found No 28’s comments to No 30 on the subject of Messiahs to be spot-on –
RESPONDENT: And no, I have nothing to do with becoming ‘Self’-centred. Two years of being with actualist list and actualism reading have taken away any traces of God (by whatever name) if there were any left. PETER: Once you manage to pull the plug on God, by whatever name, you can start to do something about changing yourself. Then you can start to become aware of all of the religious/spiritual beliefs, morals and platitudes that pass for wisdom or truths and you will be able to sensibly question their veracity without upholding them as being too holy or sacrosanct to question. You are then free enough to question whether such morals as ‘thou shalt be unselfish’ are silly or sensible and whether they work or not. Good hey. * PETER: I shall leave it at that as I do appreciate that I do post fairly long posts to the list. Personally, I find going at issues from different directions and understanding different aspects of a problem to be essential as it is only by such an in-depth exploration that I was then able to separate fact from belief and get a clear perspective or overview of the . Often this involves tracking the same territory again and again, something I did with the help of Richard and Vineeto over countless hours of discussion. Actualism is, after all, brand new in human history and to be an actualist does involve breaking free of all of humanity’s cherished and revered Wisdom – no little task. While all of what needs to be said about how to become free of the human condition is already on the Actual Freedom Trust website, this forum allows anyone, anywhere in the world, the opportunity to join in on a live unfettered discussion between living people as to the whys and hows of actualism ... which is why I do tend to rave on a bit when a juicy topic is raised. So I’ll rope this in for now and finish replying to the rest of your post in a part two ...
RESPONDENT: I am not a committed actualist in the sense that I am not asking the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’, 100% of my waking time. Yes PCE is what I am interested in. I don’t have any such experience but recently I have come very close to having ones. PETER: I find it difficult to understand how you feel that you have come very close to something you have never experienced or never remembered having experienced. RESPONDENT: It is based on the description of others. In other words, I see closeness in what I experience and the description given by others. PETER: And only you can be your own judge of that, which is as it should be. RESPONDENT: To elaborate further, for example, at certain times it makes more sense to me what other might be meaning by 360-degree awareness. PETER: For me this 360-degrees awareness that results from actualism has two salient aspects. The first is that in the process of actualism a heightened 360-degree sensate awareness increasingly emerges as a sensual enjoyment of this physical paradisiacal planet and this happens serendipitously as malice, sorrow and resentment disappears from one’s life. As this happens one only needs to be wary of being seduced by feelings of beauty, awe, gratitude and narcissism that give rise to delusions of Grandeur. The second aspect is of equal importance and that is a 360-degree awareness that becomes inclusive of and considerate of one’s fellow human beings as opposed to the normal ‘self’-centred awareness that is instinctually exclusive and is the basis of feelings of greed, suspicion, fear, blame and animosity. As this happens one only needs to be wary of being seduced by feelings of love, compassion, saviourhood, and narcissism that give rise to the fantasy of Oneness. However none of what I describe comes without effort. It takes compulsive effort and obsessive enthusiasm to eliminate all of the social and instinctual programming that conspires to prevent a bare 360-degrees awareness from being possible. It’s a tough business to abandon all one holds dear and start to stand on one’s own two feet. * RESPONDENT: I can clearly see at times that it is ‘I’ which is standing in the way of perfection of the actual physical universe, but I am not able to suspend ‘myself’ even temporarily so I don’t have any full blown PCE as described by many others on this list and elsewhere. I will be interested to know if anybody else has had similar ‘close to PCE’ experiences. PETER: And I would be very interested where the ‘elsewhere’ is where people are describing ‘self’-less experiences, or PCEs, to use the actualism jargon. RESPONDENT: For me it would take some time to find it out over the internet, but for you, wouldn’t it be easier, just to ask Richard, referring to the following piece of correspondence:
PETER: The only reason I asked was to ascertain whether you where talking of the common-and-garden altered state of consciousness experiences of ‘God and I are best mates’ or ‘I am God’ that are par for the course on the spiritual path and which receive great airplay ‘elsewhere’ ... or whether you were talking about pure consciousness experiences. Given that you have said in the past on this list –
