|
Peter’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List with Correspondent No 38
PETER: Hi, RESPONDENT: The common interpretation of the word cult has as a primary characteristic the wielding of power by one or several over a group of others. This power can only exist with the mutual agreement (at some conscious or unconscious level) of both parties to honour the hierarchal arrangement. PETER: There are currently hundreds upon hundreds of self-declared Gurus on the planet, all of whose fame, power, influence and wealth is totally dependant upon the fervour and numbers of their followers. I am not denying that many of these Gurus have the capacity to wield considerable psychic power over their followers but the follower has to be fully compliant and blindly loyal in order for this power to operate. When I was a loyal follower of Mohan Rajneesh his word was God to me, yet when I stopped believing that what he said was the Truth he no longer held any power over me – in other words, I gave him power over me, it was not a matter of mutual agreement. RESPONDENT: I stand corrected. It does start with the followers. I think I arrived at that in my last statement (below), but probably should have taken a bit more time to think about my post before hitting send. PETER: This issue does take a bit of ‘getting’, because it has many deeper layers to it and few bother to do more than scrape the surface in trying to understand it. Every child is socially trained to obey mummy and daddy, to follow the leader, to fall into line and so on. This is essential training, very necessary and quite sensible. This training often results in resentment, which can lead to rebellion and anarchy, and then the child needs to be reminded of his or her limits, lest they be punished. Many people continue living their lives rebelling against this essential social training, thinking their rebellion is a necessary and noble action, essential for social change, when in fact it is often little more than senseless riling born of childhood resentments. It is also very common for many people to seek out a big daddy or big mummy figure in the form of a Guru, Godman, God or Goddess at some stage in their life and, once hooked on the beliefs espoused by the guru, it is very difficult to wean oneself off such a fixation. Not only does abandoning such beliefs evoke feelings of disloyalty, ostracization and the like, but also very intense atavistic feelings of heretical and hellish punishments. There is a deeper layer, of course, which is animal-instinctual in nature and an actualist will usually touch upon this layer fairly early on when daring to take the risk of ceasing to follow the herd and striking off on his or her own path towards autonomy. I know the issue of authority ran deep with me for a long time at the start of actualism and I seem to recall Gary mentioning it as well. That’s why I spent a bit of time in replying to you in detail – not as a correction to what you said but as further explanation that may trigger even more contemplation. For me, if my memory is accurate, the issue was about leaving home, growing up, standing on my own two feet, taking responsibility, if I can throw in a few catch-phrases that came to mind at that time. Certainly this issue dominated a good deal of the early chapters in my Journal and I did a good deal of thinking about it at the time. When you say, ‘I stand corrected’, my reply was not meant as a matter of me correcting you as in a normal ‘who is right or who is wrong’ argumentation. I was simply digging down a bit further so as to understand the facts of the matter because I found by my own experience that only by doing so, can you avoid the dangers and pitfalls of the many forms of cultism – both secular and spiritual – that permeate the human condition so as to eventually become free of them. You also might find the * RESPONDENT: If the players in this game do genuinely follow Richard’s edict about ‘not trusting in another person (thereby inviting betrayal), but evaluating the validity of a claim through reference to one’s experience’, then the argument ends there. I detect no indication of the attempt by the AF veterans to establish a controlling influence over the participants. PETER: Given the human propensity to need someone to be an authority, a Big Daddy figure, the argument about actualism being a cult will no doubt continue long after the supposed cult-leader is dead and burnt. Speaking personally, as one of the ‘AF veterans’, I look forward to the time when the mailing list has sufficient practicing actualists that the discussions can remain lively, interesting, down-to-earth and on-topic and not be dominated or overwhelmed by objectors or flamers. At this stage retirement is a definitive option. RESPONDENT: Isn’t one of the primary functions of this list to educate interested newcomers? PETER: Not as far as I’m concerned. This mailing list is not an internet classroom offering personal tuition in actualism. The website is the primary source of information and it is adequate in itself for anyone sufficiently motivated to become free from the human condition. The mailing list is supplementary and secondary to this information – a forum for actualists and those interested in actualism to mutually discuss and share their experiences about the actualism method. RESPONDENT: There will always be objectors or flamers in that group. PETER: Seemingly so, but experience thus far has shown that they come and go … and that increasingly they are not the main event on the list. RESPONDENT: Speaking for myself, perhaps my queries could be construed to be aggressive (you be the judge), but it’s just that I consider this work to be of paramount importance, and there’s no time to be wasted beating around the bush. I am not remotely interested in spreading malice on the mailing list, I’m just trying to get the heart of the matter, in my own blundering way. PETER: To even consider heading off in a direction that is diametrically opposed to everything that humanity holds dear is a daunting business and it is bound to stir emotional responses and precipitate cognitive confusions. The process of actualism not only brings into question all of humanity’s dearly held morals, ethics and beliefs but it also stirs up the deepest of the instinctual passions. I do appreciate the difficult nature of many of the topics and discussions on this list for they are of an ilk that is usually avoided, precisely because they can get ‘too close to the bone’, as it were. But throughout, I’ve never detected you as being aggressive at all, something which I do appreciate. I’ve always had a preference for politeness. RESPONDENT: On the general topic of the mailing list, out of curiosity yesterday I took a ‘core sample’ of the past year’s worth of posts to the topica list. There certainly have been some periods of intense flaming! But I also noted that many of the ‘veterans’ who were active contributors are now mostly quiet. Perhaps for most who live in some measure of actual/virtual freedom, the need to communicate dissipates, leaving only a few dedicated individuals to carry on the educational torch. PETER: The list has a life of its own, as it were – it is completely spontaneous, no-one knows who is going to say what next, what the next topics will be, who will come along next, who will enter, who will exit, who will pop up. We are all, in fact, doing this for the first time. It’s thrilling enough stuff just to be able to have such an unfettered, uncensored discussion in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are, and yet we can all do it anonymously, without fear of reprisal or repercussion from the safety and comfort of our own house/ flat/ whatever, from wherever in the world. There have been several attempts to broach that privacy, but then again nothing in life is without risk. I often reflect that I have never, and probably will never, meet most of the people I write to on this list, but when I write and when I read, I am talking to a fellow flesh and blood human being about the most intimate aspects of what it is to be a human being. I can say things on this list and write things that I can’t say to most people I meet because they are either not interested or are likely to take offence at such conversation. As to your reference to ‘the ‘veterans’ who were active contributors are now mostly quiet’, I obviously cannot answer for them. Personally I find it a delight to be able to discuss with others my discoveries about the human condition and how it operates and as a consequence I would find it improbable that other practicing actualists would not want to share their experiences and successes on this list so as to help facilitate the freedom of other fellow human beings. But then again, I cannot know whether the past contributors to the list are still interested in actualism unless they continue to communicate or whether their need to communicate has dissipated because their inquiry into the human condition has ceased. RESPONDENT: I don’t quite grasp your last statement.
I think it could be interpreted one of two ways: Either you are fed up with the present state of affairs, PETER: To the contrary, I find the present state of affairs, with regard to this list, to be excellent – the discussions are generally lively, interesting, down-to-earth and on-topic and the contributions of our resident and visiting Godmen, objectors and flamers are in themselves informative and very often pertinent to the discussions. This mailing list was never meant to be a sheltered workshop or a cave for monks. RESPONDENT: … or at some point when the list arrives as a critical mass, you can relinquish some responsibility. PETER: When I first suggested to Richard that he put his writings on a website so as to make his discovery available to all, we discussed ways to make it less personal and more generic. We also discussed the issue of being able to make the information publicly available whilst maintaining the sensibility of living a private life. The idea emerged of establishing the web-site under the name of a legal entity in the form of a trust administered co-operatively by a number of individuals – the idea being that the trust would take responsibility for maintaining a public web-site so as to make the writings freely available world-wide and maintain the integrity of the original actualism writings for as long as necessary. As a founding member of what became the Actual Freedom Trust, I have undertaken that responsibility. As to my continuing to write on the mailing list, that is a separate and personal issue. Given that I am not yet actually free from the human condition, I still learn a lot from writing on the list. I still enjoy writing on the list and I don’t do so out of a sense of being responsible for others. I have always been willing to share my experience of actualism with anyone interested purely on the basis of passing on experience to others – what they do with it is their business entirely. After all, being able to learn from the trial and error experience of others – both the mistakes and the successes – is one of the essential attributes that separates humans from all the other animals. But I don’t see that I will be writing on this list for the rest of my life – already my usefulness in talking about the early stages of actualism and the likely issues encountered is questionable as my memory of this time is not as vivid nor as precise as it was. It’s a good thing that I wrote a lot of it down in my Journal and it’s also timely that others are now capable of writing in a way that is far fresher and more immediate. * RESPONDENT: A small group of others who have determined that the method on offer by this person has meaning to them, and they make a conscious choice to lead their lives in a similar fashion. They emulate his ‘philosophy’ and practice his techniques, likely with varying degrees of success. However, they are leading a simulation of the originator’s way (that’s what the word ‘virtual’ means after all), so it is possible that they have suspended some measure of their common sense in order to ‘be like Richard’. I can’t really ascertain that, but if that were the case, then they are dancing around the edges of cult-ness. PETER: Your supposition depends upon your definition of the term ‘common sense’. The common-to-all sense would have it that human beings need to be aggressive in order to survive in the world and that suffering is not only essential but is good for you. On the other hand, to me it is common sense to do all I can to become both happy and harmless. Perhaps a better way of putting my desire to emulate Richard is that I have abandoned the usual common-to-all-sense and relied on the uncommon-to-all-sense of devoting my life to becoming both happy and harmless. Thus far this sense is indeed uncommon, for I only know of less than a handful of people who have openly declared themselves to be similarly motivated, and I have the good fortune to live with one of them. RESPONDENT: I use the term ‘common sense’ in exactly the same way as you. I suppose it is a term that is too subjectively defined to be bandied about as freely as I have. PETER: Okay, but whereas you said ‘so it is possible that they have suspended some measure of their common sense in order to ‘be like Richard’, my experience is that I came to my senses when I decided to become actually free ‘like Richard’. I had to stop believing the non-sense I believed about what it is to be a human being – the common-to-all sense – and I had to start taking a clear-eyed look at the facts of what it is to be a human being – the uncommon-to-all-sense. To me this is not suspending ‘some measure of … common sense’ but discovering common sense and putting it into action. If you check back to the passage you originally wrote, you may find your use of the term common sense was the opposite to how I use it when I write. The only reason I am labouring the point a bit is that I had to work hard to develop a clear-eyed common sense because my thinking was always skewed by the morals and ethics I had been taught as a kid and imbibed in my latter life. My common sense – the free operation of the intelligence that is the hallmark of the human brain – was obscured, if not completely obliterated in many cases, by the beliefs I had unwittingly taken to be truths and it took a good deal of effort and time to eliminate them. And then there are the feelings that kick in automatically and instinctually before thinking has a chance to operate freely – the feelings that infiltrated my thinking without me even being aware of what was happening. It took persistent attentiveness on my part to become aware of this biological fact but once I got the hang of it, this attentiveness became almost constant and then it was thrilling to be able to observe and sort out how the human condition operates. It then increasingly began to be a pleasure to think, to ponder, to contemplate, to reflect, to understand, to realize, to be able to think things through in order to arrive at the facts of the matter … and to be aware that I was coming to my senses, both literally and figuratively. That’s what I call common sense. * RESPONDENT: What I do get from this group at times is a tendency to formulate fairly broad responses in quite black and white terms, at times sounding like a party line. Yes, the basic AF tenet is black and white, but I am suspicious of any system that attempts to fit the entire universe into one of two bins. Elemental particles may be black/white, but when you mix a lot of them together, it sure starts to look grey. YMMV. PETER: So, the basic actualism tenet is black and white but ‘this group’ tends to formulate fairly broad responses in quite black and white terms. As part of this ‘group’, I have no trouble at all with making things black and white, bringing issues and beliefs out of the shadows into the light, understanding what were formerly grey areas, calling a spade a spade when appropriate. This is the whole point of actualism – to clearly understand the human condition and how it operates in black and white terms in order to be free of it. If you want murkiness and greyness, not-knowingness and uncertainty, obscuration and ambiguity, then there are a multitude of other forums on the Net whose discussions would better meet your criteria. RESPONDENT: I didn’t state that I was pursuing grey-ness. I have no personal interest in ambiguity, that’s why I’m here. I was simply investigating some remaining sticking points, some ‘real’ world scenarios that I’ve been using as litmus tests. Vineeto in her last post to me actually answered most of them to my satisfaction, so my black/white/grey thread is concluded satisfactorily. PETER: I apologize for the presumption on my part. What you said was that you were suspicious of a system that attempts to ‘fit the entire universe into one of two bins.’ I unwittingly leapt to the conclusion that, as you were suspicious of the ‘black and white’ proposition inherent in actualism, you may have still held some lingering fondness for the greyness typified by traditional spiritual teachings of ‘not-knowing’ and ‘not wanting to know’. I was also unaware at the time of writing my response that you had meanwhile concluded this thread to your satisfaction. Sounds good to me. I do like the written-word communication of mailing lists. Putting things down in black and white presents a way of making things clear, whereas the spoken word always leaves room for greyness and ambiguities, not to mention the usual ‘but you just said … ‘no, I didn’t’, ‘yes, you did’, no, I didn’t’ disputes that commonly arise. By being able to refer back on what was actually said, the process of checking beliefs or convictions against facts becomes simple and straightforward. * PETER: I remember once pricking up my ears at something Richard said. He said something like ‘Do you really believe that human beings will never find a way to live together in genuine peace and harmony – that there will never be an end to all the wars, rapes, murders, child abuse, domestic violence and corruption that human beings inflict upon each other?’ It sure made me understand how cynical the universal conviction is that there can never be a workable straightforward down-to-earth solution to ending human malice and sorrow. RESPONDENT: Interesting... I hadn’t really about the insidiousness of cynicism (and I have it in yards), but it surely must colour everything. Thanks for (yet) another ‘opportunity’. PETER: If I remember rightly, you have been upfront about cynicism on the list before and I appreciate anyone who freely admits to feelings such as these. I remember being quite shocked as to how deeply cynical all of the spiritual teachings were and being stunned at my gullibility in that I had not seen this whilst I was on the spiritual path. The realization helped to show me how my own feelings of self-righteous and moral superiority had blinded me to the dark and sinister underbelly of all spiritual teachings. * PETER: Nowadays it is not necessary for seekers to spend years on the spiritual path because so much of the spiritual teachings are available on the Net to be read at leisure without the need to become involved in a group or embroiled in a cult. It is also possible to join any one of many spiritual mailing lists in order to assess the effectiveness – or ineffectiveness – of the teachings in producing harmonious and peaceful communities. There are ample opportunities for a present-day seeker to check out for themselves the followers of almost any spiritual teaching, to assess the quality, range and tone of discussions and by doing so make your own assessment as to whether or not the followers are living the teachings and if they are, what effect it has on their daily lives. Given the doubts you have raised in this post about actualism being a cult and your, I can only suggest that you take a clear-eyed look at spiritualism as it works in practice in order that you can move on from doubt to making an assessment one way or the other. The important thing about asking questions and having doubts is to find definitive workable answers and nowadays the Net makes it much easier than having to troop off to the East as was needed in the old days. As I remember it, living in doubt and not-knowing is the pits. There is such a joy to be had in devoting yourself to something one hundred percent. RESPONDENT: I have no doubts about the ‘cult of AF’. There is absolutely no evidence to that suggestion. I’ve looked at spiritualism and I reject it categorically. Your point about the purpose of questioning/doubting is well taken. Also, I do recognize the importance of commitment and intent to any of this work. While I can browse my way through a world’s worth of information, at the end of the day, the plain old hard work still must be done. PETER: My misconception appears to have come from reading your words and taking them at face value. You said, among other things – RESPONDENT: However, they are leading a simulation of the originator’s way (that’s what the word ‘virtual’ means after all), so it is possible that they have suspended some measure of their common sense in order to ‘be like Richard’. I can’t really ascertain that, but if that were the case, then they are dancing around the edges of cult-ness. PETER: When you say ‘however ... it is possible …’ and ‘I can’t really ascertain that, but if …’, that to me means you have doubt, i.e. you are not sure, not confident, or it is not your experience. In other words, to me, what you wrote expressed that you had doubts, which is why I responded as I did. Perhaps this is an example that throws some light on the feedback I sometimes get – that I am putting words into the mouths of correspondents that they didn’t say or that I am misinterpreting what they say. I am not saying I always get things right but I can only respond to the words someone says. The other example that comes to mind – although it has nothing to do with this current conversation – are correspondents who say things like ‘I agree, but …’ which to me means there is not a mutual agreement as to the facticity of what is being said but that very often the correspondent is objecting to the proposition being offered by saying ‘but’. In this case, what can often happen is that the correspondent will ‘dig their heals in’ and begin a standoff of principle as to ‘who’s right and who’s wrong’. Such reactions usually prevent any common sense discussion and further investigation as to what are the facts of the matter and the resulting feedback is that of me ‘being aggressive’ or ‘being confrontational’ or ‘always wanting to be right’. You may have noticed this tendency is common to many discussions – I know it was one that plagued all of my conversations and interactions until I came to see it in action and worked to break the habit. What I realized was happening was that I was emotionally defending my beliefs and convictions, very often without thinking about what I was defending at all. When what ‘I’ said or felt to be right or true was questioned or contradicted ‘I’ immediately felt threatened, the defence and/or attack mode automatically kicked in, and any chance at sensible conversation flew out the window. Sometimes, in a vain effort to keep the peace, I would feign to agree with the other outwardly whilst covertly holding on to the conviction of my rightness, thereby ensuring the truce so gained was nothing but a temporary lull in my ongoing battle with others. The only thing I found that worked to end this cycle of conflict and ceasefire was to make the effort to establish what were the facts of the matter so that my common sense was able to operate in lieu of ‘my’ automatic emotional reactions of defending ‘my’ beliefs and convictions. This process is what is meant by questioning beliefs and replacing them with facts – this is the actualism method in a nutshell and the resulting common sense discussions on this list illustrates why and how it works in practice. Peace and harmony between human beings is possible. Nice to chat again,
PETER: Just some comments that came to mind when I read your recent post to No 23 – RESPONDENT to No 23: Well, there’s the physical universe, which is a concrete entity, ever-changing. Whether it had a beginning (meaning it didn’t exist before it did) and/or an end will make for lively conjecture for some time, perhaps never to be resolved. Then, there’s our perception/sensation of the universe, which only exists for the immediate moment, a time span of zero. Then there’s data stored in our brain that recalls a previous perception/sensation of the universe, and our predictions of how the universe may be sensed tomorrow. These aspects (and likely others) all coexist quite happily. Respondent to No 23, 13.10.02 PETER: Whilst in theory these aspects should co-exist quite happily, the spanner in the works, so to speak, is the fact that human beings are first and foremost emotional beings, and quite proud of being so. Therefore the ‘data stored in our brain that recalls a previous perception/sensation of the universe, and our predictions of how the universe may be sensed tomorrow’ always has a pre-eminent, and pre-dominant, ‘self’-centred emotional aspect. As a distinct and separate psychological and psychic ‘self’ inevitably develops in early childhood in all human beings, so do emotional memories of past events and our emotional expectations and wariness of future events. These emotional memories and expectations build up over time, giving the rudimentary animal ‘self’ a passionate feeling-backed conviction of existing over time – of having, and living, a distinct and separate ‘life’ of its (as in his or hers) own. Because of this quirk of nature, this entity thinks and feels itself to be separate from the flesh and blood body and thinks and feels itself to be alien to the actual world. Thus ‘I’ can never be happy because I always feel separate and alien, which in turn means ‘I’ can never be harmless. People who have had an experience of deeply feeling this separation and alienation have to date grasped for the traditional lifebuoy – the feelings of Oneness and Unity provoked by believing the spiritual teachings. Actualism, as you know, is about tackling the root cause of the problem rather than tweaking the symptoms. Once one intellectually grasps the fact that all human malice and sorrow stems from the feelings of separation and alienation that are intrinsic to being a thinking and feeling instinctual ‘being’, the next stage is to acknowledge one has a problem – that one is neither happy nor harmless. You put it this way in a post about 3 weeks ago –
My experience at this stage was that I was faced with a decision the likes of which I had not faced before, for I knew if I devoted my life to becoming happy and harmless then that would be the end of ‘me’, the root cause of the problem. By devoting one’s life to becoming happy and harmless, one then automatically becomes committed to becoming aware of all of the invidious feelings as well as the self-aggrandizing feelings as and when they occur. This purity of intent and whole-hearted commitment means that no stone will be left unturned in investigating one’s own psyche in action, be it the outer layer of one’s social identity or the primordial depths of one’s instinctual being. However, as I remember it, in the early days I would often get sucked back into my normal ways of doing things, absorbed with the lives of others, instinctually reverting to the blame-others game. It takes considerable effort and ongoing attentiveness to break old in-grained habits, to stop repressing feelings, to stop shoving things under the carpet. But in the end the successes I had encouraged me to dare to investigate all of the beliefs and passions that stood in the way of my feeling felicitous – no matter how disconcerting the process … and no matter what changes would result from the process. Which leads me on to another comment in your post to No 23 – RESPONDENT to No 23: Initially I puzzled a lot over matters such as the effect of environment, mates, etc on this process, but after a while realized that it was just getting in the way. I don’t think I’m going to ‘get’ those answers until I’ve ‘arrived’, so the most judicious plan is to just keep plowing away, and stop demanding understanding. And, I asked myself if any sort of rationalization or justification (positive or negative re AF) was going to affect my determination to apply the method... the answer was no, so I’d better give up on some of the wanking. This is not to say that the analytical processes (dialog, ferreting out my programs, etc) are not valuable... they are, but sometimes they can consume too much energy. Once again, I am speaking for myself here... ymmv. Respondent to No 23, 13.10.02 PETER: My experience is that the only way I ever understood something fully was by the trial and error doing of it. Thinking about what to do and how to do it were the first steps, but then plunging in and doing it was essential to know if what I thought was the right way worked in practice. With hindsight that is what I did in the first year of actualism – I tested out Richard’s observations about the human condition by making my own investigations of my own psyche in action. But where I tend to differ with what you are saying is that I did demand an understanding from my investigations – and not only an intellectual understanding but an experiential understanding. What I found was that each understanding became like a stepping-stone on the path to becoming happy and harmless. Each understanding of what made ‘me’ tick, of what prevented me from being happy and what stood in the way of me being harmless, allowed me to more and more freely delight at being here, doing this business of being alive. After some 15 months of success with this process of ‘self’-investigation, I took some time off work, bought a computer and sat down and wrote down the understandings I had come to in the form of a journal. This is how I started –
As you can see, understanding or making sense was crucial for me in the process of actualism. This did take time and effort and in the early days of ‘self’-investigation so much was ‘on the table’ that often it felt like all I could do was put one foot in front of the other. If I read you right, this is what you mean when you say –
This way understanding will come by the trial and error method of doing it and this will eventually produce an experiential understanding rather than an intellectual-only understanding. Once you are into the trial and error phase of investigation and experimentation then it’s a hands on business and then life-changing changes invariably come from abandoning that which doesn’t work and pursuing that which brings success. So when you say ‘I don’t think I’m going to ‘get’ those answers until I’ve ‘arrived’, you may well find that ‘getting’ the answers as an experiential understanding is what will bring the life-changing changes necessary for you to become free of the human condition. That was a bit long winded but you have probably got the gist of what I am saying. The process of actualism brings incremental success in the way of experiential understandings, which invariably lead to tangible changes. Give me a good solid experiential understanding of what works and what doesn’t work over a belief, a hunch, a theory or a hope any day.
