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Peter’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List with Correspondent No 30
PETER: Hi, RESPONDENT: While I’m a follower of no man, I willingly and gratefully acknowledge having had teachers along life’s journey, certainly beginning with my parents. And from my vantage point at this time I continue to consider Krishnamurti, Nietzsche, and Vivekananda as perhaps the three most vital ones beneficial in regards to the continuing perfection of my walk away from the world and it’s spiritual darkness up to the mountaintop of all knowingness including the knowledge and experience of being fully human and fully alive. Yet unlike most I suppose on this list I give the glory for all the goodness I’ve discovered and continue to enjoy in my life to God. Presently I am quite involved in sharing my experience, strength and hope at AA meetings where its 12 steps are offered as the path to freedom from the bondage of self and of which personally I find are a perfect path. God is good-life is good as I dwell in a perfect world so long as I remain one with Him. PETER: Welcome to the list. If you have come to this non-God list because you have some doubts about God, as an actualist the only suggestion I would make is to question for yourself whether the ‘world’ that any of the mythical Gods has supposedly created is indeed as ‘perfect’ as you claim it is. To let go of an impassioned belief in God, let alone a personal conviction of Godship, is a big step but one that needs to be taken if one is ever to directly experience the unconditional – as in not a skerrick of ‘so long as’– peerlessness and impeccableness of this paradisiacal physical planet we mortal corporeal humans actually spend our finite lives on. If however you have come to this list to teach and preach that we actualists are wrong and you Know the Right Way, I will give your olde time religion, God-is-good, teachings a miss. I’ve been there and done that and it sucks ... But should you ever develop a sincere interest in actualism I would be only to happy to have a down-to-earth conversation with you. Down-to-earth-ism is my forte. Cheers ... ... Peter. P.S. You may not yet be aware that we already have
PETER: I thought you had disappeared from the list, but it appears you can’t help but trying to save us atheists from our foolish path. I see you are trying to goad Richard into getting ‘his hands dirty’ again, which I take to mean that he should get back to suffering like the rest of humanity. The God-business is a curious business, hey? With a little clear-eyed looking at the whole business, it can be seen that any belief in a God – by whatever name He or She or It is called in whatever tradition and in whichever culture – arises out of and is dependant upon human suffering. No feelings of sadness, misery, anguish, resentment or animosity – no need to dissociate from being here, no need to believe in a redemptive God and no need to believe in life after death. If one dares to dig deeper into the God-business it gets a whole lot murkier because it can be seen that religiosity and spirituality feed off human suffering, rather as a predator feeds off carrion. In religious belief, Good is sustained by a belief in Evil and the notion of Salvation is promulgated by a belief in Damnation, whilst in spiritual belief the feeling-fed conviction of a peaceful ‘inner world’ is reliant upon a feeling-fed belief in a chaotic ‘outer world’ and the much-lauded dissociated state of Enlightenment feeds off the belief that suffering is part and parcel of being here on earth. What we are talking of on this mailing list – a do-it-yourself method specifically designed to eliminate the animosity and anguish that ensue from the primitive genetically-encoded instinctual survival programming – pulls the very rug out from under all religious and spiritual belief. An end to feelings of sadness, misery, anguish, resentment or animosity brings with it an end to the need to dissociate from being here, to the need to believe in a redemptive God or to the need to believe in life after death. T’is no wonder the objectors to becoming happy and harmless are so numerous ... and so persistent.
