PETER: Just to let you know that computer equipment failure my end has meant that there will be a delay in responding to your latest posts.

8.2.2001

PETER: Just to let you know that computer equipment failure my end has meant that there will be a delay in responding to your latest posts.

RESPONDENT: Namaste, very Kind, thank you. If I can be of any assistance, please consider me happily at your service.

PETER: Thanks for your offer of assistance, but I am now back on line again.

I now know the computer not only has a modem but an enumerator as well. Two modems and almost 2 months of stop-starts later, I finally found a mechanic who knew of such things and further that they must be installed sequentially for all to work properly.

When I first got a computer 3 years ago I thought I was buying the latest thing in word processors because I wanted to write about my experience with actualism. I had neither interest nor desire to understand how it worked, let alone get under the bonnet as it were.

Consequently many a youngish lad has wandered in the door to ‘fix’ things up, or should I say, patch things up, leaving me none the wiser, a few dollars shorter and often no better off. The last mechanic was someone who has been around since the days of punch cards and one megabyte hard drives (1MB, not 1GB) and it did make me appreciate again that there is no substitute for well-rounded hands-on experience. Consequently I am up and running, but I will be catching up with Gary’s posts first.

Thanks again.

19.2.2001

PETER: This is my last reply to you. As I read through the posts seeking some common ground for continuing to reply to your study it became clear as to how the conversation has degenerated into tit-for-tat, tis-tisn’t rebuttal of everything I say, no matter what I say. I will post a sample snippet from your last posts to illustrate this –

[Peter]: I totally agree with you the notion that a person can be both God and man is absurd, but nevertheless the East is chock-a-block full of people who think and feel they are God-on-earth. Moreover, this absurdity has now become so fashionable in the West that there are literally thousands of such deluded men, and women, who all believe themselves to be God. Of course they are not actual Gods, but they sure do really truly believe they are and they even manage to convince millions of other human beings that they are It. I know this well for I was a believer in the power of God-men for 17 years until I saw it was but escapist nonsense given credence only by my fervent need to believe and my willingness to blindly follow.

[Respondent]: It is touching to see you speak of responsibility for your behaviour. [endquote].

(a few lines later)

[Peter]: It is impossible to either see or think clearly while in the grip of impassioned imagination.

[Respondent]: That would be the alibi an actualist would use as an excuse for making such a baseless offering. Just not ready to acknowledge responsibility? Still finding it easier (safer) to believe that you are a hapless victim?

I find the above responses bewilderingly contradictory because my second comment related directly to my personal life experiences. Two totally different responses to the same statement of fact does illustrate that trying to have a sensible conversation with you about anything down-to-earth is absolutely futile.

The most recent thrust of you rebuttal of actualism seems to be that I acknowledged no personal responsibility for my behaviour as a human being. You then use this charge as a basis to scorn any effort aimed at irrevocable change while simultaneously championing the traditional spiritual alternative of ‘choosing’ to behave like a holier-than-thou spirit-ual being.

I’ll leave you with this portion from my journal as my final contribution to the database of your study and for summary assessment by your discussion group. You will find that it directly addresses the issues of my responsibility, my intent, my naiveté and my integrity – but no doubt you will dismiss it with either a ‘thank you for sharing’ or ‘this is wrong thought’ comment.

[Peter]: ‘University days were filled with a wonderful optimism and naivety as the sixties’ youth revolution gathered momentum. We were going to change the world! Socialism, peace, love, sexual freedom, environmentalism – anything was possible to have or to change.

I marched to stop the Vietnam war, I poster-pasted to save the forests, I grooved to the Rolling Stones in Hyde Park in London, I hung around in Amsterdam, I travelled to the East, I became politically and socially concerned and involved. I’ve thought about these times during the last twelve months – what happened to the dreams, the enthusiasm of those times?

Remember John Lennon singing ‘Imagine’ or ‘Give Peace a Chance’, or watching Woodstock? We were going to change the world! And then it all started to fade a bit – I got rather lost in the daily business of wife, two kids and two cars. And then, when that crashed, I was off to the East with thousands of others, seduced and fired up by the promise of a New Man, Peace, Love, Utopia and an end to my personal suffering. In fact, the whole of the revolution of the sixties was simply sucked into the mystery, confusion and ‘mindlessness’ of the Eastern religions. Of course spiritualism failed – there was nothing new in it at all, now that I look back. How could the solution lie in the past? There would have been peace and happiness in the world by now if it worked – it has had at least 3000 years to prove itself.

So when the social revolution and the promised spiritual solution failed, I was back in ‘comfortably numb’ normal, but I couldn’t rest there – that naivety was still burning within me, that refusal to accept that this was all there was to life. I am amazed to see that so many people of my generation have reverted to ‘comfortably numb’ – have lost their naivety. Surely the purpose in life is to be the best I can – to be the best possible.

I remember a major turning point came for me when I realised I was causing ‘ripples’ for other people by my every action: however subtle sometimes, however unintentional, however well meaning, but ‘ripples’ nevertheless. And by seeing it I wanted it to stop! It became yet another motivation to do all I could to aim to eliminate my ‘self’. I wanted not only peace for myself, but for others too.

That is why I stopped battling with Vineeto. To want her to change is the traditional ‘it’s the other’s fault’ syndrome. No, if I wanted peace with her, it was up to me entirely. It had nothing to do with her – it was what I wanted, and what I could do, that mattered. So if I want peace in the world, it has nothing to do with anyone else; I simply need to do whatever I need to do to become a non-contributor to malice and sorrow on the planet. It is up to me, not anyone else. If I can’t do it – how can I expect anyone else to do it? But if I can do it then anyone else can! Cute, hey! I have had people accuse me of not caring about the world. I find this curious because caring about the world is one of the major burning drives in my life and a major motive for ridding myself of malice and sorrow as much as possible.

At one point in my investigation of the Human Condition I was studying what the psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and the like had discovered about human behaviour. I came across an experiment the results of which rocked me to my very core. A series of experiments were conducted at Yale University in the early sixties to test people’s obedience to authority. The most famous was the ‘Milgram experiment’. Stanley Milgram advertised for participants to undertake a ‘memory study’, and subsequently pairs of volunteers would turn up at the laboratory at the appointed time. One was designated as ‘teacher’, the other as ‘learner’, and it was explained to them that the study was concerned with the effects of punishment on learning. The ‘learner’ was then conducted into a room, seated in a chair, his arms strapped to prevent excessive movement, and an electrode attached to each wrist.