PETER: Hi Gary & No 38, I’d just like to add my comment to your discussion about relationships. GARY: I think I also experienced a momentary feeling of pity for my partner whose expressions of ‘love’ to me are usually not reciprocated, perhaps in they are in tender expressions of caring but certainly not in word, as I never speak the ‘love’ word anymore. I think there was an irrational belief operating in me at the time that went something like this: ‘What kind of partner are you after all – you should be telling your partner that you love her’. One could easily substitute any number of words in the place of ‘partner’ such as ‘son’, ‘daughter’, ‘friend’, ‘coworker’, etc. The irrational belief that I ‘should’ be expressing love to these people caused me to feel momentary sadness, regret, and guilt. Gary to No 46, 4.10.2002 RESPONDENT: I had found myself in a very similar position a while back, and it provided plenty of (painful) opportunity for observation. I think I came out of it with increased clarity, but one question still remains: Unlike Vineeto/Peter, I am not in a relationship with that level of shared determination and application. We do, however have a certain degree of caring for each other. It does give her pleasure to hear the word ‘love’ come out of my mouth towards her. Is it not reasonable to provide her that pleasure on occasion? Is it likely that we have been working through the whole concept of ‘love’, and as it slowly releases its iron grip, it is being reduced to merely a word? And in withholding this pleasure to others, we are hanging on to our concept of ‘love’? PETER: I thought it might be useful to this particular discussion to explain my initial interest in actualism and how and why I came to be living with Vineeto. Although I have told the story in my Journal, most people who have read the story manage to misunderstand, misinterpret or re-interpret it. When I first came across Richard I spent a good deal of time checking out the sensibility of his story, as well as checking out whether he lived what he talked. I eventually got to the stage where the story made sense and, unlike those I had followed on the spiritual path, it was clear to me that he lived what he talked. As I found myself becoming more and more interested in actualism I found myself faced with a dilemma. How best to road-test actualism in order to find out if the method worked in practice? Previous to this time I had been full-on on the spiritual path, was not in a relationship, had lived in shared houses for several years and had spent the last year living alone. It was in this latter monk-like period that I gradually lost my grip on reality and had a substantial Satori experience – a glimpse of what enlightenment would be like. It occurred to me that if I continued to live alone then it would be very easy to treat actualism as a philosophy or a belief and the danger was that I would go tripping off into all sorts of fantasies as I had done in my spiritual period. However, as I have said often before, what really challenged me was Richard’s comment in the Introduction to his Journal –
There was such a blindingly obvious sensibility to this statement that I decided that this too would be my starting point in actualism. In making this decision, I knew I would be testing actualism not only in an utterly down-to-earth arena – one-on-one male-female relationship – but one that Eastern spiritualism failed to address. The appeal of this method of testing actualism was that, whilst I knew from experience I could very happily live by myself, I preferred to live with a companion. I had always wanted to understand the nature of the odious gender divide and I had always wanted to be free from sexual inhibitions as well as instinctive sexual predatoriness. Deep-down I knew that if I wanted to be happy and harmless in the world-as-it, with people as-they-are, then the big issues in life had to be tackled and understood – not dismissed, denied or avoided. And one of the really big issues was man and woman living together in utter peace and harmony. So it could be said that my deliberately finding a companion with whom to road-test the actualism method only meant I was catching up to where you guys started – faced with the challenge of living with at least one other person in utter peace and harmony. From feedback over the years, it is clear that many people have misunderstood the nature of this challenge. It is not about waiting for, or demanding, that the other person changes – that they become happy and harmless in order that you can be. Nor is it about waiting for some like-minded person to come magically wandering into your life in order for you to change. Everybody who comes across actualism starts from where they are now, in the life circumstances they find themselves in. If you are already with a companion, then that is where you start, if you are alone, that is where you start. No matter what age, culture, gender, life experience or life circumstances – if you want to become happy and harmless in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are, then right now is always the time to start and right here is the place to start. This is not to say that you may not want to change your life circumstances in order to make life easier – contrary to popular belief there is no virtue in suffering – or that you may want to take on an adventure or a challenge of some sort. But no matter what an actualist’s life circumstances are, his or her main priority in life will always be to be happy and harmless right now. I do remember that I spent a lot of time comparing my life experience and life circumstances with Richard’s. Eventually I came to see that making such comparisons was a red herring because my life experiences and life circumstances are what has happened as a fact and what is happening now as a fact. The only salient thing that stood out in Richard’s stories of his time before he became actually free was his whole-hearted intent and stubborn persistence to explore every avenue of his psyche in his quest to become actually free from the human condition – to leave no stone unturned, as it were. Just to add another thought to the discussion that might be relevant. The last century has seen a remarkable revolution in women redefining their traditional social/gender roles and this seems to have left many men bemused about their own social/gender role. Whilst many women are now refusing to play the role of slave in their relationships, men generally seem reluctant to dare to take the same step. My own experience is that this social/gender programming, both the male and female, needed to be scrupulously examined in order that I could become free of the effects of both. These investigations were an oft-confronting business because there is a lot of darkness hidden beneath the generally well-meant goodness – however the tangible rewards far exceed the unfulfilled and fickle promise of love. By putting becoming happy and harmless as a higher priority to hanging on to the mores, habits and hopes of a traditional man-woman relationship, I am now able to relate to women as fellow human beings and not members of the ‘opposite sex’ – not only the woman I choose to live with, but all women.
