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Peter’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List with Correspondent No 23
RESPONDENT: Readers Digest actual freedom process Hi Peter and fellow list members. This is a cut of (Re: No 23 Re: Beliefs vs. facts Pt. 3) What you (Peter) wrote sometime ago along with the suggestion to try out the method for some six months and then report my experience with it.
As one may notice the header reads Readers Digest AF process. Although this title is written tongue in cheek it is seriously meant to be what it states; a readers digest. PETER: I quite liked your header – it indicates that you are reporting what you have thus far digested from reading and thinking about actualism. RESPONDENT: A while ago I was on (k-listening) of which the title is suggesting to honour and respect a good and sensible aspect of communication namely the art of listening. Unfortunately one had turned the art of listening, into the art of trying to understand ‘hear’ what the other was saying rather then listening to one’s own ever so subtle reactions to written words. As Gary introduced the term inner critic it suddenly became clear that what generally was happening on that list was ‘projecting’ ones own inner critic on that what was being written. And that the whole process of ‘interaction’ on that list and probably many other the like, was a desperate seeking to find acknowledgement of or justification for holding ones ‘gained’ spiritual values. PETER: A few years before I came across actualism, I had a revealing glimpse of the full extent of how human beings are taught and adopt a set of values, morals and ethics and then claim them as ‘my’ viewpoint, truth, fact or whatever. I was listening to my son talking one day when it suddenly dawned on me that he was sprouting as a truth something that I had believed some years earlier. It was shocking to then realize that all of the things I believed to be truths were picked up and imbibed in exactly the same way – by believing what parents and peers had told me was right, wrong, good, bad or ‘the truth’. I saw that these beliefs were what made up my son’s social identity and I knew that my own social identity was as nebulous, as fickle and as tenacious as my sons. Because of the way human beings acquire their social identity, it is no wonder that they desperately seek acknowledgement and justification from like-minded people to validate their morals, ethics, beliefs and truths and so vehemently defend them should they feel their beliefs are being attacked. As you may well be beginning to realize – the only way out of the need to continually prop up and defend one’s beliefs is to stop being a believer and start demolishing your social identity. And the way to do this is to have the fortitude to actively whittle away at all of those beliefs you have, through no fault of your own, taken on board to be inviolable truths. RESPONDENT: The AF list is significantly different. After having been for many years a convinced K-follower I finally have come to the conclusion that in evaluating his teachings there are 2 possibilities for me to categorize him. A man that was spiritual to his bootstraps (hence a spiritual teacher). A seeker at the virge of actualism, yet not recognized as such or made invisible to be so because of the spiritual cloaking his audience wanted/needed to perceive him in. >^note^ As for the actualist part I’m not saying that he had discovered actual freedom as described by Richard, yet I assume that apart from his spiritual experiences, he may have had glimpses of the actual world which unfortunately he failed to remain in, because he desperately clung to his own believe that there could not be any method designed for bringing about that experience as ongoing, hence his clinging to the statement ‘Truth is a land to which not any path can lead’ and the like his followers are, he remained stuck in ‘the observer is the observed’ thus subtly yet cleverly hiding the I as a spiritual identity, hence never to come to even consider the eradication of identity in toto, which indeed means getting down to business and start digging. PETER: If you go by what he said and wrote and how he behaved, J. Krishnamurti is clearly in category 1. If however you choose to deny what he said and wrote and how he behaved and opt to believe he is in category 2, as in ‘yet I assume that apart from his spiritual experiences, he may have had glimpses of the actual world’, then that’s up to you, but it is something entirely of your own imagining. RESPONDENT: ^note^ Diligently and intently applying the sequence ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ revealed that a method indeed is available. Yet I found it necessary to alter the method a little bit for the purpose of eliminating an aspect of this sequence which I found bearing a seed capable of breeding confusion, namely the part ‘this moment’ I’ll explain why. PETER: Personally, I find the term ‘this moment’ to be totally unambiguous and perfectly clear. The aim of the actualism method is to focus an actualist’s awareness on how he or she is experiencing this very moment – not last year, last week, an hour ago, a minute ago, in an hour, tomorrow or next year. Only this moment is actually happening and, as such, only this moment can be actually experienced. You can have emotional and/or cognitive memories of what happened in the past and you can have emotional and/or cognitive fantasies about what may happen in the future, but the only moment you can actually experience sensately is this very moment. The whole point of actualism is not to waste this moment, the only moment you can experience being alive, by being angry, frustrated, sad, bored or such let alone by wallowing in memories of the past or fantasizing about the future. RESPONDENT: It may have been overlooked by Richard that ‘this moment’ could be interpreted in terms of a time. Hence a willing experimenter (like myself) was to waste needlessly a considerate amount of energy into fruitless attempts to capture ‘this moment’ rather then focussing on ‘experiencing’ which is by now as I understand the quintessence of the method. I’m almost certain that this is not what he (R) meant to happen (correct me if this is an incorrect assumption). PETER: If you are interested in this business of being alive – in how you are experiencing this moment of being alive – then any time or energy involved in any aspect of actualism is never a needless waste of energy. Obviously wallowing in the past is a needless waste and fantasizing about the future is a needless waste but focussing your awareness on how you are experiencing this moment, the only moment you can actually experience being alive, is never a waste of time ... and can never be a waste of time. RESPONDENT: Yet through my wrestling with the part ‘this moment’ I came to find out that it is vital to understand the self construed and limiting concept of time. Hence my proposal for a change in this sequence reading now: [How am I experiencing this movement of being alive?] or [How am I experiencing this situation of being alive?] In making this alteration the difficulties in understanding the illusionary nature of time imo are lessened. As one inquires into the kind of concept of time one uses, one can determine for oneself whether one applies this concept in a sensible or silly way. PETER: Might I suggest you rephrase your last sentence to read –
After all, it is you who is proposing altering the method to suit yourself. RESPONDENT: As it occurred to me that the application of this concept is an important and vital ingredient of my social identity, prior to becoming able to diligently applying the AF method I first needed to ask: How do I experience time? Once I had unravelled this concept there was a tremendous relieve of pressure yet a keen understanding unfolded as to the urgency of applying the AF method as suggested, if I ever was to observe any significance change in the way I am experiencing my aliveness, being instinctual and barbarous at the very core. Because of the fact that once this concept had been gained clarity about, neither no longer I got trapped in expecting results overtime and taking AF to be a gaol to reach somewhere in the near or distant future, nor did I found any excuse to wait until tomorrow because right now I’m to busy and I don’t have time. Thus the method can and needs to be applied immediately meaning here; right where I happen to be. PETER: If I understand you correctly, your use of the word ‘immediately’ is akin to the use of the words ‘this moment’. If this is the case, I fail to understand your objections to the question ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ and your continuous attempts to alter it over the time you have been on this list. As for ‘no longer I got trapped in expecting results overtime and taking AF to be a gaol to reach somewhere in the near or distant future’ – if you are practicing actualism with the sincere intent to become happy and harmless then results will come over time, and if an actual freedom from the human condition is your goal in life it will happen in the near or distant future depending on the amount of effort ‘you’ put into it. RESPONDENT: So now my pure intent can be measured not by how long I’m going to apply the method but by the number of repetitions this question is needed to be asked to become as effortlessly as breathing in and out, meanwhile steadily uncovering the process of how identity is generated as described in AF as me the EGO or I the SOUL. PETER: And yet the only time asking the question ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ can be of any use is this very moment. You ask the question, and equally importantly, you come up with a sincere answer. After a while the deliberate practice of asking the question can become more of a habit and then it doesn’t have to be asked in words. You will find that in the very midst of some conversation or situation or event you will find yourself becoming aware as to how you are experiencing this moment of being alive. RESPONDENT: Also for I while I found myself trapped in questioning: who is asking this? Yet this does not happen anymore, because it is now patently clear the one who questions is the questioner and that’s me the experiencer. PETER: In the interests of keeping the matter simple, I stuck with the fact that ‘I’ was conducting an investigation into how ‘I’ ticked. And the only way to do this is clearly for ‘me’ to practice self-observation. RESPONDENT: As the question clearly asks for an ‘answer’ as to HOW this me is being experienced, its purpose is to collect data as to the ingredients the experience is made of. So ... it is only sensible to inquire into the QUALITY that this experience has, iow the shape it has taken as or is being recognized as experience. PETER: In the interests of keeping the matter simple, as in sensible, rather than collect data as to ‘the ingredients’, ‘quality’ or ‘‘shape’ of your experience’, why not put a simple label on your experience – such as I am feeling good, I am worried, I am feeling annoyed, or whatever is the appropriate label. RESPONDENT: To let the question backfire to: ‘who is asking (Advaita shuffle)’ is in fact a silly response to it because one shoots oneself in the foot so to say in not allowing the question to be used as a tool to achieve the purpose it has been designed for. PETER: Which is where sincere intent comes in because unless you have an aim to be happy and harmless the whole effort of asking ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ has no practical purpose whatsoever. Without a practical purpose, any action of self-observation can only be directionless and meaningless and, as history shows, all sorts of imaginary states can result and all sorts of deluded personas can emerge. RESPONDENT: In accurate evaluation of this ‘experiencing’ by answering the question sincerely, I find I (the experiencer) to be consisting of and or containing recognizable ingredients i.e. reoccurring movements like depression, anger, or it’s derivates of that like irritation, yet also pleasure, satisfaction and so on, so I can see for myself that I have not achieved the aimed purpose of becoming harmless in the first place, hence my achieved level of happiness is less then perfect happiness, which observation in turn motivates me in perpetuating my inquiry to the very end of self-immolation, yet not getting discouraged about my lack of perfection with regard to the difference of the aimed quality of harmlessness and the actual degree of ‘my achieved harmlessness’. Also the pitfall to call altered states of consciousness or self-deluded states like ie. Enlightenment ‘the real thing’ is avoided. PETER: Your use of the words ‘reoccurring movements’ to describe a feeling such as irritation and deeper emotions such as anger and depression does strike me as very similar to the spiritual admonition to close your eyes and watch your thoughts and feelings go by as if they were clouds in the sky. The spiritual admonition also includes neither to label these thoughts and feelings, nor to identify with them in any way. It’s a clever way of creating ‘a watcher’ identity, a real ‘me’, who then disassociates from the illusionary ‘me’, the creator of these clouds in a spaceless and timeless sky. In the interests of keeping the matter simple, I deliberately avoided creating another identity, such as ‘I (the experiencer)’, and stuck with the fact that ‘I’ was conducting an investigation into how ‘I’ ticked. And the only way to do this is clearly for ‘me’ to practice self-observation. RESPONDENT: As I attentively am monitoring myself by using the method and carefully yet persistently diligently inquire into my most dearly held ‘spiritual’ feelings, these feelings I find one by one to become exposed for what they are in this ongoing process of discovery. PETER: Given your intent to question your spiritual feelings, I take it then that you may well revisit your categorizations of J. Krishnamurti and ask yourself why ‘I assume that apart from his spiritual experiences, he may have had glimpses of the actual world’. After all, this thread did start with you quoting from a post where I said ‘It is impossible to become an actualist whilst remaining a spiritualist.’ RESPONDENT: So to make it perfectly clear as far as I am concerned in suggesting the alteration of moment into [movement/situation], I neither question the validity of the method, nor do I criticize it or nitpick on it. PETER: And yet it is clear that you want to change it, whatever the reason may be. RESPONDENT: Also not do I suggest to abandon a sensible use of the concept of time for practical purpose. PETER: To have a concept of time is neither sensible, nor does it serve any practical purpose. RESPONDENT: By suggesting this alteration I merely question the transparency of the expression as it were offered in: ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’, in an attempt to facilitate the process for any future newcomers on this list and/or those who may have second thoughts about as to wether this method can work, and can be of benefice to a ‘diligent applicant of the AF-method.’ Calling myself the latter hereby I state: [the method works for me.] PETER: You neglected to say which method works for you – the actualism method of down-to-earth self-observation or your own personal derivation of observing ‘I (the experiencer)’ observing the ‘occurring movements’ in this ‘movement’ or ‘situation of being alive’. As I said, ‘It is impossible to become an actualist whilst remaining a spiritualist’ and you may well find that your alterations to the actualism method have made it safely spiritual. RESPONDENT: So thank you Peter, for your encouragement to make this 180 degree turn into a new direction. PETER: Yep, if turning around and deliberately heading off in the opposite direction that everybody else is going was an easy business, there would already be peace on earth between human beings by now. To be a pioneer in this business of ridding yourself of malice and sorrow is a challenge that makes climbing Mt. Everest seem like a walk in the park. That is both the challenge and the thrill of being an actualist.
