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Peter’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List with Correspondent No 12
Hi No 12, RESPONDENT to No 23: I have already offered a forth way before you came along I recall and it was not accepted as the place to be seen now and most of the actualizies chose instead to remain at level 3 of the actual. And now you claim to be the inventor of level 4 for yourself. Well I say it is too late. PETER: And to think that actualfreedom.com will be the very first amongst many, many websites offering alternative short-cut effortless paths to feeling one’s self to be free from the human condition. Soon there will be countless Actual gurus all claiming to have seen the light, seen the flaws in actualism and found a new way. Before long people will be reading Actual auras, conducting Actual groups, doing Actual Tantra and Actual meditation and practicing Actual no-methods. It’s good you got in on the ground floor of what will soon be a very crowded market.
PETER to No 8: I know agent provocateurs never answer questions for fear of divulging their secrets, but for the sake of your credibility on this list – so as not to be seen as hypocritical – I ask you to declare your hand. The question is – is being an avowed agent provocateur RESPONDENT No 8: What a load of projected bullshit. Everything you say below is your own behaviour, your own scurrying for cover when myself, No 22 and No 12 have questioned you! So why should I cough up when you’re not willing to reciprocate! When you can finish the dialog that you so pettily (and with the usual lack of thought) entitled ‘No 22’s 17 words’, and answer the pertinent questions he put to you before you whimped out feigning computer problems (though you had access to two others) and then returned with some asinine excuse that you couldn’t continue what had degenerated in a tit for tat – a behaviour which BTW you were the only one contributing to – then and only then will I gladly answer any question you wish. RESPONDENT: Are you provocatively not answering questions or is it because you cannot see the question mark? Hi agent Peter. Could you answer this very question – as has already been presented to you in similar fashion on a number of occasions without a clear answer provided by you – as terminated by a question mark, without any reference to the state of mind of the asker of the question? PETER: As far as I am aware I have never been asked this very question before, or even one presented in a similar fashion. Perhaps you could refresh my memory and point out where I have failed to answer this question on a number of occasions?
RESPONDENT: I notice that when you are angry and in pain you do not write so much. Why is that? PETER: I don’t think you knew me back when I was angry and in pain and I can’t remember meeting you in my Sannyas days. The first thing of substance I ever wrote was my Journal – I had always had low marks in English at school and failed my final exams in English. I was never a great reader and was never a letter writer and I rely totally on this word processing program for my spelling and the Oxford Dictionary for the accurate meaning of various words. Since discovering actualism, the words have seemed to flow for two reasons. Writing has been a significant part of my own process of making sense of the human condition – to free the intelligence of this flesh and blood body of the crippling effects of the instinctual affectations. The other reason is altruistic – there well may be another Peter, or another Vineeto, who is vitally interested in finding peace on earth, in this lifetime. My output is usually related to the amount of posts I receive, as I always aim to respond in detail to everyone who writes to me who has a sincere interest in actualism – which is why my replies to your cult-busting posts tend to be sporadic. Writing is a pleasure for me, one of many pleasures in these delight filled days. Sometimes I don’t write for a week or two or sometimes another project takes my fancy for a while. These days I do things largely by whim – it’s a matter of which particular pleasure entices me from the pleasure of laying on the couch, doing nothing really well.
RESPONDENT: P.S I see you are finding the truth about yourself painful indeed Peter? I sometimes see or imagine or suspect the same. That the offer we are presenting to Peter right now is causing pain in him. I want to make it clear Peter that should you wish to sit again at the table with me as a common human being we can discuss things in a softer tone. I am ready and able to do that. In fact if you recall my very first email to you (on the Sannyas list) was words to the effect – ‘I like you; can we hang out and play together’. And you wrote back words to the effect – ‘No 12 – I am above you; I have written a website about actualism and first before hanging out with me you will have to read it all and become an actualist like me’. And I did not want to do that Peter did I? I wanted to have fun with you on the Sannyas list because yours was the most independent thinking to come along for a long time. And what I felt (I HAVE A RIGHT TO FEEL PETER!!) was: at last somebody I can play with without them wimpin out and falling over. And I was wrong. PETER: Just to set the record straight, you never wrote to me on the Sannyas mailing list, I wrote this post to you on this list –
You then wrote to me privately, not on the Sannyas list, and this was my reply to your post –
We never did have a conversation on the Sannyas list – as soon as I wrote to the list, you shifted it to private turf. The rest of your allegation in this post is equally imaginary – RESPONDENT: And you wrote back words to the effect – ‘No 12 – I am above you; I have written a website about actualism and first before hanging out with me you will have to read it all and become an actualist like me’. And I did not want to do that Peter did I? I wanted to have fun with you on the Sannyas list because yours was the most independent thinking to come along for a long time. And what I felt (I HAVE A RIGHT TO FEEL PETER!!) was: at last somebody I can play with without them wimping out and falling over. And I was wrong. PETER: Firstly, to set the record straight. You wanted to ‘play with’ me because you thought I was ‘stirring the possum’ on the Sannyas list whereas you missed the fact that the sole reason I was writing on the list was to offer an alternative to spirituality – actualism. Your interest in me was as an anti-spiritualist, and not as a clear thinking actualist. Your aversion to actualism is well documented over the ensuing years. Now the relevant question is why I would bother to write to you in order to set the record straight, and for the second time as we have been down this alley before? Why would I want to put the facts of the matter on the table, yet again? The only reason I put the facts on the table is that it is only when human beings are prepared to acknowledge the facts rather than cling to their beliefs, ‘gut’ feelings, intuitions, imaginations and viewpoints that peace can be possible between human beings. It was only by ‘my’ acknowledging the fact of ‘my’ being wrong in my past relationships that I was able to investigate all of the expectations, demands, moods, jealousies, etc., that prevented me from living with one other fellow human being in peace and harmony. It was always the acknowledgement of the fact that was the first stage of beginning to investigate ‘my’ social conditioning and ‘my’ instinctual passions. To acknowledge a fact was to open a crack in the door, which invariably lead to a glimpse of actuality. Many people who read Richard’s correspondence to objectors only see an endless tit-for-tat dialogue, while missing the main event – his intent to perhaps twig the other to see the fact of what is being discussed rather than desperately cling to their beliefs, trot out the usual hackneyed pious morals and unliveable ethics, air their views, defend their viewpoints, parrot the wisdom of others or simply become belligerent. You may not have noticed, but this is the same modus operandi I have in responding to any correspondents – to simply present the facts of what it is to be a human being on this paradisiacal planet. RESPONDENT: Peter; you are a man. I am a man. That is that is that is that. All else is mind games Peter. And you and I are both pretty good at that; and I am ready to say ‘hi; I am No 12’ and really, Peter, you have no choice in the end but to say ‘hi, pleased to meet you, I am Peter’ and then we can compare notes about how we find this fascinating experience of being alive on this planet. But if you tell me once again as you have over these years (documented amply by yourself, thank you) that your way is THE ONLY WAY!!! and that everybody else is a spiritualist or a normal and that I SHOULD TURN to go in the direction you have chosen for a life choice or else I am guilty of all the rape and sorrow on earth then ... we start again at square one. Ok? PETER: I am not telling you that you should turn and go in the direction I have chosen, I am telling you that if you want to become free of the real world and the spiritual world, there is an actual world of perfection, purity and sensual delight available – should you want it. Nobody can make you do anything you don’t want to do, least of all me. Surely it must be obvious that every time you write a post to me you are sending it to The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List. I am not going out of my way to tell you what to do – it is you who are going out of your way to tell me I am wrong. The only reason I reply to your posts is to present the facts of what it is to be a human being, as opposed to the common beliefs and normal passions that would have human existence as either a grim reality or a spiritual greater-Reality. The reason I keep presenting these facts is that maybe one day you may ask yourself the question – what if Richard, Peter and Vineeto are genuine? Back to square one ... what if? You also said at the start of your post – RESPONDENT: I want to make it clear Peter, that should you wish to sit again at the table with me as a common human being we can discuss things in a softer tone. PETER: We can also discuss things in a softer tone on this list – why wait? But to set the record straight, I am not a common human being – I suffer from neither malice nor sorrow and I suffer from neither feeling inferior nor feeling superior. If you want to talk as fellow human beings then that is an all together different matter – that is precisely what this list is all about. I would welcome a move to square two ...
PETER: To set the record straight again – And to think that actualfreedom.com will be the very first amongst many, many websites offering alternative short-cut effortless paths to feeling one’s self to be free from the human condition. Soon there will be countless Actual gurus all claiming to have seen the light, seen the flaws in actualism and found a new way. Before long people will be reading Actual auras, conducting Actual groups, doing Actual Tantra and Actual meditation and practicing Actual no-methods. It’s good you got in on the ground floor of what will soon be a very crowded market. RESPONDENT: I assume you made a typo above considering it is actualfreedom.com.au that rightfully has lain claim to offering the insights of actualism gurus. and then having said that are you working around to proposing that i need to arrange franchising details with your good selfs? Is actualism trademarked by the way? And yes actual Tantra and actual meditation and actual xtyyu free folk from the human condition admirably in comparison to actual wordplay as promoted by the Originator and Adopter Consortium in Byron. PETER: No typo No 12. It is you who have the ‘alternative’ actualfreedom.com web-site and it is you who proposed offering what every other path offers –
RESPONDENT: The remaining fact to be made apparent is that you do not read well. It is simple really; my cult-busting activities (as you choose to label them) are in essence my repeating over and over (following the urge to do so) ... please read what I wrote again and this time open your eyes before you read. Or if you follow your urge to write without first opening your eyes please do not claim that I had anything to do with your writing. PETER: I did not choose to label your activity on this list as cult-busting. You did so yourself in a post to this list entitled ‘cult-busting’ .
