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Peter’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List Correspondent No 58
PETER to No 37: I don’t know about you but I like it when I come across some information that
reveals what I had previously accepted as being true was all of a sudden understood to be not necessarily so. When I started to dare to question
the truths that I had accepted as being facts it was scary stuff, sometimes it felt as though ‘my’ whole world was collapsing, as though
‘I’ was being torn apart – but once I got over the initial fears the thrill of discovery took over. RESPONDENT: Think of how thrilled you will be when it hits you that your assumptions, masquerading as facts, of Richard being the first and even being what he claims to be, are not only bunk but useless items of self aggrandizement and self glory. Perhaps that is the only thing separating your current state of virtual freedom from his hallucination of actual freedom. Can you dare to care and care to dare, and thus question these useless truths Peter? Facts don’t come any more useless than these. PETER: But I did question ‘these useless truths’ as you call them. I may be naïve but my years on the spiritual path taught me the pitfalls of being gullible. When I was a spiritualist I got sucked into some very weird beliefs and I did some very weird things. In hindsight I guess I never took myself too seriously because when it came time to have a long hard look at my beliefs I figured that because I had taken them on at some time then there was no reason at all why I could not simply do without them again. The only reason I had for doing such a radical thing was that I had come across something that was better than my spiritual beliefs and that was the challenge of becoming happy and harmless – after all, being able to live with my fellow human beings in peace and harmony had been a life-long longing for me. Which means I dared to care and cared to dare. Having answered your question, I have a question for you. Given that you consider that an actual freedom from the human condition is useless and that being virtually free of malice and sorrow is equally useless, I wonder why you would waste your most valuable possession – your time – writing to me on a mailing list devoted to such useless enterprises?
PETER: You commented on two replies I made in my letter to No 60 –
and …
RESPONDENT: You know it is possible that you all may use certain words in one sense and another may use them differently. Words change, meanings change, what was once a pure fresh relevant term, becomes outdated, outmoded, loaded with undertones, overtones, mystical tones, spiritual tones, where they may have had none to start with. PETER: A good deal of the recent discussions about the meaning of words has been a beat up as some correspondents, for whatever motive, have gone out of their way to make something that is very simple, very complicated. If I don’t know the meaning of a word, look it up in the dictionary, if I don’t understand the word in the context it is used, I look it up in a dictionary or if possible I simply query the writer as to what he or she means by the word. RESPONDENT: Do you actually think Richards’s words will stand the test of time? PETER: Of course. Do you really think that human beings will forever be instinctually-driven beings, will forever be fighting and feuding, will forever be miserable and depressed, will forever be ridden by superstition, will forever be prostrating themselves before mythical Gods, or practicing dissociation by turning ‘inwards’ – that human beings can never live together in peace and harmony on this paradisaical planet? One day the spiritual teachings and metaphysical beliefs that are even now so revered will be seen as an anachronism of human beings dark instinctual past and an anonymous man called Richard will occasionally be recalled as the pioneer discoverer of an actual freedom from the old human condition of malice and sorrow. RESPONDENT: You are already taking some heat for your own journal. PETER: Both Vineeto and I have always taken heat for our writings. Very often we have been the subject of even more scorn than Richard has and the only explanation for this that I can come up with is that we both report that actualism does work in practice and that it does work incrementally in that it is possible to eliminate feelings of malice and sorrow from one’s life. Apparently many people find it much more comfortable keeping actualism at arms length by trying to treat it as a philosophy rather than be reminded that actualism is an experiential business that does work in practice. RESPONDENT: Why don’t one or all 3 of you actualists go face to face, mano a mano, with Mr. UGK and throw your spiritual and other accusations at him in person? You are all so good at kicking the dead and buried, rotten, decomposing corpses of defenceless former flesh and blood bodies. Don’t you think it would further your research, validity and future accusations if you would face a living flesh and blood body (UGK) instead of sitting behind your keyboard, safe from those you criticize, those people as they are? I am sure you could film the entire event and we could make our own judgement, after all you are all for exposing the truth, are you not? PETER: You have raised this issue before and you have been informed that we did indeed try and
open You have also recently reported that you have tried yourself and had similarly negative response –
What point you are making in continuing to challenge us to do that which is not possible? We have also had face-to-face discussions with spiritual teachers and Realized Beings on several other occasions but on all occasions they refused to engage in a sensible dialogue and several subsequently posted warnings to their followers to stay away from actualism and actualists. It is clear that spiritual teachers are among the least interested in, and most antagonistic towards, actualism as they have the most to loose in terms of their status and livelihood should they dare to turn their backs on spiritualism. I’d much prefer to dialogue with those fellow human beings who are open-minded about actualism than waste my time talking to those who are already close-minded due to the feelings of aloofness that inevitably accompanies a permanent altered state of consciousness. For those interested in past correspondences of actualists with people suffering an ongoing ASC here are
two links As for the validity of actualism, you have already had a glimpse of the fundamental simplicity and straightforwardness of actualism and its relevance to those who might be open-minded to its inevitable consequences for peace on earth.
Because of actualism’s radical nature it will not and indeed cannot be taught to children by rote. Those adults who wait and hope for the next generation to demonstrate that is possible for human beings to live in peace and harmony are merely following the age-old tradition of passing the buck. RESPONDENT: Do you have something better to do than to face the living you are throwing stones at? Are you hooked on comedies as well and sitting behind your keyboard? You say you are dedicating your life to this whole thing, why not take a little road trip and further your studies? PETER: I am not ‘throwing stones at’ either U.G. Krishnamurti or any other spiritual teacher, be they dead or alive – I am simply pointing out the inherent flaws of the spiritual teachings and of the very state of enlightenment itself, no matter who presents it and whatever form it takes. I’ve done my ‘road trip’ to the East and discovered first-hand the failings of spiritual teachings and the experienced first-hand the duplicity of spiritual teachers. I’ve sat at the feet of more than a few God-men and delved into several teachings sufficient enough to know that the whole pursuit of spiritualism is passé. There is nothing to be found in searching through the dustbin of history, finding a discarded belief or philosophy, dusting it off and re-running with it. It will become, and indeed is already becoming, increasingly obvious to the astute seeker that only a radical new approach will actually bring an end to human malevolence and sorrow … and that is the total elimination of human malevolence and sorrow.
RESPONDENT to No 38: Be clear about what you want and what you’re afraid of losing. Fear is always related to not getting what you want or losing what you have or think you have. PETER: Not so. There is the fear of actually getting what you want – the fear of being free of the human condition is the biggest fear of all because deep down one knows it will be the end of ‘me’.