The real focus of the experiment was the ‘teacher’. After watching the ‘learner’ being strapped into place, he was taken into the main room and seated before an impressive shock generator. It had a row of thirty switches ranging from 15 volts – ‘Slight Shock’, to 450 volts – ‘DANGER, Severe Shock’. The ‘teacher’ was then told to administer the learning test to the man in the other room. When the ‘learner’ responded correctly, the ‘teacher’ moved on to the next item; when the other man gave an incorrect answer, the ‘teacher’ was told to give him an electric shock. He was to start at the lowest level and increase the level each time the ‘learner’ made an error.

The ‘teacher’ was a genuine ordinary participant, but he did not know that the ‘learner’ was actually an actor who received no shock at all, but was faking a response. The real aim of the experiment was to see how far a person would proceed in a situation in which he is ordered to inflict increasing pain on a protesting victim.

The actor-learner’s ‘response’ at about 150 volts was a demand for release, at 300 volts an agonizing scream; at 450 volts he was writhing in tortured agony. In the test EVERY participant went on to administer 300 volts to the learner, with sixty-five percent going to the full 450 volts! Most participants obeyed the instructor, no matter how vehement the pleading of the person being shocked, no matter how painful the shocks seemed to be, and no matter how much the victim pleaded and screamed to be let out. This experiment has since been repeated thousands of times at different universities, with identical results. And those participants were just the ‘you and me’ of this world! Ordinary, average, typical human beings!

Reading about this experiment had an earth-shattering effect on me. I had already had glimpses of this behaviour in myself. The willingness to kill for a cause in Rajneeshpuram, the thrill of killing that I had felt, the joy of revenge – and this is ‘me’ at my core! What more incentive did I need than this to rid myself of this lust for violence? This instinctual passions of aggression that blind nature has programmed in us all. I also read books and watched programs on TV about that horrendous outbreak of genocide – the Holocaust; the systematic starving, gassing and burning of millions of people. The camp guards were ordinary 50-year-old men and women – ordinary people like those in Milgram’s experiments, the ‘you and me’ of this world. When push comes to shove, human beings become monsters, and it does not take much pushing – we even seem to enjoy it!

Another TV program I watched reported on the fire bombing of Dresden and other German cities during the war. Vast areas of these cities were turned into raging firestorms of such intensity that people were sucked off their feet into the inferno, and babies were ripped from their mothers’ arms. This was a deliberate policy of revenge for the German bombing of English cities. Civilians were deliberately targeted. The Americans similarly incinerated Tokyo, causing more deaths than both atomic bombs combined. Of some 50 million killed in the Second World War, 30 million were women and children. When the Allies saw the German concentration camps after the Second World War, they put hundreds of thousands of German soldiers in open fields – in winter – and surrounded them with barbed wire. They then fed them below minimum survival rations and slowly starved or froze thousands of them to death over the winter. To increase the torture they backed open truckloads of food up to the perimeter fence and left them there to rot. They were the ‘good guys’ and the other side had to be punished for their wrongs!

What we call justice is, after all, nothing more than revenge and retribution. An eye for an eye! Such is the appalling extent of malice and sorrow in this world.

The way I learned to cope was to stick my head in the sand, not watch TV or not want to know anything about it – a denial of the facts and that perverse human attitude that it was others who acted this way, not me. Becoming spiritual was a further denial in that I regarded the ‘outer’ world as an illusion and the ‘inner’ spiritual world as real. To get ‘out of it’ in any way possible was the aim, be it drugs, alcohol, Prozac or bliss, meditation, becoming a ‘watcher’ or, if you hit the ‘million to one jackpot’, Enlightenment. Anything was welcome to avoid feeling and acknowledging the malice and suffering intrinsic to the Human Condition. What I eventually found was that by looking it squarely in the face and not avoiding it I was forced to do something about it in myself.

‘No more turning away’ as Pink Floyd sang.

Ultimately I was seeking peace for myself, of course, but I found it extremely useful to gather as much motive and intent as possible. It can be useful fuel or ‘back pressure’, as Richard calls it. And what better motive to find peace for myself than to become a non-contributor to the malice and violence on this fair planet. To prove peace as an actual fact – for it not to forever remain a hope or an ideal. Isn’t it extraordinary that it is now possible? I’m not asking you to believe me: but I’m unabashedly trying to inspire or seduce you to ‘give it a go’.

I am no longer continually run by emotions or feelings like sympathy, empathy, love, compassion any more – they are a failed cop out, a film I used to put over things to avoid seeing the actuality of my behaviour, and of doing something about it. Now that I know that there is an alternative that works, and that malice and sorrow is optional for people, I regard those who reject this alternative as suffering needlessly and inflicting suffering on others needlessly. One of my prime motives has been that I saw my very interactions with other people as causing pain and suffering in them, even when I was being ‘good’ and ‘loving.’ To suffer myself is one thing – to inflict it on others is malice.

I care enough to eliminate my selfish malice and sorrow and I will stand no nonsense from others about not being ‘caring’; when what they really mean is not being ‘loving’. Like Richard, I’ll stick my head above the parapet and say, ‘All you have to do is get rid of your ‘self’ entirely, and then you will enjoy unparalleled actual peace for yourself twenty four hours a day, every day.’ And as more and more people care enough, peace will gradually spread through the world like a chain letter. However, I am under no illusion that most people will keep with the ‘tried and failed’, leading a dull second-rate life of trying to repress their emotions, of being as good as they can. And yet others will continue the futile aim of transcending their emotions with meditation, right thinking, and other ‘spirit’-ual devices. Most will indeed ‘turn away’ and peace may well take a few generations to establish but at last it is actually possible for those who want it.’ Peter’s Journal, Peace

9.7.2001

PETER: Given that you keep posting the meta-physical writings of others to the list every now and again, I thought I would post my story as to how I was shocked out of believing in a life after death for ‘me’, as soul or spirit. To share with you what set me off really searching for the meaning of life in the physical world we mortal flesh and blood human beings actually live in. It’s a fairly long but it does tell a complete story in itself –

[Peter]: ‘As I begin to put into words the sense I have made of life, I am reminded of the time I stood beside my 13-year-old son’s coffin. It was indeed a shocking experience to be confronted by the sight of the dead body of someone so young and so close. Shocking to my very core. It was then that I really determined to find out how to remove the ‘shackles’ that I felt had always bound me, and to experience life free of them before I died! I had been, at this time, some ten years on the spiritual path, but this experience was to prove for me a seminal point – the beginning really.

Two things in particular stick in my mind from the time of my son’s death. My ex-wife had wanted to see the body and the undertaker led us out to the little room in which the coffin stood on trestles, set up for our viewing. I remember looking at the body, which had been prepared to look serene with whatever skills an undertaker uses. What struck me immediately was the lifelessness of the corpse. This was obviously the dead body of someone who had abounded with almost frenetic energy when he was alive. There was a wail from beside me as my ex-wife put into words exactly what I had seen – ‘He’s not here, he’s not here’. After leaving the funeral parlour we drove aimlessly around the small coastal town, finally parking on the edge of the river estuary. As we wandered out onto the tidal mudflats, she looked up at the greying sky and shouted out his name several times. I looked up at the sky and clearly remember thinking, ‘No, he’s not up there either.’

I had experienced the death of both parents previously, but the death of one of my children, particularly one so young, completely shattered my nonchalant view I had of being alive. When I was seventeen, my father had died when he was only in his early forties. He had suffered a heart attack about two years before, but had continued to work very hard to fulfil his ambition of providing a house and some security for my mother. He died when it was half-complete, and I always saw the futility in his gesture, as my mother was lonely in the house without him and sold it a few years later anyway. I guess it was the only thing he knew to do as a husband, but it always seemed such a pointless sacrifice.

I also have a distinct memory from this time of my mother trying to find a priest who would officiate at the cremation. My father was a Lutheran, but the Lutheran minister refused to conduct the service, as my father had also been a Mason, which was objectionable to the minister for some reason. So, here was my mother ringing around to find anyone with a back-to-front collar willing to do the job.

What my son’s death at such a young age did for me was to intensify the sense of urgency to find the meaning of it all – after all, I saw how short life can actually be. Here I was, my father dead, my son dead; I was still alive, in my early forties, and I was obviously living on borrowed time – as I saw it. And I knew that I was not even really living yet – there was fear, hesitancy, and that feeling of invisible shackles from which I yearned to break free. What also struck me at the time was the fact that I had learnt nothing in life that I could pass on to my son about how to be happy, how to have a happy relationship with a woman, how to live life fully. My father never knew of these things, and now another generation had passed, another opportunity was being missed. I inwardly determined to make this ‘finding out’ the most important goal of my remaining life – my ‘borrowed time’ as I somewhat dramatically called it.

I vividly remember my reactions when I was first told of my son’s death. I was in Poona, India, in the ashram of a guru now known as ‘Osho’, but who is most commonly known as ‘Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’. Some few months earlier I had finished a two-year project building a huge marble and glass bedroom for Rajneesh. I was not working in the ashram at the time of my son’s death and was just cruising in one of my ‘comfortably numb’ periods, leisurely eating breakfast, with nothing at all planned for the day, or indeed for the rest of my life.

A woman I knew, who was involved in the ashram organisation, came up to me as I sat at the table and said she had something to tell me. ‘Your son has been killed in an accident.’ Immediately a wave of grief engulfed me, as though it saturated my body. I began to cry, so deeply that it really did feel as though I would sob my heart out. After what must have been only a minute or two, I then remember a deep feeling of loss – ‘I won’t ever see him again, he won’t be around in my life – and I will miss him!’ The crying continued for a few more minutes and then a numbness came over me which was to last for a few hours until I became involved in the practical things that needed to be organised – contacting his mother, organising travel, etc. This intense wave of grief was to return several times later in the day, but I recall thinking how calmly I was doing whatever was necessary. There was still a deep feeling of loss that he would not be in my life any more, that he would actually not be around any more. What was evident, even then, was that a large part of the grief I felt was really the fear that death had struck so close to me! That one day I, too, would die.

When I arrived at the school where he had died, I found a veritable sea of emotions. His mother was overcome with grief, the staff swamped with grief and guilt, his friends and peer group confused as to how to respond, while the younger students seemed the least emotionally affected. I was not interested in the details of his death at all, as any questioning would only involve guilt and blame, and the deep feeling of loss was already enough for everyone. I found myself coming back, again and again, to the fact that he was simply not around any more. After the cremation, I returned to the ashram in India to resume normal life, unsuspecting of the events to follow.

Within a few weeks, as we all assembled in the meeting hall for the evening talk, it was announced that Rajneesh had ‘left his body’ earlier that afternoon. His dead body was then carried into the hall and placed on the podium, and an emotional celebration was held. Here in front of us lay the body of the man who had been for me mentor, father and Guru! For the past ten years I had devoted my life to him and his vision. I had sat in devotion for hours and hours, had worked for his ideal, and had loyally followed him through thick and thin. Being his disciple and following his teachings had given my life meaning, direction and purpose. And now he was dead. His body was then carried through the streets amidst much pandemonium, as by now the word of his death had spread around Poona. At the burning place by the river, the body was placed on a pit full of firewood. Ghee and various perfumes were poured on, more logs piled on top, and the whole lot set on fire.

Several thousand of us were gathered in the firelight and the singing continued into the night. As the crowd thinned, I watched the smouldering remains of the fire, wondering what would become of all our dreams, and what I would do, now that he was gone. The next morning I was awoken with a message to come to the ashram, where I worked with a crew all day and through the night to convert the marble bed we had completed only months before into an altar for his ashes. The huge bedroom I had helped build was now to become his Mausoleum!