PETER: I am just clearing my in-tray and thought I would combine your latest objections into one post for convenience. * PETER: I know agent provocateurs never answer questions for fear of divulging their secrets, but
for the sake of your credibility on this list – so as not to be seen as hypocritical – I ask you to declare your hand. RESPONDENT: Peter you are seriously suggesting that we should believe it when you claim that your motivation for suggesting that No. 8 answer your question was to assist the credibility of No. 8? You are really believing that we will imagine you have a good intent like that; that you feel for No. 8 that it would be good for her if she was perceived by the list as more credible and you the good Samaritan are going to help her with that? Come off it. Get off your high horse... It has broken legs anyway and is about to self-immobolate leaving you high and dry in the air levitating like a maharishi devotee which probably you will be next anyway once Prof Richard gets his brain scan and it is shown once and for all that he is not the god-man that he presents himself as. And then you will need a new daddy figure huh? PETER: This is not the first time No 8 has played the role of agent provocateur on this list but the last time his/her appearance was somewhat smoother than the recent showing. The reason I asked No 8
was that this latest show was getting far too obvious in intent and seemed to lack the subtlety of the last visit. The first time round the tone began in a very civil manner –
But when the bait was taken –
Given that No 8 is a renowned player of the games perhaps you can now see the direct and simple nature of my question.
It was an attempt to elicit a sincere conversation with a fellow human being but I got no answer to my question and he/she has since moved on to other fishing grounds. RESPONDENT: Are you so stuck in your explorations of yourself that you have not noticed that other people can actually discern for themselves also? PETER: Speaking personally, it was only after I ceased believing what I was taught to believe that was I capable of beginning to discern for myself. I then stopped discerning things as good or bad and started to judge things as silly or sensible. Then I was able to see how ‘my’ feelings and passions crippled my ability to discern clearly without the usual ‘self’-centredness that dominates human perception, understanding and communication. RESPONDENT: Do you really think that in stating that your motivation is altruistic towards [No. 8] your readers are sitting there going ‘yeah, that must be true wot Pete says ‘cos he is an actualist and virtually free and I am just a spiritualist’. PETER: I never said my motivation was altruistic – that is how you have discerned what I said. RESPONDENT: I think you lost the plot, friend. ALL the people on the list are laughing at you mate. PETER: Maybe we could find some agreement in your previous sentence ‘that other people can actually discern for themselves also’. * PETER: For your next objections we dip back into history from the Sannyas List –
RESPONDENT: Phew. You claim no assumptions about my state of mind and only a sentence before you had somehow moved from me referring to ‘elsewhere, else-time’ to your ‘I take it you are talking about ... next lifetime’ and then the next sentence you call black white with ‘I make no assumptions’. PETER: As this was my first post to you on the Sannyas mailing list, I was trying to find a way of engaging in a conversation with you on the list. It didn’t work because you then chose to reply to me privately in a style that gives a hint of what was to come over the ensuing years.
... And the conversation has gone downhill ever since. * PETER: And finally to clear the air of another of your asides, given that the barb equally relates to me –
If it is true nowadays, was it true at the time you arrived on the Sannyas list unasked? I won’t bother posting my first post to the Sannyas list but it was an open mailing list, I was up
front in my agenda from the start, I always suggested not reading and/or deleting if anyone was offended and the list eventually exercised their
right of cyber-executing us. See I also find your current position somewhat curious given you were appreciative of our writing on the list at the time, although you missed the point of why we wrote and what we were writing about –
It may not have come to your notice but this very mailing list is specifically set up to discuss and investigate the human condition in toto and you have deliberately subscribed to it seemingly in order that you can then feel offended about what is being said, who is saying it and how it is being said.
RESPONDENT: Thanks to both of you for your correspondence; I will reply when the Great and Actual Spirit Moves me to do so. I am constantly amazed how much effort you put into the education of me; who must be for sure your most difficult potential convert to The Church of actualism. Most gurus would have given up by now. Please persist; I am sure your efforts will be rewarded in actualist heaven. PETER: Back to that very old fall-back position – declaring that I am proselytising. I first came across this objection on the Sannyas list several years ago now. It stopped me in my tracks for a minute or two until I reviewed the facts of the situation. Firstly those who were presenting the objection followed a spiritual teacher who proselytised ancient Eastern religious faiths. Many had spent hours at a time sitting and listening to his Eastern religious teachings and many even made a living from teaching Eastern religion and philosophy to others, thereby further spreading the ‘good word’. Most often their postings to the list were littered with religious/spiritual morals, ethics, sayings and direct quotes from either their own teacher or from LDGs. (long dead gurus). Very few wrote from their own experience, or if they did, it was with such coyness and couched in such obscure terms as to be almost meaningless. As such, nothing said was original, unique, personal or non-party line – most was a hackneyed regurgitation of the proselytising of countless priests, gurus, teachers, sages, shaman, Masters, Rinpoches, and the like. And yet, despite all of these clear signs of religiosity, the worst criticism that many could level at what I was saying was that I was proselytising a religious teaching – a barb supposedly aimed at silencing me. The other aspect of this barb was that I wrote enthusiastically and copiously about actual freedom whereas supposedly I was meant to be apologetic, meek and mild and extremely brief ... to the point of disappearing off the list as soon as possible. And to rope in your fantasy a wee bit more – I am not corresponding with you privately but I am writing on The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List. As such, my efforts in replying to your posts are not aimed at your ‘education’– I can readily recognize a defunct palfrey – but to take the opportunity of candidly answering your objections to being happy and harmless in an open forum.
PETER: Just a comment on something you wrote to Richard – RESPONDENT: Ok; thank you; I will pass it by my B.S. filter a few times; the initial scan suggested edibility; and ... as they say... I will sleep on it. PETER: You may well find that you are operating the old obsolete model of B.S. filter that was developed several millennia ago by the priests and shamans. That particular model only works by scanning for B.S. externally and not internally and the end result of using it over a prolonged period of time is that one ends up believing that everyone else is emanating B.S. and not ‘you’, the operator. No 22 described what can happen when using this external-only scanning B.S. filter in his how-to-become-GOD method –
You may notice that the first premise is that the operator ‘called ‘insert your name here’’ is upheld to be absolutely and unquestionably all-empowered – i.e. under no circumstances to be the subject to B.S. scanning at all. The second point is a warning to the operator that if there is any stray B.S. – such as feelings of incorrectness and dishonesty – picked up by inadvertently pointing the B.S. scanner in the wrong direction, you should immediately dismiss these readings as false and keep pointing the B.S. filter outwards. The third point is then to claim that everything anyone else says is B.S., only you know the Truth, only you think rightly, and finally, only you exist as an absolutely and unquestionably all-empowered being, aka GOD. Although No 22’s case is a somewhat extreme case whereupon he now imagines that no-one else but him exists, either as a physicality or as a personality, the use of the external-only scanning B.S. filter can only serve to make the operator more self-centred, more self-righteous, more supercilious, more blaming of others, more aggressive, more Superior, etc. What many people miss on this mailing list is the fact that there is now a new model of B.S. detector available, one that is not based on the old spiritual, ‘the operator is always pure and clean’ model. This model is specifically designed for internal scanning only, i.e. it is precisely configured to allow the operator to constantly monitor his or her own operation and performance against certain criteria, in this case happiness and harmlessness. By initially setting the dial to the minimum requirement of feeling good, the scanner will serve to pick up any glitches in the operator’s programming that throw up such things as feeling annoyed, feeling glum, feeling angry, feeling arrogant, feeling malicious , feeling separate, feeling blissed out, etc. The operator can then investigate his or her programming faults, sort out the glitches and quickly get back to feeling good. Sometimes the first investigation doesn’t fix the problem but with perseverance and diligence you can eventually get to the bottom of what the problem is precisely and why it keeps recurring such that you can eliminate that particular glitch altogether. Then as you get better at scanning with this new model, internal-scanning, B.S. detector you can crank the dial up even further to set it at a minimum of feeling really good or feeling excellent and continue to monitor your operating system for anything that interrupts this new level of optimum operation. Nothing can escape this constant monitoring and scanning provided one is scrupulously honest with oneself – but why would one want to fool oneself if one’s prime aim in life was to eliminate every skerrick of malice and every skerrick of sorrow from me, this flesh and blood body. This ‘self’-scanner is brand new on the market and has only been road tested by a handful of people thus far but the reported results are stunning to say the least. There is however, and quite understandably, a lot of opposition from owner-operators and salesmen of the old external-scanning model. Countless people have invested a lot of time and money in it over the millennia but the old model’s limitations are becoming painfully obvious as more of it’s failings are becoming public knowledge – it does nothing but produce a whole herd of supercilious operators all of them claiming that everyone else is talking B.S., while only they Know the Truth, that they are the Greatest, that they personally are One with God, that they are GOD, etc. What is now readily apparent in this emerging post-spiritual era is that any version of the ancient, been around since Moses and Buddha, external-scanning model is well and truly passed its use-by-date. Like it or not, rile against it or ignore it – what is on offer on this mailing list, and on the Actual Freedom Trust website, is a new ‘self’-scanning detector specifically designed to eliminate malice and sorrow from the operator’s own socially imbibed and genetically encoded instinctual programming. The new ‘self’-scanning method is deceptively simple –