– I am curious as to your current description of a ‘close to PCE’ experiences’. Granted several years have passed since this post but it is only by understanding, and being observant to, the particular characteristics of other-than-normal experiences that can you make a clear distinction between impassioned spiritual experiences and direct experiences of actuality. An altered state of consciousness such as epiphany, Satori and the like are delusionary states whereby ‘I’ think myself as aggrandized and feel myself to be Real to the extent that ‘I’ know the Truth and feel the physical world to be dream-like and illusionary. On the other hand, a pure consciousness experience is diametrically opposite in that, for a brief period, there is neither an ‘I’ as a thinker nor a ‘me’ as a feeler extant and there is a sensate-only experience of actuality. * RESPONDENT: I do try to take time to ‘become sensately aware of the physical marvellousness of this planet we live on’ but to me what seem to work more is contemplation on various issues like ‘what is actual’ or ‘ what makes me tick’ or ‘how the universe would look like I remove myself’ etc. PETER: I see you are using the word contemplation as in theorizing or imagining – however it is impossible to think your way to becoming free of the human condition, assuming that is what you are interested in. RESPONDENT: While there might be a bit of imagining involved in this activity, what I am doing is largely contemplation as in ‘ The action of thinking about or pondering over a thing continuously; musing. The action of viewing as a possibility or as a purpose; taking into account; prospect, intention’ . When I am contemplating on ‘ how the universe would look like (if) I remove myself’ , I am not imagining the universe without me. I am pondering over what it means and viewing it as a possibility and taking into account the effects of it. PETER: The universe, being infinite and eternal, has always been, is now, and always will be, unaffected by your presence either as an entity or as a flesh and blood body. The universe, being infinite and eternal has no outside to it and it is therefore peerless. The universe, being peerless, is nothing other than utterly perfect. And, contrary to ancient fear-driven belief, the universe is not populated by good and evil spirit beings and as such it is benign and unsullied – utterly pure. * RESPONDENT: Yes I am interested in becoming free of human condition and I cannot help but do it ‘my’ way. PETER: Why? Once I realized ‘I’ was in no way unique and in no way an individual it was easy for me to give up ‘my’ pride, prejudices and preconditions and follow someone else who had become free of the human condition and do it his way. There was a slight variation to Richard’s way in that I avoided becoming Enlightened on the path – as I was well forewarned by Richard – but the way or method I used was identical to Richards. Everybody is socially conditioned and programmed and there is very little essential difference in this programming as there is little essential difference between the various human tribal cultures, their religions, beliefs, morals and ethics. The instinctual passions are also universal and common-to-all – there is no difference between German anger or Indian anger or Australian anger nor is there in any difference between French sadness, Chinese sadness or Lithuanian sadness. Once I understood the fact that no one is unique or special in that everybody is entrapped within the same human condition, I was then able to gaily abandon doing things ‘my’ way and get on with being sensible. I gave up doing what didn’t work to make me happy or harmless and I started to become really curious about actualism and how to become free of the human condition in toto. Besides trying to ‘be’ an individual and ‘be’ unique is such an effort that it was a tangible relief to head off down the path to becoming an anonymous ‘nobody’ – a non-identity. RESPONDENT: I understand that actuality is different than what I understand it to be, but as I don’t have any first hand experience of it, I can’t do better than just making intellectual sense of it. PETER: Why do you believe this, if I may ask? As long as you have ‘first hand experience’ of being sad and malicious you always have an opportunity to begin investigating the human condition in operation as your ‘self’. This is the only way to move forward because your understanding of actualism will go from intellectual curiosity to direct experimentation through trial and error and on to intrigue and fascination. This is a step above making intellectual sense of actualism as you then start the process of becoming incrementally free of the human condition and as you start to become free you will inevitably facilitate the onset of a pure consciousness experience of actuality. You will then have your own experience of the delight and purity of ‘self’-less living under your belt, as it where, to act as a your own touchstone and guide for your further investigations ... and then you can really start to stand on your own two feet and become autonomous for the first time in your life. While this is only a suggestion it is founded upon the experience of all that I know of who have assiduously practiced the actualism method so far. If you can’t remember a PCE there is a way to induce one but it does require compulsive effort and obsessive enthusiasm, both of which are contrary to all spiritual teachings.