RESPONDENT: In a recent conversation you (Peter) suggested to substitute I for ‘one’ in the sentence: As one inquires into the kind of concept of time one uses, one can determine for oneself whether one applies this concept in a sensible or silly way. As indeed I found the statement sounding, like having traces of fundamentalism I find it sensible to rephrase it. I hasten to say that in a way I still find ‘one’ an interesting expression, as it gives a sentence the touch flavour of old traditional sort of gentlemen style, yet it sounds rather distant from personal experience, so ... I come to: In my experience this concept of time appeared to be one of the main ingredients from which my social identity was being generated. BTW, I find it, Peter, kind of surprising that, you don’t find time considered to be a concept.
PETER: And yet I didn’t say that I ‘don’t find time considered to be a concept’. Human ‘beings’ have a psychological and psychic persona who thinks and feels it exists over time and therefore time is experienced as a psychological and psychic concept. Hence ‘I’ have emotional memories of ‘me’ existing in the past and imaginary fantasies of ‘me’ existing in the future. Whereas, in fact, the only time that can be experienced as an actuality is this very moment. This is not to deny that past moments did not exist or that there will be future moments to then experience but the only moment that you can actually – i.e. sensately – experience is this very moment. Hence, as I said – ‘To have a concept of time is neither sensible, nor does it serve any practical purpose’. RESPONDENT: Also as to: ‘one’: Having attained to meetings where Krishnamurti spoke and also having been listening to tapes of his talks for a long time, this use of ‘one’ rather then ‘I’ illustrated how I have been indoctrinated by him on some level. K’s way of speaking must have been an influence on me, as hardly ever or very rarely I have heard him refer to himself as ‘I’. Although the old chap is death since 1986 I almost felt that I had betrayed him by being not longer a faithful spiritual believer. From that my posing:
Can be merely taken as a sentimental attempt to give the man a last chance in taken myself responsible for the fact, that I’m being a failing student of his teachings, desperately hoping that after all his’ will be agreed upon as to be as ‘having to ‘be meant’ to be non spiritual’ and it solely was my own spiritual way of interpreting that made them spiritual. So I guess after all a sort of childish wishful thinking. PETER: This type of wishful thinking is one that millions upon millions of other seekers have fallen for. I also remember feeling a fool when I started to realize that the famed Eastern Spirituality was nought but Ole Time Religion – with the only essential difference being that instead of a belief in a single God with subservient prophets, family members, messengers and saints the Eastern religions are pantheistic – allowing anything to be worshiped as a God or anyone to declare themselves to be a God. RESPONDENT: Now this sentimental feeling I find, deriving from the bare fact that in spite of having been deeply disappointed in him as a teacher yet, he had invoked feelings by me for him as a person, sort of like a son may have for his father. It may sound a bit silly but in a way still I even feel embarrassed by his exposure of being just an ordinary Guru. PETER: The feeling of being disloyal – and even of being a traitor – was very strong in me when I abandoned my Guru. But the good thing is that it I realized it was is only ‘my’ feelings that stood in the way of acknowledging a fact – feelings such as disloyalty, foolishness and pride. When I realized this, it became apparent to me that it was even more foolish to keep on feeling a fool by holding on to my beliefs when all I needed to do was to acknowledge a fact and then the associated feeling disappeared by itself. RESPONDENT: Personally I do see not much harm in copying/emulating a style to a certain degree, it’s probably so to speak also a sign of the good old ‘monkey spirit’ in me. Spirit not being used here in any traditional spiritual way, but rather spirit meaning nature/instinct. Iow, I found monkey spirit better sound then monkey nature. As a child already, I appeared to be highly sensitive to any perceived subtleties in the appliance of language and as to that, I sometimes was a source of annoyance to people, as I generally rather persistently insisted in appropriate pronunciation and use of words, thus many a time suggesting to make corrections where nobody was really interested in doing so or even cared to take notice. As recently was mentioned that it is most common in spiritual tradition to abandon or minimize the use of words as one (oops, slip of type board) mainly aims at ‘silent’ communication, I find it very refreshing to see that many of the actualists do not shun to sometimes express their thoughts in a rather abundant flow of words. PETER: Spiritualists are notorious for their misuse and abuse of words, often using them to mean something they do not mean and were never meant to mean. As for actualists, I can only speak personally. I didn’t start to write before I became an actualist, so no doubt a good deal of my writing style is influenced by Richard’s extensive vocabulary of words. It made a good deal of sense to me to use the same terminology as Richard uses for both clarity and consistency which is also why I wrote a glossary of terms used in actualism. You may have noticed the tendency in the spiritual world for every new pundit on the block to dress up the hackneyed ancient wisdom in new terms, thereby declaring his or her ‘discovery’ to be fresh and new. Obscuration and inconsistency are essential to sustain spiritual belief, whereas clarity and consistency are intrinsic to the process of actualism. RESPONDENT: Most often this seems to be a demonstration of the joy the writer has experienced in making an effort to express his thoughts with a degree of accuracy that is found satisfactory. Yet being far from an expert in the English language it is inevitable that certain expressions will sound silly to the ears of a native tongue or come over more/less strongly than intended. Iow, how do I write in such a way that the writer/reader is not to invest unnecessary energy in en/decoding the message as for to find out where to put any accents on words?; is a rather basic question to me. PETER: The first time I ever wrote anything of substance was when I wrote my journal. I had two basic criteria when I wrote and that was to write from my own experience only and to be able to stand by what I wrote. RESPONDENT: Yet sometimes this question ‘bites me in the ass’ so to speak and things become too complex, so ... as to –
Indeed this is perhaps a bit too analytical way of putting it and perhaps making things too complicated, hence the expression: ‘why not put a simple label on your experience’ is being as well as fairly well considered as a question to be resolved, as it is also heartily welcomed as a sensible suggestion. PETER: Making things overly complicated and indulging in overly minutious argumentation has a long tradition within the human condition and is a particularly male trait. So, if you find yourself doing it, not to worry. Simply get back to basics and back to the essence of actualism – discovering how to be actually happy and harmless in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. RESPONDENT: Although it is in AF highly recommended to read ‘face value’, sensible re/interpretation can only be done unless one has some presumptions as to the meaning and/or content of a phrase. My personal experience to that is ‘in reading it out loud’ it often becomes clearer. PETER: Understanding what is on offer in actualism is an essential first step in order to establish a prima facie case as to whether you want to abandon materialism and spiritualism and take up being an actualist. Reading what is written ‘out loud’ seems a good idea to me because in doing so you may also be thinking about what is being written rather than skip-reading it with the subsequent likelihood of not taking it at face value and misunderstanding what is being said. When I first came across the writings of actualism, I would have to go over sentences and re-read them many times because what was being said was 180 degrees opposite from what humanity takes to be truth and wisdom. In other words, fact and actuality is 180 degrees opposite to belief and imagination. * PETER: And just to finish, you alluded to the use of the word ‘one’ and I will take the opportunity to clarify how I use the word in my writing. I do not use the word ‘one’ as a substitute for I, the personal pronoun, because I find its use in this way to pretentiously silly. Some time ago, when writing to people about my experience in actualism, I became aware of the fact that if I passed on my experience using an impersonal pronoun such as ‘one’, it was a way of avoiding being too personal, because the human condition is common-to-all, i.e. it is impersonal in its universality. As every human being is subject to the human condition, I have tended to use the word ‘one’ as an impersonal pronoun when describing human beings in general. I did consider my use of the word ‘one’ for a while and pondered over its other connotations when people use it as a personal pronoun. But I decided that, provided I did not use it as a personal pronoun, ‘one’ was a reasonable impersonal descriptive word – in other words, whenever I talked about me and my experience, I used the appropriate personal pronouns, I and me.
RESPONDENT: The below conversation twigged me into serious re-evaluation.