PETER: 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.’ 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. RESPONDENT No 4: 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: Peter ‘sees’. Others ‘theorize’ or ‘imagine’. Hhhmm. I see. PETER: What I was attempting to convey to No 4 is the fact that human beings normally have three ways of experiencing the physical world we all live in – cerebrally, affectively and sensately. Every normal human being, by the age of about 7 years, has a completely ‘self’-centred consciousness in that they think and feel themselves to be separate from the physical world they actually exist in as a corporeal mortal flesh and blood human body. Everyone thinks and feels that they exist as a ‘self’, a psychological and psychic entity, thinking and feeling themselves to be contained within and separate from his or her own body, as well as separate from the physical world and from other human beings. This inside-the-body ‘self’ then sees the outside physical world through the eyes of ‘his’ or ‘her’ body, ‘he’ or ‘she’ can only hear the sounds of the outside physical world through the ears of ‘his’ or ‘her’ body, ‘he’ or ‘she’ can only smell the smells of the outside physical world through the nose of ‘his’ or ‘her’ body and so on. Further this ‘self’, being a psychological and psychic entity, is restricted to affectively or cerebrally experiencing the physical world that appears to exist outside of their body. As such, this entity spends most of his or her time involved in either worrying, plotting, scheming, imagining, conceptualising or theorizing or in emotionally reacting to the world they live in – feeling sad, angry, annoyed, resentful, lonely, separate, lost, frightened, antagonistic, suspicious, etc. Now as every human being knows by personal experience, this entity – ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul – is non-physical in nature. It consists of two distinct parts – a social identity, which is the product of all of the beliefs, morals, ethics, values and psittacisms that have been imbibed from our parents and peers which has been deliberately overlayed as a supposed panacea for the primitive animal instinctual ‘self’ we are all born with. This entity knows and feels it is separate from physical world ‘he’ or ‘she’ lives in and if this knowing and feeling is sufficiently strong, this knowing and feeling can produce a powerful yearning for freedom from this state, a state which has been identified in the East as essentially suffering. The traditional path to freedom from this essentially suffering state has always been to pursue a feeling of freedom via exalted thoughts and noble feelings which results in feelings of universal love and divine passion. The pursuit of a spirit-ual freedom for the spirit-like entity can result in hallucinatory delusions whereby one imagines there is some sort of Divine Intelligence or God-spirit who one feels beholden to, protected by and empowered by, or in extreme cases that one is that Divine intelligence or God-spirit. The third alternative to being a normal suffering being or a supernormal Being, is to set upon a path of totally eliminating ‘who’ I think and feel I am in order to reveal ‘what I am’ – a free and autonomous, i.e. beholden to no-one, flesh and blood body brimming with sensory receptors that enable a direct sensual intimacy with the physical world, i.e. not in any way separate from actuality. Everybody has had, at some stage in their lives, temporary experiences of this sensate-only experiencing of actuality whereby this direct sensual intimacy is so paramount that it briefly purges any feeling of separateness. These ‘self’-less pure consciousness experiences far surpass any feelings of Oneness and Godliness generated by the altered state of consciousness experiences so lauded in the spiritual world because they are a sensately-evident experience of the wonder of the perfection and purity of the actual world and not a dream-like ‘self’-centred delusion. These pure consciousness experiences are often described as nature experiences and I certainly, with hindsight, had quite a few in my ‘normal’ lifetime. There are a number of experiences that stand out in my memory, some of them drug-induced but others that simply happened by themselves. There are memories of particularly intimate moments with other human beings or of particularly friendly, familiar or comfortable places, memories that fuelled my discontent with life as-it-was because they offered the tantalizing evidence that there was more to life than being normal ... or having to become God. These memories stand out as experiences of utter peacefulness and perfection as the utterly sensual delight of being here as a flesh and blood body in this cornucopian paradise temporarily obliterated ‘me’ and ‘my’ petty worries and ‘self’-centred feelings. A pure consciousness experience is an exceptional experience for two noticeable aspects. Firstly, there is suddenly and clearly no ‘me’ and ‘my’ petty worries and ‘self’-centred feelings existing – the experience is one of a bare and clear consciousness. Secondly, there is suddenly and clearly a noticeably heightened sensate input – the experience is one of a direct and explicit sensuousness. It is as if one is seeing the actuality of things for the first time with a friendly inclusiveness, rather than a fearful guardedness. It is as if one is hearing sounds that were previously muted or non-existent. Touch comes to the fore as the feeling of air, water and objects on one’s skin is felt as a direct and sensual intimacy. Taste becomes distinctive as one savours the delights of food rather than devours it. One becomes effortlessly aware of aromas and smells that only a moment before did not seem to exist. In a pure consciousness experiences all of this is effortless – it is not contrived, concocted or imagined. While the experience at first can seem otherworldly, it is this heightened sensate experience – the pure sensuous delight of being alive in an obviously physical world – that provides the evidence that a PCE is an explicit and ‘self’-less experience of the actuality of the physical universe we live in and not most definitely a dream-like non-physical other-world. What I was attempting to convey to No 4 was that actualism is 180 degrees opposite to spiritualism in that one needs to cultivate and develop a sensate sensual awareness of the physical world we live in rather than turn away from, resent, reject and deny all physicality as is taught in spirituality. This is why I was writing about the importance of cultivating sensualness while demolishing one’s ‘self’, lest one ends up in a stark meaningless reality or a grandiose Greater Reality. I don’t know if this relates in any way to your comment of ‘Hhhmm. I see’, but I thought I would take the opportunity to expand on the subject matter of my post to No 4 – ‘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.’ Perhaps you would like to expand on your comment as to what it is that you ‘see’ about the subject matter of my post to No. 4. Only if you are interested, that is.
PETER: You have commented on something I wrote in the glossary –
RESPONDENT: An emotion is one possible outcome of a change in biochemical state; a thought is another possible outcome of such a change and the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. A feeling is thus a possible outcome of change in biochemical state the only relevant question to any student of actualism is whether it is the biochem that is actual (matter) or change that is actual ... (behaviour) or perhaps it is change in matter that is actual. (hint ... obviously this is the right answer). PETER: Firstly given that you have spent 3 years deriding actualism and actualists all the while demonstrating a stubborn unwillingness to put your personal prejudices aside for a time in order to understand actualism, it would seem that you are poorly qualified to make assumptions as to what is ‘the only relevant question to any student of actualism’. As a practising actualist – i.e. someone who is doing it, not just thinking about it, or theoretically studying it or intellectualising about it – the only relevant question is why anyone would not want to change such that they became more happy and less belligerent towards others. Why would you want to negate intelligence and common sense and continue to cling on to the debilitating feelings and emotions that arise from the instinctual passions? Why would you want to continue to be sad, depressed, lonely, resentful, lacklustre, morose, miserable, depressed, pissed-off, annoyed, irritated, angry, and so on, when what is on offer in actualism is the possibility of freedom from this chaos and suffering? I am well aware that the very notion of irrevocable change is anathema to many but it has been proven by several examples that to take on even a bit of actualism can serve to make one’s life easier, simpler and more harmonious. RESPONDENT: All this stuff you ... ‘actualists’ ... go round and round with about thoughts and feelings and instincts is blinding you to the actual. Q. What is actual in regard to you? Answer: a body that includes a brain, in the universe. Bodies, brains and the universe are made up of the same actuality. That actuality is physical chemistry. And at the level the human that actuality is biochemistry, which of course is still physical chemistry. There is no need to examine instincts and emotions and thoughts and spiritual stuff or material stuff ... as you ‘actualists’ seem to delight in doing ... it is all the proverbial red-herring and one tires of herring day after day after day; you think ... ‘actualists’ ... you are so different than the others? .... The materialists and the spiritualists? Think again. PETER: Of course there is ‘no need to examine instincts and emotions and thoughts and spiritual stuff or material stuff.’ Nobody has bothered to, or should I say dared to, examine these issues as a complete package up until now. Everybody clings to the belief put out by the peddlers of ancient wisdom that there is ‘nothing new under the sun’ or that ‘you can’t change human nature’. The human condition is universally upheld to be inviolable – that ‘we are passionate and feeling beings’ is upheld to be the quintessential human virtue, provided one either ignores or denies the pain and suffering generated by the self same feelings and passions, that is. The battle twixt good and evil that rages in the heads and hearts of each and every human being has always gone unexamined for the sole reason that the Good is considered too sacred to examine and it is imagined that if ‘the Good’ is eliminated then Evil will run riot. This last belief is a classic perversity for so much hatred and bloodshed has resulted from impassioned believers defending their own particular version of ‘the Good’ against other equally impassioned believers defending their own particular version of ‘the Good’. If ‘instincts and emotions and thoughts and spiritual stuff or material stuff’ remain unexamined the sun will still rise every morning and the universe will still go on being perfect and pure as it always has, and always will. Despite the overarching ‘self’-centred instinctual psychological and psychic battle for survival that stifles intelligence and the human fixation with primitive beliefs about good and bad spirits, Gods and Devils, goodies and baddies, human beings have managed to organize themselves in such a way that an increasing proportion of the population live with levels of safety, comfort, leisure and pleasure that were unthinkable even in my father’s time. If, however, one is at all interested in becoming genuinely happy and harmless in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are, there is every need ‘to examine instincts and emotions and thoughts and spiritual stuff or material stuff.’ It is only by willingly bringing what is hidden and secretly coveted out into the light of awareness that any change is possible. What got me off my bum was the fact that I yearned to be free of the human condition – being a human within the human condition felt as though I had a straight jacket on. After treading the spiritual path for a good many years the idea of swapping my straight jacket for the mantle of a holier-than-thou, head-in-the-clouds, man of God did not sit at all well with me. So I chose instead to tread a new and radical path – I decided, with careful forethought and consideration, to devote my life to becoming happy and harmless, here on earth, in this lifetime. It seems amazing to me in retrospect that this seemed to be such a radical step at the time but, then again, I had been steeped in spiritual belief, all of which deemed it impossible to be happy here on earth, in this lifetime. RESPONDENT: Your whole ‘method’ is based on Freud and it is time you turned 180 degrees in the opposite direction. PETER: This is a novel objection for you. As you know by now, the most common objections fall into ‘what you are saying is not new and has been said before – it’s just spiritualism’ and rarely do objectors get beyond this particular stuckness. If they do, it is usually into ‘what you are saying is pure evil because if it ain’t Good it must be Evil.’ But to say that the ‘self’-awareness method inherent in being a practicing actualist is some sort of psychoanalytic therapy designed to make one ‘normal’, as in reasonably socially adjusted such that one can cope with grim reality, is to yet again fail to understand what is on offer. Even the ‘real-worlders’ have largely given up on Freud, as I understand it, and many of his theories seem to have fallen from favour. His sole contribution appears to have been to invent a few more esoteric theories or hair-brained excuses as to why human beings are inflicted with malice and sorrow and which ultimately did nothing but reinforce the common belief that it is impossible to ever become free of the whole insanity of the human condition. Look, we all know that grim reality is a bummer – that should be taken as a given by anyone who cares to sit down in front of a TV set for a week, let alone make the effort to examine their own psyche in action. From this starting point, one only needs to come to understand that the idea of a Greater Reality is just a fairy tale and then it is really only a few short steps to being able to get on with the business of becoming free of both the spiritual world and the real world. Actualism isn’t about adjusting to being a normal entity trapped in a commonly accepted grim and glum reality, nor is it about becoming a dissociated paranormal entity in a phantasmagorical Greater Reality – actualism is about ridding oneself of all the objections one has to being here, pure and simple. Or to put it even more plainly – we are in fact here in this physical actuality anyway, so why not make every effort to be happy being here and why not make every effort to be harmless towards all of one’s fellow human beings? RESPONDENT: A wise man once said ... ‘when you get the answer; put down the phone’. The phone bills of you guys must be bankrupting you. PETER: Given that you are so confident that you have the answer, as in your ‘obviously this is the right answer’ from above, you might care to also notice that it is you who have yet to ‘put down the phone’. You have spent several years now trying to prove you have the answer and that what is actual is wrong according to your viewpoint. I take it that it costs you a phone call for every post you have sent, and you have clocked up hundreds so far, so your phone bill must be at least proportionate to your stubbornness. Which only highlights the fact that a sensible man always checks out his own actions and deeds before quoting the wisdom of other so-called wise men ... lest he ends up with egg on his writer’s visor while sitting in a glass house.