RESPONDENT to No 38: Be clear about what you want and what you’re afraid of losing. Fear is always related to not getting what you want or losing what you have or think you have. PETER: Not so. There is the fear of actually getting what you want – the fear of being free of the human condition is the biggest fear of all because deep down one knows it will be the end of ‘me’. RESPONDENT: You so sure about that Petey? That it will be the end of ‘you’? Why do I even ask, of course you are sure. PETER: Yep. Whenever I write about the time when I was considering devoting my life to becoming happy and harmless and that it felt as though I was entering a tunnel that had ‘Warning, do not enter here’ written above it and I get no reply other than bluff and bluster, I assume that others may well be being confronted with the biggest fear of their lives – the beginning of the end of ‘me’. RESPONDENT: You have been told it will be the end of you and that ending you will solve all your problems. PETER: No. I have experienced the fear of having nothing left to loose other than to devote my life to becoming happy and harmless is. RESPONDENT: This whole self-immolation thing seems completely bogus to me and why use that silly misleading term except to carve out some bogus originality for yet another philosopher, philosophy, teacher and teaching. That term mystifies the whole thing and scares people. It’s completely unnecessary imo. PETER: Remaining who you think and feel you are is only an instinctual necessity for those who want to keep their sorrowful feelings and those who want to continue to blame others for the chronic inability of human beings to live together with other human beings in peace and harmony. For those who are sincere in wanting to be happy and harmless, the feeling of fear that they encounter is not at all mystifying, it is felt to be very real – and especially so for those who have been conditioned by religion and spiritual belief to take their selves seriously. RESPONDENT: You think what you have written above is the biggest fear? I don’t agree at all. There is no biggest fear. They are all the same and arise from the same source, self-obsessed thought and thinking taken to a neurotic/ psychotic level. PETER: I don’t get it. Why do you persist with trotting out this old thinking about the source of fear when it is has been utterly debunked as being mythology by experiential neurological evidence which proves that fear is an instinctual reaction that produces an affective reaction that kicks in prior to any cognitive assessment being possible. In other words, although imaginative thinking can produce a feeling of fear via secondary feedback circuitry, the primary source of fear has been proved as being a near instantaneous instinctual/ thoughtless reaction that produces an affective/thoughtless response some 13 milliseconds before the signal reaches the neocortex which only then enables the possibility of cognitive awareness and any consequential thinking to operate. And you don’t have to be a scientist to work this out for yourself. The next time a potentially threatening situation arises, be it driving a car or hearing an unfamiliar noise outside your house at night or whatever – provided you are attentive to how you are experiencing the moment – you will notice that the feeling of fear has already kicked in before you even become cognitively aware of the potential danger. Your foot has already gone to the footbrake and your heart is already pumping faster before you have had a chance to think about what is happening or you are already feeling fearful before you have a chance to even begin to think about what the noise outside could be. The reason I say ‘I don’t get it’ is that when I talked about feelings of malice and sorrow with Richard and he explained that their source was instinctual, there was an ‘of course’ – it was as if I had known this all along but had spent my life denying or avoiding the fact that I was an instinctually-driven animal. After that I refused to be so silly as to go back to believing Eastern philosophy and religion, all of which is based on denial and avoidance of this simple and self-evident fact. RESPONDENT: This fear you are talking about can be grouped in your societal conditioning fears. PETER: All fear can ultimately be sheeted home to the instinctual fear of death. Why do you persist in being so silly as to hold to ancient spiritual beliefs when they have been long disproved and debunked? To me, holding to such beliefs is akin to those fundamental Christians who deny the geological evidence and the fossil record that disproves and debunks the Bible’s fairy stories of a creator God. RESPONDENT: You have been taught that ‘you’ need to go. The ‘you’ or ‘me’ has and can have no idea what the hell that means except death and it gets scared about the implications of death. Those implications have all been taught to us. PETER: No. You would know very well from your own life experiences that the fear of death is instinctual and you would also be well aware that the fear of death comes to the forefront of one’s awareness the older one becomes and the closer one comes to death. The implications of actualism are that one can either assuage this fear of death by latching on to some form or other of imaginary religious/ spiritual/ metaphysical beliefs, live and die as a melancholic and antagonistic materialist or live and die being a happy and harmless actualist. This is not something I have been taught – the facts are now clearly laid out for anyone to see and for anyone to choose whatever alternative they want. RESPONDENT: If you never heard of all this philosophy and teaching of the self and that the self is the causes of your troubles and that your self must go or die to fix your problems, then this particular fear would never have come into existence. PETER: Again, not so. It is common to many people when reaching what is termed middle age – when the years remaining to death become less than those that have passed since birth – to begin to seek the meaning of life. The churches used to be full of the middle-aged and older seeking meaning, whereas nowadays they are more likely to be found frequenting therapy groups, yoga and meditation classes and Internet mailing lists.
PETER: I thought to interject in your recent tirade against Richard not only because you have made a number of comments which are distortions of the facts, and blatant inventions but also because you make accusations that refer to me as well. RESPONDENT to Richard: In spite of my clear explanation, you still haven’t gotten it. No surprise there. But you keep on with your latest theme of promotion, no matter how lame. Flog it to death if you wish. Its all a smoke screen to the issue at hand which is your assertion that ‘life is too much fun to take serious or seriously or to be serious’ or whatever version you choose. I suppose we should not take the fact of our parents coming down with some disease seriously. I suppose we should not take the fact of one of our children’s untimely deaths seriously & see how much fun that whole episode brings to each and every one of us. I suppose we should abandon our young children to trot the globe in pursuit of our deluded dreams of becoming the first actually free person ever. That would explain why life is too much fun to take serious or seriously or to be serious. I suppose all these wars, rapes, murders, injustices of man on his fellow man would qualify as not serious, not to be taken seriously or just to be plain fun. PETER: You have again deliberately chosen to distort what Richard actually said –
– by leaving out any reference at all to the word sincere, thereby attempting to put your own cynical twist to what he in fact said. Now that your beat up about the recent natural disaster has been exposed for what it was, you have since resorted to an even more desperate extrapolation alleging that Richard is supposedly saying that ‘all these wars, rapes, murders, injustices of man on his fellow man … be plain fun.’ (And all this from a correspondent who is on record as complimenting the Introduction to Actual Freedom – which is all about using the actualism method to finally bring an end to ‘wars, rapes, murders, injustices of man on his fellow man’.
The more pertinent question surely is whether or not those who are currently acquainted with actualism are ‘ready for this subject’: not whether or not the ‘world’ is ready for it?) Whilst I do realize that you admitted to being disturbed at the time you wrote this post, your mention of ‘I suppose we should not take the fact of one of our children’s untimely deaths seriously & see how much fun that whole episode brings to each and every one of us’ means that your latest wild accusations are not only aimed at Richard but also include me as well. The reason I mention this is that the death of my 15-year-old son was not ‘plain fun’ for me, as you would have it. It was, however, an event that had a profound effect on me in that it spurred me on to find out the meaning of life mainly in order that that future generations of children should not have to suffer the angst of being instinctually-driven beings – and puberty is a particularly angst filled time for all teenagers due to the rapid onset of the sexual imperative. I also wanted to offer by living example a practical down-to-earth alternative such that they should not have to waste their lives by searching for meaning in the pursuit of a ‘spiritual’ freedom or by meekly following the herd that insist that you can’t change human nature. Given that you have been a contributor to this mailing list for several years I am somewhat surprised
that you made specific reference to the death of one’s children in your rant as it raises the possibility that it was a barb deliberately aimed
at me to see if I would bite (a tactic In order to demonstrate your sincerity, would you care to engage in a conversation with me about the subject of caring … or was the flippant mention you made of the death of children merely another of your unsubstantiated hit-and-run personal barbs?