PETER: A somewhat belated response to your post – * PETER: However, as I remember it, in the early days I would often get sucked back into my normal ways of doing things, absorbed with the lives of others, instinctually reverting to the blame-others game. It takes considerable effort and ongoing attentiveness to break old in-grained habits, to stop repressing feelings, to stop shoving things under the carpet. But in the end the successes I had encouraged me to dare to investigate all of the beliefs and passions that stood in the way of my feeling felicitous – no matter how disconcerting the process … and no matter what changes would result from the process. RESPONDENT: Whew! You are right about the insidious constant reversions. I am continually catching myself slipping into the same old movies... the good news is that I do catch them much quicker than I used to, giving me the opportunity to dig deep into the origin. This does have the tendency to de-fuse them. I have been more careful lately to make sure that I am actually digging into the feelings rather than simply suppressing them. That don’t work! Side note – at times I have had feelings of being overwhelmed by the magnitude of this task... 24/7 determination could be exhausting. It dawned on me that though this is a full-time job, it does start anew every moment. If I fail to bring full determination, it’s ok because I just start over again (and again and again...). For some bizarre reason, this seems to relieve me of the ‘burden’. I think this is similar to the 12 step mantra. PETER: It’s good to remember that of the hundreds who have been offered the chance of testing a method to become happy and harmless thus far only the proverbial handful have taken up the challenge. I was reminded the other day of an acquaintance who once asked me what actualism was about. When I told her it was about eliminating malice and sorrow from your life, she thought about it for a bit and then said ‘But I like feeling sad, it’s a nice feeling and I like being angry – I have needed to fight in my life to get to where I am.’ So, not only is the task you have set yourself a big one – it is, at this stage in human history, a very rare one. As for starting ‘anew every moment’, feeling happy and being harmless is not like a bank account – in fact, observation will reveal that this is the only moment you can feel happy and be harmless. If you miss out, then there is something to check out, to investigate. Then, as quick as you can, get back to cranking up the felicitous feelings. You are not doing anything ‘wrong’ by missing out. Noticing that you are ‘missing out’ and then discovering why you are ‘missing out’ – be it that you were feeling detached, lacklustre, sad, anxious, annoyed, aggrieved or whatever – is the real work inherent in being an actualist. * PETER: My experience is that the only way I ever understood something fully was by the trial and error doing of it. Thinking about what to do and how to do it were the first steps, but then plunging in and doing it was essential to know if what I thought was the right way worked in practice. With hindsight that is what I did in the first year of actualism – I tested out Richard’s observations about the human condition by making my own investigations of my own psyche in action. But where I tend to differ with what you are saying is that I did demand an understanding from my investigations – and not only an intellectual understanding but an experiential understanding. What I found was that each understanding became like a stepping-stone on the path to becoming happy and harmless. Each understanding of what made ‘me’ tick, of what prevented me from being happy and what stood in the way of me being harmless, allowed me to more and more freely delight at being here, doing this business of being alive. <snip> RESPONDENT: Understood. I think it’s probably a case of vagueness on my part. I’m not suggesting I drop the proper application of neo-cortical capability. If I don’t maintain vigilance, I tend to ‘drift’ off to an abstractly intellectual place. It’s just my Jungian type. I have to constantly remember to keep it all firmly rooted in the flesh-and-blood. I am a huge proponent of the power of our grey matter, and am aghast at how poorly the human race uses it. It’s our greatest tool and it is essential that we take full advantage of it. PETER: I don’t know about Jungian types but the male of the human species does have a well-earned reputation, and a long history, for abstract intellectualization – it’s not for nothing that men are said to be ‘in their heads’ whilst women are ‘in their hearts’. In exploring the different gender programming with Vineeto I discovered that, broadly speaking, men tend to indulge in philosophy, intellectualization and rationalization whilst women tend to wallow in psychology, drama and dreams. Abstract intellectualization can only lead to philosophies, beliefs, dreams and theories about how things were, could be, should be or would be. Abstract intellectualization is the opposite to the down-to-earth reflective contemplation that an actualist uses in order to make sense of what it is to be a human being, here and now in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. Actualism requires a radical shift not only in one’s attention and focus but in the very manner of using one’s ‘grey matter’ as you put it. Because the shift is so radical, it does take a stubborn intent to stay on track, as it were. Whenever you notice you ‘tend to ‘drift’ off to an abstractly intellectual place’ then that in itself is an excellent awareness and understanding. Whenever you become aware of falling into old habits and programs and manage to break free, pat yourself on the back and then get on with the business of being here. As to the business side of being here – I was a bit late with my response because I have been head down and tail up lately drawing for money rather than writing for leisure and pleasure. Whilst human beings in the past sustained themselves by hunting and gathering which then developed into hoarding and plundering, by and large, we are now all traders of sorts, be it time, goods or services. I do my hunting and gathering in an air-conditioned supermarket and the only thing I have to do to survive is to ensure that when I put my plastic card into the machine outside the bank that it spits out enough money to pay for my food, clothes and shelter plus whatever toys I like playing with. This means that I need to trade my time for money – the least money I need to survive, the least work I need to do, the more time I have free for leisure and pleasure or for ‘learning to do nothing really well’. When I came to live in this area, I found a good many of my spiritual friends were busy buying houses and big new 4-wheel drive cars. I made a living by building houses for some of these people and I did consider whether I should put my nose to the grindstone and save and borrow in order to get my own house and land. I was accustomed at the time to spending all of my spare money, or ‘disposable income’, as it’s known nowadays, on chasing Gurus, so I saw wanting to be rich and secure as contrary to my goal of wanting to be free. The other thing was that I estimated I would need to totally devote about 4 years of my life to saving enough money for a deposit for a house and then I would have to pay a mortgage (interest on home loan) payment each week which would be then more than I now paid in rent. It just didn’t make sense to me to have to work more just in order to ‘own’ something when I can work less by renting something equally as good. Whilst this is clearly an example of personal choice, relative to my own circumstances, it is however a down-to-earth example of how questioning common beliefs and applying common sense often leads to solutions that are not ‘normal’ by societal conventions. Of course there are many more layers and aspects of societal beliefs and programs about money but underscoring all of it is the primal animal survival instinct – ‘what can I eat, what can eat me?’ Investigating these beliefs and peeling away these layers of conditioning about money – money being the modern means of survival – is a fascinating business. And the rewards are tremendous – the progressive diminishing of worry and stress, more free time for leisure and pleasure and, curiously, a corresponding diminishing of the fear about ‘what can eat me?’ Less fear about ‘what can eat me’ means in practice a progressive diminishing of suspicion and competition and more ease and comfort in relating to all of my fellow human beings. Well, that’s it for me. Nice to chat again.
PETER: Just thought I’d write to you about something I came across recently that I thought might be of interest to you. But before I start I would like to preface my remarks so that you might have an inkling as to why I found the particular piece of information so fascinating and also why it is relevant to the process of actualism. When I first came across Richard, I very carefully listened to what he had to say about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being. While some of what he said made sense – much of it jarred with what I had been taught to be the truth. Given that I had been so gullible in my spiritual years – my faith was indeed blind, as is all faith, in that it managed to completely blind me to the glaring gulf between ‘the talk’ and ‘the walk’ of spiritual belief, both in myself and in the revered teachers and Masters – I was determined not to go down that road again, ever. Although it took a while, I soon came to take Richard’s observation that the human condition is epitomized by malice and sorrow as a given – the global-wide evidence is overwhelming, whilst the evidence of the predominance of feelings of malice and sorrow on a personal level is somewhat disconcerting when initially acknowledged and unmistakeably observed in operation in oneself, and as one’s ‘self’. I also had a strong flash of realization when I first met Richard and he said ‘everybody’s got it 180 degrees wrong’ – the realization that everybody, including me, had been trolling through the garbage bin of history’s tried-and-failed philosophies, beliefs and theories, dusting them off for recycling, denying their shortcomings and ignoring their failure to elicit anything remotely resembling peace on earth between human beings. This brief flash of realization was sufficient to embolden me to consider abandoning my life as-it-was and embarking on a course that no one else had trod but Richard. The other thing I did in this initial period was to conduct my own investigation as to whether what Richard was saying about actualism being brand new in human history was a fact. I deliberately re-read many of the spiritual books I had in order to see if anywhere they were teaching the patently obvious path of doing all you can to become happy and harmless such that one can become free of the human condition of malice and sorrow. Needless to say, all I found were teachings aimed at ‘self’-aggrandizement – the exact opposite to ‘self’-immolation. I then delved into reading up on philosophy, psychology, sociology and science in general in order to see what they were busy investigating and what solutions they were offering. I was astounded to discover that all of human knowledge and investigation is predicated upon, and therefore straight-jacketed by, the conviction that it is impossible to change human nature. As I read on, the reason for this became more and more obvious – the core spiritual/religious belief that earthly life is essentially suffering so pervades all of human thinking that it is inconceivable that this ain’t necessarily so. As part of my investigation I also delved into theoretical physics and cosmology in order to ascertain whether any evidence had emerged that contradicted Richard’s experience that the physical universe is eternal and infinite. That it had no beginning, can only be actually experienced in this moment of time and has no end, that it has no centre, no ‘holes’ or edges to it other than imaginary ones – and therefore there is no ‘outside’ to it. Reading a few books and scouting around a bit was enough for me to ascertain that, while all sorts of fanciful theories and spurious evidence abounds in theoretical physics and speculative cosmology, no empirical evidence has been found to contradict what Richard says and what everyone has directly experienced in a PCE sometime in their life – that the universe is infinite and eternal and hence peerless both in its perfection and purity. What did amaze me at the time was how much Eastern philosophy and spiritual belief had permeated into science. As a practicing actualist I have since come to understand that the human condition is inherently awash with spiritual belief and can clearly see that the current fashion for Eastern polytheistic belief is popular only in that it offers an apparent freedom from the constraints of monotheistic dogma. So much am I out of the spiritual world, that I am now amazed that I had been amazed about how much of scientific theory is awash with spiritualism and mysticism. But, then again, the process of actualism is about becoming free of belief – all belief. In hindsight, these investigations I conducted not only confirmed the facticity of what Richard was saying but also confirmed the fallacy of many of my own beliefs and none more so than in my understanding of the universe. Contemplating the physical nature of the universe – as distinct from investigating and contemplating the nature of ‘my’ psyche – can not only trigger memories of past PCEs, but this type of ‘me’-out-of-the-way contemplation when combined with softly-focussed wonderment of the sensual nature of the universe provides a potentiality that can evoke the onset of a PCE. Talking about contemplating the physical nature of the universe brings me to the point of my letter, which is to post a couple of links I thought you might be interested in. I don’t want to comment specifically on the subject matter of the links, as I would not want to pre-empt you from drawing your own conclusions as to whether the explanations offered make more sense than do the currently-fashionable theories and long-held beliefs about the physical nature of the universe – so I’ll leave it at that. http://www.holoscience.com/eu/eu.htm and http://www.electric-cosmos.org/