PETER: T’is no wonder the objectors to becoming happy and harmless are so numerous ... and so persistent. RESPONDENT: First and foremost I’m in the Truth-business, Peter. PETER: The reason I said God-business is because you have used the word God in the past –
If you now want to call your God by another name then you are in good company – keeping God anonymous, impersonal, obscure or shrouded in mystery has become very fashionable nowadays given that Eastern religion has so heavily infiltrated Western philosophy and religion in the last century. My point was that actualism is not about the God-by-whatever-name-business, it is about the business of becoming happy and harmless – a soul destroying business and not a soul enhancing business, if you like. RESPONDENT: Predestined for the abyss one might say. And whether it brings me a profit or a fatality, I would add. PETER: What abyss are you talking about – Eastern religion’s abyss or ego-death after which comes Glory for the soul before physical death, or the monotheist religion’s abyss or physical death after which comes a Glorious life for the soul? I remember reading a book by an elderly Westerner of Christian upbringing who had spent years on the spiritual path and was nearing death and she wrote that was convinced that she would become Enlightened when she died. I remember being perplexed at the time because it seemed that it was such an odd mixture of Christianity and Eastern spiritual teaching … but nowadays nothing much surprises me about the God-by-whatever-name-business. RESPONDENT: I find your ‘rubber stamp’ critique/rant on ‘believers’ to be old hat and rather simple minded, even though it’s indeed fairly accurate. PETER: I like it that you see my comment as simple-minded – taking a clear-eyed look at something can be seen by some as being simple minded. But I do wonder how you make your judgement of ‘fairly accurate’ – what part is accurate and what part is not accurate. Does ‘fairly accurate’ mean that it is an accurate statement about some believers and/or some Gods but not about other believers and/or other Gods? RESPONDENT: Believer, agnostic, atheist, whatever the label, genuine freedom is about abandoning the false conditioned self … PETER: I remember when I first came across Eastern religion I felt like I had discovered ‘the Truth’, or the meaning of life, and that all I had been conditioned to believe, mainly materialism and monotheism, was nothing but false conditioning. Now I know that the Truth by whatever name is a fabrication based on the notion that there is a conditioned Non-Truth by whatever name. The Truth and its hand-in-glove Non-Truth are but products of impassioned human imagination – neither have any existence whatsoever in the actual world of the senses. RESPONDENT: … and becoming fully human-fully alive, and I’ll throw in here, for more complete measure, fully male. PETER: Does your desire to become ‘fully male’ refer to a prior anatomical incompleteness? RESPONDENT: And of course leaving NO stones unturned in this ultimate adventure, as I mentioned previously. PETER: Unless you are interested in investigating whatever is under the stone you label ‘the Truth-business’ you are wasting your time on this mailing list. Actualism is entirely upfront about the necessity of abandoning all spiritual beliefs if one aspires to become free of the human condition – for the obvious reason that spiritual and religious beliefs are part and parcel of the human condition.
PETER: What we are talking of on this mailing list – a do-it-yourself method specifically designed to eliminate the animosity and anguish that ensue from the primitive genetically-encoded instinctual survival programming – pulls the very rug out from under all religious and spiritual belief. An end to feelings of sadness, misery, anguish, resentment or animosity brings with it an end to the need to dissociate from being here, to the need to believe in a redemptive God or to the need to believe in life after death. T’is no wonder the objectors to becoming happy and harmless are so numerous ... and so persistent. RESPONDENT: First and foremost I’m in the Truth-business, Peter. PETER: The reason I said God-business is because you have used the word God in the past –