As there were no notion given of AF in 1930’s, the question ‘What would be the appropriate action based on the country learning that Jews were being put to death by the millions in Germany?’ is purely speculative as well as ‘Invade to prevent further suffering or not get involved because fundamentally we can’t influence others?’ as in 1930’s AF not yet even had been discovered so, as to the degree of sensibility of these questions one might as well have asked, to stick to actuality. ‘If Mr. Bush would not have won the US-elections and the US as a whole had subscribed to the notion of AF, how would a different president have responded to the terrorist attack on the WTC provided that such an alike event would have occurred?’ PETER: Despite your objections to No 38’s question, your question is still hypothetical and not related to an actuality. RESPONDENT: (No offence meant, the intent of the question is assumed to be serious) Are Jews and Germany an issue for the questioner? PETER: I obviously can’t speak for No 38, but the question that No 38 asked is one that is often asked of pacifists and, as such, deserved a direct answer from an actualist. Despite the long-held idealism of pacifism, the fact is that what humans term ‘civilization’ is but a thin and tenuous veneer that is ultimately only maintained at the point of a gun – i.e. law and order is maintained by armed police and armies. RESPONDENT: Thus the posing
I found not to be correct, as it reflects the viewpoint of an EVF (expert virtual freedom) rather then that of an AAF (authority actual freedom). PETER: A fact is not dependant on who says it – a fact is something that stands by itself. While a fact is not necessarily apparent to all, for personal feelings, passions and beliefs often prevent their acknowledgement. However, if one aspires to actualism, the acknowledgement of facts is essential lest one remains a believer of commonly held viewpoints or in the authority of some person or persons. RESPONDENT: Yet as the posed hypothetical situation ‘US as a whole subscribed to the notion of AF in the 1930’s’ has been transcribed into or suggested to be of appliance to a recent actual event ‘the same appropriate action that was recently taken by some of the world’s armies to put an end to the genocide that was happening in the Balkans’, it has been taken that:
is representing the viewpoint of an EVF as to his own opinion/ observation/ conclusion that it is sensible and not silly, that police and army are prepared to maintain law and order at the top of a gun. PETER: No, the reply I offered was not representing my viewpoint, opinion, conclusion, nor Richard’s. It was offered as a statement of fact. It is based on a clear-eyed observation of the history of humankind and the current situation of the human condition. The other evidence that it is fact is that there are no exceptions, nor have there ever been exceptions, to the situation of law and order being maintained at the point of a gun (or whatever other weapon was used at the time). RESPONDENT: Thus it looks like he deflects his own responsibility (with regard to maintain law and order by imposing his influence) to those who are willing to participate in army and/or police activity. PETER: If by he you mean me, I take it that you are suggesting that I should be responsible for my own protection. Being responsible for your own protection was how it was in primitive societies where everyone carried arms, be it a club, a spear, a bow and arrows or more lately a gun. A brief look at history will show that early humans very quickly gathered in groups and built walls around their compounds so as to be more safe from raids from other groups of human beings. As these groups became more organized they also developed an array of morals, ethics and laws as a code of behaviour so as to maintain a semblance of law and order within the group itself. These codes and laws were either imposed by the shamans under threat of damnation or by the chieftains and kings under threat of physical punishment. When these tribal groups grew sufficiently large and more organized over time, they developed police forces whose job it was to maintain internal law and order and maintained armies whose job it was to defend the group and its territory. There is no doubt that in an ideal world – a world in which the human beings are no longer driven by instinctual fear and aggression – there would be no need for law and order to be maintained by armed police and armies. But we humans who live on the planet now have to start somewhere and somewhere is here – in the world as-it-is, with people as-they are. For those who are genuinely interested in peace on earth as an actuality, the question then becomes a personal one – ‘How can I become happy and harmless in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are?’ Having abandoned the unworkable idealism of pacifism in favour of the pragmatism of actualism, I have no objections to world as-it-is where law and order is maintained by armed police. As history shows, it is far, far preferable to a world where everybody is responsible for maintaining their own law and order by imposing his or her influence on others – that’s what is known as anarchy. RESPONDENT: Thus also suggesting to be demonstrating some hypocrisy the like of that of a person that eats meat, yet judges the ones who kills the animals in order to provide this meat. PETER: I used to believe in vegetarianism in my spiritual days because it was regarded as virtuous. But nowadays I appreciate both the taste and the nutritional value of eating meat and fish, so your comment about hypocrisy is again hypothetical. RESPONDENT: Also ‘perhaps’ demonstrating that although, having readily ‘ditched’ spiritual believes hence freed/liberated himself from the spiritual identity, part of the social identity still well may be needed to be dismantled/ uncovered/ demolished. Hypocrisy I also find to be in my own experience an important and vital ingredient of the social identity ... (so no offence meant). PETER: And none taken, for the good thing about acknowledging the fact that law and order is ultimately maintained at the point of a gun within the human condition is that I don’t need to feel a hypocrite for being happy and harmless in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. In other words, I don’t believe in the ideal of pacifism because indulging in such communal imaginations are but a distraction from the main event – concentrating my efforts on the only person I can change – me. RESPONDENT: The recent ‘outbreak’ of waves of patriotism in the USA clearly makes it apparent, that the dangers of lurking ‘tribal beliefs generating mechanisms’ nowadays are far more dangerous than so called ‘spiritual/ religious beliefs’. And to have headed off objections at the pass before breaking loose: i.e. crusades are to be assumed to derive from conflicting ‘spiritual values’ (as to point out the dangers of a group of people unifying in a ‘spiritual’ collective the like i.e. Christians.) I find it silly to discriminate between the kind of mayhem that is caused by a group of people mentioned as above in ‘armed police force prepared to do whatever is necessary to stop outbreaks of murder or genocide’ or ‘a group of people unifying in a ‘spiritual’ collective the like i.e. Christians / Muslims / Hindus and so on PETER: Speaking personally, I found that when I was a spiritualist, I was more ready to defend my spiritual beliefs than I was to defend my real-world beliefs, i.e. God came before Country. Once I got rid of my spiritual beliefs, I then was able to investigate my real-world beliefs, including my nationalistic feelings. In the process of investigating my beliefs, I didn’t bother to discriminate as to which belief was best or worse, or more dangerous or less dangerous – I came to see that upholding any belief was silly. RESPONDENT: So ... to update to (f)actuality nowadays: 1. There is – or /are group(s) of people sharing a vision as to how to resolve the questions: ‘How to create/maintain a space for this-these particular group-(s)?’, as such so that this group can/will be enabled to move into the direction that the members can continue to maintain/expand this vision on a solution to the question; ‘How can their members be enabled in doing their ‘business at large’ without getting disturbed while doing it?’ Now this vision nowadays most often goes by a flag of a nation or group of nations yet a religious symbol may also be play a significant part (ie Koran, Bible). PETER: The history of humanity is a litany of inter-group and inner group conflict. Tribal leaders have often stirred the passions of their tribe so as to seize the territory of other tribes or to wreak a bloody revenge for some past wrong. And history is also littered with Saviours who declare ‘if you follow me and join my group, one day we will be so powerful that we will rule the world and then there will be peace on earth’. A little clear-eyed seeing will reveal there is scant difference between the vision and messages of real-world dictators and those of spiritual-world saviours. RESPONDENT: 2. In his recent ‘state of the Union’ Mr. Bush, as one of the world leaders of nations, has more or less redefined war as: ‘doing justice’. 3. This way of ‘doing justice’ has been largely agreed upon by a great number of people to be considered as ‘taking appropriate action’. And to have head off objections at the pass before breaking loose: ‘I neither do agree nor disagree on that as to be appropriate action. I do not know.’ Yet I question whether to call this intelligent and/or sensible action. I do not find so, as it is very far from clear in whose interest this kind of actions are being performed and as for now it has not been agreed upon commonly what the word justice is to imply. As I understand there is still a bit of disagreement about that. 4. More over Mr. Bush set the tune that, those nations who disagree with USA-strategies, are assumed to be opponents hence losing the right to either be supported by USA and/or even may run the risk of facing the force of the US-army. Not to mention the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, so far for an update to (f)actuality nowadays. PETER: From the thrust of your conversation, I take it that you are more inclined to believe in pacifism and complain about the world as-it-is and people as-they are, rather than take unilateral action by proving you can rid yourself of malice and sorrow. Speaking personally, it took me a long time to rid myself of the seductive beliefs and idealisms promulgated by the ‘good’ people of the word. I found that time and again I would be drawn to take sides in the battle of good vs. evil, lured into believing that there might one day be a solution within the human condition that could magically bring peace on earth. It’s easy work to question and understand the passions that fuel evil and bad but it’s tough work to question and understand the nature of the passions that fuel the sacred and good. RESPONDENT: Another fact is that ‘I’ as a spiritual identify cannot otherwise exist then as; being unified in a spiritual principle hence being ‘I’ not individual but collective. Thus in uncovering this ‘I’ one uncovers a certain ‘us’ that was cleverly disguised as ‘I’ as the spiritual identity. Iow ‘speaking’ with a spiritual voice (Sannyasin, Buddhist, Christian and so) I represent knowingly or unknowingly a group that has the same principle. PETER: And yet many spiritualists manage to disassociate themselves from the group to which they belong as and when it suits them and yet associate with the group, as and when it suits them. The correspondence section of the Actual Freedom Trust website has many examples of spiritualists, be they Krishnamurti-ites, Rajneeshees, Buddhists or whatever, blatantly denying they belong to a spiritual group ... or even that they have any spiritual beliefs at all. RESPONDENT: In AF it seems to be assumed that the (malicious) aspects of ‘tribal behaviour’ are rooted in instinctual survival passions (genetically encoded in the DNA of all species with no exception to humans). PETER: The only way to prove this assumption to be factually correct is by observation – observation of animal and human behaviour as well as the most difficult aspect of all, your own self-observation. The universal unwillingness to undertake this last aspect of self-observation is the reason that human beings continue to deny that, at heart, they are instinctually driven animals. RESPONDENT: It has recently been stated by Richard that he finds a Darwinian explanation as to how humans have evolved from apes into humans, a sensible sound scientific approach to support the assumption as to how apes did come to evolve into humans. Thus assuming that the (malicious) aspects of ‘tribal behaviour could be explained/justified, by taken for factual that ‘groups behaviour’ is basically nothing more then a herd of buffaloes following a leader. Thus assuming the situation in which a world leader as i.e. Adolf Hitler was followed by millions of humans, or/and the recent outbreak of patriotism in the USA, to be due to animalistic instinctual group behaviour. PETER: Often you hear the term ‘alpha-male’ used both to describe the dominant male in animal groups as well as the dominant male in human groups, so there is some hesitant and tacit acknowledgement of the similarity between human animal behaviour and other animal behaviour. As long as this acknowledgement of ‘animalistic instinctual group behaviour’ is focussed on human behaviour in general or on the behaviour of others, it remains what it is – a purely scholarly observation of interest only to academics. The fascinating journey of actualism starts when you apply observations such as these to your own personal behaviour, feelings and passions. RESPONDENT: There maybe a different explanation for these phenomena. PETER: Apart from the traditional explanation that it is all part of the grand and glorious battle between Good and Evil, or that humans have been created this way by some God or other, by whatever name, did you have any other explanation in mind? RESPONDENT: On the other hand the AF-method is primary a tool to achieve the state ‘happy and harmless’. As holding the need to be malicious in anyway can be considered to be the main obstacle in achieving a state of ‘harmlessness’, I consider it of secondary importance as to why or how this need of being harmful/malicious has come into being. PETER: How can you expect to fix something if you don’t understand why it doesn’t work? How can you expect to become harmless if you don’t understand why you have malicious feelings in the first place? In my experience it is vital to acknowledge that there is a physical basis for the human condition of malice and sorrow, if only to avoid becoming embroiled in the fantasies and the calenture of the traditional metaphysical explanations. RESPONDENT: Writing this I have taken the position of an AFEx (Actual Freedom explorer) thereby implicitly acknowledging the validity of the method as suggested to apply. PETER: And yet in the sentence before, you relegated exploring precisely what sets actualism apart form spiritualism and materialism to a ‘secondary importance’ –