PETER: Just thought I’d write to you about something I came across recently that I thought might be of interest to you. But before I start I would like to preface my remarks so that you might have an inkling as to why I found the particular piece of information so fascinating and also why it is relevant to the process of actualism. RESPONDENT: I’ll come back to the relevance to actualism further on ... PETER: When I first came across Richard, I very carefully listened to what he had to say about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being. While some of what he said made sense – much of it jarred with what I had been taught to be the truth. Given that I had been so gullible in my spiritual years – my faith was indeed blind, as is all faith, in that it managed to completely blind me to the glaring gulf between ‘the talk’ and ‘the walk’ of spiritual belief, both in myself and in the revered teachers and Masters – I was determined not to go down that road again, ever. RESPONDENT: Purely as background info, I have arrived here via a slightly different route than you (and most other ‘regulars’) ... I have never engaged actively in any of the spiritual disciplines (east or west). I have done plenty of reading as there was always an element of attraction to me, but whenever I got down to the nuts and bolts of practical application, they all were awash in dogma and emotion, and that seemed at odds with the central points they espoused. PETER: From my observations it would appear that the majority of people who have adopted Eastern religious beliefs tend to avoid the nuts and bolts of practical application, preferring instead to adopt them as a philosophy – morals, ethics, attitudes, values and psittacisms – and clasp them tightly to their bosom as a affectation – feeling superior and self-righteous. When the central principle of Eastern spirituality – dissociation à la ‘I am not the body’ and ‘the physical world is an illusion’ – is melded with dogma and emotion the result can be horrific. (See http://www.darkzen.com/) RESPONDENT: Most attractive were the very basic principles presented by Zen – I particularly liked Bankei, he seemed to have a grasp of the real essence. Why did they then have to bring in all the goofy chanting and incense, and what about that stick? Sheesh. PETER: Have you ever considered that maybe there was something essentially rotten in Bankei’s ‘real essence’? RESPONDENT: I have since realized that what I was attracted to in Zen – that stripped down elemental simplicity – I have found in these parts. PETER: In order to make clear the ‘stripped down elemental simplicity’ of Zen, I’ll post a précis of the essence of Bankei’s teaching –
A human being who imagines they are ‘the Unborn’ subsequently imagines that they can never die, which in turn means they waft around feeling themselves to be immortal. Such a person then teaches the wisdom of detachment to others – thereby locking yet another generation of seekers out from experiencing the peace on earth that already, always exists in the actual world. If you have realized that the ‘stripped down elemental simplicity’ of ‘I am the Unborn’ can also be found in actualism, then you have either totally misinterpreted, or completely ignored, the words published on the Actual Freedom Trust website. RESPONDENT: Whereas you may have been ‘gullible in my spiritual years – my faith was indeed blind’, I tended to the other extreme, that of sceptic to a fault. Nothing was ever true, a cold place to be indeed. PETER: It is important to distinguish between scepticism and cynicism because it is impossible for someone who is cynical about, or detached from, life and the universe to crank up enough innate naiveté to be an actualist. * PETER: Although it took a while, I soon came to take Richard’s observation that the human condition is epitomized by malice and sorrow as a given – the global-wide evidence is overwhelming, whilst the evidence of the predominance of feelings of malice and sorrow on a personal level is somewhat disconcerting when initially acknowledged and unmistakeably observed in operation in oneself, and as one’s ‘self’. I also had a strong flash of realization when I first met Richard and he said ‘everybody’s got it 180 degrees wrong’ – the realization that everybody, including me, had been trolling through the garbage bin of history’s tried-and-failed philosophies, beliefs and theories, dusting them off for recycling, denying their shortcomings and ignoring their failure to elicit anything remotely resembling peace on earth between human beings. This brief flash of realization was sufficient to embolden me to consider abandoning my life as-it-was and embarking on a path that no one else had trod but Richard. RESPONDENT: Agreed. You have to look no further than the impending ‘war’ with Iraq to find proof of that. PETER: And I had to look no further than the war ‘I’ continuously conducted with all of my fellow human beings. Ending the habit of pointing the finger at others and acknowledging one’s own feelings of malice and sorrow is an essential starting point in the process of actualism. The next realization I spoke of requires an abandonment of real-world cynicism – and spiritual romanticism – for it requires an astounding naiveté to consider that ‘everybody’s got it 180 degrees wrong’ – that there might be a third alternative that can actually bring an end to human malice and sorrow, in this body, and every body. * PETER: The other thing I did in this initial period was to conduct my own investigation as to whether what Richard was saying about actualism being brand new in human history was a fact. I deliberately re-read many of the spiritual books I had in order to see if anywhere they were teaching the patently obvious path of doing all you can to become happy and harmless such that one can become free of the human condition of malice and sorrow. Needless to say, all I found were teachings aimed at ‘self’-aggrandizement – the exact opposite to ‘self’-immolation. RESPONDENT: I suspect that if there ever had been another who came across this approach, it is likely that they simply faded into anonymity. Richard himself has only come forth with great reluctance. PETER: I didn’t see any great reluctance, particularly as the World Wide Web provides such a wonderful forum for the dissemination of Richard’s writings and an uncensored discussion of actualism in general. As such, his coming forth is done in anonymity from the comfort of his living room. RESPONDENT: Coincidentally, I picked this up at Electric Universe...
PETER: His firm conviction seems to have a familiar ring to it. Spiritualists are often convinced that there are Enlightened Beings who live quite unobtrusive lives, a conviction particularly held by those humble practitioners who fail to make it to the top of the spiritual heap. As for Einstein, you may find this quote to be relevant to the subject at hand – From ‘My Credo’, a speech by Albert Einstein to the German League of Human Rights, Berlin, Autumn 1932. * PETER: I then delved into reading up on philosophy, psychology, sociology and science in general in order to see what they were busy investigating and what solutions they were offering. I was astounded to discover that all of human knowledge and investigation is predicated upon, and therefore straightjacketed by, the conviction that it is impossible to change human nature. As I read on, the reason for this became more and more obvious – the core spiritual/religious belief that earthly life is essentially suffering so pervades all of human thinking that it is inconceivable that this ain’t necessarily so. RESPONDENT: Odd you should mention ‘impossible to change human nature’. My SO very recently stated this (again) unequivocally, whereas I firmly hold the opposite POV. It’s a bone of contention ... while I’m busy making real change, with real results, she’s trying to figure out ways to treat symptoms, most absurdly my symptoms that don’t even exist any more. Besides, there’s plenty of evidence that behaviour and thought processes can be changed for the worse, so there’s no reason they can’t be changed for the better. It just takes more time and work, that’s all. PETER: Yep. And yet, to date in actualism’s brief history, t’would appear that the major hurdle to changing human nature is the human propensity to desperately cling on to the teat of ancient beliefs. * PETER: As part of my investigation I also delved into theoretical physics and cosmology in order to ascertain whether any evidence had emerged that contradicted Richard’s experience that the physical universe is eternal and infinite. That it had no beginning, can only be actually experienced in this moment of time and has no end, that it has no centre, no ‘holes’ or edges to it other than imaginary ones – and therefore there is no ‘outside’ to it. Reading a few books and scouting around a bit was enough for me to ascertain that, while all sorts of fanciful theories and spurious evidence abounds in theoretical physics and speculative cosmology, no empirical evidence has been found to contradict what Richard says and what everyone has directly experienced in a PCE sometime in their life – that the universe is infinite and eternal and hence peerless both in its perfection and purity. RESPONDENT: To relevance to actualism: If in fact the universe is electric, or if in fact it is filled with rubber duckies ... how is it relevant to actualism? PETER: If you want to contemplate on life, the universe and what it is to be a human being, and your contemplations are based on the currently-fashionable pseudo-scientific theories of an expanding universe – replete with a Big Bang beginning, full of or even empty of, all sorts of unseen, unseeable and unmeasurable phenomena and which will suffer some Diabolical End – then you will remain in the grip of spiritual belief. When I first began to dig into these scientific theories I was amazed how unscientific they were, and I say this as a layman with only a basic knowledge of mechanics and engineering. The reason I posted the links about an alternative explanation to the empirical observations of the universe was that the explanations make far more sense to me than those currently held to be the truth. An obituary of Hannes Alfvén, the founder of plasma physics, reinforces my own layman understanding –
The other aspect I found of interest in my early explorations into mainstream cosmological theories of the 20th century was that many of the proponents of the theories were heavily influenced by the Eastern religious beliefs and philosophies that were particularly fashionable in European intellectual circles at the time. What really set the alarm bells ringing – my scepticism if you like – was when I discovered that the man who formulated the Big Bang creation theory was Abbé Georges LeMaître, a central figure in the Vatican’s Pontificia Academia de Scienza di Roma. RESPONDENT: From an experiential point of view, it ‘can only be actually experienced in this moment of time’ is certainly true, but that does nothing to describe the universe’s physical evolution over time. PETER: Whilst there is ample empirical evidence in the fossil record of this planet to support the theory that vegetate matter emerged from the mineral matter of this planet due to a unique combination of physical conditions – and that it then further evolved into animate matter, conscious animate matter and apperceptive animate matter over time – it is a leap of pure imagination to propose that the universe itself has evolved over time. The physical universe is ever changing but it is not evolving, because implicit in the word evolution as it is commonly used is that the process of evolution has a beginning point. The universe, being eternal and infinite, had no beginning point, no creation event. Further, the physical universe is not evolving towards perfection – it is already perfect, as can clearly be experienced in a pure consciousness experience. RESPONDENT: While that experience implicitly involves my flesh-and-blood, hence can only be happening in this moment, I know also that the flesh-and-blood is subject to physical laws and will eventually become dust. Why would similar laws not apply to the universe too? PETER: The universe, being eternal, can have no ending, no doomsday event. To propose that because flesh and blood human beings are mortal – ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ – it therefore follows that the universe is mortal – ‘will eventually become dust’ – is an anthropocentric viewpoint. Thus far in human history, all of humanity’s wisdoms and truths have been founded upon an anthropocentric viewpoint, be it that of the spiritualists’ much-vaunted search for immortality for the human spirit – the ‘Unborn’ state – or the scientists’ futile search for metaphysical spirit-like creationist forces. RESPONDENT: I ask this in all sincerity, and I’m not arguing the physical nature of the universe, nor its perfection and purity, just how it is pertinent to the matter at hand. PETER: Anyone who holds to an anthropocentric view of the universe and holds on to spiritual and/or creationist theories about the nature of the universe will, by the very nature of these ‘self’-centred and ‘self’-perpetuating views and beliefs, remain locked out from the pure consciousness experience of the perfection and purity of the infinite and eternal universe. It is as pertinent as that. * PETER: In hindsight, these investigations I conducted not only confirmed the facticity of what Richard was saying but also confirmed the fallacy of my own beliefs and none more so than my understanding of the universe. Contemplating the physical nature of the universe – as distinct from investigating and contemplating the nature of ‘my’ psyche – can not only triggered