RESPONDENT: Yes I am interested in becoming free of human condition and I cannot help but do it ‘my’ way. PETER: Why? Once I realized ‘I’ was in no way unique and in no way an individual it was easy for me to give up ‘my’ pride, prejudices and preconditions and follow someone else who had become free of the human condition and do it his way. There was a slight variation to Richard’s way in that I avoided becoming Enlightened on the path – as I was well forewarned by Richard – but the way or method I used was identical to Richards. Everybody is socially conditioned and programmed and there is very little essential difference in this programming as there is little essential difference between the various human tribal cultures, their religions, beliefs, morals and ethics. The instinctual passions are also universal and common-to-all – there is no difference between German anger or Indian anger or Australian anger nor is there in any difference between French sadness, Chinese sadness or Lithuanian sadness. Once I understood the fact that no one is unique or special in that everybody is entrapped within the same human condition, I was then able to gaily abandon doing things ‘my’ way and get on with being sensible. I gave up doing what didn’t work to make me happy or harmless and I started to become really curious about actualism and how to become free of the human condition in toto. Besides, trying to ‘be’ an individual and ‘be’ unique is such an effort that it was a tangible relief to head off down the path to becoming an anonymous ‘nobody’ – a non-identity. RESPONDENT: This is a very useful insight Peter. I thought about it after reading your mail and found that I indeed believe that I am unique. As I contemplate further I can see that ‘my uniqueness’ is just a belief and I need to work on it. I would welcome if you have your experience to share on how you tackled it. PETER: It took me a while to consider how to reply to your question, as my initial response was that I have already written enough about my personal experiences. The reason I wrote my journal was to relate to others my own experiences with the inherent failures of pursuing happiness via materialism and spiritualism and to document the intrinsic successes of being a practicing actualist. I have also fleshed out many of these experiences and expertise in my writings and responses to correspondents since then. Another reason for my reluctance is that I have no wish to dominate this list – contrary to the belief of some, this mailing list is not the Richard, Peter and Vineeto show. This list has been set up as an uncensored forum to discuss how to become free of the human condition and, as such, it is open to anyone and everyone to openly share their experiences with materialism, spiritualism and actualism. I always assumed that anyone subscribing to this list would have been attracted by the fact that actualism offers an alternative to both materialism and spiritualism. However, we do seem to have attracted a few spiritual cyber-teachers looking for a flock or at least a soapbox and others who seem intent only on defending their spiritual beliefs. What I have found telling over the past four years of correspondence is the number of people who eagerly proffer and stubbornly defend their borrowed-from-others beliefs, concepts, viewpoints, theories and psittacisms but that none have been are able to offer factual evidence or lived experiences that in any way supports their stance. Many, many people have written to Richard about altered state of consciousness experiences, blithely telling him their ideas and beliefs about something he lived as an ongoing experience for 11 years. Consequently Richard doesn’t believe Enlightenment is a massive delusion – he knows it by personal lived experience corroborated by the documented teachings of many other similarly afflicted humans believing themselves to be ‘supernatural beings’. Similarly, many people have corresponded with Vineeto and I about the merits of following the spiritual path whilst we both have lived it as an ongoing experience for 17 years. Consequently I don’t need to believe that spiritualism doesn’t work – I know it by personal lived experience corroborated by the documented evidence of a long and legendary historical record of abysmal failure. I didn’t sit on the fence or paddle around the edges of the spiritual world – I turned my back on the real world, I renounced materialism and literally wore the orange robes of a sannyasin in the Eastern religious tradition. I have lived in spiritual communes and experienced their failures and I have met several of the God-men personally and have seen for myself their lust for power, reverence and adulation in action. I have been a paid-up passionate believer in several spiritual groups and know the feelings of exclusivity and superiority that inevitably breeds competitiveness and antagonism towards other believers in other religious groups. I know by experience that embracing any spiritual or religious belief does not bring peace and harmony – au contraire, it can only breed yet more conflict and resentment because