PETER: I thought to interject in your recent tirade against Richard … RESPONDENT: Peter! Where ya been babe?! Long time no correspond. PETER: Not so long actually. Just to refresh your memory, this was the most recent of your correspondences –
I didn’t reply because it is beyond me why a supposed adult would revert to the use of schoolboy sexual taunts when corresponding with a fellow human being. Do you think it clever or witty? Do you think it adds spice to your scorn? I know you are on record as saying that writing on mailing lists is a game for you but it does rather seem that you have stereotyped yourself so much that you are now so firmly trapped in your mailing list persona that you have become a parody onto yourself – unless that is you really talk like this to people face to face. RESPONDENT: But I must point out that Dick has been tirading against moi – in his ahem, malice free way, of course. PETER: It’s quite clear that you still don’t get it … despite the fact that it has been spelled out in unambiguous terms many times over on this mailing list. Besides which playing the hard-done-by victim is a pre-school yard ruse that I would have thought was beneath even you. * PETER: …not only because you have made a number of comments which are distortions of the facts, and blatant inventions but also because you make accusations that refer to me as well.
You have again deliberately chosen to distort what Richard actually said –
– by leaving out any reference at all to the word sincere, thereby attempting to put your own cynical twist to what he in fact said. Now that your beat up about the recent natural disaster has been exposed for what it was, you have since resorted to an even more desperate extrapolation alleging that Richard is supposedly saying that ‘all these wars, rapes, murders, injustices of man on his fellow man … be plain fun.’ (And all this from a correspondent who is on record as complimenting the Introduction to Actual Freedom – which is all about using the actualism method to finally bring an end to ‘wars, rapes, murders, injustices of man on his fellow man’.
The more pertinent question surely is whether or not those who are currently acquainted with actualism are ‘ready for this subject’: not whether or not the ‘world’ is ready for it?) Whilst I do realize that you admitted to being disturbed at the time you wrote this post, your mention of ‘I suppose we should not take the fact of one of our children’s untimely deaths seriously & see how much fun that whole episode brings to each and every one of us’ means that your latest wild accusations are not only aimed at Richard but also include me as well. RESPONDENT: My accusations are hardly wild but you read into them whatever suits your agenda. PETER: You are right. Wild is too mild a word … hysterical is a more appropriate word. RESPONDENT: In this particular case, my accusations were not aimed at you. PETER: I see. So, when you said –
what you really meant to say would have gone something like –
Would you care to amend your accusation accordingly, keeping in mind that future amendments may well be necessary as others become interested in not taking their own life so seriously? * PETER: The reason I mention this is that the death of my 15-year-old son was not ‘plain fun’ for me, as you would have it. It was, however, an event that had a profound effect on me in that it spurred me on to find out the meaning of life mainly in order that that future generations of children should not have to suffer the angst of being instinctually-driven beings – and puberty is a particularly angst filled time for all teenagers due to the rapid onset of the sexual imperative. I also wanted to offer by living example a practical down-to-earth alternative such that they should not have to waste their lives by searching for meaning in the pursuit of a ‘spiritual’ freedom or by meekly following the herd that insist that you can’t change human nature. Given that you have been a contributor … RESPONDENT: That is most generous of you to refer to me as a ‘contributor’. What gives? Are you buttering me up for a future onslaught? PETER: I was simply stating a fact. One of the benefits of having an un-moderated Actual Freedom mailing list is that all aspects of the human condition are freely displayed for all to see … and as one of the staunchest defenders of the status quo the quality, style and substance of your contribution literally speaks for itself. * PETER: … to this mailing list for several years I am somewhat surprised that you made specific
reference to the death of one’s children in your rant as it raises the possibility that it was a barb deliberately aimed at me to see if I would
bite (a tactic RESPONDENT: No, Peter, I wasn’t trying to get you to bite. But perhaps you think you are the only one who has lost a child? PETER: Not at all. I know that I am not the only one who has lost a child – it was something I became acutely aware of soon after my own son died. I started to see the nonsense in my feeling that no-one else knew how much I was suffering, that my suffering was special, unique and more profound than others and this was the beginning of the end of me indulging in grief and sorrow. Eventually I saw that the bitter-sweet feeling of sorrow had become an integral part of my identity – sort of a badge of honour that marked me out as being special. As an aside, I notice that someone recently has put a name to another aspect of this innate tendency of humans to indulge in sorrow, the tendency to indulge in feeling sorrow for others – ‘compassion competition’. If you care to look into the matter, as I did at the time, you will find that both are but versions of the eons-old game of human beings attempting to outdo others by claiming the moral high ground. But if you want to head off down that track of tit-for-tatting again: I do happen to know of an actualist whose child was acutely ill at one stage. Would you exclude her from the ‘we’, ‘our’ and ‘each and every one of us’ of your accusations? Or I could ask you – did one of your children die? In other words, were you speaking from your own experience or were you merely intellectually ‘speaking for others’ by proxy when you made your accusation. Given that you made two suggestions to me in your last correspondence, I will take the opportunity of offering you two hints in return.
* PETER: As can be seen from RESPONDENT: I never said you referred to the loss of your son as plain fun nor did I mention your reaction as sincere or insincere. PETER: If that is what you think, then it is time for my next hint –
* PETER: In order to demonstrate your sincerity, would you care to engage in a conversation with me about the subject of caring … or was the flippant mention you made of the death of children merely another of your unsubstantiated hit-and-run personal barbs. RESPONDENT: Peter, I am happy to converse with you about anything. PETER: Okay, I’ll take your offer at face value. I have already kicked off the subject on the mailing list in response to No 65’s comment about
actually caring. Here is As you know, No 65 has steered well clear of wanting to talk about the subject so the door is wide open for you. As the thrust of the conversation was sharing of personal experiences, you may well want to keep Hint #2 in mind. Over to you …
PETER: I thought to interject in your recent tirade against Richard … RESPONDENT: Peter ! Where ya been babe?! Long time no correspond. PETER: Not so long actually. Just to refresh your memory, this was the most recent of your correspondences to me –
RESPONDENT: I meant long time no hear from YOU... I do remember dispensing my sage advice for your well being.... Which to my chagrin, you will ignore. PETER: Like water off a duck’s back, such advice as you offer requires no effort at all to dismiss. * PETER: I didn’t reply because it is beyond me why a supposed adult would revert to the use of schoolboy sexual taunts when corresponding with a fellow human being. Do you think it clever or witty? RESPONDENT: Do you specialize in facetiousness? Is that your idea of practicing sincerity? It seems that you, your boss & your girlfriend, whilst criticizing the masses for the very same, can’t walk your own talk. PETER: No, it is what is known as asking a straightforward question … RESPONDENT: Yeah Pete ... it ’t’was fun. For me that is. PETER: To which you … eventually … gave a straightforward answer. * PETER: I know you are on record as saying that writing on mailing lists is a game for you … RESPONDENT: as it is a game/entertainment for you, Dick & V. Let us not forget that ‘life is too much fun to take seriously or to be serious!’ PETER: I see that you have again reverted to repeating your deliberate distortion of what Richard said by leaving out any mention of sincerity. Just to refresh your memory and that of other readers, this is the actual quote you are referring to –
Yet another example of your ‘repeat -a -lie-for-long-enough-and-it’s-sure-to-becomes-a-truth’ ploy in action. Writing on this mailing list is always fun for me, particularly as the game is a sincere one – to pass on information that will be of use to any of my fellow human beings who are interested in becoming actually free from the human condition. * PETER: … but it does rather seem that you have stereotyped yourself so much that you are now so firmly trapped in your mailing list persona that you have become a parody onto yourself – unless that is you really talk like this to people face to face. RESPONDENT: whatever ... say what you please ... I am not trapped either in this list nor in my moment to moment existence ... so don’t you worry about me ... although I know how concerned you are about your fellow human. PETER: I am not worried about you at all No 58. I was simply giving you some feedback that it appears to me that your game has been running on a such a limited repetitive loop for such an extended period that you have become a parody onto yourself. * RESPONDENT: But I must point out that Dick has been tirading against moi – in his ahem, malice free way, of course. PETER: It’s quite clear that you still don’t get it … despite the fact that it has been spelled out in unambiguous terms many times over on this mailing list. Besides which playing the hard-done-by victim is a pre-schoolyard ruse that I would have thought was beneath even you. RESPONDENT: Beneath ‘even’ me? Is that some sort of back-handed compliment? PETER: No. It was simply an observation of pre-schoolyard behaviour. It is quite a common ruse for children to say things like ‘it wasn’t me, it was him’ or ‘he started it’ or ‘Mum, she is being nasty to me’ and so on whenever they are caught out. The reason I said that I would have thought such a ruse was beneath you is that I presume by the fact that you are writing on this mailing list that you must be an adult. RESPONDENT: It’s quite clear that Dick thinks I ‘still don’t get it’ and since that’s his opinion, of course it is also your opinion ... whatever it is you both mean by ‘it’, I could care less. PETER: It is precisely because you care less that you don’t get it. Or to put it another way, whenever feelings prevail – and ‘care less’, or not caring, is a feeling – common sense is nowhere to be found. * PETER: …not only because you have made a number of comments which are distortions of the facts, and blatant inventions but also because you make accusations that refer to me as well.