Life in the ashram continued on, hardly missing a beat, with his chair ceremoniously carried in each evening, and a large screen lowered to play videos of his previous talks. We all believed he had only ‘left his body’ and ‘His Energy’ was still here. I stayed on in the ashram for a month or two, but since I was running out of money I returned to work in the West. I found a largely unspoken sympathy directed towards me because of my son’s death, and I became aware of a certain personal emotional investment in continuing my grief. The grief was to remain simmering just below the surface for some two years. I would often find myself feeling guilty, but eventually it became obvious that this was senseless, as I explored all of my actions and could see that in no way was I culpable. I realised some of the guilt was associated with the question: ‘Did I give him too much freedom?’ And the answer was always that it was better to have given him freedom than to try and tie him down. For the last six months of this period I would walk the beach near where I lived for hours and hours, miles and miles, trying to make sense of why he had died. In the end I wore out the question and accepted the fact that there was no answer – he was no more in my life. He was dead!

The death of my son proved to be a turning point in my life. It provided me with both the intent to find out the ‘meaning of life’, and a constant sense of urgency to do so. I realised two things when I saw his dead body – the living being I had known was no more, and he had not ‘gone’ anywhere else. In short, death is the end of a living being and there is no after-life – it is but a passionate myth!

Curiously enough, those two realisations were to prove vital in beginning to remove the ‘shackles’ that I felt that day by the coffin. Those imaginary bonds, restraints and confusions which are now but a faded memory. They were, however, real and very potent at the time and have required a lot of stubborn, intense effort to remove. They actually separate me, this flesh and blood body, from the sensual, thrilling experience of being alive and doing whatever is happening, this very moment, right here – even although only virtually free of any malice and sorrow.

During my investigations into death over this last year, I have become aware that the most shocking thing for human beings is that we are able to contemplate our own death. It is amazing that, of all the animals on the planet, only we human beings, with our ability to think and reflect, know that we have a limited life span and, further, that we could die at any time. We know this, we can talk about it and think about it. We see other people and animals die, and we see our bodies aging and dying. We know that death is an inevitable fact. This is the fact of the situation, but we have avoided this fact largely by making ‘Why are we here?’ and ‘What happens after death?’ into great religious, philosophical and scientific questions. Indeed, for many humans the pursuit of the answer to these meaningless questions is deemed to be the very meaning of life. The search for what happens after life becomes the point of life and the Search is endless. One is forever on the Path. One never arrives.

That always seemed some sort of perversity to me. All that the religious and spiritual meanings of life have offered us is that they point to life after death – that’s where it is really at! ‘When you die, then you can really live!’

I have read the work of some researchers who have studied the responses of people with terminal illnesses and they have documented people’s reactions in the face of death. Broadly, those reactions are seen progressively as denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. It seems to me that since we all know we suffer from a terminal illness called ‘growing old’, at the end of which comes death, human beings actually live their lives in one, if not all, of the above psychological states at one time or another.

Denial of the fact of death is to believe in a Heaven, a place where we go to after death. This is common to all religions, with the Eastern religions adding the belief of reincarnation to somewhat muddy the water. Enlightenment, with its altered state of consciousness, is a denial of death in the sense that the Guru believes Him or Herself to be in a state of Timelessness – a delusion that they are beyond death. Denying the fact that the body dies and rots, they claim the body is but an illusion. ‘I am not the body’ is a common belief. A separate entity from the physical body – the Soul, Self, Atman or whatever – is self-created, that which lives on and cheats death. Thus, even the Enlightened Ones have their place to go to after death – the various Eastern versions of Heaven.

Added to the denial of death, the denial of life’s sensual pleasures, sex, comfort and leisure is entrenched in all the religions. In fact, suffering and sacrifice are deemed great virtues in both religion and spirituality. The curious thing I was to discover about the spiritual path was that at the core of the teachings, exactly like in the Western religions, lies the desire to achieve a ‘state of immortality’, and I had not seen it while on the ‘path’. Somehow I had managed to blind myself to these facts, as I was originally attracted to spirituality for the goal of personal ‘peace of mind’ in this life – to hell with the next one. This led me to believe that Eastern Spirituality was something other than, or better than, the ‘old-time Religion’ that I had known, and rejected as silly, in my youth.

Anger in the face of death is a common reaction, and it is obvious to all of us that many people live their lives in anger. It has never been a particular resentment for me, but I do know of people who are angry at having to be here. Most of this anger seems to be blindly and wildly directed at authority, and those who people see as responsible for the mess in the world. The so-called peaceful protests, movements and demonstrations are, in my experience, mainly an outlet for this anger. When people get together to combine their anger the results can be horrific, often deadly.

Bargaining is perhaps the most insidious reaction to the fear of death because it involves the belief that one can indeed cheat or avoid death. This is, of course, nothing but a delusion, for death is an undeniable fact. Some people seek a form of immortality by producing children, or consider power and fame as some form of immortality – ‘at least I will be remembered’. The most common bargain is the religious and spiritual pursuit, with its promise of some kind of life after death. Thus a bargain is made with one’s God or Guru – I’ll support, follow, love and devote myself to you and in return I get a ticket to the ‘next life’.

Indeed, this is trading time, happiness, leisure, sensual pleasure and freedom, which is available right now, for time and effort involved in worship, meditation, prayer, devotion and suffering, in the hope for some ‘good spot’ in a supposed afterlife.

The other price paid lies in the necessity of complying with the moral and ethical codes of the particular spiritual or religious group in which you believe – the necessity to comply, conform, love, and unquestioningly trust results in a tangible and palpable restriction of freedom. It seems an appalling price to pay, given that there has been no actual authenticated report back of any life after death from anyone who has died. Depression is not something I am very familiar with in myself, but I have seen in other people the feeling of exhaustion and futility that comes with realising there is no escape from death and indeed from the suffering of life. Those people I know who suffer from depression, ultimately see no way out of the continuing cycle of sorrow and misery. Even the time honoured methods of hope, trust and faith seem to fail them as they struggle to keep their heads above water. At the bottom of the pit, below despair, forever tempting, lies suicide.

Acceptance is deemed the last stage in the usual reaction to imminent death. It seems to me that a more accurate description of this state would be resignation. I remember my father going back to his particular church for a time after he had his first heart attack, to make his peace with God. He lasted for a few months before giving up and lapsing back into what I now see as resignation. People’s acceptance of life and its inherent suffering is summed up in phrases such as ‘making the best of it’ or ‘that’s life’, or the classic ‘life wasn’t meant to be easy’. The description I used for myself when in this state, was of being ‘comfortably numb’.