all spiritual and religious seeking is in fact fuelled by the narcissistic drive that is inbuilt in the ‘self’-centred survival passions. While this aspect of discussions about spiritual belief and imagination vs. fact and lived experience has been interesting, what fascinates me is that, to date, there has been little discussion about materialism per se. I recently watched one of those typical film documentaries made specifically to promote the Goodness and virtues of primitivism, animism, and spiritualism whilst blatantly blaming all the evils of the world on the vices of modernism, technological progress and materialism. The thrust of the program was breathtaking in both for its patent disregard for facts which resulted in a deliberate distortion of actuality and for the hypocrisy of the film-makers who obviously didn’t live what they preached else they would have been struggling to survive, wearing loin cloths, living in mud huts and telling their story by drawing lines in the dust. In the TV program herbalism, shamanism, witchcraft and spirit-healing were praised and lauded whilst modern medicine was roundly condemned and vilified – despite the fact that the doubling of the average human lifespan in the last century has coincided with spectacular advances in pharmacology, immunology, obstetrics, surgery and systemized co-ordinated health care. Tribalism, isolationism, ethnicity and traditionalism were proposed as the New Way forward whilst globalisation, co-operation, harmonization and innovation were seen as crippling and restrictive – despite the fact of the spectacular advances in safety, comfort, leisure and pleasure that are available to an increasing proportion of the world’s population most particularly in the last century. I won’t go on but you will have got my gist by now. If one has only two choices – grim reality and mortality or the fantasy of a Greater Reality and immortality for one’s soul, then believers in a Greater Reality are loath to let a few facts get in the way of their dearly-held spiritual beliefs or their cherished heart-felt spiritual experiences. There is so much thoughtless blame, prejudice and disinformation propagandised by spiritualists that it is no wonder that spiritual believers don’t want to actually be here on this physical planet at all. Given the recent comments on isms on this list I am tempted to label the belief that ‘life’s is a bitch and then you die’ as Miserablism and its proponents as miserabilists. However, if you have had sufficient life experience and common sense to question the follies of the beliefs and passions that underpin this dualistic view of a grim reality or the fantasy of a Greater Reality that is imposed by one’s own social conditioning and instinctual programming on the actuality of the physical universe ... then it is never too late to start the business of becoming free of these beliefs and passions. * As I said, a great deal has been written on this mailing list and documented on The Actual Freedom Trust website about the puerile myths and fairy tales that form the basis of all spirit-ual belief and ancient flat-earth wisdom but less has been written so far about the beliefs, morals and ethics which advocate that the pursuit of materialism can bring one peace and happiness. I remember when Mohan Rajneesh died and many of his followers began to drift away, I was surprised at how many then abandoned their search for freedom and simply drifted back into materialism. It soon became apparent that many were merely ‘dedicated followers of fashion’ and not sincere searchers for freedom and that many had not really experienced or thought about the failings of materialism before leaping on the mindless Eastern spiritual bandwagon. Nowadays many so-called spiritual seekers have a-foot-in-each-world approach – they have become once-a-week spiritualists and six-day-a week materialists. Somehow they still think that more money means more happiness, having more possessions provides security and power, cultivating family, relationships and friendships offers sanctuary and succour, having children imparts meaning, fulfilment and a sense of immortality, and that being ‘me’ and doing things ‘my’ way will satiate their instinctual urge for narcissism and power over others. When I began to experience the failures and duplicity of Eastern spiritualism from the inside, I came to understand that it is nothing other than Eastern religion, albeit cleverly packaged and presented by a few savvy Indian God-men to a gullible western audience eager for an alternative to materialism. I then understood I was not at all unique – I was simply one of a gullible many and there have been billions of followers of Eastern religion over the millennia. However, there was no question of my turning back to materialism because I had had sufficient life experience to know it offered neither peace nor happiness and this was one of the reasons I was willing and eager to try something new – actualism. This life experience of the failures of materialism was also why I wrote my journal as I did – as a total life experience which says as much about materialism as it does about spiritualism ... for the keen and observant reader, that is. So maybe you can understand my hesitancy in tracking over territory I may have already tracked over before in my journal but I will just add a bit on the topic of being unique. It was pretty obvious to me by the age of about 30 that the measures of uniqueness in the real world were fame, power and narcissism and it was a shock to later discover that the measures of Uniqueness in the spiritual world were exactly identical – Fame, Power and Narcissism. Since becoming a practicing actualist I have now come to both understand and experience the uniqueness of being happy and harmless – of being free of the human condition of malice and sorrow. It is utterly unique to be amongst the first to be free of the illusion of a run-of-the-mill grim reality as well as to be free from the common and garden delusion that there is a Greater Reality. If you want to be genuinely unique, as in free and autonomous, it behoves one to discover ‘what’ one is by doing all one can to dispose of the social and instinctive identity that one’s peers and blind nature have superimposed upon you as a distinctive flesh and blood body. * Well, it was quite a rave again but I wanted to write a bit about these topics as it may be useful in broadening the scope of discussion on the list from a defence of spiritualism to a more comprehensive and wide-ranging discussion about the human condition we all find ourselves born into – for no fault of ours or anyone else for that matter. Or to put it plainly, maybe its time to look at the beliefs that contribute to the generally agreed view that ‘life’s a bitch and then you die’.
RESPONDENT: It has been quite revealing, thinking about my belief in my uniqueness. Once I recognize and acknowledge that I am not unique, large part of me becomes weak to defend. It also makes me more ruthless in dealing with my feelings and emotions. I remember now the following correspondence with Richard three years ago. At that time I did not realise his last sentence was so meaningful:
It is indeed a good news. Once I realise that ‘It is the human condition that is to blame ... not the flesh and blood body called No 4’, it makes life much simpler and it is much easier to investigate and remove other beliefs. It looks like that ‘being unique’ is the mother of all beliefs. It has been helpful discussing these things with you. PETER: I have been able to spend many hours discussing such things with both Richard and Vineeto and it is wonderful that this mailing list now allows the opportunity to broaden such discussions into an open to anyone forum. Much of what is being discussed is very difficult to take on board at first reading and it may need several readings and a lot of contemplating before the penny drops – the ‘uh hu, that’s what he or she meant’ bit. First comes the understanding of the fact and then comes the acknowledgement and experiential understanding of the fact and then action ensues. When I read your exchange with Richard, I thought to myself that he had described the fact of the matter so succinctly – ‘It is the human condition that is to blame ... not the flesh and blood body called No 4’. Recognizing and acknowledging this fact means you are instantly able to throw guilt, blame, denial, objection and avoidance out of the window and get on with the job that is always at hand – being happy and being harmless. I also noted with amusement that I had recently used almost identical terms to describe the universal, common to everyone, nature of affective feelings. Richard’s description – ‘There is no difference between English anger ...’ – was so straightforward that it has stuck in my head as it were. No wonder people accuse me of being a clone – I use similar words and very often the same words to describe the same facts. Then, out of interest, I went searching for the past conversations I have had with you on the list and found the following. I thought it interesting because the topic relates to the three possible ways of experiencing the world that is a currently being discussed on the list.
And here you are now saying –
Once it sinks in that you are not unique you start to see that you just been infected with the human condition via social conditioning and genetic propensity. Then you start to become a student of the human condition – you make an experiential study of feelings and emotions as they come up, you take a good look at all of Humanity’s ancient beliefs and wisdoms, you also look at Humanity’s ideals, values, morals and ethics in terms of ‘are they silly or sensible and do they work in practical terms’. You start off by being interested in the human condition, then you find yourself becoming curious, then a fascination grows which can eventually become an obsession. Soon you find this curiosity about the human condition runs almost constantly in the background as a sensual attentiveness and an investigative awareness – a wordless ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?
Peter’s & Richard’s Text ©The
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