RESPONDENT: Thanks for the refresher. Things have changed little. Steadfast I remain. And open-minded, I would add. Hmmm. PETER: I does seem that you are somewhat flexible in your thinking if you can hold to the Faith while remaining a long-term member of this mailing list. * PETER: If you now want to call your God by another name then you are in good company – keeping God anonymous, impersonal, obscure or shrouded in mystery has become very fashionable nowadays given that Eastern religion has so heavily infiltrated Western philosophy and religion in the last century. RESPONDENT: Yes, Truth=God-God=Truth. Can’t have one without the other. PETER: Well that’s cleared that up. I thought your comment – ‘First and foremost I’m in the Truth-business’ – meant that my comment wasn’t relevant. * PETER: My point was that actualism is not about the God-by-whatever-name-business, it is about the business of becoming happy and harmless – a soul destroying business and not a soul enhancing business, if you like. RESPONDENT: ‘Happy and harmless’ has a ring of cowardice in it to me. I’m for becoming free of the bondage of self. PETER: I remember when a friend once asked me what actualism was about I said it was about becoming happy and harmless, as in free of malice and sorrow. She paused to think about it and then said ‘Well I like feeling sad, watching a sad movie or listening to a sad song’. I said what about being free of malice and she replied that she had to fight to get to get to where she was now in her life and she didn’t want to give up fighting – it was necessary and it gave her strength. So we moved on to talking about the weather. * RESPONDENT: Predestined for the abyss one might say. And whether it brings me a profit or a fatality, I would add. PETER: What abyss are you talking about – Eastern religion’s abyss or ego-death after which comes Glory for the soul before physical death, or the monotheist religion’s abyss or physical death after which comes a Glorious life for the soul? I remember reading a book by an elderly Westerner of Christian upbringing who had spent years on the spiritual path and was nearing death and she wrote that was convinced that she would become Enlightened when she died. I remember being perplexed at the time because it seemed that it was such an odd mixture of Christianity and Eastern spiritual teaching … but nowadays nothing much surprises me about the God-by-whatever-name-business RESPONDENT: Are you sure you were ‘perplexed’ at the time for the reason you state? PETER: Yep. I even bought the book as I thought it was a classic representation of a mixture of Christianity and Rajneeshism. * RESPONDENT: I find your ‘rubber stamp’ critique/rant on ‘believers’ to be old hat and rather simple minded, even though it’s indeed fairly accurate. PETER: I like it that you see my comment as simple-minded – taking a clear-eyed look at something can be seen by some as being simple minded. But I do wonder how you make your judgement of ‘fairly accurate’ – what part is accurate and what part is not accurate. Does ‘fairly accurate’ mean that it is an accurate statement about some believers and/or some Gods but not about other believers and/or other Gods? RESPONDENT: Yes, you’re pretty close. PETER: That makes it pretty close to being ‘fairly accurate’. * RESPONDENT: Believer, agnostic, atheist, whatever the label, genuine freedom is about abandoning the false conditioned self … PETER: I remember when I first came across Eastern religion I felt like I had discovered ‘the Truth’, or the meaning of life, and that all I had been conditioned to believe, mainly materialism and monotheism, was nothing but false conditioning. Now I know that the Truth by whatever name is a fabrication based on the notion that there is a conditioned Non-Truth by whatever name. The Truth and its hand-in-glove Non-Truth are but products of impassioned human imagination – neither have any existence whatsoever in the actual world of the senses. RESPONDENT: Being a living embodiment of truth is the goal. Putting aside all ideas and theories regarding truth. PETER: Anyone entering the spiritual world is admonished to ‘leave your mind at the door, surrender your will and trust your feelings.’ * RESPONDENT: … and becoming fully human-fully alive, and I’ll throw in here, for more complete measure, fully male. PETER: Does your desire to become ‘fully male’ refer to a prior anatomical incompleteness? RESPONDENT: A bit slippery here are we? PETER: No I was just being frivolous. RESPONDENT: What about becoming fully human-fully alive? If nothing else it has a better ring to it than ‘happy and harmless’, don’t you think? Not to mention that the rewards of doing so are mighty fine. Ah yes, to be fully human-fully alive! Should I add fully God? PETER: You can add ‘fully-God’ if you like. The idea that one can be both a human and a God grew out of pantheism – I guess at some stage it occurred to some person if a monkey or a cow or a rat can be worshiped as a God, why not a human animal, in fact why not me? When I first heard someone say ‘we are all Gods’, I remember thinking ‘what if everybody felt themselves to be God’ – who would be the disciples, who would fill the church pews, who would drive the buses, for that matter? It gets a bit Monty Python-esue as there would be 6 billion Gods on the planet all looking in vain for some non-Gods to save. There would be 6 billion Gods disagreeing amongst themselves, being sad, feeling lonely, getting annoyed at other Gods, all the while claiming ‘we are all one’ – and all trapped within what would have to be called the ‘God condition’ rather than the human condition.
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