You have again deliberately chosen to distort what Richard actually said –
– by leaving out any reference at all to the word sincere, thereby attempting to put your own cynical twist to what he in fact said. Now that your beat up about the recent natural disaster has been exposed for what it was, you have since resorted to an even more desperate extrapolation alleging that Richard is supposedly saying that ‘all these wars, rapes, murders, injustices of man on his fellow man … be plain fun.’ Whilst I do realize that you admitted to being disturbed at the time you wrote this post, your mention of ‘I suppose we should not take the fact of one of our children’s untimely deaths seriously & see how much fun that whole episode brings to each and every one of us’ means that your latest wild accusations are not only aimed at Richard but also include me as well. RESPONDENT: My accusations are hardly wild but you read into them whatever suits your agenda. PETER: You are right. Wild is too mild a word … hysterical is a more appropriate word. RESPONDENT: Now you are acting hysterical and making wild & hysterical accusations. No surprise unfortunately. PETER: I am simply making the point that your accusations against Richard were couched in universal terms – as in speaking as ‘we’ and ‘us’ so as to include everyone including me and everyone reading your post – and that they included everyday universal examples of events than either can or do happen to anyone at some stage in their lives and as such they were wild accusations, as in ill-considered, erratic. When I raised the question of whether or not these accusations were aimed at me, given that you used the example of anyone whose child had died, you replied they were not aimed at me, an admission on your part that your accusations were indeed ill-considered and erratic. It is the last sentence of your accusations that tips them from being wild into being hysterical, as in farcical, in that you accuse those who are devoting their lives to doing something practical about eliminating the malice and sorrow that is the root cause of ‘all the(se) wars, rapes, murders, injustices of man on his fellow man’ of regarding them as ‘plain fun’. Regardless of what you think of actualists’ efforts or how misguided you may think they are, none have said anything remotely resembling what you accuse them of saying – quite the opposite in fact. What makes this aspect of your accusation especially farcical is that you are on record as praising the ‘Introduction to Actual Freedom’ that I penned which is all about bringing an actual end to the abomination of ‘all the(se) wars, rapes, murders, injustices of man on his fellow man’. But then again you are nothing if not inconsistent in your posts to this mailing list. Your latest accusations wherein you merrily lambast Richard for not only not caring about ‘all the(se) wars, rapes, murders, injustices of man on his fellow man’ but go on to imply that he finds them to ‘be plain fun’ stands in stark contrast to your own teachings on the same subject posted only two weeks prior –
In the light of your own teachings on this list, I would now describe your accusations as not only hysterical but hypocritical as well. * RESPONDENT: In this particular case, my accusations were not aimed at you. PETER: I see. So, when you said –
what you really meant to say was –
RESPONDENT: And now you are being just a plain moron Peter. Don’t put words in my mouth unless you get some perverse pleasure at having them spat out at you and your actual & actualist absurdity. PETER: What I am doing is explaining why your accusations, as you wrote them, were aimed so widely as to include me. I then substantiated my point by giving an example of how it would have had to be phrased for the accusation to have not been aimed at me. This is something that a moron – ‘an adult with a mental age of between about eight and twelve’ – (Oxford Dictionary) would have great difficulty in doing. * PETER: Would you care to amend your accusation accordingly, keeping in mind that future amendments may well be necessary as others become interested in not taking their own life so seriously? RESPONDENT: No I would not care to amend a thing. You read into them as you will. Your interpretation is your problem & pleasure & not my concern either way. PETER: I see you have dug into your bag of stock-standard ploys and bought out the ‘that’s just your interpretation’ platitude with yet another – ‘that’s your problem and not my concern’ – tacked on for good measure. Your repetitive reversions to such hackneyed responses is one of the reasons I said that ‘it appears to me that your game has been running on such a limited repetitive loop for such an extended period that you have become a parody onto yourself’. * PETER: Given that you have been a contributor to this mailing list for several years … RESPONDENT: That is most generous of you to refer to me as a ‘contributor’. What gives? Are you buttering me up for a future onslaught? PETER: I was simply stating a fact. One of the benefits of having an un-moderated Actual Freedom mailing list is that all aspects of the human condition are freely displayed for all to see … and as one of the staunchest defenders of the status quo the quality, style and substance of your contribution literally speaks for itself. RESPONDENT: Of course you would think this. This is how you have been brainwashed by your resident Dick. PETER: Right on cue, yet another of your Pavlovian responses Some examples of your use of this tactic from the last few weeks –
* PETER: … I am somewhat surprised that you made specific reference to the death of one’s children in your rant as it raises the possibility that it was a barb deliberately aimed at me to see if I would bite. RESPONDENT: No, Peter, I wasn’t trying to get you to bite. But perhaps you think you are the only one who has lost a child? PETER: Not at all. I know that I am not the only one who has lost a child – it was something I became acutely aware of soon after my own son died. I started to see the nonsense in my feeling that no-one else knew how much I was suffering, that my suffering was special, unique and more profound than others and this was the beginning of the end of me indulging in grief and sorrow. Eventually I saw that the bitter-sweet feeling of sorrow had become an integral part of my identity – sort of a badge of honour that marked me out as being special. As an aside, I notice that someone recently has put a name to another aspect of this innate tendency of humans to indulge in sorrow, the tendency to indulge in feeling sorrow for others – ‘compassion competition’. If you care to look into the matter, as I did at the time, you will find that both are but versions of the eons-old game of attempting to outdo others by claiming the moral high ground. But if you want to head off down that track of tit-for-tatting again: … RESPONDENT: It is you who is heading off down that track of tit4tatting ... again. PETER: Sometimes I choose to go with someone in their tit-for-tat arguments but if I do so, I generally take the opportunity to post something of substance based on my own experience that adds to the understanding of whoever it is who is reading this post. * PETER: … I do happen to know of an actualist whose child was acutely ill at one stage. Would you exclude her from the ‘we’, ‘our’ and ‘each and every one of us’ of your accusations? Or I could ask you – did one of your children die? In other words, were you speaking from your own experience or were you merely intellectually ‘speaking for others’ by proxy when you made your accusation. RESPONDENT: In this case I am speaking from personal experience. PETER: In that case would you like to write about personal experience? As you know, I have written about my own personal experience when my young son died and I found the very act of writing about it was a great aid in being able to make sense of my feelings about it RESPONDENT: Either way it’s irrelevant to your tit4tat tactics. PETER: What is relevant is that there is a marked difference between someone speaking intellectually about a subject and someone speaking from personal experience about a subject. * PETER: Given that you made two suggestions to me in your last correspondence, I will take the opportunity of offering you two hints in return.
RESPONDENT: I don’t care about credibility nor smidgeons thereof in your eyes nor anyone else’s. PETER: Ah, therein lays the essential difference between the care with which I write and the care-less-ness with which you write. RESPONDENT: Above you criticize humans wearing badges of credibility claiming moral high grounds & now you suggest I play that game. I am not about to play the twists & turns of your games. PETER: I suggest that you scroll up and re-read what I actually said as it bears no resemblance to what you think I said. I did not ‘criticize humans for wearing badges of credibility’ – what I said was –
No criticism, no mention of humans in general, no mention of credibility – I was speaking of my own personal observations and – consequently – my observations of the human condition in action. With regard to the moral high ground this is what I said –
Again no criticism, no mention of humans in general, no mention of credibility – I was speaking of my own personal observations and – consequently – my observations of the human condition in action. You have made it perfectly clear that you have no interest in playing such a game yourself but therein lays the very means of discovering how the human condition is played out in each and every feeling being, in this case ‘me’. The trick to beginning to play the game was to cease pointing the ‘torch’ of awareness on other people, turn it around and begin to focus it on my own feelings, my own actions and my own reactions. RESPONDENT: 1st; I shouldn’t play the ‘eons-old game of human beings attempting to outdo others by claiming the moral high ground’ and then 2nd; my ‘posts will have at least a smidgeon of credibility if you speak from your own experience’. Make up your mind or: Hint#1: keep it & your Hints to yourself if want it both ways. PETER: All this falls flat for the simple reason that I did not say you ‘shouldn’t play the ‘eons-old game of human beings attempting to outdo others by claiming the moral high ground’’. This is yet another example from your limited repertoire of tactics on this list claim that someone has said something that they haven’t said and then rile against them for supposedly saying it. Countless conflicts are begun or sustained by people either intentionally or inadvertently using this tactic or get hoodwinked by it, whether it be intentionally or inadvertently. * PETER: In order to demonstrate your sincerity, would you care to engage in a conversation with me about the subject of caring … or was the flippant mention you made of the death of children merely another of your unsubstantiated hit-and-run personal barbs. RESPONDENT: Peter, I am happy to converse with you about anything. PETER: Okay, I’ll take your offer at face value. I have already kicked off the subject on the
mailing list in response to No 65’s comment about actually caring. Here is RESPONDENT: Those posts were too long & not aimed at me and I don’t care to reread them. Post your relevant points from them to this discussion & I will be happy to engage you in what you refer to as a discussion. PETER: Another of the tactics you employ on this list in order to avoid engaging in discussions about what are commonly known as sensitive matters is to focus on style, thereby avoiding having to make any reference to, let alone make sensible comment, to the content of the posts – Peter is too long-winded, Richard is nitpicking, Vineeto is a bitch, and so on. As for these posts not being ‘aimed at’ you, this is a discussion forum and as such anyone is free to respond to any post that is of interest to them on any subject that is of interest to them, i.e. whilst I usually address a post to a single person I am well aware that the post is dispersed to or is available to all list members. Be that as it may I’ll repost a (brief) section of the first post mentioned so you can get the gist of what I was saying and how I was saying it –
So there you go – Topic: the significant events in your life that set you caring about what is often called the ‘plight of humanity’. Type of discussion: swapping personal stories, just as one does when one puts one’s feet up and swaps life stories with others. Over to you ... again …
RESPONDENT: Let us not forget that ‘life is too much fun to take seriously or to be serious!’ PETER: I see that you have again reverted to repeating your deliberate distortion of what Richard said by leaving out any mention of sincerity. Just to refresh your memory and that of other readers, this is the actual quote you are referring to –
Yet another example of your ‘repeat -a -lie-for-long-enough-and-it’s-sure-to-becomes-a-truth’ ploy in action. RESPONDENT: To repeat a lie is what Richard is doing by advising others to be sincere whilst he does not practice same. PETER: This is obviously your ‘personal’ truth as they say as I, and many other people I know of, do regard Richard as being sincere. Again you are adopting the tactic of not addressing the issue I was talking about – the tactic of repeating your misrepresentation/ deliberate distortion of what Richard actually said – by using the schoolyard tactic of piling on even more allegations of exactly the same ilk. RESPONDENT: To repeat a lie would be advising others to practice his method whilst he doesn’t practice his method, whilst it wasn’t even his method, whilst he shall never practice said method. PETER: And even more allegations for good measure, yet another misrepresentation/ deliberate distortion of what Richard actually said – as he has made it very plain on a number of occasions that it was the social-instinctual entity ‘Richard’ who practiced the method and as a consequence became extinct in order that the flesh and blood body Richard could be free. RESPONDENT: To repeat a lie is what Richard is doing when he boasts of having no malice, anger, feelings whilst his venomous emails display such traits. PETER: And even more allegations – this time based upon the your complete misunderstanding as to what an actual free of the human condition entails. It certainly does not mean that one becomes a pacifist as you apparently imagine – which is no doubt why you go on and on and on and on and on poking and prodding, ranting and raving, cajoling and confronting in order to get a response. And when you do get a response your game is to immediately exclaim, ‘there you go, you are being malicious’, ‘you are being mean to me’, ‘your hurting my feelings’ and so on. Whilst your crying wolf is an obvious ploy, what you don’t get in this case is that actualism has got nothing at all to do with pacifism. Pacifism is nothing other than the desperate appeal of the supposed meek and mild to the bullies of the world to not pick on them but to go pick on someone else … as well as affording them the chance to smugly claim the moral high ground in the mythical battle betwixt Good and Evil that human beings still insist in believing in. RESPONDENT: You however appear sincere, PETER: I have no idea what to make of this comment. The problem is that you also say things like –
– which leaves me with no way of knowing if you are being sincere. This is one of the side-effects of adopting a cyber-personality in order to play your ‘I’ll-just-sit-at-the-computer-and-fire-off-some-shots-at-Richard-and-his-lackeys-and-see-if-I-can-score-some-points’ game – nobody on this mailing list knows whether they are talking to you or to your cyber-player personality. RESPONDENT: [You however appear sincere,] albeit too much under the influence and spell of said hypocrite and mystico-pseudo-actualist teacher. PETER: There you go again, finger on the trigger, never let a chance go by to get in yet another weak shot. * PETER: I was simply giving you some feedback that it appears to me that your game has been running on a such a limited repetitive loop for such an extended period that you have become a parody onto yourself. RESPONDENT: Like I said before – whatever. Your statement ‘it appears to me that your game has been running on a such a limited repetitive loop for such an extended period that you have become a parody onto yourself’ ... could well apply to yourself & your mate/ partner/ whatever she is. PETER: This gambit represents the basic thrust of you’re the game you play because it involves no thinking whatsoever– take any comment that is made to you, load it up a bit, turn it round and throw it back at the other. No matter that it makes no sense at all, off goes another shot. As for your gratuitous add-on comment ‘& your mate/ partner/ whatever she is’ – you have had no trouble in explaining to me what you think she is – you last described her as being a ‘sperm receptacle’. Have you suddenly gone all coy for some reason because that was by no means an isolated slur? Your recent descriptions include –