RESPONDENT: Your reply as received conveyed very little understanding of what I wrote to you but rather conveyed that you choose to allow your mind to go in the same old rutted circles. So I ask you, how much freedom do you have? How much freedom do you have to read my words with both your eyes open and to be able to discriminate for yourself between the meanings I convey in my texts and the meanings that those meanings of mine trigger you to cause to access out of your own previously stored set of meanings ... your own favoured meanings ... To bring those favoured meanings of yours once again into prominence in your own mind ... and present them in your emails ... again, and again and ... again? And in the process you tell yourself that those meanings are mine, rather than your own ... and in the process you tell yourself that those meanings are mine, rather than your own ... and in the process you tell yourself that those meanings are mine, rather than your own ... PETER: Given that this mailing list is an actualist mailing list I, like everyone else on this list, have total freedom to respond to your posts as I deem appropriate. As for being able to discriminate the meanings conveyed in your posts I am very well aware of the meaning you convey. Over the years you have been unambiguously anti-actualism and your current tack seems to be that actualism is nought but materialism, or physical chemistry as you term it. By playing the reductionist card your end game can only be nihilism and its resultant despairing of life as-it-is. I simply refused to go down that track years ago for it literally leads no-where. Also your meaning is very clear when you resort to pretending to know about actualism by asking questions and then giving your own answers – answers that distort the facts about actuality and actualism simply in order to support your current viewpoint –
If you it is tiring to maintain your stance as an avowed actualism dissenter then the solution is in your hands, not mine ... simply stop. RESPONDENT: How much freedom do you have to read what I write and to understand what I write, in isolation from what you want to read, from how you want to understand it and thus for you to ‘get it’ what I have been presenting to you for all these years? a/ none b/ virtual c/actual PETER: I have already explained that everyone writing on this list has total freedom to read and make sense or not of what others write and respond as they deem appropriate. This freedom is actual – type out a post and send it off, read a post and respond or not. The wonderful thing about the freedom that I now have as a practicing actualist is that all of the criticism you have been presenting to me over several years has been like water on a duck’s back – none of it has stuck. I always welcome engaging in a discussion about the human condition and about actualism in particular but your whole ‘anti’ approach is typified by your claim to being the dissenter’s dissenter. In other words I ‘get it’ what (you) have been presenting to you for all these years’ – you invariably express disagreement with, decline/refuse to support, protest against, object to, and dispute anything and everything about actualism and actual freedom. * PETER: Personally, whenever I discovered something that didn’t make sense or didn’t work, I saw no reason to waste my life continuously riling against it. You may not have noticed but actualism is not about dissenting, being anti-this and anti-that. Actualism is non-spiritual and non-materialist simply for the reason that these are merely socially-imprinted dualistic worldviews that have been imposed upon us by those who have been here before us and both spiritualism and materialism have proved to be legendary failures to bring freedom, peace and happiness to the human species. I do acknowledge that there is an apparent risk in putting all one’s eggs in the actualism basket simply because it is so new and has been road tested by so few. In what may seem to you a slightly perverse motivation, this very newness was one of the aspects that initially attracted me to actualism. A new approach was particularly appealing when I realized that the Eastern spiritualism that I had been following was nought but olde time Eastern religion ... and millions upon millions of gurus, siddhas, teachers, lamas, monks, sannyasins and the like had been practicing their religious practice for thousands upon thousands of years and the East is as the East is – steeped in moralism, ethicalism, casteism, animism, paternalism, misogyny, theocracy, superstition, regimented poverty, ritual suicide and infanticide, not to mention a history of territorial wars, civil wars, religious wars, pogroms, murders, rapes, domestic violence, corruption and despair that at least equals that of the West. Or to put it even more plainly, once I had experienced and understood the failures of materialism and spiritualism there was no way I could fall back into ‘real’-world nihilism and cynicism – particularly when I came across Richard and his brand new discovery of how to facilitate an ongoing and permanent ‘self’-less experiencing of the perfection and purity of the actual physical world we live in. A persistent theme in your posts is that I fail to talk to you as an actual human being, yet if you care to listen, this is exactly what I have always done. I have always told you that in my experience actualism works as a method to become happy and harmless, to become free of malice and sorrow. I know this is not what you want to hear, nor care to hear, ... but for you to expect, nay even demand, that I recant my own experience of the success of the actualism method and somehow expect me to understand and agree with your current line of dissent will never cut the mustard with me. Once I came to realize that the straightjacket I felt as though I was wearing and yearned to be free of was of ‘my’ making and was not the fault of anyone, else I simply stopped blaming others for keeping me from becoming free. Then I stopped believing that in order to become free I needed to feel grateful to some mythical God or Existence and after that it was a straightforward and easy decision to get on with the business of being an actualist. There was also the blow to my pride in having to admit I was wrong, but that was no big deal when I realized that everyone I had met, or read about, also had it wrong. They had it wrong for the simple reason that whatever teaching or ideal they were following or preaching didn’t work in practice. None of them were happy, none of them were living in peace and in harmony with others, all of them complained about how tough it was to be here in the world-as-it-is with people as-they-are, and all of them blamed others for the ills of the world. When I came to understand that this also applied to all the revered spiritual teachers and God-men, the writing was on the wall that everyone has got it wrong. I know you have always had an issue with right and wrong but I am not talking about right and wrong in an ethical sense. It is a practical matter that if someone is doing something that doesn’t work, or following a teaching that doesn’t work in practice, then what he or she is doing must, by definition, be wrong. By fully taking on board this fact one is immediately freed to make a decision based on what is sensible and what is silly rather than remaining hamstrung and hobbled by pride and principle.
PETER: Once I came to realize that the straightjacket I felt as though I was wearing and yearned to be free of was of ‘my’ making and was not the fault of anyone, else I simply stopped blaming others for keeping me from becoming free. Then I stopped believing that in order to become free I needed to feel grateful to some mythical God or Existence and after that it was a straightforward and easy decision to get on with the business of being an actualist. There was also the blow to my pride in having to admit I was wrong, but that was no big deal when I realized that everyone I had met, or read about, also had it wrong. They had it wrong for the simple reason that whatever teaching or ideal they were following or preaching didn’t work in practice. None of them were happy, none of them were living in peace and in harmony with others, all of them complained about how tough it was to be here in the world-as-it-is with people as-they-are, and all of them blamed others for the ills of the world. When I came to understand that this also applied to all the revered spiritual teachers and God-men, the writing was on the wall that everyone has got it wrong. RESPONDENT: That will be the big one Peter. When you finally get it that I have NOT been telling you that actualism is wrong in contradistinction to any other path including the Osho path we both travelled ... PETER: No problem. You have regularly said to me that actualism is wrong because it is just another spiritual teaching and that I am wrong because I am yet another spiritual disciple –
You have even played the ‘actualism is evil’ card so as to make it doubly clear how wrong actualism is –
I won’t go on with other versions but it is very obvious to me that you have been telling me actualism is wrong in whatever way you can think of. RESPONDENT: When you finally get it that I am telling you that you and actualism are not removing yourself far ENOUGH from all ancient wisdom including those paths and the one we both walked ... PETER: I have heard you before say I have not gone far enough but I have always been mystified as to what it is you are currently advocating as one of the hallmarks of your viewpoint appears to be flexibility. RESPONDENT: When you finally get it that your neuronal net is pretty small compared to mine ... PETER: But then again I have always appreciated quality over quantity. RESPONDENT: ... and that I have turned much further physically than your 180 degrees .... PETER: I have never advocated physically turning around 180 degrees for that is nonsensical. What I am talking about is giving up keeping doing what is plainly not working and never has worked for thousands of years, i.e. the well tried and the well failed, and heading off in a brand new direction that you have never tried before. I always figured I had ‘nothing left to lose’ – which is the subtitle of my journal, by the way. RESPONDENT: Then... ... then, will your pride allow you to say ... oh ... this method we actualists were propagating is based in the understanding of the world and the nature of physical biochemical existence from pre-2000. And we were left behind because we thought we had made it. PETER: You may not have noticed but the method of ‘self’-investigation inherent in actualism is founded upon the understanding and experience that every human being has had sometime in their life – a temporary pure consciousness experience whereupon one realizes that the paradise traditionally mythologized as being somewhere else and some time else is in fact here on earth, under our very noses as it where. Actualism takes awareness to depths never dared before in any spiritual pursuits – investigating not only one’s social identity in operation but also one’s instinctual animal passions as well. And from a real-world perspective actualism takes the study of the human psyche in directions deemed dangerous and reckless – into the realm of a non-‘self’-centred awareness that psychiatry has classified as insanity. It may have also escaped your notice that there have been a number of empirical studies of brain
functioning whose factual findings accord with both Richard’s discovery and the experience of practical actualists – that blind instinctual
reactions are genetically programmed to precede and pre-empt intelligent thought. While I certainly make no claim to any in-depth knowledge about
the science of neuro-biology, I have attempted to put the findings of these experiments into layman’s terms, particularly in RESPONDENT: You should get yourself on some cutting edge research lists about, for example ... genetics ... and then you will perhaps begin to see what a wank your method is. But ... it is in your hands as you say ... lol. PETER: I tend to find such lists highly technical in their jargon, narrow in their viewpoint and mostly theoretical in their concepts. That was one of the things that attracted me to actualism – it offered a practical method to fix up a problem I had – after 17 years on the spiritual path I had to admit I was neither happy, nor was I harmless. RESPONDENT: Peter, I suggest you take a break from your self-questioning for a day or two and start your new understanding of Peter, and of actualism, and of the universe, and of what actual freedom entails, at www.benares.com ... it is one portal into a network of sites that is stating that nothing has worked up till now on this planet. We still have war and suffering and bitterness, and it is time to recognise that, and do something about it .... we are approaching a new possibility for freedom from that and a possibility of alignment of us into the present physical paradise that is here already... PETER: Thanks for your advice, but I am already turning a ‘possibility for freedom’ into a fact. Or to put it another way, I am having such an excellent time savouring the delights of being here, in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are, to take seriously the fantasies and theories of yet another regurgitated, dusted off and presented as new, already failed, ‘possibility for freedom’. RESPONDENT: And the new science called ‘paradise engineering’ is offering a practical potent method for that ... and one day you will see that your list musings and your self-musings are just the tail end of the methods and paths that you quite rightly proclaim as part of the problem, rather than of the solution ... but don’t stop there at www.benares.com, ... at the doorway into a new understanding ... as most people do.... drill right down thru the sites accessible from there, thru the paradise engineering presented there, which is the only viable method for actual freedom.... and begin to understand that you are still in delusion, still in denial, and still living in an illusion. PETER: The so-called new possibility for freedom on offer at www.benares.com is not new at all, it is just a contemporary rehash of a well tried and well failed practice that has been around since humans first discovered hallucinogenic plants. The great ancient myths and legends that form the basis of spiritual belief, religious dogma and human wisdom have all emerged from altered states of consciousness induced by some sort of ‘paradise engineering’ – by imbibing some form of mind-altering substance. As far as I know, each of the tribal groups and great civilizations had their drug or drugs of choice and the high priests, gurus, shamans and witchdoctors were always amongst the most ardent users. There is a long tradition, particularly in the polytheist religions, of hallucinogenic drug use that continues to this very day. Taoists monks in Japan still ‘retreat’ to the mountains in search of magic mushrooms, Hinduism is awash with ganga smoking out-of-it gurus and the current fad for Eastern spiritualism was initiated by the youth of the 60’s tripping off to the East in search of the permanent drug experience. Not only have the spiritualists endlessly experimented with paradise engineering, so have the materialists. Alcohol in some form or another has generally been the sop of materialists even to this day. Although one doesn’t ‘get out of it’ in an altered state of consciousness by imbibing alcohol, its effects dulls the senses sufficiently to provide many people with a sense of temporary relief and refuge from the stresses inherent in the rat race world of material pursuit. In the last century particularly, there has also emerged what are called designer drugs – specifically engineered and targeted at lessening the debilitating effects of undesirable emotional states or at heightening the euphoric effects of desirable emotional states. Many of these drugs have been invaluable in ensuring a better quality of life for many people who suffer from the extremes of the emotional see-saw that characterizes the human condition and no doubt both their use and effectiveness will increase as pharmacists continue to fine tune their effectiveness. But to prophesise that ‘paradise engineering ... is the only viable method for actual freedom’ is to ignore the fact that paradise engineering has been very much part and parcel of the human condition for thousands of years and stuff all has changed. Why should something that has been tried for thousands of years by millions upon millions of people, and has failed to bring anything remotely resembling peace on earth, all of a sudden work? ‘Paradise engineering’ has been a path trod for millennia – nothing new is offered in the slick presentation of the Hedonistic Imperative other than the futuristic fantasies of what genetic manipulation may or may not do. No doubt some people in the next generation will give up waiting for Godot and start waiting for Genome. Having said that, hallucinogenic drugs do undoubtedly cause a physical change in the functioning of the human brain and whilst the most common result is a mild, or even full-blown, altered state of consciousness, there is also the possibility that a pure consciousness experience can eventuate. The first, and most substantial, PCE I can remember was triggered by taking MDA. That I had a PCE and not an ASC was a serendipitous event, for most people I have talked to had Love experiences whilst on MDA and they all felt aggrandized in some form or other. It is only a speculation on my part but the idea of ‘self’-love and its inherent power never sat well with me and maybe that is why I had a self-less pure consciousness experience and not a self-aggrandizing altered state of consciousness, but I wouldn’t hang my hat on it. After this first experience, repeated usages of the drug failed to produce the same result and I soon after abandoned its use as retaking it only resulted in the usual up and down cycle associated with all drug use. What is available now is a no-cost, do-it-yourself, drug-free method of firstly being able to provoke the onset of a pure consciousness experience and then being able to remove the impediments that prevent one from being free from the human condition in its entirety. Already in my short stint of practicing actualism, I experience ordinary life as better than a pure consciousness experience simply because it is constantly excellent – there is no experience of being here briefly and then having to go back into the grim reality of the real world. Once the realization set in that I am here anyway, I set about removing the objections and excuses, buts, bitches and blames, ruses and resentments that got in the way of me being happy and harmless, 24 hrs a day, every day. To aim for anything less than this, or settle for anything less than this, is but to continue to waste this moment of being alive. To miss out on the sensual delight of being here in this earthy physical paradise by being angry at or sad about people as-they-are, or by being resentful or miserable about things as-they-are, clearly makes no sense whatsoever. After all, actualism is about coming to one’s senses ... literally.
PETER: I know you have always had an issue with right and wrong but I am not talking about right and wrong in an ethical sense. It is a practical matter that if someone is doing something that doesn’t work, or following a teaching that doesn’t work in practice, then what he or she is doing must, by definition, be wrong. RESPONDENT: Exactly. I have no concern for ethics. If you understand me in that framework then get your mind into a different framework. Once you get your mind into a different framework you might begin to see that all your work here on actualism has been in that sphere... the mind... whereas the problem lies in the brain. PETER: I recently heard John Lithgow on the TV show ‘Third Rock from the Sun’ put it somewhat differently. He plays the character of a visiting alien from another planet sent to observe the human race. He commented that ‘there is no problem with the human brain – it’s just that the mind keeps getting in the way’. This common misconception has led the Eastern religions to embark on sublimating ‘I’ the thinker whilst giving full vent to ‘me’ the feeler to run amuck in an on-going narcissistic orgy of Self-indulgence and Self-centredness. All of the work I did in actualism was to pay attention to how I was experiencing this moment of being alive. What I discovered was that it was invariably a feeling that was preventing me from being happy now, i.e. I was busy wasting my time feeling sad, lonely, miserable, lacklustre, bored, etc. and I was anything but happy ... and some other ‘place’ but here. Similarly what I discovered was that it was invariably a feeling that was preventing me from being harmless now, i.e. I was busy feeling pissed off, angry, resentful, annoyed, superior, inferior, resentful, etc. and I was anything but harmless ... and some other ‘place’ but here. Whenever I was sufficiently aware I was able to nip these feelings in the bud and get on with feeling good about being here. Then I raised the stakes to feeling excellent and began looking at the deeper emotions and passions that give substance to one’s very sense of being. And all the while I came to more and more appreciate the wonderful and benign workings of the human brain when freed of the insidious feelings and emotions that are sourced in primitive thoughtless instinctual reactions common to all animate life. The method of actualism is a radical departure from spiritual awareness because the aim is to come here to the actual world and not go ‘there’ – to retreat ‘inside’ to the false security of an imaginary spirit-ual world that has no actual existence outside of the heads and hearts of human beings. By practicing spiritual methods of awareness one is in fact moving further away from the actual world. When one sees and understands this, it is important to understand that the actual world is the paradise and freedom that one was seeking, lest one ends up back in grim reality of real world despairing. The ‘problem’ , as you put it, does not ‘lie in the brain’ because there is nothing ‘wrong’ with flesh and blood human beings. It’s just that inside every flesh and blood body is a non-physical psychological and psychic entity. It is ‘he’ or ‘she’ who invariably suffers emotionally and who, despite good intentions, invariably inflicts emotional suffering on others. The problem, as you put it, is this entity in its entirety, both the ‘I’ in the head and ‘me’ in the heart. The problem is not physical per se, but it does have its roots in the program of social conditioning that everyone undergoes from birth and in the genetically inherited crude survival program that results in thoughtless impassioned reactions, mainly those of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. Richard’s discovery was that neither of these programs are set in concrete as it were – that you can, in fact, change human nature. These programs are software not hardware and as such they can be deleted. And what you discover is that the hardware functions better than ever without the debilitating effects of a software program which has as its centre an illusionary ‘I’ and at its very core a passionate ‘me’. This neurological programming consists of nothing other than socially imbibed millennia-old beliefs, spiritual fantasies, unliveable morals, unworkable ethics, platitudes and psittacisms that have been passed down to us by those who were here before us, layered upon a genetically inherited survival program that cause us to instinctively act like animals, to put it crudely. The method inherent in actualism is specifically designed to facilitate the incremental deletion of this software programming such that one becomes progressively happier and more harmless in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. RESPONDENT: Regardless of your wrong thinking about what I understand by right and wrong, actualism is WRONG. Now read above what it means to be wrong. Just as in the end love is wrong, because it has been proven not to work, in terms of alleviating suffering on earth so is actualism wrong, and will continue to be wrong. No method that relies on an understanding based on psychic entities, such entities as thoughts and feelings and instincts, can be right, in the sense we agree on, that you wrote above, ... ever. PETER: Goodness knows what it is you imagine we agree on. I can’t remember you ever agreeing with me on anything. Surely it would be totally out of character for an avowed dissenter’s dissenter to agree with anyone? Did I miss something perhaps? RESPONDENT: A physical method that is built out of an understanding based on physical entities such as neurotransmitters and genetics and biochemical intervention is the only method to create freedom where there was suffering ... that physical method is the only method can possibly be right in this physical world. Surely that is obvious. PETER: No. It may seem obvious to you because you believe there is something wrong with the actual world we live in but I gave up objecting to being here quite a while ago now. There is no fear in a rock, no love in a coffee cup, no awe in a sunset, no anger in a tree, no sorrow in a rain storm. Similarly, there is no fear in human big toes, no love in human feet, no awe in human kidneys, no anger in human noses and no suffering in human brains. A pure consciousness experience shows plainly that it is only ‘I’ who psychologically and psychically suffers and the aim of a practicing actualist is to eliminate ‘he’ or ‘she’ who feels fearful, miserable, angry, lost, lonely, resentful, etc. so that I, this flesh and blood body only, can experience the unfettered wellbeing of sensate-only ‘self’-less experiencing. RESPONDENT: ... or should be to somebody who has seen that there is nothing other than this physical universe. No soul. No self. No meaning. PETER: No wonder you are grasping at straws if, as you seem to imply, you experience ‘nothing other than this physical world, no soul, no self, no meaning’ . It is a recipe for experiencing a stark meaningless reality at worst, or the ‘I don’t know where I am and I don’t know how I got here’ spiritual nihilism seemingly experienced by U.G. Krishnamurti at best. RESPONDENT: I infer, Peter, that deep down you still are pretty convinced that you have or are a soul, and a self, and have meaning. I infer that because you will not leave behind mind based methods; and mind is where the soul and the self and meaning reside – nowhere else – and mind is an outcome of the physical brain. PETER: I take it that you don’t read any other mail on this list other than that which is addressed to you because what you are inferring or imagining about actualism is in direct contradiction to what is being currently discussed on this mailing list about the distinction between thinking and affective feeling. Still, as I am apt to say, ‘t’would be a pity to let a few facts stand in the way of a dearly-held belief’.
RESPONDENT: The science of genetics and in particular the science of locating cellular roots that is going thru quantum leaps in the last couple of months means that we can now begin to work at a deeper level than thoughts and feelings and instincts we can work at the cellular level to change the species into one that is actually free. The method that is being theorised and concurrently beginning to be practiced in research communities is changing the world forever by changing the human species through directly intervening at the cellular level and this method is the only hope left for this species ... this species that has suffering and malice and sorrow and ignorance encoded in the DNA. PETER: Are you saying ‘the method <directly intervening at the cellular level> is beginning to be practiced in research communities’? Could you perhaps provide evidence of this or at least provide relevant link/links to substantiate your claim that the method ‘is changing the world forever’? I am curious to know what is in fact going on with this method and what results have been achieved because, thus far, even genetic interventions for simple one-issue physical ailments seem to be in their theoretical infancy and yet these are the subject of considerable moral objections and ethical perplexity. To tackle something so complex as genetically dowsing down or even genetically eliminating the undesirable feelings that arise from the instinctual passions seems the stuff of fairy tales to me. I don’t deny it could well be possible but then again, chemical castration for rapists is now possible but it has yet to gain broad social acceptance as an appropriate punishment ... let alone become a free and fashionable choice amongst men who are tired of being instinctually led around by their dicks.
RESPONDENT: And the new science called ‘paradise engineering’ is offering a practical potent method for that ... and one day you will see that your list musings and your self-musings are just the tail end of the methods and paths that you quite rightly proclaim as part of the problem, rather than of the solution ... but don’t stop there at www.benares.com, ... at the doorway into a new understanding ... as most people do.... drill right down thru the sites accessible from there, thru the paradise engineering presented there, which is the only viable method for actual freedom.... and begin to understand that you are still in delusion, still in denial, and still living in an illusion. PETER: The so-called new possibility for freedom on offer at www.benares.com is not new at all, it is just a contemporary rehash of a well tried and well failed practice that has been around since humans first discovered hallucinogenic plants. The great ancient myths and legends that form the basis of spiritual belief, religious dogma and human wisdom have all emerged from altered states of consciousness induced by some sort of ‘paradise engineering’ – by imbibing some form of mind-altering substance. <Snipped> But to prophesise that ‘paradise engineering ... is the only viable method for actual freedom’ is to ignore the fact that paradise engineering has been very much part and parcel of the human condition for thousands of years and stuff all has changed. Why should something that has been tried for thousands of years by millions upon millions of people, and has failed to bring anything remotely resembling peace on earth, all of a sudden work? ‘Paradise engineering’ has been a path trod for millennia – nothing new is offered in the slick presentation of the Hedonistic Imperative other than the futuristic fantasies of what genetic manipulation may or may not do. No doubt some people in the next generation will give up waiting for Godot and start waiting for Genome. < Snipped> RESPONDENT: Hmmm Peter, I can see you still are into mind stuff like self-examination and pce’s rather that the actuality behind them so there is not much more I can do about that. Well, I guess you will just keep on following the masters that you continually find in your life. I know you have trouble understanding what I am telling you and that is because you try continually to fit it into your existing frame of reference. I assure you it will not fit, because it is bigger than your frame of reference. But I have explained it all enough for now. If you have not understood, then clearly your neuronal net is not primed yet to link in to the new. Genetic research is fascinating I assure you. Enough talking to ducks. All they hear is ‘quack’... PETER: Is that it? You have stated that actualism is ‘part of the problem rather than of the solution’ and proclaimed ‘paradise engineering’ to be ‘the only viable method for actual freedom’ and yet when your theory is challenged by a few facts you reply with a whinge and a whimper rather than continue with your advocacy. Surely if this is what you are advocating on this list as your solution to ending malice and sorrow you should be both willing and capable of standing by it? It’s called putting your money where your mouth is.
PETER: Are you saying ‘the method <directly intervening at the cellular level> is beginning to be practiced in research communities’? Could you perhaps provide evidence of this or at least provide relevant link/links to substantiate your claim that the method ‘is changing the world forever’? I am curious to know what is in fact going on with this method and what results have been achieved because, thus far, even genetic interventions for simple one-issue physical ailments seem to be in their theoretical infancy and yet these are the subject of considerable moral objections and ethical perplexity. To tackle something so complex as genetically dowsing down or even genetically eliminating the undesirable feelings that arise from the instinctual passions seems the stuff of fairy tales to me. I don’t deny it could well be possible but then again, chemical castration for rapists is now possible but it has yet to gain broad social acceptance as an appropriate punishment ... let alone become a free and fashionable choice amongst men who are tired of being instinctually led around by their dicks. RESPONDENT: Well... the other day you stated you had knowledge of genetic research lists and found them dry and boring. Could you tell me which ones you were on, and then I will see if I can refine your education somewhat? This ploy could well be described as duck-shoving, whereby, in a vain attempt to conceal your lack of evidence to support your claim that paradise engineering ‘is the only hope left for this species ... this species that has suffering and malice and sorrow and ignorance encoded in the DNA’ , you shift the onus of providing your evidence on to me. This bluff tactic does nothing but highlight the fact that you have yet to reply to the comments I have already made on the content of the website that you yourself offered as proof that paradise engineering is already bringing an irrevocable end to human suffering and misery. Unless you haven’t yet noticed, the ball is firmly in your court to back up your claims – attempting to somehow make your dilemma into my problem simply will not work on me.
RESPONDENT: Peter, I suggest you take a break from your self-questioning for a day or two and start your new understanding of Peter, and of actualism, and of the universe, and of what actual freedom entails, at www.benares.com ... it is one portal into a network of sites that is stating that nothing has worked up till now on this planet. We still have war and suffering and bitterness, and it is time to recognise that, and do something about it ... we are approaching a new possibility for freedom from that and a possibility of alignment of us into the present physical paradise that is here already... PETER: I know you have always had an issue with right and wrong but I am not talking about right and wrong in an ethical sense. It is a practical matter that if someone is doing something that doesn’t work, or following a teaching that doesn’t work in practice, then what he or she is doing must, by definition, be wrong. RESPONDENT: Exactly. I have no concern for ethics. If you understand me in that framework then get your mind into a different framework. Once you get your mind into a different framework you might begin to see that all your work here on actualism has been in that sphere... the mind... whereas the problem lies in the brain. Regardless of your wrong thinking about what I understand by right and wrong, actualism is WRONG. Now read above what it means to be wrong. Just as in the end love is wrong, because it has been proven not to work, in terms of alleviating suffering on earth so is actualism wrong, and will continue to be wrong. No method that relies on an understanding based on psychic entities, such entities as thoughts and feelings and instincts, can be right, in the sense we agree on, that you wrote above, ... ever. A physical method that is built out of an understanding based on physical entities such as neurotransmitters and genetics and biochemical intervention is the only method to create freedom where there was suffering ... that physical method is the only method can possibly be right in this physical world. Surely that is obvious. ... or should be to somebody who has seen that there is nothing other than this physical universe. No soul. No self. No meaning. I infer, Peter, that deep down you still are pretty convinced that you have or are a soul, and a self, and have meaning. I infer that because you will not leave behind mind based methods; and mind is where the soul and the self and meaning reside – nowhere else – and mind is an outcome of the physical brain. PETER: <Snip> The ‘problem’, as you put it, does not ‘lie in the brain’ because there is nothing ‘wrong’ with flesh and blood human beings. It’s just that inside every flesh and blood body is a non-physical psychological and psychic entity. It is ‘he’ or ‘she’ who invariably suffers emotionally and who, despite good intentions, invariably inflicts emotional suffering on others. The problem, as you put it, is this entity in its entirety, both the ‘I’ in the head and ‘me’ in the heart. The problem is not physical per se, but it does have its roots in the program of social conditioning that everyone undergoes from birth and in the genetically inherited crude survival program that results in thoughtless impassioned reactions, mainly those of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. Richard’s discovery was that neither of these programs are set in concrete as it were – that you can, in fact, change human nature. These programs are software not hardware and as such they can be deleted. And what you discover is that the hardware functions better than ever without the debilitating effects of a software program which has as its centre an illusionary ‘I’ and at its very core a passionate ‘me’. This neurological programming consists of nothing other than socially imbibed millennia-old beliefs, spiritual fantasies, unliveable morals, unworkable ethics, platitudes and psittacisms that have been passed down to us by those who were here before us, layered upon a genetically inherited survival program that cause us to instinctively act like animals, to put it crudely. The method inherent in actualism is specifically designed to facilitate the incremental deletion of this software programming such that one becomes progressively happier and more harmless in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. RESPONDENT: Peter I am amazed. Absolutely flummmoxicated! Please explain so I am even more knocked-over.
You are suggesting there is nothing ‘wrong’ with ‘flesh and blood human beings’? Ummmm [cute] ... nothing wrong in a cancerous body? Nothing wrong with a flesh and blood body mangled under a prime mover? Nothing wrong with a HIV determined body? Nothing wrong with toothache? Nothing wrong with epileptic seizures? Nothing wrong with bipolar disorder? Nothing wrong with blindness? Nothing wrong with foot-in-mouth disease? Nothing wrong with retarded intellectual ability? PETER: This is a classic example of what is known as a red herring. You may well have forgotten by now but this discussion and my comment relates to your proposition that –
You were clearly not talking about physical disabilities, diseases and accidents at all. You were talking about how to become free of emotional suffering – that which is self-inflicted and that which human beings inflicted upon other human beings either intentionally or unwittingly. Medical scientists are doing a superb job in alleviating and even eliminating the physical suffering caused by physical disabilities, diseases and afflictions and engineers are busy doing the same in alleviating and even eliminating the risk and effects of the accidents that are so-called acts of God. Human intelligence and ingenuity has wrought wondrous advances particularly in the last 100 years that has seen both the length and physical quality of life increase exponentially with cures and treatments found for many illnesses and unprecedented physical safety and comfort for an increasing percentage of an increasing population. A mere century ago, life was a grim battle for physical survival for many and even today life is still not without its risks and dangers. But without doubt, the major cause of deaths, injury and suffering in these modern times is the deaths, injury and suffering that human beings inflict upon each other – be it in one-to-one relationships, within family or tribal groups, through millennium-old religious and ethnic conflicts as well as territorial disputes. Human intelligence and ingenuity is tackling the ‘wrongs’ of your list and in many cases has already made remarkable progress in alleviating them and many may be even eliminated. But when it comes to the problem of bringing an end to the suffering that human beings inflict upon each other, thus far there have only been two solutions to being able to cope – head in sand or head in clouds. It is worthy to note that both of these reactions are rooted in denial. Actualism is about getting off your bum, sticking your hand up and devoting your life to being happy and harmless – in order to demonstrate that it is possible to be actually free of malice and sorrow. To be actually free of malice is to be incapable of inflicting emotional suffering on others and to be actually free of sorrow is to be incapable of emotionally suffering oneself. RESPONDENT: Please ... assure me ... I had imagined all this time that at least you were post-Osho in your thinking and feeling, but more and more I am beginning to think you are about to Burn Witches, or exorcise the demons. PETER: You have already gone down the ‘you are evil track’ before. Your avid objections to actualism over the years are now beginning to follow very familiar cycles. I noticed you have failed to address my comments about the effectiveness of your latest proposal that chemical or genetic intervention is the means to bring an end to human suffering and have now slid off into red herring territory. It is a fact that many people do suffer physically from disease and accidents but to wilfully indulge in or deliberately heap emotional suffering on top of the physical suffering makes no sense whatsoever. It is a fact that most suffering, be it physical or emotional, is either self-inflicted or inflicted by human beings on other human beings – either intentionally by malicious actions or unintentionally, despite one’s good intentions. * PETER: Contrary to popular opinion, there is no one to blame for this state of affairs we all have found ourselves born into. What we find ourselves witness to, and unavoidably involved in, is the inevitable struggle for the ascendancy of benign human intelligence over the crude animal instinctual passions, for it is these passions that are, in fact, the root of all evil. The monumental human suffering and conflict we find ourselves embroiled in, and unwitting contributors to, is not, as is universally believed, a result of us not being Good enough or not being God-fearing enough. Nor is earthly existence a necessary penance or a prelude to some other-worldly existence after physical death. We are not being punished by God, by what ever name, for there is no God, by whatever name. Rather than bringing an end to human suffering, the traditional meta-physical Wisdoms and Truths of humanity, rooted as they are in ancient ignorance of the fundamental nature of both the universe and the human condition, serve only to perpetuate human misery and mayhem. Currently we are witnesses to yet another round in a millennia-old conflict between the believers of one God fighting the believers of a different God. Yet another saga is being played out in the sad and sorry lineage of religious wars, crusades, pogroms, campaigns, struggles, missions, revenges and retributions ... not to mention pompous finger pointing and pious fence sitting. When I came to realize that the much vaunted and cherished Eastern spiritualism was nothing other than Eastern religion I saw how gullible I had been in believing it would, or indeed ever could, bring an end to human suffering. I also saw that holding a religious or spiritual belief was simply a convenient way of finger-pointing – as long as I was a true and faithful believer there was always someone else who was to blame, someone else who had a wrong belief, someone else who was being fanatical, someone else who was responsible for human conflict and misery. As I finally started to shed myself of my religious/spiritual beliefs I was however not content to remain a fence-sitter, a dissociated voyeur of life as it were. I knew very well by my own life experience that I had been endowed with the human condition of malice and sorrow and I serendipitously met someone who had managed to break free from this endowment. So I set about on yet another adventure but this time I made sure that what I was following made sense and also that it worked in practice, thereby completely steering clear of my previous gullible tendencies. For this very reason I find it incredulous that gullible followers of religious and spiritual beliefs who have never bothered to make sense of their God-man’s teachings and have turned a blind eye to his failures and shortcomings should berate a pragmatic actualist for being a Follower or a Teacher. But I have wandered of track a bit as I am talking about the human condition and my experience as an actualist whereas your post was about red herrings and what you currently imagine about me.
May I suggest you lift your game from imagining what I am saying and imagining what is on offer in actualism ... and start reading, taking the words at face value if at all possible, and start thinking, setting aside your pride, prejudice and pre-conditioning if at all possible. Otherwise these dialogues will only follow the predictable rut of you proposing yet another of your viewpoints and making yet another of your accusations as you merrily tip toe through the fickle and fruitless fields of your own imagination.
RESPONDENT: Peter, I cannot understand where your ignorance comes from. Do you not understand that the advances in biochemical reengineering over the last decade have brought the science inestimably further than the last time you looked seriously at ‘hallucinogenic plants’? PETER: I thought I had made myself clear that I do not subscribe to the theory that ‘paradise engineering’, by whatever name, will ever or can ever actualise a ‘freedom from <war and suffering and bitterness> and a possibility of alignment of us into the present physical paradise that is here already...’ as you are busy proposing. But I am willing to be corrected by any practical evidence to the contrary you may offer. RESPONDENT: We are not looking at unaided chance creations of nature in the form of ‘hallucinogenic plants’ anymore. We are looking at Darwinian reselection via intent and project plan and detailed design and testing and implementation by the best minds on the planet. PETER: By your use of the phrase ‘we are looking at’ , I take it that ‘paradise engineering’ by whatever name is still in the theoretical, yet to be put into practice and tangible results produced, stage. In short, I take it that no one has yet become actually free of the human condition by means of ‘paradise engineering’ . Becoming free of the human condition is not even on the ‘paradise engineering’ agenda for they are looking at being better able to cope with the human condition or attaining altered states of consciousness experiences in the spiritual tradition. RESPONDENT: In a few generations there will be no other choice available. That must be obvious even to you. You actualism ostrich! PETER: In a few generations there will be no other choice available, eh? And in the mean time, the period of time before you are dead and buried, there are only three choices available. Taking your posts to this list at face value, I take it that you have given up spiritualism and the belief in God and are now busy looking to materialism to provide a solution to a problem that is at its root psychological and psychic in nature. The problem – the human predilection for, and obsession with, malice and sorrow – can be sheeted home to the social and instinctual programming that every human being is unwittingly subject to. The combination of this social and instinctual programming has produced an illusionary ‘I’ as a thinker in the head and a passionate ‘me’ as a feeler in the heart. This alien non-substantive entity or ‘self’ is however only programming, analogous to an old software program that is now redundant and needs to be deleted if the computer is to now perform at its optimum. Richard’s discovery was that by progressively deleting this social and instinctual programming, a stage is reached whereby the whole lot comes crashing down, taking with it the illusionary little man or woman in the head and the little man or woman in the heart. And I can attest to the efficacy of his method of deleting these programs ... it works. RESPONDENT: My god. You seem to read thru the eyes of somebody who last read Carlos Castaneda and who smoked a few joints for peace in the seventies and now hears the claim that humans will be recreating themselves biochemically ... and so you fit that claim into your own experience. PETER: As for my experience, I have never read Carlos Castaneda at all and I didn’t smoke a joint until the mid-eighties. What I did offer was a brief explanation of the ancient traditions of mind-altering substances and their use in spiritualism as well as pointing out a few practical difficulties with your claim. You can bluster all you want but I am still awaiting a sensible response. RESPONDENT: Peter ... I wish to cease this conversation now with you ... I have given you the background reading to bring your mind up to some sort of basic understanding and ... please read a bit more and then come back to me really, I used to care what you think and express and want to tell me ... I used to imagine that eventually you would be able to listen as well as spout ... but that has changed. PETER: It is no wonder you have stopped writing, given up trying to change me and getting me to agree with your viewpoint. Perhaps it has finally dawned on you that there is no chance of raking in a disciple or a convert to No. 12-ism by continuing to write to me. It is not that I don’t listen to your objections, imaginations and viewpoints – it’s just that none of what you say or propose stands up to factual scrutiny. In three years of almost constant writing you have yet to provide any facts to support your claims. In fact, whenever you have been requested to provide substantiating facts, you have never responded. Given my latest request for you to provide substantiating facts to support your advocacy of ‘paradise engineering’ I am not at all surprised you are ceasing conversing with me – ’tis par for the course. When I found that my beliefs could not stand factual scrutiny I just threw them out the window because I saw that they were obviously silly ... and my motto became ‘why be stubbornly silly when you can simply be sensible?’ Besides, having no beliefs makes life so much easier – nothing to defend, nothing to attack. RESPONDENT: You claim I do not advocate. PETER: Au contraire ... it is clear your latest advocacy is ‘paradise engineering’ or is it already fading on the horizon? RESPONDENT: Have you read the advocacy I pointed you towards? Castaneda is not on the reading list Peter ... or shall we say ... he is on freedom studies 101, and this is a post-doctoral course we are undertaking here ... Peter, I do not have time or energy for recalcitrant freshmen anymore ... when you have read what I advocated you read ... then perhaps you can enter intelligently into the discourse. Until then stop whimpering. Goodbye for now. PETER: And how dare the ‘recalcitrant freshman’ ask the Master to provide factual evidence to substantiate His teachings, hey. This sort of thing wouldn’t have happened in the old days. It was definitely not on to dare to question the Master, let alone have the audacity to question his teachings. It may be useful to consider that this is a non-spiritual mailing list and these are post-spiritual times so your spiritual-type teaching style is conspicuously outdated, in other words bluff and bluster can now be clearly seen and acknowledged for what it is. RESPONDENT: ‘I used to care; but I took a pill for that’. PETER: I fail to see why you post this when you yourself advocate ‘paradise engineering’, or pill-popping as it is currently known and practiced. Did you deliberately aim at your foot or is this an attempt at Pythonesque satire? RESPONDENT: PS. What does my subject line PETER: No.
PETER: I am curious to know what is in fact going on with this method and what results have been achieved because, thus far, even genetic interventions for simple one-issue physical ailments seem to be in their theoretical infancy and yet these are the subject of considerable moral objections and ethical perplexity. To tackle something so complex as genetically dowsing down or even genetically eliminating the undesirable feelings that arise from the instinctual passions seems the stuff of fairy tales to me. I don’t deny it could well be possible but then again, chemical castration for rapists is now possible but it has yet to gain broad social acceptance as an appropriate punishment ... let alone become a free and fashionable choice amongst men who are tired of being instinctually led around by their dicks. RESPONDENT: I see some possibility of you moving on into the 21st century in this text Peter. Keep on. Your analysis shows you have a barely basic understanding of the revolution that is occurring in these years around you. PETER: What you make of what I write always astounds me. Subscribe to these two lists and read with both eyes open for a while. <evolutionary-psychology@yahoogroups.com> <psychiatry-research@yahoogroups.com> Peter, tell the guys on those list that actualism is the answer. Really. I would like to see your intellectual baboonery challenged by homo-sapiens on the cutting edge of understanding the human condition. If you can get some sort of credibility on those lists I will personally donate hard cash to Richard’s actualists’ Retirement Home Fund. PETER: Ah, a prime example of duck shoving. It is you who claim to be on the cutting edge of understanding the human condition, if not even beyond the cutting edge on some occasions. Given your self-proclaimed advocacy of ‘paradise engineering’, why don’t you yourself challenge my ‘intellectual baboonery’ and reply in detail to the points I raised about the efficacy of ‘paradise engineering’. In other words, I am still waiting for you to put your money where your mouth is. RESPONDENT: In fact I lay down the challenge to you and to Richard. You play here and on various other lists propagating your toy; but the real test is for you to strut your stuff on the lists I mention above. PETER: As a useful rule of thumb, those materialists seeking to cope with the real world are those who have yet to begin to search for freedom from the human condition, whereas spiritual seekers have generally got off their bum and begun to search. This is why actualism will appeal to discontent spiritualists rather than real-world battlers. Although the motives of spiritual seekers were by and large well meaning in searching for freedom, they were simply seduced and sucked into believing in God or a God-man, and seeking Godliness, Truth and Immortality for themselves. The major problem is that once sucked into a belief system it is tough to get out again because trust, faith, hope and loyalty are demanded of all followers. These impositions are so strong that whenever a spiritualist has a glimpse that their precious spiritual beliefs are nought but olde time religion, or whenever the fact is pointed out by someone else, then massive denial sets in as one is socially programmed to defend one’s beliefs even to the death. However, provided one doesn’t retreat from massive denial into fanatical denial, one can come to understand that this compulsive trait of blindly defending one’s own beliefs is precisely the same compulsion that fuels all the religious wars, conflicts, crusades, pogroms, ethnic cleansings, campaigns, struggles, missions, revenges and retributions that have plagued humanity for centuries and still do so. Not only that, one can come to see that defending one’s beliefs to the death is lauded within the human condition as a noble and righteous sacrifice for God and/or Country. When one comes to see, understand and acknowledge these facts then the only way out is to get out. If this involves being a traitor to the cause, admitting that you have been conned, feeling more than a little foolish, or whatever, then it is a paltry price to pay, for one can then get on with the business of becoming free of malice and sorrow. In the simple act of realizing there is no God, there is no other-world, and there is no afterlife, you can then start the business of becoming a happy and harmless, anonymous and autonomous, citizen of the world. This simple act of realization is quick and painless as one simply turns around 180 degrees ... and heads in the opposite direction. RESPONDENT: I never write to those lists by the way; I read them. I can pretty easily discern when the discourse on a list is ahead of me rather than behind, and adjust my contribution accordingly. PETER: Are you saying that you see these lists as being ‘on the cutting edge of understanding the human condition’ but you never write to them because the discourses are ahead of you rather than behind you? And the other day you wrote in regard to genetic research lists –
From this I can only conclude that you are not only an advocate of ‘paradise engineering’, by whatever name, but that you also consider yourself an expert in the field. And yet, the more you go on, it becomes apparent that you have read what is written on these lists and automatically believed it to be true without bothering to think about whether it is fact, whether it is workable, whether it is just theory and superstition, whether it is wishful fantasy, let alone who are the authors, what are their qualifications and practical expertise and what is their bent. The problem with just believing what someone else says is that one remains ensnared or beguiled by these beliefs and you never find out the facts for yourself. By remaining a believer one is, by default, accepting the universal beliefs that ‘life’s a bitch and then you die’ or that ‘who we really are is a spirit-ual being’. Thus one spends one’s life wallowing in the bitter-sweetness feeling of sorrow, forever battling it out for survival or desperately trying to dissociate oneself from being here by pretending one is a Divinely-aligned spiritual being of some sort or other. An actualist needs to fully understand that beliefs are the very bane of humankind and can never ever bring forth their promised salvation for the clear-cut reason that beliefs, by their very nature, are not facts. Once you fully take on board this understanding you are then free to get on with the essential business of ridding yourself of all of the beliefs one has unwittingly taken on board as being truth or fact or simply taken as given. For an actualist nothing is too sacred to question. Every belief must be questioned until one comes to question the very act of believing itself. Unless one is willing to make this effort, one will remain forever an impassioned believer, forever clutching at straws or being gullibly seduced and suckered into the next fashionable belief to sweep the planet. RESPONDENT: ... A potted version is available via nibbs-newsletter@yahoogroups.com. You will begin to find actualism is as primitive as sannyas. I assure you that although ‘genetically dowsing down or even genetically eliminating the undesirable feelings that arise from the instinctual passions seems the stuff of fairy tales to’ ... you ... that is because you just have not been reading the appropriate materials. Well, if you want to miss the major event to happen in the early 21st century because you are busy propagating actualism, being the last living proof that all of ancient wisdom has failed, then so be it. PETER: I once half-jokingly said to Richard that he should hang a sign above his door that said ‘abandon hope all ye who enter here’. I see that you are still pinning your hopes on what you have read about some hope-filled, yet-to-be-realized, theoretical dream – whereas I have completely abandoned all hopes, dreams and beliefs and am busy being amongst the first living proofs that actualism works.
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