memories of past PCEs, but this type of ‘me’-out-of-the-way contemplation when combined with a softly-focussed wonderment of the sensual nature of the universe provide a potentiality that can evoke the onset of a PCE. RESPONDENT: Speaking of which ... I’ve recently gone through a painful time in my primary relationship, and in the process peeled back a lot more layers of the onion. It has been very educational, and also offered more proof of the efficacy of the AF method. I have little remaining scepticism. It has dawned on me that HAIETMOBA is running most of the time, almost sub-consciously, and I detect and probe ever more subtle emotions and responses of all types. I also realized that the percentage of my day where I feel excellent is continually increasing. Most amazing. Now, however, I think it’s time to put some energy into inducing some real PCEs to reinforce the results to date. I’m using all the techniques I’ve gleaned from the site to that end. PETER: One of the techniques you may have come across is the questioning of dearly held beliefs. Everybody has some core beliefs that serve to prop up their identity and these will vary slightly according to gender, culture, age, vocational training, and so on. Anyone who becomes interested in being happy and harmless will, sooner or later, come smack up against one of these beliefs. Sooner or later one of these beliefs will appear, rather like a boulder, on the path to being happy and harmless. And from observation of others who have been interested in actualism, it is clear that unless this belief is abandoned, willingly and deliberately, then that person will remain essentially unchanged by the process of actualism. Whilst I do acknowledge that abandoning one’s pet beliefs can be daunting – one’s very identity as a (… fill in the blank space) is at stake – the resulting palpable sense of freedom can oft evoke a pure consciousness experience of the perfection and purity of the infinite and eternal universe. This is what happened to me and I know this is what happened to Vineeto. And the curious thing is that during the process of actualism, I knew what I had to do next, I knew what belief stood in the way of my becoming more happy and more harmless – simply because the issue would not go away. This is, after all, what this discussion is really about – the nuts and bolts of abandoning belief and superstition in favour of actuality and sensibility. * PETER: Talking about contemplating the physical nature of the universe brings me to the point of my letter, which is to post a couple of links I thought you might be interested in. I don’t want to comment specifically on the subject matter of the links, as I would not want to pre-empt you from drawing your own conclusions as to whether the explanations offered make more sense than do the currently-fashionable theories and long-held beliefs about the physical nature of the universe – so I’ll leave it at that. http://www.holoscience.com/eu/eu.htm and http://www.electric-cosmos.org/ RESPONDENT: Of course, back to the original subject. As I said above, I need to do more reading to see how the math hangs together, but the argument is persuasive and interesting. PETER: As I read it, it was scientists’ reliance on mathematics that lead to the abandonment of common sense in the first place. RESPONDENT: I was put off at the initial screen for Holoscience as it said:
My suspicions are aroused whenever I come across the word holistic, it’s typically used to capture a mish mosh of metaphysical gobbledygook. So, I thought, is this another Capra-esque affair? PETER: Indeed there is a good deal in the links I provided that make no sense to me – the supposed evolution of the universe being one. But I do find the explanation of the nature of the universe to be far more scientifically plausible than the creationist theories of a Big Bang and a Wimpy End, not to mention the Other Invisible Universes fantasies. What this group of scientists is saying is that what has thus far been empirically observed in the universe can be attributed to the combination of physical matter and the physical energies and forces associated with that matter. RESPONDENT: However, it quickly got back to real science. They go one to make some persuasive arguments about the plasma nature of the universe, and a very different take on the electrical, magnetic, gravitational, and nuclear characteristics. A couple of items that really piqued my interest:
I had puzzled that myself in the past – because gravity is attractive only, it seemed to me that any gravity based system (i.e. orbits) were eventually going to degrade. An electostatic system however, because of its bipolar nature, would theoretically be stable until perturbed by an outside force. PETER: As I have said I am a layman in these matters. Having said that, it seems to put me at an advantage because I am obliged to rely on common sense – something that is impossible for those who are driven by passion and blinkered by belief. RESPONDENT: And,
The implication here is that two bodies related across a distance by an electrostatic force would have essentially instantaneous communications. There’s an old modern physics conundrum: if you filled a tube with incompressible balls, all touching, and hit the end one with a hammer, the ball at the far end would move instantly, not constrained by the speed of light, or any other speed limit for that matter. PETER: I’ll pass on this one. The conundrums of theoretical physics do seem to bear a remarkable resemblance to Zen koans – Schroeder’s Cat comes to mind. RESPONDENT: As to pertinence to AF (no further comment needed):
PETER: Or some aspects of scientific research have to once again break free from the shackles of religious dogma, spiritual belief and metaphysical mysticism and get more down-to-earth again. RESPONDENT: OK, all great so far, but we get to the point that I was attempting to make some odd months ago.
I’m all for simpler explanations, but I think it’s a bit scientifically naive to assume that just because something is the ‘way we perceive it’, it must be the whole truth. PETER: In my experience I found it useful to make a distinction between the many disciplines of science. The distinction I make is between what could be called the empirical sciences or applied sciences – engineering, mechanics, chemistry, geology, biology and so on – and the sciences that incorporate a good deal of theory or philosophical speculation – quantum physics, cosmology, climatology and so on. Simply by making this distinction it became clear that it is empirical science – the empirical understanding of physical matter and the physical forces and energies associated with physical matter – that has wrought the incredible progress in human safety, comfort, leisure and pleasure. It also became clear that the sciences that are driven by theory and conjecture – speculating on the nature of matter and then devising scenarios, forces and energies to suit their theories – produce little that is of practical use to anyone. RESPONDENT: The Holoscience people discount the notion of higher dimensions, but I still maintain we may be constrained by our sensory apparatus to only those detectable inputs. Of course, I could be entirely wrong about that ... maybe we are seeing all that there is. Maybe it is adequate, and complete. I’ll have to mull this over some more and rein in my skeptical bent a tad. PETER: Human beings have an obsession with ‘the notion of higher dimensions’ – the belief that the world is subject to the influence of good forces and evil forces is prevalent in every tribe and every culture on the planet. This belief is somewhat understandable considering that it emerged in the days when it was universally believed that the world was three layered – a flat earthy plane full of dangerous animals and dangerous humans, a mystifying heavenly realm above and a mysterious underworld below. Eventually it was empirically observed that the earth was not flat but was spherical and subsequent explorations over centuries proved that this was in fact so. Nowadays photos of earth taken from spacecrafts have subsequently convinced all but the wacky that the earth is not flat. The next belief to be demolished by empirical observation was the notion that the earth was the centre of the solar system – an empirical observation only made possible by the invention of a mechanical enhancement of our ‘sensory apparatus’ – the telescope. As telescopes got bigger and better, the belief that our galaxy was all there was to the universe – a conviction held in Einstein’s time – was replaced by the discovery that there are in fact countless other galaxies in the universe. The subsequent invention of radio telescopes and the like has meant that we are now able to observe and measure spectrums of the electromagnetic energy of the universe that lay outside the range human eyes can detect. And yet, despite this long history of scientific discoveries about the extraordinary magic that is the physical universe, the eons-old search for some sort of ‘higher dimension’ or metaphysical energy – the famed spirit-energy of mythology – still persists. The same long trek from belief and superstition to actuality and wonder can be seen in the discoveries about the creation of animate life. The process of animal reproduction was unknown to early humans and all sorts of beliefs and superstitions flourished in ignorance. Now, thousands of years later, the science of observation and investigation – mightily boosted by the invention of the inverted telescope, the microscope – has revealed the facts to be far more wondrous than the puerile myths dependant upon the belief in supernatural spirit forces. I could go on tripping through other fields of scientific discovery and endeavour, but you probably have got the gist of what I am saying – human beings will never be free from the fear and hope inherent in superstition if they insist on believing in higher dimensions, supernatural forces, metaphysical realms, divine beings, good and evil spirits and so on – or persist in hoping that one day science will provide the empirical evidence that spiritual belief so tellingly lacks. RESPONDENT: I also need to read some more on the premise about close planetary encounters in recent history ... that does sound a bit wild at first. PETER: Unless someone discovers some substantive empirical evidence to back up a theory, I am also sceptical of many of the suppositions that are presented along with the theory of a plasma universe or an electric universe. But I see these as add-ons to the central thrust of what is presented – an alternative evidence-based explanation for the thus-far empirically observed matter of the universe as opposed to the fashionable creationist explanations of Einsteinian Cosmology. Well, that’s been good fun. Nice to chat about these matters.
RESPONDENT: Most attractive were the very basic principles presented by Zen – I particularly liked Bankei, he seemed to have a grasp of the real essence. Why did they then have to bring in all the goofy chanting and incense, and what about that stick? Sheesh. PETER: Have you ever considered that maybe there was something essentially rotten in Bankei’s ‘real essence’? RESPONDENT: I was relating historically, careful to use the past tense. I was simply giving you a bit of background as to how I arrived at this juncture. All religion and spirituality is rotten to the core. PETER: The reason I posted the piece about Bankei’s teachings of ‘realizing the Unborn’ is that you said in the last post –
This is a present tense statement, implying that you still see a link between spiritualism and actualism – if not in subject matter, at least philosophically. Actualism is not a stripped down elemental philosophy, nor a non-spiritual form of Zen, nor a happy-go-lucky form of materialism. * RESPONDENT: I suspect that if there ever had been another who came across this approach, it is likely that they simply faded into anonymity. Richard himself has only come forth with great reluctance. PETER: I didn’t see any great reluctance, particularly as the World Wide Web provides such a wonderful forum for the dissemination of Richard’s writings and an uncensored discussion of actualism in general. As such, his coming forth is done in anonymity from the comfort of his living room. RESPONDENT: I recall reading somewhere on the site that it took some convincing to get him to come forth even to that extent. I’ve searched but can’t find the exact reference, just a bit from Gary referring to the same. It’s not important. I was merely suggesting that any founder of a system based on self-extinction would hardly run about beating his/her own drum. PETER: Why not? An eventual end to all the wars, all the torture, all the rapes, all the domestic violence, all the child abuse, all the corruption, all the suicides, all the despair and all the hypocrisy is surely reason enough for anyone sincerely interested in peace on earth to get off their bum and do their bit to facilitate it happening – fear of ‘self’-extinction or not. I say that because even a global incidence of virtually happy and harmless humans would be sufficient to foster in a global peace and harmony that would be truly beyond belief. * RESPONDENT: To relevance to actualism: If in fact the universe is electric, or if in fact it is filled with rubber duckies ... how is it relevant to actualism? PETER: If you want to contemplate on life, the universe and what it is to be a human being, ... RESPONDENT: Most assuredly. PETER: … and your contemplations are based on the currently-fashionable pseudo-scientific theories of an expanding universe – replete with a Big Bang beginning, full of or even empty of, all sorts of unseen, unseeable and unmeasurable phenomena and which will suffer some Diabolical End – RESPONDENT: Most assuredly not. PETER: ... then you will remain in the grip of spiritual belief. RESPONDENT: What few spiritual beliefs I had in the past are gone now. That was the point of describing a bit of my history ... how it was not a spiritual path. PETER: Are you saying that reading