I can only speak personally, but I wanted to know why the human condition is still epitomized by malice and sorrow despite millennia of persistent and well-intentioned efforts to bring an end to it. RESPONDENT: In having done so I tend to agree that the above mentioned ‘tribal generating mechanism’ maybe firmly rooted in an animal instinct, yet surprisingly I found it may be not rooted in this ‘buffalo instinct’, but, the (genetically encoded?) program that soon as a human infant gets born becomes active running the message: ‘‘I’ need HELP to survive.’ Thus it becomes patently clear that the infant cannot otherwise do but to accept the parent(s) and/or any authority’s concept of help/assistance, in order to survive. As (blind) nature’s interpretation of survival may well read: ‘Maintaining the integrity of the body-system in any situation/environment’ this ‘goal’ is concerned to be achieved long as the infant remains alive. Yet as part and parcel of the dealing with the authority it is inevitable that the HELP-needing infant gets infected with believes as to how this’ integrity’ is to be maintained in the system. Even more important: it has to take on standards as to what ‘integrity of the system’ implies. Figuratively speaking: while growing up, the infants stores data in a compartment of his brain and this compartment has the overall labelling of: ‘required to maintain the integrity of the system’. Now as this ‘security system’ largely is an assimilation of ‘integrity-data’ that hold and reflect the standards of the authorities that supplied the brain with these data, it is safe to say that: the (assumed) instinctual program ‘‘I’ need help to survive.’ Is being transcribed into the above-mentioned security program. As this is for an important part an intellectual process, thus becomes this security program for the main part a function assigned to the neocortex. So one might pose that the ‘I’ as the social identity in fact is a ‘we’ yet possibly not being recognized as such, is a thought pattern that for some reason (to be explored by oneself) still gets the ‘backup’ of this ‘‘I’ need help to survive program’. I have yet not found a way to determine whether this ‘I.N.H.T.S-program’ is being located in the neocortex or in fact in older parts of the brain, so from that I question whether this ‘backup’ of the security program which produces I as the social identity is indeed emotional. PETER: Might I suggest the only way to determine this is to ask yourself each moment again ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ and seek an experiential answer to the question ... rather than focus on intellectual questioning issues that can only remain abstract theories to you unless you have hands-on experience of them. It’s a bit like trying to understand how a computer works without actually sitting down, using a computer and discovering how it works for yourself. RESPONDENT: Iow: it is yet to establish whether any other animal than the human species is capable of generating a sense/feeling and thus experiencing ‘I’ in anyway what so ever. Iow: I question Richards discovery that ‘I’ particularly as the SOUL being feelingly experiencing a unifying principle, is indeed basically deriving from the animal instinct. That is not to suggest that the question ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ is a useless tool for inquiry, on the contrary. Had this question not been available it may be doubtable that I would have been able to progress in my self-inquiry the like I have done. PETER: Again I can only suggest abandoning the anguish of self-enquiry, a machination common to Krishnamurtiites, and begin practicing the fascinating business of hands-on self-observation. This way you get to find out the answers to all your questions by yourself – which is the only way to stop being a believer, a doubter, a follower, a dreamer, a philosophiser, an objector, a dissenter, an agreer, a sceptic, a cynic, a fence-sitter or whatever. RESPONDENT: Neither I would make the mistake of saying that the AF method is alike the many offered spiritual or personal-growth methods and therefore the claim of having an unique approach and offering a solution to men’s misery and mayhem that has been perpetuated for ages, will not be honoured. Far as I can see for me the AF method has been and still is the only sensible ‘practical’ approach so far in history. Nevertheless the claim ‘being the first human being free of the human condition’ needs to be taken sceptical, as taking/accepting this on authority would imply believing. Thus the status as ‘I the flesh body sans identity as me as an Ego or I as the soul’ might be rightfully claimed by others yet so far they have not spoken or showed themselves. Also one might consider the possibility that the state of apperception is the social identity cleverly hidden in denial, silently justifying participation in and agreeing with maintaining law and order at the point of a gun until the global condition has changed. Thus having running ‘a security program ‘for the flesh-body that is hitherto absolutely fail safe, while being able to take advantage of all luxury and comfort that one can afford while having an undisturbed private life. As basically each of us aspires to that so far, I can see in R’s way of redefining ‘Maintaining the integrity of the body system in any situation/ environment’ the most sensible way to go about my business. Ah well, ‘indeed, the world keeps abreast while...’ PETER: Yep. Unless you find out the answers to these questions yourself, you are simply swapping the belief in one authority, (K), for another, (R), which simply leaves you a believer, a doubter, a follower, a dreamer, a philosophiser, an objector, a dissenter, an agreer, a sceptic, a cynic, a fence-sitter or whatever.
RESPONDENT: Whereas I find for myself that it makes no sense to write i (not capitalized) as to pretend to be detached from any sense of an ego in the spiritual form, neither I makes sense of speaking of living in ‘A country’ rather then saying My country in order to pretend that I have freed myself from any patriotic or national thoughts/ feelings. Far as I can see the only way to explore/uncover ‘me’ as the social identity is, to claim the country I live in (or was born) in, to be ‘mine’, thus coming in touch with fundamental territorial instincts, which in fact make up for the basically defensive attitude my social identity displays with regard to possession. PETER: Playing the game of changing words, be it making them mean something they are not meant to mean, glibly adopting a new belief and taking on its terminology or playing the impersonal pronoun game, à la Krishnamurti, can only result in fooling yourself. It takes a good deal of work to get to the stage where an actualist can sincerely say ‘the country I live in’ rather than ‘my’ country. To break the emotional bonds of nationalism firstly requires the intent to do so and then a good deal of observation to be aware of these bonds as one’s feelings and passions first kick in. RESPONDENT: It is this territorial instinct that is being superimposed on my environment, thus allowing for generating the belief that: my possessions (money, clothes, living space and so on) are actually mine, thus this mine is experienced as an extension of me so in fact it is me, yet cleverly disguised as my legal rights maintained at the point of a gun. This mine-ness does not exist otherwise then as an agreement, as to what I am legally (as determined by nations law) entitled to claim to be ‘mine’. From that it becomes clear that my social identity ticks with, and can only keep going on ticking, so long as it is fairly primed with hypocrisy. PETER: There is no need to beat yourself up for being a hypocrite because everybody is passionate about ‘their’ possessions, be it land, house, objects, kith or kin. This passion is more than a belief, it is in fact instinctual as can be readily seen in the behaviour of other animals. Most societies have put in place a set of morals, ethics and laws that specifically deal with the issue of possessions so as to suppress and prevent the worst excesses of fighting and feuding over possessions, such as prevailed in the supposed good old days of humanity. Generally this carrot and stick approach works reasonably well, but locking one’s doors and windows is still a prudent action in all societies. Yet however careful one is, things can still be stolen, lost or damaged which can cause inconvenience or even hardship, but to then suffer emotionally on top of this is but to compound the situation. As such, it is useful to become aware of any feelings associated with your possessions, as they occur, because it is feelings and passions such as these that prevent you from being happy and prevent you from being harmless. RESPONDENT: The moment I drop a coin in a candy bar machine, I become part of a system where this coin is being part of. This system is a malicious system of corruption and violence, there is no arguing about it. PETER: The modern system of manufacturing goods, trading goods and exchanging money for goods is an amazing advance on the do-it-all-yourself business of battling it out for survival in the supposed good old days. Contrary to popular belief in some circles, the fact that corruption and violence exist within the human condition is not the fault of materialism, technology, industrialization or the globalisation of trade and culture but they are solely due to the instinctual survival passions. To blame a system, by whatever name, is to relegate responsibility for bringing an end to instinctual malice and sorrow on to someone else, by whatever name. RESPONDENT: If someone comes along and robs me from my money, do I call the police on my cell phone? I, the social identity, am my country, I am the police and the army of my nation, as these are an extension of ‘me’ saying this is ‘mine’. PETER: Speaking personally, I concentrated on investigating my own feelings and emotions about possessions, when and as they occurred. This way I was able to look at issues such as jealousy, envy, desire, greed, resentment, hypocrisy, deceit, pride, etc. as they occurred, and by doing so I was able to work my way through my social programming and down into the very survival passions themselves. This type of investigation is not something you can only think about because it then becomes a philosophy and philosophy is about the pursuit of knowledge and ‘truth’, not about experience and hands-on doing. RESPONDENT: The moment I agree to have tasks assigned to a second party with regard to ensuring, either my own security at large or my properties and/or possessions, I must allow for hypocrisy. That’s how my social identity ticks. Demolishment of that ... ... is it possible at all? PETER: The other alternative to having others do things for you is to do everything yourself, for example making your own candy bars, building your own computer, catching the thief should someone steal these things and so on. This is the ideal of self-sufficiency that is proposed as an alternative to the mutual trading of food, goods and information between fellow human beings. The hills around here are alive with the sounds of people building their mud brick homes and chopping wood for their log fires, in a desperate attempt to be self-sufficient. None succeed completely for the ideal is unliveable – when the going gets tough they tend to rely on neighbours for help, revert to modern technology for survival and comfort and, of course, call on the police for protection. What you have discovered is that you feel yourself to be a hypocrite because you fail to live up to an unliveable ideal. You may identify with this ideal as being ‘mine’, an integral part of your social identity, but by holding on to this ideal you are holding on to feelings such as guilt, shame, blame, self-righteousness, self-flagellation, perplexity and so on. It might be useful to consider that actualism has nothing to do with the failed pie-in-the-sky idealisms that are preached by the self-righteous – actualism offers a radical alternative to the fantasy and hypocrisy of ‘if only everyone would ...’ The process of actualism is pragmatic in that it is solely – and I do mean solely – about changing yourself, the only person it is possible for you to change. RESPONDENT: Living identified with a spiritual ego largely means assuming that I no longer have the ‘bad’ qualities that can be ascribed to my instinctual nature, thus disowning those qualities, calling it being unattached. In order to create the illusion of being without any social identity, I have to suppress my hypocrisy which is indeed a very difficult task, as self-observation readily is to bring it to light. PETER: Why would you want to create the illusion of being without a social identity, when this only creates the feeling of hypocrisy? Having discovered that your feelings of hypocrisy are due to ideals that are an integral component of your social identity you now have a plain and simple choice. RESPONDENT: Thus the brain has two options – either to disown it completely (suppress to the degree that it becomes invisible) or embrace it as a tool to maintain the integrity of the system of the flesh-body and ‘cloaking’ hypocrisy with honesty, which is probably the most sensible thing to do. PETER: Or you could just keep it simple and set your sights on becoming happy and harmless. This way you will find you will willingly give up anything that stands in the way of your becoming happy and harmless. This is something ‘you’ decide to do, not your brain, for only ‘you’ can demolish your social identity. And only the sincere intent to become happy and harmless will kick-start you into the enterprise and keep you on the path ... lest you get waylaid by the nonsense that passes for wisdom within the human condition. RESPONDENT: So ... whereas the domain of the spiritual identity is a Magical Spiritual Lala-land. The domain of the social identity is simply a Lala-land without any magic, but it is Lala anyway. So ... in order to come to self-observation free from any delusion and thus to cure my brain from the disease that this dilemma is causing it to suffer from, two questions seem to be needed to be answered: HOW am I experiencing this moment of being alive? and WHERE am I experiencing this moment of being alive? PETER: The first question cannot be answered by thinking about it theoretically or hypothetically – it can only be asked, and answered, in the moment it is asked. Once you have an experiential answer to the question then you have something to think about that is directly relevant to ‘you’ and the social and instinctual programming that makes up ‘you’. By asking ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ you avoid the pitfalls and dilemmas of theorizing by focusing your attentiveness on what is happening right now, wherever you happen to be, whatever you happen to be doing. The answer to the second question is nearly always obvious, even to the most inattentive of people.
RESPONDENT: In my experience this concept of time appeared to be one of the main ingredients from which my social identity was being generated. PETER: To have a concept of time is neither sensible, nor does it serve any practical purpose. RESPONDENT: I find it, Peter, kind of surprising that, you don’t find time considered to be a concept. PETER: And yet I didn’t say that I ‘don’t find time considered to be a concept’. Human ‘beings’ have a psychological and psychic persona who thinks and feels it exists over time and therefore time is experienced as a psychological and psychic concept. Hence ‘I’ have emotional memories of ‘me’ existing in the past and imaginary fantasies of ‘me’ existing in the future. Whereas, in fact, the only time that can be experienced as an actuality is this very moment. This is not to deny that past moments did not exist or that there will be future moments to then experience but the only moment that you can actually – i.e. sensately – experience is this very moment. Hence, as I said – ‘To have a concept of time is neither sensible, nor does it serve any practical purpose’. RESPONDENT: I take it that my invitation to dialogue on that subject is been accepted. PETER: The only person thus far I have refused to dialogue with is No 22 and that was because it is impossible to have a dialogue with someone who has convinced himself that he is GOD. RESPONDENT: Ok. So time you consider to be a concept if not, you could not call it either ‘practical’ nor sensible to have it and even more so you must have one. PETER: No. Time is a fact. Past time is a fact, as is future time. But the only time that can be experienced as an actuality is this very moment. Hence, to rephrase what I said – To make a concept out of a fact is neither sensible, nor does it serve any practical purpose. RESPONDENT: But guess what I found for practical, running off to the dictionary in a desperate attempt to stop the spinning.
PETER: Which means that anyone who makes a concept out of the fact of time is neither being pragmatic nor sensible, to pick the most relevant meanings. RESPONDENT: Btw, most accurate perception, Peter, there’s no arguing about this, yet we differ somewhat from opinion as so you might suspect already. Note: as I want to make it clear that reading prima facie or face value for me is as if I wrote that myself and repeat it until it sounds like spoken with a voice of honesty. So ... then it works out like thus: I ‘lose’ you already after the first line. It appears to me if it [to have a concept of time] is not sensible then it must be silly. I must think black-white here because I see no options to differentiate, as you even deny the practical purpose of having firmly integrated in the brain the concept of time. Don’t hang me for this one (you did not say that and neither do I imply you said so); it is just my way for pleading for sensibly because next, you begin pleading for that statement as to be even ‘more’ then silly. PETER: It seems as though the confusion is about the meaning of the word ‘concept’. A concept means an idea, a notion, an abstraction, a conceptualization, a conception, a theory. As you can see, a concept is abstract thinking whereas the aim of asking yourself ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ is to get you out of your head, out of abstract thinking, conceptualizing, theorizing, imagining, and so on, and get you to come to your senses. And you can only sensately experience this moment – you can only hear something in this moment, you can only smell something in this moment, you can only taste something in this moment and so on. RESPONDENT: Then you bring in your psychological and psychic concept (which made me spin around) and then you jump to hence, ‘‘I’ have emotional memories of ‘me’ existing in the past and imaginary fantasies of ‘me’ existing in the future’ so just to make a wild guess would that mean something like ‘time is a boat on Lala-river’? PETER: Okay, I’ll attempt to go along with your terminology. How about – ‘you’ are ‘a boat on a Lala-river’, a river that ‘you’ call ‘your life’. ‘You’ usually spend most of your time either re-running past emotional memories or imagining things that may or may not happen in the future. By doing so, ‘you’ are unable to focus your attentiveness on how you are experiencing this, the only moment you can actually, i.e. sensately – experience being alive. The actualism method is aimed at more and more mooring ‘you’, the ‘boat on Lala-river’, to being here, in this very moment of time. It’s not an easy thing to do at first because ‘you’ are so used to not being here – in fact even the idea of being here, and nowhere else, is at first a frightening business. But what ‘you’ can do is nibble away at all the programming – both social and instinctual – that prevents you, the flesh and blood body called No 23, from being here, firmly moored in the utter safety and perfect stillness of this very moment. RESPONDENT: ‘To have a concept of time is neither sensible, nor does it serve any practical purpose’ which I find as a statement a bit too radical. But hey, OK that’s how you tick. PETER: It is very common to hear the refrain that ‘there is nothing new under the sun’ within the human condition. This understanding that it has all been said and tried before is the cause of a morbid fatalistic despair that feelings of hope never manage to quell. Once I acknowledged that it was obviously useless for me to re-run the old tried and failed solutions it then made sense to me to try something really radical – something that had only been road-tested once before. If that makes me too radical in your eyes, hey, that’s OK with me. RESPONDENT: I would agree in its ‘phrasing’ though with : ‘Peters concept of time is neither sensible, nor does it serve any practical purpose’. PETER: And yet because I found having a concept of time neither sensible nor serving any practical purpose, I focussed my awareness on how I am experiencing this moment of time – because I realized that this moment is the only moment I can actually experience. As such I no longer have a concept of time, for me time is a simple and obvious fact. RESPONDENT: So thus I find your sensibility with regard to the following statement ‘the only time that can be experienced as an actuality is this very moment’ questionable. PETER: If that means you are leaving the statement open to question, then it sounds good to me. Whenever I ran one of these questions in my head for a while – and there were many such questions that are thrown up in the process of actualism – I would look for an experiential answer and not an intellectual answer. In other words, I would seek an answer in my own experience and not settle for just agreeing with what someone else said because it sounded good, right, appropriate, groovy or whatever. RESPONDENT: Hence to make this a little more transparent: What is the discriminating factor/ mechanism by which you are enabled to make a distinction between past and future? PETER: Calendars and clocks. RESPONDENT: Iow, how can you know the difference between what actually happened (emotional memory) and what your imaginary projections are? PETER: In order to prise these three separate issues apart, – actual experience, emotional memory and future projections – a practical down-to-earth example may be useful. I will use an example that I have written about in my journal, a time when I was waiting to meet Vineeto –
This is a description of something that actually happened – two people were involved in an event that occurred in a definitive location over a definable period of time in the past. As I have described, at the time this event was happening, ‘I’ had feelings of jealousy raging, and these feelings prevented me from enjoying the sensual delight of what was actually happening at the time. If ‘I’ now had an emotional memory of what happened, ‘I’ would simply be reliving ‘my’ feelings of jealousy in this moment, thereby preventing me from enjoying the sensual delight of being here. By evoking an emotional memory of having been jealous in the past, ‘I’ re-vive the emotion in this moment and thereby run the danger of imagining situations or events to justify ‘my’ feeling jealous now. Given that ‘I’ am my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’, ‘I’ therefore exist over time – in other words, ‘I’ exist as past emotional memories, current affective experience and future fearful or worrisome imaginations. RESPONDENT: So ... this is merely a plea for my sensibility not to say sanity with regard to my ‘In my experience this concept of time appeared to be one of the main ingredients from which my social identity was being generated.’ And I begin to suspect that this perception is rather accurate with regard to the overall make up of any social identity. PETER: Indeed, your statement is rather accurate but, if I may suggest, it would be more accurate
to say that ‘I’ as a social and ‘me’ as an instinctual identity can only experience this moment conceptually and/or affectively. At this
point, it is good to remember that there are RESPONDENT: Ie. ‘I must not be too late at school/ work/ appointment/ the airport’, aso. Or ‘How much am I a going to ask/pay for say 1 hour of service’, aso. Imo, if time is not appropriately conceptualized this brings about stress in the system. PETER: And yet you don’t need a concept of time in order not to be late – you simply need a watch and the sense to plan not to be late. Again you don’t need a concept of time to know how much to charge for one hour of service, a watch gives you the time, and market-value usually determines the appropriate rate per hour. And as for stress, having an appropriate concept of time does nothing to eliminate stress because being a thinking ‘I’ and a feeling ‘me’ is inherently a stressful business. RESPONDENT: Which brings indeed once more to light; the interesting qualities of this way of conversation. So I’ll put my experience as to the concept of time differently.
PETER: That’s a reasonable concept, or working hypothesis. I certainly took it that way when came across it in Richard’s writings. For me it made sense, but then I went looking for my own experiential evidence that this was so. Reflective contemplation on issues such as this, combined with a sincere intent to be happy and harmless, can lead to a direct, unfettered sensual experience of the actuality of this very moment. Such experiences are known as pure consciousness experiences, whereby ‘I’ and ‘my’ concepts, beliefs, theories, imaginations, feelings and passions are temporarily in abeyance for a brief period. RESPONDENT:
PETER: No. Even as an ‘I’, you don’t have to conclude that there was a past. Whilst ‘you’ have mostly emotional memories of the past, the past did in fact exist and there is ample evidence of the fact. I need look no further than the fact that I have received a number of posts from you all dated and timed, that prove that the flesh and blood body called No 23 typed them out and sent them. Now the entity called ‘No 23’ who first started corresponding on this list is not the same ‘No 23’ who is reading these words for, as I take it from your correspondence, ‘No 23 the spiritualist’ seems to be somewhat weakened. This process is what is meant by demolishing one’s own social identity, as bits of your identity literally fall by the wayside as you begin to replace your beliefs with facts. Again, you don’t need to conclude ‘through inference’ that there is a future yet to come for, barring accident or physical death, you can be reasonably certain that you will awaken tomorrow morning and the day after that, for a number of years yet to come. RESPONDENT:
PETER: No. You can look at a photograph taken of you in the past and that is an image, but it makes no sense at all to deny that there was an actual flesh and blood body called No 23 existing at the time the photo was taken. This type of conceptual thinking, i.e. thinking abstracted from facts and actuality, is common in spiritual circles and can only lead to a ‘me’ who imagines ‘I’ am real and the past, the physical world and other human beings are but an illusion. RESPONDENT:
PETER: Indeed. If you start believing that the world of people, things and events is but an image, your feet can literally leave the ground and you can feel as though you are floating. Actualism is about getting your feet back on the ground – a radical proposition, I know. RESPONDENT:
PETER: No. Only this moment is actual for only this moment can be actually, i.e. sensately, experienced. This is not to deny that past moments did not exist or that there will be future moments to then experience. If you do so you start to trip off into imaging all sorts of things, such as feeling yourself to be timeless, which then leads to feelings of being immortal ... and so on. Pretty soon your head is so far in the clouds that you can never get back down to this very earth where we flesh and blood human beings actually live. RESPONDENT:
PETER: I seem to have dissected your poem a bit, but then again I was never a fan of poetic imagination. RESPONDENT: Actualism ... Let’s make things better. PETER: The wonderful thing about actualism is that making things better by having the sincere intent to become happy and harmless is entirely your business – it has nothing at all to do with anyone else. And what a relief that is, for your destiny is entirely in your own hands, and who would have it any other way. You have to earn your freedom from the human condition, nobody can magically give it to or bestow it upon you. If someone else could make you free, you would end up beholden to them – be they a God, Goddess, God-man or God-woman – and being beholden to someone or something is not freedom.
PETER: Yep. Unless you find out the answers to these questions yourself, you are simply swapping the belief in one authority, (K), for another, (R), which simply leaves you a believer, a doubter, a follower, a dreamer, a philosophiser, an objector, a dissenter, an agreer, a sceptic, a cynic, a fence-sitter or whatever. RESPONDENT: So ... am I: a believer, a doubter, a follower, a dreamer, a philosophiser, an objector, a dissenter, an agreer, a sceptic, a cynic, a fence-sitter or whatever? PETER: Speaking personally, I would say that I have been all these things at some stage and further that I often would glibly flip from being one or other without a thought for the hypocrisy that it involved. RESPONDENT: It appeared to me that the No 38’ query
needed to be revaluated, as now I see, that possibly the main point here is questioning whether it is possible to influence others. PETER: No 38’s initial query related to the matter of ethics vs. sensibility, or to put it another way, idealism vs. pragmatism. The initial reason you raised the point for discussion was that you saw my reply to No 38 as being hypocritical. Your latest revaluation of No 38’s query simply opens up yet another topic of conversation – a diversion that is not at all conducive to either clear thinking or a coherent conversation. RESPONDENT: One might bring in ethical objections as to how far this influence, if possible is justified/ allowed/ desirable. I’ve chosen to abandon any beliefs, assumptions, aso. With regard to this I say if don’t know whether it is possible or not I choose to think I ‘am’ an influence because otherwise I would put myself and anyone else at the mercy of ‘greater’ forces as currently is advocated that we are by certain world leaders (iow. We cannot do anything as long we think it’s over our hats) and see where it gets from there. PETER: The only comment I would make on this diversion is that there are no we’s on this list. Becoming free of the human condition is entirely your own business. * RESPONDENT: (second) hi update!: <Darwinian- to Quantum-theoretical level> M< y >our<*m< Y >our<*M< Y >our<*m< y > <OUR<* ^note as the exclamation sign might suggest that this is an order I make this note to make it clear that the intention of ! is merely meant to be a ‘strong suggestion’, thus leaving it up to the reader to choose to ‘ignore’ or ‘take notice’. PETER: I have no idea what any of this means. RESPONDENT: Intro – it is not uncommon for me, that I do some reflection on ‘AF-list history’ and I have found that most helpful in getting insight into my own AF-process. I consider the dialogues with actualists, apart from keeping a ‘personal’ diary currently the best way to reap, so to speak, the greatest benefit from this AF-process. PETER: Whilst swapping notes with other actualists is no doubt of great benefit it should in no way be considered to be the sum total the process of actualism ... and it seems that you are well aware of the distinction. If I can pre-empt the possibility of yet another version of what is a very simple and very straightforward question – the process of self-investigation in actualism begins and ends with the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’, not ‘How are we experiencing this moment of being alive?’ RESPONDENT: Thus the ‘Byron incident’ for me now is a nice starting point to evaluate progress. As me as I were as to who I am now and who I plan to be. Iow, the identity me while writing this continues to moving (as we all are doing) into the direction of total Selfimobulation, as advocated as to do in applying the actualist method. Now I suspect anyone who might read this knows a good number of ways to have that ‘goal’ achieved much quicker with other methods in, say within less then a day, some very clever ones may even have this ‘fixed’ in a few minutes (given that some preparation at least needs to be done). PETER: Given that actualism method is the only thus far devised to facilitate self-immolation and this is the only actualism mailing list, your speculations are just that. From my experience with actualism, anyone who has used the method and has had success with the method would not want to be so selfish as to refrain from swapping and sharing stories about their discoveries on the journey out of the human condition. RESPONDENT: Realistically (calculating speaking) if one is lucky enough like me to live on the 4th floor, it’s just a simple jump through the window. Ok, I admit that there is the ‘risk’ that it not may result into S.iM but into SM (self mutilation) but there are also higher buildings close to where I live. Yet as I said I’ve chosen to be moderate in this, hence these methods are all not considered to be leisurely applicable thus dismissed as options. end intro] PETER: I have never understood the desire for self-mutilation but, then again, there is a lot about the human condition that doesn’t interest me enough to even want to try to understand. RESPONDENT: Interestingly I yesterday received in a mail message advocating a therapy to cure anger. I found myself after having read the message, ready to wipe the floor with the suggested method called EFT (I don’t know where that stands for). But suddenly I became aware that the message only had been a trigger for my own reaction so ... iow, as I did some quick backtracking as I noticed being triggered. Thus I realized that I was reacting in the ‘idealist modus’. PETER: As an actualist, I take it that you took notice of your reaction and gave it a label before you did some quick backtracking, otherwise what you are describing could well be a summary dismissal of an undesirable emotion. This type of summary dismissal is what humans have been taught to do both by the teaching of repression in the real world and by the teaching of self-righteousness in the spiritual world. Becoming aware of and labelling feelings and emotions are the first part of the actualism method but then being attentive to ‘feeling the feeling’ or ‘experiencing the emotion’ is vital in order to get an experiential understanding of how ‘you’ tick. RESPONDENT: So ... I’m currently ‘debugging’ that program as I’m writing, rather then investing any time in returning this message to deliverer with a few ‘corrections’ ‘suggestions’ and ‘Advices’. I refrained from that and took another option which turned out to be the revaluation of the ‘Byron incident’. Note as these words [‘corrections’ ‘suggestions’ and ‘Advices’ aso] now are considered to be ‘loaded’ I’m going carefully and hey! I know what I’m talking about. Also keeping in mind that I received a response to my insertion of [The below conversation twigged me into serious re-evaluation] which conversation was mainly centred around No 38’s Query which in essence was taken as serious yet now is considered to be as ‘not so easy to resolve’. So iow, I’d pretty much be in trouble if I would have re-queried it in the ‘serious’ old fashioned way. So I did not because, that would have put myself under too much stress. PETER: As a suggestion, if you are seeking to have a sensible dialogue with me about actualism on this mailing list, perhaps you could use your personal diary to record any diversions and stream-of-consciousness-type introspections. This way it is easier to stick with a single topic and thereby avoid sporadic diversions. I remember when I first started to try and make sense of the human condition and started to become aware of my feelings, my mind would often race off all over the place and the diaries I kept at the time are littered with a jumble of questions and realizations. However, whenever I met Richard I always attempted to stick with one topic and follow that topic through to completion and while this was initially difficult I soon came to value the opportunity to do so. I also came to the realization that ‘sticking with it’ is the only way of coming to my own understanding of the issue as opposed to accepting or believing what someone else is saying. RESPONDENT: Thus the No 38’s Query has been transcribed into – Am I as an actualist willing/able to be an influence at all? The willing part is being answered affirmative yet the ability is still questioned. PETER: The desire to influence others runs deep in the human condition – so deep that it is instinctual, in fact. One only needs to observe the constant fights for dominance that exemplify the social life of our closest genetic cousins, the chimps, to see this fact stripped bare of human social conditioning. It took me a great deal of self-investigation to dig down to this instinctual passion as it operated in me as ‘me’. In real world terms it’s often called the lust for power à la Genghis Khan, Adolph Hitler et al, whereas in spiritual world terms it is evidenced as what could be called the lust to be the next Saviour of the World, à la Rajneesh, J. Krishnamurti, the Dalai Lama, et al. RESPONDENT: How am I experiencing this moment of being alive? becomes now as How (the anguish of self enquiry can be deleted) simply: Am I experiencing this moment of being alive? PETER: If you choose to delete self-investigation out of the question, you completely rule out any opportunity of any experiential understanding of what makes ‘you’ tick. This is nothing but repression by intellectual trickery, a device oft indulged in by the male of the species. The libraries of the world abound with useless philosophical tomes sprouting supposed wisdoms that are devoid of any in-depth understanding of the human condition in toto precisely because they are not founded on a personal experiential understanding of the whys and hows of its operation. RESPONDENT: [aietmoba] thus the orig. Richard sequence so to speak gets a ‘condensed’ form iow. the focus now is on ‘alive’ which I suggest to become the global message to ‘transmit’. From a neo-cortical point of view that would be the only way to transform humanity at large while still going about the unilateral business of ‘running’ the actualist ‘program’ Yet this way it may become strong enough to ‘infect’ the shell of the ‘social’ identities which currently are ‘in charge’ of ‘leading’ or as Vineeto recently put it rather euphemistically: ‘administering’ the world. PETER: And yet actualism is not about changing the world, actualism is about becoming happy and harmless in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. RESPONDENT: ^note: religion and science have been undergoing a rather significant change yet politics are still essentially rooted in the very old concept of ‘being in power or empowered by’^. Their ‘idealistic programs’ have become a bit too dangerous for all of us now. That is; this ‘freed human intelligence’s opinion. There may be other ‘intelligence’ with a different opinion. PETER: Contrary to popular belief, the endemic human malice and sorrow is not the result of failed political or social concepts or programs – malice and sorrow is rooted in the animal instinctual survival passions and further cemented in place by tribal social conditioning. As such, the best that science and religion can do is offer a temporary respite, relief or feeling of succour for the blight of human malice and sorrow. The ending of your malice and sorrow is entirely in your hands and this fact is startlingly evident in a PCE where it is clear that nobody else is standing in the way of you being free – nobody but ‘you’. RESPONDENT: I am well aware that no human being with its highly evolved yet always-limited brain can claim to KNOW how this universe is working. Even as apperceptively experiencing itself as the universe it is still the interpretation of the human brain. Iow. it never can go beyond its own interpretation. PETER: By your statement, you obviously can not remember having had a PCE. Whilst this may appear to be a hindrance to understanding what is meant by being free of the human condition it need not be so for someone who genuinely sets their sights on becoming happy and harmless. Such a person is bound to trigger a PCE by their own sincere intent to eliminate all that stands in the way of their becoming happy and harmless. RESPONDENT: So ... to set the stage so to speak: ping- pong level 4 defcom off ‘chess mixmode’ quake off <TAN-GO on! I well can imagine to have happened a dialogue the like ‘At the point of a gun’ while sitting at the Byron cafe had not been there, certain influences, so to speak well over my hat, that prevent this from happening. ^note: it is being assumed that the reference to this so-called ‘incident’ rings a bell as to the nature of that conflict is being rooted for the main part in a loyalty conflict, yet if any elaboration is requested I’m willing to go into details^ PETER: I’ll pass on the offer as I long ago gave up taking a walk in someone else’s imagination. RESPONDENT: Thus the header [A New and Non-Spiritual Down-to-Earth Freedom] ‘copied’ from the AF-commercial could well have been the subject of an interesting dialogue. Iow, a coffee table meeting of Emb. actualists having a Down to earth conversation as to the query is the Actual Freedom method an option to the realization of peace on earth this life time for all of us? Bypassing any silliness as to disagreeing about the (f)actuality of the table and/or (f)actuality of the cappuccinos there on whichever viewpoint may taken. PETER: But much better than imagining what might have happened in the past ‘if only’, we now are having a conversation at a world-wide cyber coffee table, so-to speak. There is no such thing as missed opportunities in the past, because only this moment is actual and the dialogue is happening as you read these very words – this actuality is beyond imagination because it can only be happening at this very moment. This moment is so immediate that you cannot even begin to imagine what I will say next. Despite the efforts of that ‘little man in the head’ to control what is happening, this moment is always fresh, has never been before and can never be again. Despite the efforts of that ‘little man in the head’, what is actually happening this moment is always impromptu, is always unrehearsed and, as such, is unsurpassable in both its purity and perfection. RESPONDENT: ^note: as having not received any objections to the way of labelling I have applied I take it as ‘agreed upon’ that these labels, are being used/applied in an accurate/correct way^ PETER: I have no idea what you mean by your ‘way of labelling’ but if I were to guess maybe my earlier comment above might be relevant –
RESPONDENT: PS. below I present the ‘<snipped>‘e-message ‘Thought for the day...’, that twigged me into the idealist modus. Thought for the day ... ‘Alone we can do nothing, but together our minds fuse into something whose power is far beyond the power of its separate parts.’ A Course In Miracles PETER: By believing messages such as these individual human beings choose to remain ensconced in their spiritual nurseries. By doing so they abdicate their own responsibility of actually doing something about their own malice and sorrow by indulging in the obscurant and duplicitous act of focussing on the malice and sorrow of others. RESPONDENT: <snip> Now I say ‘Altruism is ‘debugged’ idealism’. Do we choose to evaluate the current Global situation as an actuality, or are we saying, it is neither my concern nor my responsibility nor do I care? PETER: The current global situation is an actuality, whether you chose to evaluate it as such or not. Speaking personally I cared, which is why I made becoming both happy and harmless the most important thing in my life. It’s called leading by example as opposed to sticking your head in the sand or wafting along with your head in the clouds. RESPONDENT: I welcome the felicitous feelings and say goodbye to self inflicted malice and sorrow: I’m checking out of heartbreak hotel. PETER: And I look forward to reports of your successes on your journey. An actual peace on earth in this lifetime is the big prize, a prize that is possible for anyone who has the intent, and is prepared to do the work.
PETER: At the end of our conversation about hypocrisy you wrote the following – RESPONDENT: Very good Peter, (sort of basketball as a way of dancing while playing ball ‘disclaimer’) Any negative attribution as to the use of ‘hypocrite/hypocrisy ‘ has as such now been rendered ‘neutral’. PETER: Speaking personally, I never rendered the feeling of being a hypocrite neutral, for in order to do so I would then have to be insincere. In my spiritual years, what I did was puff up my feelings of superior righteousness whereby others where the bad guys, others were the problem and so on and these feelings then masked and shielded my hypocrisy to a large extent. Two facts served to shatter my veneer however. One was the failure of yet another relationship and my acknowledgement that I was equally responsible for its failure and the other was an outburst of anger one day that demolished my self-image as a being a peaceful man. Both these incidents nagged me, for it made it obvious that despite my beliefs and fine ideals, I was being insincere and hypocritical, i.e. I was sprouting one thing and doing another. When I came across actualism I was presented with the challenge of doing something practical about my insincerity and hypocrisy and the challenge was to devote my life to becoming actually happy and actually harmless. Thus it is that sincerity – the ending of hypocrisy – is both the starting point of actualism, the driving force on the path and the end of the process of actualism. I strongly recommend cranking up sincerity, not neutralizing it. RESPONDENT: As an ex-hippie I know what you’re saying about seeking solutions in disregarding the world as is and dream of a better world with peace and flowers and love songs, yet ignoring the intimate interwoveness with all the technical progress that has been made and one’s dependency on that. PETER: What I am saying is give up dreaming about peace on earth and start doing something practical about it. As for ‘intimate interwoveness’, you are obviously not talking about human beings whose interactions with each other are anything but intimate. RESPONDENT: So ... me thinks that you have more or less demonstrated that hypocrisy is in fact a form of self imposed perfectionism with at its core the clinging to the realization of an idealistic utopian goal and one tends to flagellate oneself for feeling not sufficiently living up to that to be realized ideal. PETER: What I am saying is that the human search for peace on earth is based on dreams and ideals that have been run and re-run by billions of people for millennia and they don’t work. These dreams and ideals are based on ancient spiritual concepts and beliefs – fairy tales in fact – that has it that the physical world is underpinned by a spirit-ual world, a world populated by good spirits and evil spirits. Thus the human battle for survival is believed to be a noble battle between Good and Evil – a wretched nonsense that has held and still holds mankind enthralled. To flagellate yourself for not living up to the morals, ideals and beliefs that are part and parcel of this puerile scenario makes no sense if you want to become free of the madness of the human condition. What I did was use my feeling of being a hypocrite trapped within a hypocritical-ridden humanity to re-spark my sincerity to actually do something practical about peace on earth. RESPONDENT: Because of the fact that such an ideal is based on the imposing of impossible demands, as well upon oneself as upon the world, this idealism has as a main prerequisite a very, very big ‘if only but’. Thus is the idealist readily to be known, to reside in the domain of (Spiritual) La-la-land safely to stay there while putting out a strong message for a need of supporters, and blaming others for the failure of that realization of his imagined ‘perfect world’ yet never gets down and dirty and begins to change her/himself. Thus holding on to a claim of feeling hypocrite if ‘I’ do or don’t ... is a nice excuse to stay in the comfort zone of being together with other hypocrites who all say I can only change myself if ... PETER: Yep, you got it. But deep down, everyone knows this is a perfect world, for everyone has had a brief glimpse of that perfection at some time in their lives. These are usually glimpses in childhood or sometimes in latter-life, often induced by a sudden shock, drugs, serendipitous circumstances or in certain self-less, peace-filled situations that are known as nature experiences. These brief pure consciousness experiences are experiences that fuel the human search for freedom – they provide the knowledge that there has to be something better than normal life and there has to something better than spiritual life. Yet these self-less pure consciousness experiences have been corrupted into self-aggrandizing narcissistic experiences of feeling ‘I am child of a God’ or even ‘I am God’. This corruption is fuelled by the spiritual belief in a life after physical death that is in turn driven by the instinctual fear of death – a potent mixture that can only lead to delusionary states of consciousness. This is why an actualist needs sincere intent, and an intention to question everything that stands in the way of becoming actually free of the human condition, especially all of spiritual beliefs. A sincere intent means one aims for purity and perfection – for a genuine peace on earth in this lifetime – and that one will never settle for second-best. This is why sincerity is both the starting point of actualism, the driving force on the path and the end of the process of actualism.
RESPONDENT: Your hobby is doing some test driving/road testing with this thing that has only be tested out once. So ... it’s good to keep your eyes on the road and hands on the wheel, because nerves of steel are highly recommended and you seem to have them. I, on the other hand, am still deeply involved with the testing of my program [patafok vers. 0.1 (still betha< bugfix idia.-hypocr.-subroutine>)], so that is quite an effortful job and also very rewarding, so I’m not complaining. Yet I have not so much time to study a lot actualism on the site but the e-interaction is found to be a ‘very challenging and interesting alternative’. PETER: As I said in the last post, whilst swapping notes with other actualists is no doubt of great benefit it should in no way be considered to be the sum total of the process of actualism ... and it seems that you are well aware of the distinction. RESPONDENT: Also as I have allowed myself once to be deluded to trust, and as faith haveth no eyes to see ... neither trust nor faith is whereby I go now. PETER: Having tread the boards on the spiritual stage for some 17 years before I came across actualism, I can relate to giving up on trust and faith. I also found that I had to abandon the cynicism that I had developed in my other-worldly spiritual search about the possibility of there ever being peace on earth. RESPONDENT: So ... [Pr(d)elude: No 23: (Speaking in a sort of metaphorically, so not imaginary poetic way): Be it at first the sensation of spinning, next it became floating and now while picking up speed, it has become sort of water skiing or hover crafting because this is ‘virtual ecstasy’ a 3d simulation game still running in the ‘environment’ of La-la river, but possibly setting off for la-la space, because, above me is the wondrous La-la-sky as indeed I must be in la-la land (that’s Holland 4 me right now). I wonder ... am I perhaps on Planet La-la here? Most certainly not on Planet Doom anymore so ... You are (assumed to be located) in Auz (as an Emb.EVF) merrily humming the actualist tune [haietmoba] be it in a flat voice or more or less melodically, while keeping on intently swinging your inquiry hammer, to knock down the walls of – and thus demolishing the house of the social identity, where the hypocritical *I* still comfortably resides cloaked in honesty and over cloaked by god knows what but so to speak is still alive and kicking’. End Prelude.] PETER: To repeat my previous suggestion – perhaps you could use your personal diary to record any diversions and stream-of-consciousness-type introspections. This way it is easier to stick with a single topic and thereby avoid sporadic diversions. RESPONDENT: [BTW I know you have the oxford dictionary I don’t have that so I have pasted a few cuts from Atomica, I say it is information as scientifically safe thus Agreed to be correct according to the below entities/ corporations/ institutes/ organisations/ enterprises namely: The Columbia Electronic Encyclopaedia Copyright © 1999, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.] [intro: I say you have the hypothesis (I’m not going to say viewpoint; too metaphysical concept) that time is a fact and I must say you have done admirable work to clarify why that is so for you. I haha... have the hypothesis that time is a concept and of course I seem to stubbornly hold on to that. So: Peter: [I seem to have dissected your poem a bit, but then again I was never a fan of poetic imagination.] as to [I seem to have dissected] I say :this is more then obvious; you not only ‘seem to have’ dissected it, you actually did dissect it (I’m not saying analysed though). And it seems ... clearly to have been done on ‘purpose’. I’d even say the fact is ... the poem has been dissected, so there is no arguing about that. As to [dissected your poem a bit] I say: well that depends how you define ‘a bit’ in this context I’d even say you dissected it completely and imo. it has been done in a way that I find admirable accurate, and what’s even more ... not only you dissected it, in fact you have, also say; taken a fair space to fill in your comments as to [I was never a fan of poetic imagination] I say: that’s a matter of taste. And hey, possibly because you are an architect, it could be that this is how ... you perhaps tick, as to [a fan of poetic imagination] I hesitate to even call it poetry anymore, so let alone imaginary poetry. Also my assumption [I take it that you’ll enjoy this little poetic eruption] that you would appreciate it as a poem appeared to be false so ...this assumption I have found to be too assumptive and you have demonstrated that this ‘assumptiveness’ is a fact. Thus as to [I take it that you’ll enjoy this little poetic eruption] I withdraw that assumption. So that leaves us with [Given that this is more or less from a Darwinian perspective] as ‘given’ was clearly also incorrect as it is related to the assumptive quality of the phrase as a whole it is rendered nought as well as ‘more or less’ I restate [Given that this is more or less from a Darwinian perspective] into this [This is from a Darwinian perspective.] So, iow. I claim [time is a concept] which was in fact the essence of ‘ground Zero’, to be correct from Darwinian perspective. As you have not objected to this [Darwinian perspective.] I assume (Ok it’s muddy waters, but lets say I take it that you silently agree upon that), your claim is: [Time is not a concept but a fact] end intro] [intermezzo so to find some common ground here let’s see if this [concept-vs- fact]-issue can be reconsidered as ie. –
PETER: Or, if we were having this discussion at a coffee table, you could just as easily ask the following questions –
I have learnt by experience to bale out when conversations get to this point. * PETER: And yet because I found having a concept of time neither sensible nor serving any practical purpose, I focussed my awareness on how I am experiencing this moment of time – because I realized that this moment is the only moment I can actually experience. As such I no longer have a concept of time, for me time is a simple and obvious fact. RESPONDENT: So thus I find your sensibility with regard to the following statement ‘the only time that can be experienced as an actuality is this very moment’ questionable. PETER: If that means you are leaving the statement open to question, then it sounds good to me. Whenever I ran one of these questions in my head for a while – and there were many such questions that are thrown up in the process of actualism – I would look for an experiential answer and not an intellectual answer. In other words, I would seek an answer in my own experience and not settle for just agreeing with what someone else said because it sounded good, right, appropriate, groovy or whatever. RESPONDENT: Agreed so ... is the question? [is this very moment’ the only time that can be experienced as an actuality?] where moment as time reference is considered as non conceptual and either future and/or past are concepts or facts. I tend to say they are both as well concepts as facts (given that we apply the above Atomical definitions) so that would make my time-experience is a conceptualized fact. So the (f)actuality of time is conceptual. Can for the flesh-body time only be a concept? PETER: As I said, I have learnt by experience to bale out when conversations get to this point. * RESPONDENT: Hence to make this a little more transparent: What is the discriminating factor/ mechanism by which you are enabled to make a distinction between past and future? PETER: Calendars and clocks. RESPONDENT: Yet you would not be able to use them sensibly had time not been firmly been integrated as a concept in your system. PETER: No. I was taught how to tell what time of the day it is by looking at the hands of a clock at school. Quite straightforward stuff, like when the little hand points at three and the big hand points at twelve it is 3 o’clock. The same thing with days in the week and months in the year. Nothing conceptual about knowing what time it is at all, it’s all down-to-earth. * RESPONDENT: Iow, how can you know the difference between what actually happened (emotional memory) and what your imaginary projections are? PETER: In order to prise these three separate issues apart, – actual experience, emotional memory and future projections – a practical down-to-earth example may be useful. I will use an example that I have written about in my journal, a time when I was waiting to meet Vineeto – <story snipped> As I have described, at the time this event was happening, ‘I’ had feelings of jealousy raging, and these feelings prevented me from enjoying the sensual delight of what was actually happening at the time. If ‘I’ now had an emotional memory of what happened, ‘I’ would simply be reliving ‘my’ feelings of jealousy in this moment, thereby preventing me from enjoying the sensual delight of being here. By evoking an emotional memory of having been jealous in the past, ‘I’ re-vive the emotion in this moment and thereby run the danger of imagining situations or events to justify ‘my’ feeling jealous now. Given that ‘I’ am my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’, ‘I’ therefore exist over time – in other words, ‘I’ exist as past emotional memories, current affective experience and future fearful or worrisome imaginations. RESPONDENT: [I’ exist as past emotional memories, current affective experience and future fearful or worrisome imaginations.] Ok given that now is the only moment you can experience any reference to future or past (ability to discriminate) can only be arrived upon as a factual instance by appliance of time as a concept (a measure tool) hence I say the discriminating mechanism is the ability to conceptualize time. PETER: A memory of a past event is not a concept of a memory of a past event – it is a memory of a past event. Similarly the reasonable anticipation of a future event, say that I am going to get up in the morning and have breakfast, is an anticipation – not a concept of a reasonable anticipation. To make a concept out of something is to make an idea, a notion, an abstraction, an hypothesis, a theory or an image out of it. RESPONDENT: Iow long as I can label an experience as past (memories) this discriminating mechanism is the very labelling of the experience. Otherwise there would be only experience. PETER: And the only moment you can actually experience is this very moment that you are reading these words. You don’t need to have a concept about this experience. You read the words on the screen and they mean something to you. Reading is a sensory experience, it is not a concept. The computer screen is an object made of the stuff of this planet we humans live on, it is not a concept. And the only moment you can actually experience all this is this very moment. If you are sensually experiencing this moment, there is simply no room for conceptualisations or abstractions, let alone past emotional memories or future fearful imaginations. * RESPONDENT: I may have images of the past or the future yet these are nothing more than then the activity of my brain ie memories. PETER: No. You can look at a photograph taken of you in the past and that is an image, but it makes no sense at all to deny that there was an actual flesh and blood body called No 23 existing at the time the photo was taken. This type of conceptual thinking, i.e. thinking abstracted from facts and actuality, is common in spiritual circles and can only lead to a ‘me’ who imagines ‘I’ am real and the past, the physical world and other human beings are but an illusion. RESPONDENT: So overtime there is not happening disembodiment? PETER: No. Spiritual people believe they are disembodied spirits as is typified by statements such as ‘I am not the body’ or ‘I left my body the other day’. When meditating one day, I had an out-of-body experience but such experiences are what is known as hallucinations or figments of the imagination. * RESPONDENT: So ... now seems to be this floating experience in between past and future yet, it all happens HERE. PETER: Indeed. If you start believing that the world of people, things and events is but an image, your feet can literally leave the ground and you can feel as though you are floating. Actualism is about getting your feet back on the ground – a radical proposition, I know. RESPONDENT: [now seems to be] not [now is]. PETER: And yet this moment is the only moment you can actually experience. If I may suggest, the only way to know how you experience this moment is to become attentive to how you are experiencing this moment of time – which is precisely the purpose of the actualism method – ask yourself each moment again ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’. At first it takes a good deal of effort for you will find that you have made a habit of wasted a lot of moments by dwelling in past emotional memories, worrying about future events or being angry at someone or feeling sad about something. As you get the knack of it you get this wasted time down to a minimum and you learn to crank up feeling good about being here. With sufficiently stubborn effort the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ becomes wordless and your attentiveness comes to the forefront for the first time in your life. Only by stubbornly and diligently practicing attentiveness can what ‘seems to be’ happening become the direct sensual experience of what ‘is now’ actually happening. The actualism method is unremitting in its efficiency and simplicity, which is why some people take the safe route and make a philosophy out of actualism rather than use the method themselves. * PETER: One of the major difficulties for newcomers to actualism is that they think there is something new to learn in actualism – something they can add on to what they have already learnt. This is quite understandable because all that human beings think and feel to be true or ‘the truth’ has been learnt from someone else. The tendency therefore is to see actualism as something new to learn, a new form of wisdom to be clipped-on or melded in to their existing belief, a new and superior philosophy than the one they had before, a new set of rules and regulations as to how to live one’s life, a convenient excuse for continuing to suppress emotions and feelings, a clever mask for sublimating undesirable emotions and feelings, a catchy concept to strut around and teach others, and so on. While there is no doubt that even a little of the down-to-earth sensibleness that is the hallmark of the writings of actualists is of benefit for those who have had their head in the clouds for years, to consider actualism as something new to learn is to miss the whole point of actualism. Actualism is in fact all about unlearning – unlearning everything you have been taught to be right, true, wise, and sane. Actualism is about unlearning of all of your social and instinctual programming, the very programming that serves to incarcerate you within the human condition. Becoming free of the human condition involves unlearning and deleting all of your social programming that you have been taught by your parents and peers – in other words, you yourself actively demolish your own social identity. As this unlearning progresses you then start to become aware of the instinctual passions that lie suppressed or sublimated beneath this layer of social programming. You are then free to be attentive to the automatic-instinctual passionate impulses of fear, aggression, nurture and desire and the very act of attentiveness enables you to eventually break the stranglehold that these habitual reactions have over you. All of this is an unlearning, or de-learning, process – an incremental methodical procedure of deleting all you have been taught to be true and all you instinctually feel to be right – it is not at all about learning something new. You can’t learn actualism, nor can you teach actualism to anyone else – unlearning is a do-it-yourself business. Nobody can do it for you, or to you – you have to want to do it for yourself.
Peter’s Text ©The Actual Freedom
Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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