Nothing like a few misogynist pot-shots, hey? … ‘Let’s see how she likes these ones’ hey? ‘Serves ‘em right for having an unmoderated mailing list’, hey? ‘Good sport’ hey? * RESPONDENT: But I must point out that Dick has been tirading against moi – in his ahem, malice free way, of course. PETER: It’s quite clear that you still don’t get it … despite the fact that it has been spelled out in unambiguous terms many times over on this mailing list. Besides which playing the hard-done-by victim is a pre-schoolyard ruse that I would have thought was beneath even you. RESPONDENT: Beneath ‘even’ me? Is that some sort of back-handed compliment? PETER: No. It was simply an observation of pre-schoolyard behaviour. It is quite a common ruse for children to say things like ‘it wasn’t me, it was him’ or ‘he started it’ or ‘Mum, she is being nasty to me’ and so on whenever they are caught out. The reason I said that I would have thought such a ruse was beneath you is that I presume by the fact that you are writing on this mailing list that you must be an adult. RESPONDENT: You should know by now that nothing is beneath me. PETER: This is a classic fallback position because if anyone bothers to call you at your game, or rise to your bait, you can then resort to ‘I’ve finally reduced you to grovelling down in the gutter with me … Mr. High and Mighty’. There is utter safety in having no goals in one’s life – one can never fail, nor can one ever succeed, one is free to criticize everyone and every thing, in fact one feels so superior to all those fools who are making an effort, all those fools who are trying, all those fools who are seeking. And lo and behold, along comes an unmoderated mailing list – talk about shooting sitting ducks, hey? RESPONDENT: It quite amusing that the 1st & only human ever free of the human condition engages in the non-sensical banter that the intention of this list was NOT set up for by that very same person. PETER: Even more amusing is the fact that the most vehement and voluminous critic of what he, Vineeto and I have to say, had nothing to say of substance himself and very quickly reverted to doing nothing other than sitting on the sidelines dispensing school yard jibes and taunts intermixed with a dash of nihilistic doom-sayings. * RESPONDENT: It’s quite clear that Dick thinks I ‘still don’t get it’ and since that’s his opinion, of course it is also your opinion ... whatever it is you both mean by ‘it’, I could care less. PETER: It is precisely because you care less that you don’t get it. Or to put it another way, whenever feelings prevail – and ‘care less’, or not caring, is a feeling – common sense is nowhere to be found. RESPONDENT: Whatever Petey ... repeat what you have been taught. PETER: Says he reaching for his ‘you-are-nothing-but-a-clone put-down reply’. RESPONDENT: If you consider his responses to me common sense, then no such thing exists. PETER: The ‘let’s-get-the-conversation-back-to-Dick’ ploy. Anything but talk about the topic at hand – in this case the feeling of not caring. * RESPONDENT: My accusations are hardly wild but you read into them whatever suits your agenda. PETER: You are right. Wild is too mild a word … hysterical is a more appropriate word. RESPONDENT: Now you are acting hysterical and making wild & hysterical accusations. No surprise unfortunately. I am simply making the point that your accusations against Richard were couched in universal terms – as in speaking as ‘we’ and ‘us’ so as to include everyone including me and everyone reading your post – and that they included everyday universal examples of events than either can or do happen to anyone at some stage in their lives and as such they were wild accusations, as in ill-considered, erratic. When I raised the question of whether or not these accusations were aimed at me, given that you used the example of anyone whose child had died, you replied they were not aimed at me, an admission on your part that your accusations were indeed ill-considered and erratic. RESPONDENT: They were not aimed at you Peter, even though you have had this particular experience. I don’t get your point. No need to explain unless you can’t help yourself which will most likely be the case. PETER: Okay, I won’t bother to explain. I have already made my point and discerning readers will no doubt get it that this whole accusation was nothing other than yet another of your beat ups that has backfired on you. * PETER: It is the last sentence of your accusations that tips them from being wild into being hysterical, as in farcical, in that you accuse those who are devoting their lives to doing something practical about eliminating the malice and sorrow RESPONDENT: Maybe you can do something about eliminating malice & sorrow and maybe you can’t. PETER: Why so wishy-washy, suddenly? You have made it abundantly clear, particularly when someone new comes to this list, that you are firmly convinced that nothing can be done about malice and sorrow. Vis:
RESPONDENT: If Richard is any example, then we should all just give it up. PETER: I see that you chose to ignore my hint about the use of words such as ‘we’, ‘our’ and ‘us’. You have made it crystal clear that you are not even interested in, let alone have started to do anything about, eliminating the feelings of malice and sorrow from your life so your comment that ‘‘we’ should all just give it up’ is utter nonsense. * PETER: What makes this aspect of your accusation especially farcical is that you are on record as praising the ‘Introduction to Actual Freedom’ that I penned which is all about bringing an *actual* end to the abomination of ‘all the(se) wars, rapes, murders, injustices of man on his fellow man’. RESPONDENT: I thought you did a good job in a scholastic sense. You summarized it well. PETER: The well-worn back-handed compliment ploy. Your cohort No 65 used the very same trick recently when I wrote to him about the events in my life that woke me up to the difference between feeling I was caring and actually caring –
RESPONDENT: I believe your intent is generally for the good as opposed to Richard who says one thing and behaves another way. PETER: There may well be some hope for me yet …if only I would listen to you and follow your teachings, hey? Ah, yet another saviour trolling the net looking for souls to save from the ‘evil of the Gurus’, in this case the Evil One called ‘Richard’. * PETER: But then again you are nothing if not inconsistent in your posts to this mailing list. Your latest accusations wherein you merrily lambast Richard for not only not caring about ‘all the(se) wars, rapes, murders, injustices of man on his fellow man’ but go on to imply that he finds them to ‘be plain fun’ stands in stark contrast to your own teachings on the same subject posted only two weeks prior –
In the light of your own teachings on this list, I would now describe your accusations as not only hysterical but hypocritical as well. RESPONDENT: You may describe my ramblings in whatever way you wish. I will not be defending them. They can go into the waste bin for all I care. Take them or leave them. You are better off leaving them. PETER: Ah, the humble, ‘I have nothing to offer my readers, for nothing needs to be offered, nothing can be done, nothing needs to be done’, ... dismissal/retreat. Another bit of U.G. Krishnamurti’s teachings, or should I rather say U.G Krishnamurti’s non-teachings? RESPONDENT: I am not on record as saying my words are ‘ever fresh’ whilst speaking out of my arse at the exact same time ‘matter is not passive’. I am not on record as saying my words are ‘IT’, that my words are an exact non=contradictory, non-ambiguous description of reality/actuality, whatever you want to call it, whilst spewing malice, pettiness, venom & anger at his fellow human being whom one says they like so much. PETER: … finished off with a suitably muddled and confused mishmash of accusation, disinformation and misrepresentation masquerading as saying something of substance. * RESPONDENT: In this particular case, my accusations were not aimed at you. PETER: I see. So, when you said –
what you really meant to say was –
RESPONDENT: And now you are being just a plain moron Peter. Don’t put words in my mouth unless you get some perverse pleasure at having them spat out at you and your actual & actualist absurdity. PETER: What I am doing is explaining why your accusations, as you wrote them, were aimed so widely as to include me. I then substantiated my point by giving an example of how it would have had to be phrased for the accusation to have not been aimed at me. This is something that a moron – ‘an adult with a mental age of between about eight and twelve’ (Oxford Dictionary) – would have great difficulty in doing. RESPONDENT: As you have said, I wasn’t concerned if you were included or not. You go on & on about a ‘wide’ & wondrous path yet you would like for me not to use such ‘widely’ aimed comments. PETER: And yet I never said that at all – another case of using the let’s put some words he didn’t say in his mouth and then proceed to make comment about it. This is a ploy that is usually a precursor for setting up a straw man argument or is employed so as to spread disinformation about someone in the form of gossip. More than a few times you have managed to fool others on this list into falling for your ploys and this is one of the reasons I am using my spare time at the moment responding to your posts in such detail. What I write will be of use for others in wading their way through the bluff and bluster that spiritualists produce, posing as comments of substance. It also may encourage readers to do their own thinking on matters rather than be so readily swayed by those who do nothing else but defend the status quo. * PETER: Would you care to amend your accusation accordingly, keeping in mind that future amendments may well be necessary as others become interested in not taking their own life so seriously? RESPONDENT: No I would not care to amend a thing. You read into them as you will. Your interpretation is your problem & pleasure & not my concern either way. PETER: I see you have dug into your bag of stock-standard ploys and bought out the ‘that’s just your interpretation’ platitude with yet another – ‘that’s your problem and not my concern’ – tacked on for good measure. Your repetitive reversions to such hackneyed responses is one of the reasons I said that ‘it appears to me that your game has been running on such a limited repetitive loop for such an extended period that you have become a parody onto yourself’. RESPONDENT: Whatever Peter. Your response is the same repetitive parody loop. PETER: Ah, the stock standard ping pong response – the response you make when you have got nothing to say. * PETER: Given that you have been a contributor … RESPONDENT: That is most generous of you to refer to me as a ‘contributor’. What gives? Are you buttering me up for a future onslaught? PETER: I was simply stating a fact. One of the benefits of having an un-moderated Actual Freedom mailing list is that all aspects of the human condition are freely displayed for all to see … and as one of the staunchest defenders of the status quo the quality, style and substance of your contribution literally speaks for itself. RESPONDENT: Of course you would think this. This is how you have been brainwashed by your resident Dick. PETER: Right on cue, yet another of your Pavlovian responses RESPONDENT: If the shoe fits ... PETER: Ah, the hackneyed platitude as a ping-pong response. * PETER: … I do happen to know of an actualist whose child was acutely ill at one stage. Would you exclude her from the ‘we’, ‘our’ and ‘each and every one of us’ of your accusations? Or I could ask you – did one of your children die? In other words, were you speaking from your own experience or were you merely intellectually ‘speaking for others’ by proxy when you made your accusation. RESPONDENT: In this case I am speaking from personal experience. PETER: In that case would you like to write about personal experience? As you know, I have written about my own personal experience when my young son died and I found the very act of writing about it was a great aid in being able to make sense of my feelings about it. RESPONDENT: I don’t need to clarify a thing. A fact of life is losing loved ones. But this nonsense of feeling nothing at such an event is really something else. PETER: Did what I wrote about my son’s death completely pass you by? I’ve snipped it from my reply as you didn’t bother to respond to it but I’ll refresh your memory. I wrote about the feelings I had when my son died and how, when I investigated them, I found that there is a self-indulgent aspect to the feeling of grief and not only that but also a feeling of being special that I found came with it, as in ‘no one else knows how much I am suffering’. The fact that I was able to become so clearly aware of the insidious nature of the feelings I was having meant that they soon went away. I discovered that the loss of one so close is difficult enough, but to compound this loss with the usual feelings that accompany such a loss was debilitating not only to myself but to everyone else involved as well. The reason I say everyone else is that I also became aware that I wanted others to acknowledge my suffering, I wanted others to feel gloomy along with me and yet on the other hand I resented their sympathy because it was never enough because in the end they couldn’t feel my suffering because only ‘I’ can feel what ‘I’ am feeling. The other thing that helped me to clearly see the senselessness of the feelings that are involved in the death of someone close is that the circumstances involving my own son’s death were initially somewhat unclear and consequently many people were swamped with feelings of guilt, indignation, blame, resentment, helplessness, despair and so on. Coincidently, the shock of my son’s death caused me to be in a state of calm at the time – somewhat akin to the ‘being at the centre of a cyclone’ experience that many report – and this calmness enabled me to clearly see that having these feelings only made the whole situation surrounding the fact of the loss far worse and far more complicated. Everyone was so awash with their own emotions that it was left to me to do the practical things that needed doing, to take care of those who needed taking care of and to attempt to diffuse the feelings of bitterness and recrimination that were threatening to get out of hand. Because I had felt these feelings and was aware that I was having these feelings when my son died, I came to realize that to suffer the loss of someone close is one thing but to compound the situation by having to suffer the affective feelings normally associated with such a loss does nothing but aggravate the situation. I have nothing good to say about the feeling of grief – the feeling sucks and it sucks big time. Nor do I have anything good to say about the associated feelings of sorrow and compassion (feeling sorrow for others). Contrary to popular opinion, there is no ‘good’ in sorrow - the only thing that one gets out of the feeling of sorrow is the debilitating pain and angst that comes with all affective feeling. As for ‘this nonsense of feeling nothing’ – to me, wanting to hold on to such feelings, simply because everyone else says you should, is what is nonsense. * RESPONDENT: Either way it’s irrelevant to your tit4tat tactics. PETER: What is relevant is that there is a marked difference between someone speaking intellectually about a subject and someone speaking from personal experience about a subject. RESPONDENT: Sure. If someone speaks from personal experience then they are claiming a moral high-ground. PETER: No, this bears no resemblance to what I said. The marked difference I referred to was something that became very obvious to me in my university days when I very quickly realized that I was being taught by academics who had little or no practical experience and not by hands-on practitioners in the field of building and architecture. It took me some 20 years thereafter before I managed to glean sufficient hands-on, trial and error experience in order to become proficient in my field of work – to know that what I was doing did indeed work in practice. . RESPONDENT: If someone speaks intellectually, they can be easily dismissed as not speaking from personal experience. Either way, you win. PETER: Despite your fabricated scenario, what I am saying has nothing to do with winning and losing, far from it. It is, as I have reiterated by example, simply common sense. * PETER: You have made it perfectly clear that you have no interest in playing such a game yourself but therein lays the very means of discovering how the human condition is played out in each and every feeling being, in this case ‘me’. The trick to beginning to play the game was to cease pointing the ‘torch’ of awareness on other people, turn it around and begin to focus it on my own feelings, my own actions and my own reactions. RESPONDENT: Do what you have to do Peter and do what you want to do. Why you would think everyone should take the same tact is absurd, narrow and blind. PETER: I have no illusions whatsoever that human beings will continue to pride themselves on being feeling beings long, long after I am dead and reduced to a pile of ashes that will be indistinguishable from any other piece of matter … but in the mean time, along with two friends, I will help to maintain a website and occasionally write to its associated mailing list in order to let others know that a way has now been found to be actually free of the human condition in toto … and I do mean in toto. RESPONDENT: 1st; I shouldn’t play the ‘eons-old game of human beings attempting to outdo others by claiming the moral high ground’ and then 2nd; my ‘posts will have at least a smidgeon of credibility if you speak from your own experience’. Make up your mind or: Hint#1: keep it & your Hints to yourself if want it both ways. PETER: And all this falls flat on its face for the simple reason that I did not say you ‘shouldn’t play the ‘eons-old game of human beings attempting to outdo others by claiming the moral high ground’’. * PETER: This is yet another example from your limited repertoire of tactics on this list: claim that someone has said something that they haven’t said and then rile against them for supposedly saying it. Countless conflicts are begun or sustained by people either intentionally or inadvertently using this tactic or get hoodwinked by it, whether it be intentionally or inadvertently. RESPONDENT: So you are now suggesting I should increase my repertoire of tactics in order to compete with the versatile & ready for any tactics actualists? PETER: I remember when I first started writing on mailing being taken aback and confused by the ‘debating rules’ that people engaged in. So much time was wasted and so much attention was diverted away from talking about the subject by people ducking and dodging, inventing straw man arguments and insisting on pursuing them, putting words into others mouths, side tracking the conversation, indulging in trivia, and so on, that matters of consequence was rarely discussed. The very same thing happens on this mailing list for long periods of time, yet despite the frenetic interference run by those with a vested interest in running interference occasionally someone gets to get something that will be of use to them in their lives. Good, hey. RESPONDENT: Not interested in your games. Find someone else to play by your rules if you are bored. PETER: Ah, and right on cue, you finish off with another playground cliché. As you well know, this is an umoderated mailing list, so there are no rules per se, no policemen to impose rules, which you affords you the opportunity to follow your own advice to others on this list –
Far from being bored, I have found the exchange to most fruitful as I have taken the opportunity your posts have provided to pass on my by-no-means extensive knowledge of some of the games people play in order to disguise the fact that they have nothing of substance to say – in this case with regard to the subject of feelings.
PETER: So there you go – Topic: the significant events in your life that set you caring about what is often called the ‘plight of humanity’. Manner of discussion: swapping personal stories, just as one does when one puts one’s feet up and swaps life stories with others. Over to you again … RESPONDENT: I am not Mother Theresa , Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr, Genghis Khan, George Bush Jr, ... I am not Bill Gates and donate my billions for charitable causes ... I am not in a position of political power .... I don’t have a website offering methods to kill time and instil hope for the apparently ever elusive actual freedom except for the one, by their founders who didn’t found it, who didn’t practice it but go on & on about someone or others method with an unverifiable ‘proven track record’ ... unlike the very verifiable track records of a Bill Gates for example or some sports star or military hero, businessman, school teacher, etc ... I am extremely average ... I am generally aware of the news that is available, I can see the plight of humanity/current events as it goes down ... if I do anything about the plight of humanity, as its called, it would be on a micro scale, if even that. Perhaps its because I don’t feel I can do a thing to change the ‘plight of humanity’ ... like I said, I am not a politician, social changer, I am not in any position of effecting change on a mass scale. Nothing set me off ‘caring about what is often called the plight of humanity’. I have done what I have always done. I am sorry, but I have no interesting or relevant stories to tell which proved to be significant in widening my outlook from purely self-centred to including a concern for the antagonism and despair that I saw as inherent to the human condition. I was self-centred and I remain so. You are free to use that statement against me in future discussions as I am sure you may, as well as your boss and/or your lover. Sorry Peter, my feet are up but nothing relevant is coming out. We can try something else if you’d like. PETER: No. I’ll pass on your offer as I will be helping a friend out for the next few weeks and after that I’ll be back to work. Your reply did however leave me somewhat mystified as to why you have riled against actualists for ‘not caring’ when you so freely admit to not caring yourself. The reason I say this is that you obviously care about actualism because you devote a good deal of your own time sitting at the computer passionately riling against actualists. If you don’t care about the suffering that human beings inflict upon themselves (and each other) then why do you care whether or not other people are trying to do something about bringing an end to the malice and sorrow they find in themselves? Why should this bother you so? The inquisitional zeal that you exhibit on this mailing list belies your avowed ‘care less’ attitude, does it not?
RESPONDENT to Richard: You promise ... RICHARD: This flesh and blood body made no ‘promise’ anywhere at all in
the above (or elsewhere for that matter) ... and, as the pure consciousness experience (PCE) provides a practical demonstration of life sans
identity in toto, no such pledge is even needed (let alone made). RESPONDENT to Richard: What do you call these little statements taken directly from your website:
RESPONDENT: So you haven’t ‘promised’ ....you have instead ‘guaranteed’ .... well excuse me for the mis-representation. And as far as ‘within a remarkably short time’ .... how short is short? Are we talking thousands of years or within one lifetime, or 2 years, 5 years? perhaps 10 years? ??? PETER: And yet Richard did not make these statements, a fact which makes the current tack you are taking pointless. As the author of the statements, I would be more than happy to discuss the issues you raise … should you want to, that is.
RESPONDENT to Richard: You promise ... RICHARD to No 58: This flesh and blood body made no ‘promise’ anywhere
at all in the above (or elsewhere for that matter) ... and, as the pure consciousness experience (PCE) provides a practical demonstration of life
sans identity in toto, no such pledge is even needed (let alone made). RESPONDENT to Richard: What do you call these little statements taken directly from your website:
So you haven’t ‘promised’ ... you have instead ‘guaranteed’ ... well excuse me for the mis-representation. And as far as ‘within a remarkably short time’ ... how short is short? Are we talking thousands of years or within one lifetime, or 2 years, 5 years? perhaps 10 years? ??? PETER: And yet Richard did not make these statements, a fact which makes the current tack you are taking pointless. As the author of the statements, I would be more than happy to discuss the issues you raise … should you want to that is. RESPONDENT: Words like guarantee and within a remarkably short period of time are strong words. PETER: At the time I wrote these words I was talking of my own experience only, yet in the short time since then there are now a number of people who have discovered that the method to become free of malice and sorrow is devastatingly simple once one has unearthed the required ingredients necessary for it to be effective … and a few of these people have even dared to report their successes on this mailing list. And not only that but nowadays there are also a number of people who have reported tangible successes in becoming free of malice and sorrow in a remarkably short period of time … and a few of these people have even dared to report their successes on this mailing list. That you persist in maintaining a head-in-the-sand attitude to these reports only serves to illustrate your No 58-knows-best (because UG Krishnamurti says nothing-can-be-done) stance on this mailing list. RESPONDENT: Marketing and advertising terms. PETER: What a terrible thing to speak openly and enthusiastically about the discovery of a do-it-yourself method to eliminate malice and sorrow, eh? What an effrontery that I should have used such strong words at the time given that they were based on only a handful of successes at the time? How dare I be so naive as to go on to propose that the spreading of actualism will one day mean that war, rape, murder, torture, child abuse, domestic violence, corruption, despotism and so on will be remembered as things of the past? And yet at the same time you criticize me, you are yourself busily marketing and advertising your
do-nothing method RESPONDENT: Anyways, feel free to explain your usage if you feel like it, for me, you or the viewing audience. PETER: I have never needed an invitation to explain the workings and outcome of actualism, but thanks anyway(s).
RESPONDENT: Actualism is dead ... Richard can’t keep up the charade no more ... everyone go home ... t’was fun while it lasted tried, flailed ... & ultimately failed PETER: Far from dead, t’is alive and flourishing. RESPONDENT: Oh well ... NEXT !! PETER: What is ‘NEXT’ is in fact available right now … the first two DVDs in what will be a
series of DVDs entitled ‘Conversations about the Human Condition and how to become free of it’.
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