Eastern spiritual texts, liking what you read and being attracted to the teachings is to be not on a spiritual path? ‘Path’ as in a motivational direction or line of enquiry or the pursuit of an interest or course of action. Perhaps because you took no action, i.e. didn’t get involved in the nuts and bolts of applying any spiritual teachings, you don’t see it as having been on a path but your point does seem somewhat moot to me. I have always assumed that those who are at all interested in life, the universe and what it is to be a human being would have found the grim dog-eat-dog reality of materialism to be unsatisfactory and would have explored what was on offer in spiritual teachings and the spiritual world – i.e. to have checked out the spiritual path. At age 32 I found by experience that the grim reality of materialism sucked, by age 49 I found by experience that spiritualism’s Greater Reality is a wank – which is why I moved on to the nuts and bolts of actualism. It makes sense for anyone interested in life to explore what is on offer, to find out if it works and, if it doesn’t work, to move on. RESPONDENT: I did not bring that particular kind of baggage, but a whole truckload of many others. PETER: Speaking personally, I found bits of my spiritual identity – be it a Christian moral, a Buddhist ethic, a New-Age psittacism, a Mother Earth belief or such – popping up in my baggage for several years after I abandoned the spiritual path. But then again that is hardly surprising for finding such baggage is the whole point of the process of actualism – to do all ‘I’ can to root out every thing that prevents me from being happy and harmless. As you said ‘all religion and spirituality is rotten to the core’ – so any skerrick of religious/spiritual belief, no matter how seemingly innocuous or apparently well-intentioned, has to be scrupulously investigated, clearly seen for what it is, and deleted from one’s psyche – firstly as an effect, and then as a fact, i.e. it doesn’t resurface. * PETER: When I first began to dig into these scientific theories I was amazed how unscientific they were, and I say this as a layman with only a basic knowledge of mechanics and engineering. The reason I posted the links about an alternative explanation to the empirical observations of the universe was that the explanations make far more sense to me than those currently held to be the truth. RESPONDENT: Granted that the present Big Bang theory has many holes, and that the electric universe contingent makes some compelling arguments. This is the scientific method at work: conjecture (aka guess at) a scenario hitherto opaque, conduct experiments to test the scenario, and assess the scenario given the acquired data. Some of these are easy (right angle theorem), some more complex (fundamental nature of the universe). The Big Bang theorem is still a theorem as it has not yet passed the test of the scientific method. Nor has the electric universe theorem. A key element of this process (particularly the first step) is common sense, as you use the term. PETER: You may have missed the fact from the last post that the man who formulated the Big Bang creation theory was Abbé Georges LeMaître, a central figure in the Vatican’s Pontificia Academia de Scienza di Roma. In other words, the very first step in the process of the formulation of the Big Bang theory, was LeMaître’s religious belief that God created the world out of nothing, that the universe had a beginning – a creation event. The ‘scientific method’ employed in this case was to take a transparently creationist religious belief, create mathematical formula to support the belief, assess any empirical observations solely in the light of the belief and, when holes appear in theory, persist by adding complications to the theory. After nearly a century of theories built upon LeMaître’s initial theory, some scientists have even
come out claiming that they see the You might have noticed Richard’s recent post where he posted documentary evidence that the Tibetan Buddhist Dalai Lama is deliberately meddling in, and influencing, what could be termed the human behavioural sciences in precisely the same way that the Catholic Pope meddled in, and influenced, theoretical cosmology. It’s a good ploy on the part of the churches because the distinction between science and religion – between fact and fantasy – remains so blurred in most people’s minds that it is impossible for common sense to even begin to get a toehold, let alone a leg in. RESPONDENT: So far, note that this process is a-personal, and a not-too-bad approach to satisfying curiosity. PETER: Scientists, being human beings, can do nothing in an a-personal manner, but if the process they follow produces verifiable down-to-earth results with leads to things that work, or criteria that can be applied to produce results that work in similar situations, it can reliably be said that the theory then becomes fact. As for curiosity, if it isn’t a down-to-earth curiosity, then curiosity very quickly turns into a flight of fantasy – naught but impassioned imagination. A bit from my journal is relevant –
RESPONDENT: When scientist’s egos get involved and they become defensive of ‘their’ theories, the waters are muddied and extricating real truth becomes much more difficult. PETER: Contrary to spiritual belief, t’is not the obstinacy of the ego that is the bane of humanity, t’is the tenacity of the soul. You may have observed that many scientists are very wary of treading on the toes of spiritualists lest they be seen as ‘soul’-less. * RESPONDENT: From an experiential point of view, it ‘can only be actually experienced in this moment of time’ is certainly true, but that does nothing to describe the universe’s physical evolution over time. PETER: Whilst there is ample empirical evidence in the fossil record of this planet to support the theory that vegetate matter emerged from the mineral matter of this planet due to a unique combination of physical conditions – and that it then further evolved into animate matter, conscious animate matter and apperceptive animate matter over time – it is a leap of pure imagination to propose that the universe itself has evolved over time. The physical universe is ever changing but it is not evolving, because implicit in the word evolution as it is commonly used is that the process of evolution has a beginning point. The universe, being eternal and infinite, had no beginning point, no creation event. Further, the physical universe is not evolving towards perfection – it is already perfect, as can clearly be experienced in a pure consciousness experience. RESPONDENT: In checking the dictionary, I find no specific indication that evolution implies a beginning point. However, it is defined as (generally) an increase in complexity. Clearly that is presumptuous, and I used the term incorrectly. But, whether the universe is becoming more or less complex, or is static, does not imply that the universe has a beginning or an end, or is finite. They are possibly related but exclusive. PETER: If I read you right, you seem to be willing to acknowledge that the universe may not have had a beginning, i.e. was not created by someone or something out of nothing, but you are hedging your bets by saying it does not necessarily follow that the universe won’t have an end – an extinction caused by someone or something whereby the universe wimps or bangs into nothing. I am left wondering why you would abandon half of a belief and yet hold on to the other half? RESPONDENT: At this point I do acknowledge that my common sense tells me that the universe is likely infinite in both time and space, but that is more opinion than scientific fact. PETER: Perhaps, in the interest of getting to the root of this issue, you would like to post the scientific facts that provide evidence that the universe is not ‘infinite in both time and space’. Then we can put them on the table and see if they make sense or not. Just as a point of interest, you will have noticed I am not alone in questioning the common popular theories in cosmology. You will have noticed that I have previously posted some comments made by Hannes Alfvén, astrophysicist and joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1970 in which he questioned not only the methodology but the substance of the scientific rationale for a finite created universe with a beginning and end. * RESPONDENT: To relevance to actualism: If in fact the universe is electric, or if in fact it is filled with rubber duckies ... how is it relevant to actualism? From an experiential point of view, it ‘can only be actually experienced in this moment of time’ is certainly true, but that does nothing to describe the universe’s physical evolution over time. PETER: The universe, being eternal, can have no ending, no doomsday event. RESPONDENT: Can you offer a scientific argument as to why the universe should have no end? Common sense or a PCE is adequate to propose the hypothesis, but not the proof. PETER: I don’t have a scientific argument to offer because it is impossible to refute the arguments of those who believe in a creationist beginning event or a doomsday ending event to the universe. This is akin to believers asking for scientific proof that God doesn’t exist or proof that there isn’t life after death. It is beholden upon those who believe to provide empirical scientific evidence to back up their theories and beliefs – after all, it’s their belief, their conviction, their fantasy. To be stuck between a hypothesis and a belief is a hard place as I remember it, but out of this confusion came the understanding that certainty lies in the observable facts of down-to-earth matters. Or to put it another way, once I realized that actualism had nothing to do with any spiritual belief whatsoever, it gradually dawned on me that actualism is completely and utterly down-to-earth. Having said that I don’t have a scientific argument to make, I will offer the scientific explanation as to why –
* RESPONDENT: While that experience implicitly involves my flesh-and-blood, hence can only be happening in this moment, I know also that the flesh-and-blood is subject to physical laws and will eventually become dust. Why would similar laws not apply to the universe too? PETER: To propose that because flesh and blood human beings are mortal – ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ – it therefore follows that the universe is mortal – ‘will eventually become dust’ – is an anthropocentric viewpoint. Thus far in human history, all of humanity’s wisdoms and truths have been founded upon an anthropocentric viewpoint, be it that of the spiritualists’ much-vaunted search for immortality for the human spirit – the ‘Unborn’ state – or the scientists’ futile search for metaphysical spirit-like creationist forces. RESPONDENT: You have applied the scientific method to my hypothesis and it has failed. My argument is flawed. PETER: Flawed or not, you still seem to be arguing for the belief in creationist cosmology, albeit as half a belief. On one side you offer ‘granted that the present Big Bang theory has many holes’ and yet on the other you ask ‘can you offer a scientific argument as to why the universe should have no end?’ As I’ve said before, this is not an argument as to who is right or wrong, nor is it really even about the scientific explanations about the nature of the universe – this is a discussion between two fellow human beings, two actualists, about the origin, nature and tenacity of human beliefs. If you want an example of scientific method in action this is it – examining the origin, nature and tenacity of human beliefs, in this case using creationist cosmology as an example. We could conduct exactly the same scientific method examination of any other beliefs – the pantheistic beliefs that underpins much of environmental science is another example that comes to mind. * RESPONDENT: Speaking of which ... I’ve recently gone through a painful time in my primary relationship, and in the process peeled back a lot more layers of the onion. It has been very educational, and also offered more proof of the efficacy of the AF method. I have little remaining skepticism. It has dawned on me that HAIETMOBA is running most of the time, almost sub-consciously, and I detect and probe ever more subtle emotions and responses of all types. I also realized that the percentage of my day where I feel excellent is continually increasing. Most amazing. Now, however, I think it’s time to put some energy into inducing some real PCEs to reinforce the results to date. I’m using all the techniques I’ve gleaned from the site to that end. PETER: One of the techniques you may have come across is the questioning of dearly held beliefs. <snip> This is, after all, what this discussion is really about – the nuts and bolts of abandoning belief and superstition in favour of actuality and sensibility. RESPONDENT: Thanks. I’ve gleaned that, and other approaches from the site. Belief and superstition are not primary obstacles to me, ... I don’t believe either that the universe is finite or infinite, or that it is filled with gods or fairies. PETER: To choose to not believe that the universe is finite or infinite is but to remain an agnostic – a person who is uncertain and non-committal about a particular issue. An agnostic is not someone who is free of belief; an agnostic is someone who remains open to belief, who keeps his or her options open, who has a bet each way. On the other hand, an actualist is someone who recognizes the necessity of becoming free from being a believer in the much-vaunted wisdom of humanity if one is to become free of the human condition and the way to become free from beliefs is to replace one’s beliefs with obvious and irrefutable facts thereby depriving ‘the believer’ from sustenance. I do realize that ‘not-knowing’ is highly valued in the spiritual world, but an actualist is vitally interested in life, the universe and what it is to be a human being and as such makes exploring, investigating and ‘finding-out’ his or her prime mission in life. RESPONDENT: My stuff is more of