The Human Condition is exemplified by the universal and inviolable acceptance that human life is typified by malice and sorrow and the only possible ‘solutions’ are spiritual or religious, all firmly based on Ancient Wisdom. Life on earth ‘is the way it is’ and there is nothing one can do about it. Acceptance is praised in the spiritual world as understanding that the world, the body and indeed even death itself, are an illusion. The most insidious teaching that now seems to be emerging from the East is a form of ‘it doesn’t matter what you do – it is all an illusion anyway’. For me, my son’s death ruled out the option of accepting that ‘this was all there was to life’. I wanted to be sure I got the most out of my life – to actually live the promised freedom, right here, right now, as this flesh and blood body.

What I have found is that all of the religious and spiritual doctrines and concepts about death are simply intricate fairy-tales retold and reinforced for millennia. They require constant injections of Faith, Hope, Trust, Devotion and Surrender to effectively maintain the belief in an afterlife – all to keep the underlying fear of death at bay.

I remember when Rajneesh died we selected a piece of marble and had an Indian stonemason chisel on it: ‘Never Born, Never Died, Only Visited This Planet…’ as the epitaph on his tomb. Rajneesh had dictated this to his secretary some months before his death. It seemed curious to me at the time, because I thought I had understood that the whole point of the spiritual search was the dissolution of the ‘self’ – in other words, ‘peace of mind’ or freedom for me, on earth. And here was Rajneesh proclaiming that he was only a ‘visitor’ here anyway, and even hinting that maybe he went somewhere else in the physical universe. There arose in me more questions than answers, but at the time I took it as was merely ‘par for the course’, given the inconsistency of his teachings. Now, of course, I am able to clearly see that the denial of living as this body, on this earth, at this moment of time, of all the spiritual teachers is both legendary and well documented – if one bothers to investigate.

In some of those people around me who are religious or spiritual I see an increasing devotion and fanaticism as the physical fact of death comes closer. For others, ‘sitting silently, doing nothing’, the mid-life crisis, old age, and finally death come by themselves. Some adopt a ‘sit on the fence’ attitude of ‘maybe, maybe not’ to the idea of an after-life – an indifference that actively precludes them from a full-blooded commitment to life on earth, as a flesh and blood body only.

Acknowledging the fact of death has also had a curious effect on how I experience time. Knowing that death will come, it will just be another event to respond to the moment it occurs. It simply makes no sense to fear a fact – it is how it is, it is a fact. This frees me from the fear that I am running out of time – that I am in a hurry to fit everything in. This is not to be confused with the feeling of intensity that people falsely call ‘being here, being really alive’, a frenetic feeling which is fuelled by the fear of death. For some people this intensity is induced by a near-death experience, when they see life as ‘precious’ and not to be wasted on ‘petty things’.

Nor am I talking about the spiritual concept of ‘being here’. I remember being visited recently by a friend who has spent years vigilantly on the spiritual path, and he talked about ‘being here’. It was very strange, as I experienced him as being ‘somewhere else’, as though stoned. It was then that I fully understood that Enlightenment is actually an ‘Altered State of Consciousness’, a ‘getting out of it’, and an attempt, by a fanciful flight of imagination, to defy the actuality of death by denying or transcending the fact of mortal earthly life.

Being free of the belief in an after-life, I am now free to actually be here, fully acknowledging the fact that before the sperm hit the egg I wasn’t here, and when this body dies, I die, since I am this body. What else could I be? A walk-in, like Rajneesh? Having no belief in a past or future life enabled me to tackle the issue of my behaviour, my actions, my feelings and emotions, and, of course, my happiness and my harmlessness, right now. I have no second-chances at living, this is it, so I have to be the best I can be now. This understanding was crucial in order to be able to fully embrace the responsibility I had to free myself of the psychological and psychic entity and the ensuing malice and sorrow that was shackling my enjoyment of life. It didn’t allow me any room for denial, bargaining or accepting a second-rate life. I simply could no longer postpone or avoid. It made the question of ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ so vitally intense to me and meant that the process of becoming free was guaranteed of success.

Success in being free means a life led without the fear of death. No psychological or psychic fear of death, no feeling of running out of time, no spiritual belief in an after-life or ‘other-world’ distract me from fully living this moment of time. With no ‘sense of continuity’ – as Vineeto calls it – each moment is fresh, and I am doing what I am doing for the first time. This does not deny the fact that what I do is largely repetitive. I get up in the morning, have breakfast and do whatever I do and then go to bed at night-time – exactly as I have done every day for forty-nine years. Frankly, the idea of immortality appals me – I think the present arrangement is perfect and I see the attempts of human beings to alter it, or to try to ‘cheat’ it, as plain silly. I desire no ‘remote control’ to fast-forward time, slow it down, replay it, or ‘change channels’. I am firmly and safely located in time, in this moment, the only moment I can experience, doing whatever is happening now.

I am finally on the way to becoming an autonomous human being, happy and harmless, delighting in being alive. I simply wasn’t here before I was born. And I simply won’t be here (or anywhere else) after I die. I will be like the parrot in John Cleese’s sketch: ‘dead, extinct, finito, kaput, stuffed, no more, finished, obliterated’. Exactly as my father, my son, my mother, Rajneesh, Krishnamurti, Jesus, Buddha, and all the billions who have been on this earth before me.

I had lived in fear of death and tried to avoid death and the suffering of life by ‘getting out of it’ spiritually. But, in the end, by fully investigating the beliefs around death – finding out the facts for myself – I was able to acknowledge the fact of death. To acknowledge the fact of death is an essential prerequisite to begin the journey to becoming free of the Human Condition of malice and sorrow. It meant that I could no longer turn away from the facts of my mortal life in this actual physical world.

A genuine freedom from the Human Condition has to be an actual freedom, easily and readily liveable by anyone, in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are, and not some imaginary escape or transcendence into a ‘spiritual world’ peopled with ‘higher-evolved’ ethereal beings.

Actual Freedom is, per definition, both non-spiritual and down-to-earth, and as such, is both a freedom from the need to believe in an after-life and an authentic freedom from the fear of death.’ Peter’s Journal ‘Death’

Actualism is not a theory or philosophy about life – actualism is all about the physical world we mortal flesh and blood human beings actually live in. Actualism is as down to earth as you can get, 180 degrees opposite to the imaginary ethereal metaphysical world.

Maybe having read my story you will see why I have no interest in intellectual dissertations about metaphysics – my fascination is with the world of people, things and events.

16.7.2001

PETER: Given that you keep posting the meta-physical writings of others to the list every now and again, I thought I would post my story as to how I was shocked out of believing in a life after death for ‘me’, as soul or spirit.

RESPONDENT: The kind attention is appreciated.

PETER: To share with you what set me off really searching for the meaning of life in the physical world we mortal flesh and blood human beings actually live in. It’s a fairly long but it does tell a complete story in itself –

RESPONDENT: Thank you for the concern. Please be aware that length of story really is of no consequence. With a deep and happily extended respect, what ‘set (you) off really searching...’ was the choice to do so and no-thing else. Recognizing that, and admitting it, shortens the story some, but it does place One in a much more honest position.

PETER: Your comment not only shortens my story, it completely dismisses it. No doubt you see this as placing ‘One’, aka No 22, as being ‘in a much more honest position’ , thereby imputing ‘with a deep and happily extended respect’ that my experience is less than honest, but this haughtiness does nothing but stifle any possibility of a genuine discussion between two fellow human beings.

*

PETER:

[Peter]: ‘As I begin to put into words the sense I have made of life <Snipped for length> Peter’s Journal ‘Death’

Maybe having read my story you will see why I have no interest in intellectual dissertations about metaphysics – my fascination is with the world of people, things and events.

RESPONDENT: Again, thank you. It is kind to share the story and the conclusions that are believed to be based on the memories it is.

PETER: You sure do have a way with words that serves to continuously write off anything another human being is saying to you. Your attitude is however both consistent and thorough, even to the point of negating the existence of the very person who is writing to you –

[Respondent to No 12]: Do you find it reasonable to imagine a some-thing called ‘Peter’ that might be the owner of said mind? Respondent to No 12 19.5.2001

It was obviously a waste to share my story with you, or as you would have it, ‘the conclusions that are believed to be based on the memories’ of an imagined ‘mind’ of an imagined ‘some-thing called ‘Peter’’.

But my story may well be of interest to others on this list who are ready and willing to acknowledge the fact of their own mortality rather than be lulled by the traditional narcissistic fantasy stories of an immortal Soul. Which is why I posted my story.

RESPONDENT: Please allow the offering of the cliff note memories of the behaviour you would call ‘No 22’.

PETER: The reason I posted my story to you and why I keep writing about becoming happy and harmless is that my concern is what human beings do to other human beings in the physical world we humans spend our lives in – the sort of things that happened to you in your first 32 years on this planet. Vis:

[Respondent]: Father in turn left ‘me’ with grandparents and joined the service while I was 3 months old, never to be seen again. [endquote].

Actualism is about bringing an end to wars – be they nation vs. nation, religion vs. religion or as an act of revenge for some ancestral tribal dispute. In other words, eventually no father or son would ever go off to war to kill or be killed in the name of God, country or ancestral retribution, no son or daughter would be orphaned, no woman be widowed to war.

[Respondent]: Sexual relationship between the ages of 8 (?) and 13 initiated by live in aunt and care taker. Physically beaten from age 5 (?) to 13 by live in aunt and care taker and by mother when living in same household.

Was the choice to be intermittent debilitating anxiety accompanied by acute panic attacks from age 19 to age 32 and choose to be debilitated and bed ridden with depression and agoraphobia at age 32, attempted suicide and was hospitalised. [endquote].

Actualism is about bringing an end to sexual abuse, rape, child abuse, domestic violence, substance abuse, depression, corruption, despair and suicide – in other words, eventually every child would have a happy childhood and every human being would have a happy life.

Actualism offers a method whereby every human being can rid himself, or herself, of the evils of instinctual malice and sorrow – in other words, with actualism spread around the world like a chain letter, eventually every body would be happy and everybody would be harmless. There would be no need for policemen, jails, lawyers, courts, armies, locks on doors and bars on windows. With the eventual elimination of the evils of malice and sorrow, human beings would no longer need to pray to mythical Gods for forgiveness of their sins or need to dissociate from the actual world by escaping into a self-induced metaphysical inner world.

Actualism is about once and for all bringing peace to this fair planet and not about finding a fragile Self-centred and Self-created peace in a fantasy metaphysical world.

That’s why I posted my story to you, No 22. The death of my son set me off searching for the answers as to why the human condition is always typified by childhood hurts and wounds, teenage angst and resentment, adult unhappiness and competitiveness and old age inevitably spent in denial, anger, bargaining, depression or resignation. My son’s death revitalized my concern and my sensitivity to the appalling things human beings do to each other, so much so that I was forced to abandon the notion of a personal retreat into the metaphysical world and to rise to the actualism challenge of proving that an actual peace on earth between human beings is possible.

RESPONDENT: In ‘recovering’ from the choice to be depression, it was recognized, if I could feel so bad, it must be possible to feel so good. If I could feel so anxious and scared, must be able to feel so peaceful. It was found the difference between so good and so bad, it was a choice. Immediately and completely ALL dread, worry, anxiety, fear, concern, doubt, numbness, angst, horror, trepidation, and malaise disappeared. Complete and utter peace and stability appeared. I was no longer a ‘victim’ of the behaviour called emotions, it was recognized that in fact ‘No 22’ was THAT behaviour, and that behaviour was a choice. The recognition that to live or die was a choice, to be the behaviours called a beating heart, breathing lungs and thinking brain, was a choice. If I did not care to feel bad (be the behaviour called ‘feeling bad’) there was absolutely no reason to, and the belief that ‘things’ and ‘reasons’ were responsible for feelings, good or bad, was also a choice, and like all choices, was completely and utterly unnecessary.

PETER: Dissociation is a tempting offer – simply choose not to be the victim who feels bad in the ‘physical world of things and reasons’ but choose to be an all powerful disembodied non-physical identity. This act of denial and retreat involves abandoning grim reality so as to immerse oneself in the passionate delusion of a Greater Reality thereby completely disenfranchising oneself from the world of people, things and events.

One then starts to tune into the Grand Scheme whereby we are all God’s children or we all Gods, depending on one’s religious/spiritual bent. One starts to ingratiate oneself to a mythical God, currying favour for a good spot in the after-life world or one starts to have delusions of grandeur whereby one begins to think and feel oneself to be the omnipotent and immortal GOD. And all the while, the wars and rapes and murders and child abuse and domestic violence and corruption and despair and suicides go on unabated, as yet another ‘wise’ generation of spiritual shaman peddle their message that you too can create your own Reality.

From what you are saying, your particular message to the man defending his home would be that he chose to be attacked, to the woman who was raped you would say that she chose to be raped, to the victim of child abuse – like yourself – that he or she chose to be abused, to the despairing refugee that he or she chose to be born in a war zone? Your message would be not to choose to ‘feel bad’ or to identify at all with the ‘physical world of things and reasons’.

And yet despite your teachings of having omnipotent control, or choice, over your emotions –

[Respondent]: It was found the difference between so good and so bad, it was a choice. Immediately and completely ALL dread, worry, anxiety, fear, concern, doubt, numbness, angst, horror, trepidation, and malaise disappeared. Complete and utter peace and stability appeared. <...> If I did not care to feel bad (be the behaviour called ‘feeling bad’) there was absolutely no reason to, and the belief that ‘things’ and ‘reasons’ were responsible for feelings, good or bad, was also a choice, and like all choices, was completely and utterly unnecessary. [endquote].

you are also on record as saying –

[Respondent to Richard]: ‘I have experienced sorrow, and have never made any effort to try and compensate for it. Sorrow feels good. (...) I have felt anger but I have never felt that I was compelled to act on it, needed to relieve it, express it, or compensate for it’. Respondent to Richard, List B, 29.5.2001

Not only is your philosophy typical of spiritual self-righteous escapism, it is also utterly hypocritical and leaks like a sieve.

RESPONDENT: A final comment if I may please? The offering ‘actualism is not a theory or philosophy about life ...’ is, based on several years of communications with actualists and self proclaimed experts in actualism, is wrong thought. There has been a list of offerings compiled from the afore mentioned communications that illustrate several of the metaphysical and theoretical components of actualism and/or of the behaviour called ‘an actualist’. If you would like, please post your interest and they will be shared.

PETER: Your summary dismissal of your fellow human beings as imagined ‘behaviour’ and your endless dismissal of actualism as ‘wrong thought’ over a period of several years leaves me with no interest in your list of stereotyped offerings. The wisdom you share – choosing to think of yourself as an omnipotent immortal GOD rather than acknowledge that you are a mortal human being who, exactly like all other human beings, is socially and instinctually programmed to be malicious and sorrowful – is one that at least some on this mailing list are moving on from.

RESPONDENT: A last thank you for the kind attention. It is a pleasure to communicate with you. Be well.

PETER: If that is what you call communication I’ll pass on your offer of further sharing – I’m interested in peace on earth between mortal human beings which is why I abandoned being a believer in metaphysical other-worlds and the supernatural power of Gods.

19.7.2001

PETER: Actualism is about bringing an end to sexual abuse, rape, child abuse, domestic violence, substance abuse, depression, corruption, despair and suicide...

RESPONDENT: Recipe for bringing an end to sexual abuse, rape, child abuse, domestic violence, substance abuse, depression, corruption, despair and suicide...’

1. Recognize and acknowledge that One (you) is absolutely, unquestionably and infinitely responsible for every aspect of the behaviour called ‘insert 'your' name here’.
2. If the above does not feel correct and honest, do not stop until it does
3. Remove from your thoughts, vocabulary, action, library, computer hard drive, floppy disk, daily routine, social interaction and behaviour in general, ANY information that promotes, assures, attests, re-enforces, claims, or otherwise communicates in any form that 1. is not true.

There, it is done. If you do not wish to sexually abuse, do not. If you do not wish to rape, do not. If you do not wish to abuse a child, violate your domestic circumstance, abuse a substance, feel depression, be corrupt, be despairing, or commit suicide, do not. If you want to be happy and harmless, decide what it means for you to be happy and harmless and do it. Once 1. through 3. are complete, it is really very easy.

Of course, it is also completely unnecessary, so if you would rather not, that is fine too.

PETER: I would take it that you used this recipe of yours to become –

[Respondent]: A(n) god’, omni-potent or other-wise is an absurdity that represents no actuality. This is GOD, not a god, nor the god, nor some god, nor another god. Respondent to Richard, List B, 29.1.2001

and ...

[Respondent to Richard]: I is not inside anything – it is everything. I create what is by becoming what is. I am the intelligence that rearranges itself endlessly. This body, that body, the entire cosmos is but the evidence of I. Respondent to Richard, List B, 1.11.1998

and ...

[Respondent to Richard]: I can do nothing, but I do everything. Omnipotence not only comes with the package, it is the package. I am infinitely responsible for I am responsible for each I that I create. I am responsible for being the action that are you, and I am responsible for the action that is I. Respondent to Richard, List B, 25.5.1999

Your recipe is not a recipe for bringing an end to malice and sorrow, as in ‘an end to sexual abuse, rape, child abuse, domestic violence, substance abuse, depression, corruption, despair and suicide...’ . Your recipe is the same old hackneyed spirit-ual message of sublimating and transcending the bad or unwanted emotions in order that you can ultimately feel omnipotently immortal, as in GOD. And then you have the gall to claim that your transcendental choice recipe ‘is immediate, it is honest, it is complete, and it is actual’ despite the fact that you are also on record as saying –

[Respondent to Richard]: I have experienced sorrow, and have never made any effort to try and compensate for it. Sorrow feels good. (...) I have felt anger but I have never felt that I was compelled to act on it, needed to relieve it, express it, or compensate for it’ Respondent to Richard, List B, 29.5.2001

Your message has got nothing at all to do with being happy and harmless – you would have never even heard of the phrase before you came across Richard. This recipe of being ‘infinitely responsible’ has never ever been about being happy and harmless in the world as it is, with people as they are. Your message is about becoming a sanctimonious superior Being, living in a metaphysical dream world of One’s own creation. This spiritual message is not just your own creation – it has been assiduously followed and practiced by billions of people for thousands of years and nowhere, and at no time, has there ever been anything remotely resembling peace on earth.

Clipping the words happy and harmless on to your ‘choose to be GOD’ message does not change the essentially narcissistic nature of your teachings one iota. I was a touch concerned that I used the word hypocritical to describe your last post, but this latest effort of yours leaves me scurrying for the thesaurus.

Actualism has nothing to do with the transcendental effortless path of Eastern religious philosophy. Those who think that is what actualism is about an effortless choice have failed to read and understand what is on offer in actualism. Actualism is about making the effort to step by step rid oneself of all the social/spiritual and animal/instinctual programming that gives rise to human malice and sorrow – and those who imagine this process to be effortless are those who are yet to try.

May the Force be with you ...

11.12.2001

PETER: You posted the following to the list –

[D. Breton & Chr. Largent]: <Snipped for length> So, when we look at war’s history rather than war’s propaganda, we see a different nature from the one portrayed in war films. And we see responses that suggest that we humans may not be as murderous as the entertainment industry makes us out to be. Are Human Beings Killers? © 1999 Denise Breton and Christopher Largent (whole article)

The author’s ‘suggestion’ does beg the question as to why the most watched offerings of the entertainment industry – be they films, books, television, games, sport, music or the like – are those that portray violence and conflict as well as those that convey sorrow and loss? Does this not say much about the human condition that malice and sorrow is popular entertainment?

The other most popular entertainment falls into the fairy-tale category – be it romance, soaps, science fiction, witches, goblins, spirits, ghosts and the like. This tendency for other-worldly escapism is also mirrored in the spiritual and religious fairy-tale beliefs that have been passed down to us through the mists of time. Does this not say much about the human condition that escapism and denial is either popular entertainment or deemed to be humanity’s Great Wisdom?

Indeed one could even ask a further question as to why the popular and enduring religious and spiritual propagandas all portray human existence on this planet as a perennial struggle and fight betwixt Good and Evil forces. Does this not say much about the human condition that life on earth is believed by the majority of human beings to be a perennial struggle concocted by some imaginary Divine force?

This line of questioning could even lead anyone who was sufficiently curious and interested on to asking why all the great religious and spiritual propagandas portray human existence on this planet as essentially a suffering existence and that ultimately peace can only be experienced somewhere else after physical death? Does this not say much about the human condition that peace on earth is not the agenda of the so-called Great Wisdoms of the world?

And, if I was sincerely interested in bringing an end to the violence and suffering the exemplifies that human condition on this planet, then might I not be vitally interested in questioning my own anger, frustration, resentment, disenchantment, melancholy, sadness and the like? Does it not say much about the human condition that human beings always blame other human beings for being malicious and for perpetuating sorrow – the four in every hundred men blamed in the article posted – and yet they refuse to acknowledge the direct connection between their own feelings and passions and those of whom they willingly blame?

But spiritualists don’t like asking themselves questions such as this because they have already accepted the Truth of a life after death – provided that they personally are Good or Godly enough. Subsequently they will grasp at any straws in order to justify their belief and uphold their spiritual identity as well as stubbornly deny any facts and actualities that could possibly upset their apple cart.

Methinks thou art grasping at straws for fear of losing your apples.

21.12.2001

PETER: You posted the following article to the list without any comment form you –

[D. Breton & Chr. Largent]: <Snipped for length> So, when we look at war’s history rather than war’s propaganda, we see a different nature from the one portrayed in war films. And we see responses that suggest that we humans may not be as murderous as the entertainment industry makes us out to be. Are Human Beings Killers? © 1999 Denise Breton and Christopher Largent (whole article)

I then responded to the articles summary –

The author’s ‘suggestion’ does beg the question as to why the most watched offerings of the entertainment industry – be they films, books, television, games, sport, music or the like – are those that portray violence and conflict as well as those that convey sorrow and loss? Does this not say much about the human condition that malice and sorrow is popular entertainment?

RESPONDENT: Before speculating about the reasons

[Peter]: ‘why the most watched offerings of the entertainment industry – be they films, books, television, games, sport, music or the like – are those that portray violence and conflict as well as those that convey sorrow and loss?’ Does this not say much about the human condition that malice and sorrow is popular entertainment?’ [endquote].

There are two quick questions.

• If I may please, is this offering intended as a serious response to the article?

PETER: I must admit I did not check the bona fides of the authors of the article. Was the article not meant to be serious?

RESPONDENT:

• And if in fact it is intended to be a serious response, why did you choose to title the communication ‘Blaming Others’?

PETER: Because the title of my comment was appropriate to the author’s thrust in the article. I see from your comment to Gary that your interest in this topic has already waned but I would add the following comment for other’s who may be interested.

Every human being is genetically encoded with an aggressive instinctual passion and every human being is taught to keep a lid on this passion by a combination of reward for being good or punishment for being bad. Those who succeed in repressing their aggression are then deemed to be good whilst those who fail to repress their aggression within socially acceptable levels are deemed to be bad or evil and are then punished for erring. Any gross failure in repressing this innate instinctual aggression results in punishment by laws ranging from fines to imprisonment and even execution in some societies.

What I did was dig beneath my social programming and discovered my instinctual animal lust for aggression. By doing so I was able to confirm by direct experience the fact that, at core, the human condition of malice and sorrow is entirely the result of the instinctual passions – and not some mysterious evil force or spirits as is commonly believed. Many people have experienced, at some time in their lives, a lust to kill or maim – be it in a fit of jealousy, a desire for revenge or retribution, the urge to obliterate – but most do not physically act on the urge. But even if the passion remains repressed and not acted upon, any malicious feelings that one becomes aware of are the tip of an iceberg – signs of the repressed instinctual passion for aggression bubbling to the surface of awareness.

The authors of the article imply that only very few people – four percent of men in their opinion – have a lustful passion for aggression whilst the rest have a ‘different nature from the one portrayed in war films’. This conclusion can only have been reached by someone who has yet to either acknowledge or investigate his or her own malicious feelings and thus experience what is in fact at the root of the evil that has forever blighted humanity. Whilst I admit it does take a certain courage to dare to examine one’s own dark side, at the very least it may help one to break free of the craving to self-righteously blame others for all the evil in the world.