the socio-cultural conditioning form ... self-judgement et al. Maybe you lump those in the belief category too? PETER: Yes. Self-judgement, self-condemnation, self-deprivation, self-flagellation and the like are the consequences of the moral teachings arising from religious/spiritual programming that is inflicted upon every child from every culture. Through no fault of our own we are taught to believe that self-imposed moral judgements are essential to keep the lid on our instinctual passions. The belief in morals is essential to cling to within the human condition but an actualist needs to set his or her sights higher – the very process of eliminating of malice and sorrow makes the self-righteous morals and unliveable ethics of the real-world obsolete and redundant. * RESPONDENT: Of course, back to the original subject. As I said above, I need to do more reading to see how the math hangs together, but the argument is persuasive and interesting. PETER: As I read it, it was scientists’ reliance on mathematics that lead to the abandonment of common sense in the first place. RESPONDENT: In my experience, mathematics has been subject to much more rigor than the ‘wilder’ branches, such as cosmology. Maybe science has abandoned common sense, but mathematics is (by and large) quite concrete, and forms the underpinnings for most other branches. I suspect that what is really happening is that in formulating pet theories, scientists ‘pick and choose’ bits of mathematics that appear to support their arguments, while disregarding the bits that contradict them. While mathematics may be concrete, the spin that ego-driven scientists put on it can distort the truth. PETER: Again a distinction needs to be made between applied mathematics and pure or abstract mathematics. Applied mathematics is an essential tool utilized by many practical scientists and professions including those of engineering and architecture. When mathematics is divested of down-to-earth applications all sorts of fantasies can result, including the search for mathematical ‘Elegance’ and ‘Truth’. I would refer you to the following link, which makes this point far more concisely than I am capable of doing – http://www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/PhysicsHasItsPrinciples.asp You might also find further reading on this site useful in your research as it essential that you make your own sense of such matters and not just believe what I, or others, are saying. * RESPONDENT: However, it quickly got back to real science. <snip> PETER: As I have said I am a layman in these matters. Having said that, it seems to put me at an advantage because I am obliged to rely on common sense – something that is impossible for those who are driven by passion and blinkered by belief. RESPONDENT: Sorry if I ‘blinded you by science’, I just got a little over-excited I guess. Relying primarily on common sense definitely puts you at an advantage at the blinkered ones ... imagine coupling that with a dispassionate approach to science. A powerful combination indeed, methinks. PETER: There is no power per se to be had in having a common sense approach to thinking about any issue. But if you can manage to put your beliefs aside sufficiently to allow common sense to operate then the resulting clarity can lead to realizations which, if acted upon, will lead to you becoming more happy and more harmless. After all, actualism is not about becoming cleverer or more dispassionate – actualism is solely aimed at becoming happy and harmless. * PETER: In my experience I found it useful to make a distinction between the many disciplines of science. The distinction I make is between what could be called the empirical sciences or applied sciences – engineering, mechanics, chemistry, geology, biology and so on – and the sciences that incorporate a good deal of theory or philosophical speculation – quantum physics, cosmology, climatology and so on. Simply by making this distinction it became clear that it is empirical science – the empirical understanding of physical matter and the physical forces and energies associated with physical matter – that has wrought the incredible progress in human safety, comfort, leisure and pleasure. It also became clear that the sciences that are driven by theory and conjecture – speculating on the nature of matter and then devising scenarios, forces and energies to suit their theories – produce little that is of practical use to anyone. RESPONDENT: You’re right in that the applied sciences have produced much good (and bad too), … PETER: I take it from your conditional agreement that you are somewhat sceptical or agnostic about the incredible progress in human safety, comfort leisure and pleasure that has been produced by the practical application of the scientific method of enquiry. I only say this because human beings do give themselves a very hard time, so much so that they denigrate the amazing technological advances that human intelligence and ingenuity has produced. As I said above, self-judgement, self-denigration, self-condemnation, self-deprivation and self-flagellation are but hangovers of spiritual belief. RESPONDENT: … but many of these advances only came about because the seed was planted while ‘speculating on the nature of matter and then devising scenarios, forces and energies to suit their theories’. PETER: Oops. T’was a bit sloppy of me. The obvious point of departure where the theoretical scientists abandon the rigours of scientific method is when their speculations on the nature of matter and their devised scenarios, forces and energies are promulgated as being truths or fact. RESPONDENT: Once again, this is fine as the first step in the scientific method. PETER: Whereas the first step in the Big Bang theory was not scientific at all, it was based on spiritual/ religious belief. RESPONDENT: Many or most of these failed and we never heard of them, and other practical discoveries happened purely by accident. PETER: Au contraire. We have heard of little else but Einsteinian-based cosmology for over 60 years now and this version of creationist belief is but the latest manifestation of a persistent and pernicious mystical tradition in science that goes back through alchemy, astrology, shamanism and the like to the dim dark past when the wise man or wise woman of the tribe was both witch doctor and God man or witch and God woman. As you yourself said, ‘all religion and spirituality is rotten to the core’ so it stands to reason that when religion and spirituality infect science then that science can hardly smell of roses. As a rough rule of thumb, any scientific theory that includes doomsday scenarios tends to tweak my BS detector. * RESPONDENT: The Holoscience people discount the notion of higher dimensions, but I still maintain we may be constrained by our sensory apparatus to only those detectable inputs. Of course, I could be entirely wrong about that ... maybe we are seeing all that there is. Maybe it is adequate, and complete. I’ll have to mull this over some more and rein in my skeptical bent a tad. PETER: Human beings have an obsession with ‘the notion of higher dimensions’ – the belief that the world is subject to the influence of good forces and evil forces is prevalent in every tribe and every culture on the planet. RESPONDENT: My statement does not imply anima, intelligence, etc. I flat out refute the notion of gods, fairies, and other such forces. PETER: Your use of the words ‘higher dimension’ led me to make my comment – i.e. I was taking your words at face value. If I take out the word ‘higher’, as in lofty or elevated or principle, and take out the word ‘dimension’, as in attribute or aspect, I am left presuming you meant that the human sensory apparatus is limited in that it cannot detect the full range of all of the physical matter, nor the full range of all of the physical energies in the universe. Scientific progress has gone hand-in-hand with the invention of tools and apparatus that have allowed humans to extend the range and effectiveness of their sensory apparatus. The human invention of language, then written language, then mass printed words on paper, then the digitalizing of words and the subsequent invention of a world wide web of home computers is what allows us to have this conversation across the globe – an astounding extension of the ‘limitations’ of the human language and auditory capacity. * PETER: This belief is somewhat understandable considering that it emerged in the days when it was universally believed that the world was three layered – a flat earthy plane full of dangerous animals and dangerous humans, a mystifying heavenly realm above and a mysterious underworld below. Eventually it was empirically observed that the earth was not flat but was spherical and subsequent explorations over centuries proved that this was in fact so. Nowadays photos of earth taken from spacecrafts have subsequently convinced all but the wacky that the earth is not flat. RESPONDENT: This is my point exactly. We base our understanding of the universe on the facts we have gathered using the scientific method, and the tools we have available presently. A spacecraft is a sophisticated tool that allows us to gather useful information about the physical characteristics of the universe. Historically, the availability of ever more sophisticated tools (telescopes, microscopes, particle accelerators, ...) has resulted in the refutation of previously held beliefs (masquerading as truths of course). So, the tool that someone invents in the 25th century could prove conclusively that the universe is not actually filled with plasma as previously thought, but actually filled with rubber duckies. PETER: By the same logic, an agnostic would say it is best to keep one’s options open because ‘higher dimensions’ or evidence of creation or other worlds or black holes or singularities or meta-physical forces, or whatever else one chooses to believe in, might well be found to be true after all. This line of reasoning is often used as a last resort by those who can find no evidence to substantiate their belief and fall back on claiming the evidence does exist but it ‘hasn’t been discovered yet’. RESPONDENT: BTW, I don’t think any of this is incompatible with the perception in a PCE, ‘that the universe is infinite and eternal and hence peerless both in its perfection and purity’. PETER: I used to think that a lot of beliefs I held didn’t matter or weren’t relevant to actualism, but eventually I discovered the act of holding onto any beliefs only served to keep ‘me’ in existence and therefore kept me hobbled to the human condition of malice and sorrow. In short, if I couldn’t drop a belief I always knew it was something ‘I’ identified with – i.e. that it was part and parcel of ‘me’ as a social or instinctual identity. * PETER: I could go on tripping through other fields of scientific discovery and endeavour, but you probably have got the gist of what I am saying – human beings will never be free from the fear and hope inherent in superstition if they insist on believing in higher dimensions, supernatural forces, metaphysical realms, divine beings, good and evil spirits and so on – or persist in hoping that one day science will provide the empirical evidence that spiritual belief so tellingly lacks. RESPONDENT: I guess I don’t really like the term ‘higher dimensions’ – maybe a better term is ‘characteristics of the universe that are not perceptible at present with the available human senses and tools’. PETER: Maybe you would like to refect on what characteristics of the universe have changed since the beginning of human awareness of the universe? Such reflection might lead you to the conclusion that the characteristics of the universe exist independently of human sensory perception, and are unaffected in any way by human sensory perception. Anthropocentricity runs deep within the human psyche, manifested in each and every human being as ‘self’-centredness. Contrary to popular belief, the universe was not ‘created’ especially for human beings – the human species is manifestly a species of animate life that has evolved from the matter of the universe. So predominant is anthropocentric belief that early humans, out of ignorance, believed the earth to be the centre of our solar system – a geocentric belief – but it has been discovered over time that the earth is but one of a number of planets that orbit the sun, which is but one sun in a galaxy full of suns, which is but one galaxy in an endless cosmos of countless galaxies. And yet these physical characteristics of the universe have always been so despite the early beliefs and superstitions that the earth was the centre of the world and that this world must have been created by a Someone or Something. I don’t know wether you came across the modern ‘Fingers of God’ tabulation – if this didn’t send the alarm bells ringing amongst creationist cosmology as to how geocentric, hence anthropocentric, their observations are then nothing will. http://www.electric-cosmos.org/arp.htm RESPONDENT: Again, I emphasize that none of what I am talking about has anything to do with metaphysics or spiritual belief. PETER: And yet, despite your disclaimer, you have said previously in this post –
The Big Bang theory is a creationist theory. The Big Bang theory is metaphysical in that it presumes there was a force or energy existing prior to the existence of physical matter and that this non-material force or energy then created the physical matter of the universe. The Big Bang theory is spiritual at root in that ancient spiritual belief was the prior source of all metaphysical science. And just a note to finish with – Personally I didn’t try to understand the science of all this too much. Simply contemplating on what would have existed before the universe was supposedly created, what would exist after in supposedly ended and what I would see if I got to the supposed edge of the universe was enough to convince me that the creationist cosmologists were off with the fairies.
Peter’s Text ©The Actual Freedom
Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer |
