RESPONDENT No 23: Dimlogicism

In fact it is a variation on dimwitticism (coined by Peter if I recall that word correctly) so... what is the art of dimlogicism, basically an exercise in linguistic mathematical naivety and/or naive linguistic mathematics or/and mathematical naive linguistics.

PETER to No 23: I think you will find that there is already an appropriate word that applies to the subject matter you were addressing – mentalism.

Mentalism is a particularly chronic form of self-indulgence and one that mostly afflicts the males of the species. I have an actualist friend who finds a good deal of the conversation on this mailing list to be bewildering and lacking in common sense.  I point out to her that this is how men think, by and large, and have done for thousands of years – they persist in trying to make a philosophy out of the utterly simple and entirely down-to-earth business of being alive. Peter to No 23, 13.7.2004

RESPONDENT: You close your eyes to complexity and call it simplicity. Fun game isn’t it? It has all kinds of other applications too!

PETER: My investigations into my own psyche – the human condition in action as ‘me’ – led me to understand that I was merely inculcated into believing that life is full of complexities. As such it took a good deal of effort to get in touch with my naiveté such that I could firstly intellectually understand and then experience the utter simplicity of doing the business of being alive.

Here is a bit from my journal that is relevant to your comment. One of the particular events that twigged me to the utter simplicity of being what I am was making breakfast one morning and realizing that I had done this about 17,000 times in my lifetime and would continue to do so until I died – that, after all, the doing of everyday events such as this are what being alive is actually about.

[Peter]: ... ‘Since I met Richard I have been challenging the very act of believing itself, and I am actively dismantling the beliefs that I find so as to strip away the veil of misery and sorrow, which they maintain and constantly reinforce. No longer seeing the world through grey or rose coloured glasses, no longer with my head in the sand or in the clouds, means that I am different from other people. I actually experience the world as it is as a near-perfect place (except for human beings, of course). It requires no belief, faith, hope or trust to see that this is the case; the physical universe simply is perfect, pristine, pure, infinite, and happening this very moment. Human beings have just been programmed, socially and instinctually, into believing that this is not so. This programming consists of the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire that we are born with, overlaid with the beliefs we have been indoctrinated with since birth – in total called the Human Condition.

Further the advice of parents, teachers, priests, gurus, philosophers – indeed all of the human Wisdom – is founded on the belief that you can’t change Human Nature. Not only is life on earth a sick joke, but there is no cure possible! The Mother of all beliefs!

	It is only a belief-system, but it is very insidious. It creates an imaginary world, made of beliefs, that is so dense, so elaborate and so convincing that it seems real. But it is not actual or factual. And when one first peeks through a crack in the door out from this world it can look overwhelming fearful – that is why it takes sincere intent and a certain courage to tackle the journey out. The essential thread for me was having had a significant pure consciousness experience in which I had experienced an absence of ‘self’, and where I actually experienced the delight, ease and magic purity of this planet. I think most people have had similar experiences at some times in their life and these glimpses of such a startling potential sent so many to the East in the first place.
	But then, of course, with the newly acquired ‘spiritual’ beliefs firmly in place any subsequent experiences became spiritual in nature – and I’ve had a few in my time. I am not talking about the fickle feelings of bliss, love, beauty, or oneness experienced in an altered state of consciousness. Here I am talking about a direct experience of the actual physical world of people, events and things as they physically are – be it an ashtray, a sunset, a rainy day, talking to the cashier at the bank, the bedroom ceiling, going to work on a Monday, getting a flat tyre, doing nothing or something, having breakfast for the 17,000th time – in short, everything and anything actual. The world of people, events and things – not the world of imagination.
	By seeing the facts of what it is to be a human being I now associate with people in an entirely new way. Gone is the need for ‘friends’ to share my sorrow with. Gone is the need to be part of a ‘group’ as a protection from imaginary fears, or for the sharing of common beliefs. Gone is the need for someone to look after me, someone to care and support me. I have no need for love as a temporary bridge to overcome the feelings of loneliness and separation. I have always been on my own and looked after myself very well in my life, and people have simply come and gone, for varying periods of time and involvement. It’s only that now I don’t have any pretences or bargains, where I do something for someone only in return for their helping me. Now if someone does something for me it is an unexpected bonus and if I do something for someone else it is a pleasure, freely given.

I am, for the first time, beginning to live my own life, not someone else’s. The bargains, bonds, deals, clinging and neediness have all but disappeared. I now regard allowing freedom, as far superior to giving love, with its accompanying needs and expectations. To allow anyone I meet to be free of me, as I am free of them. A free association. I am now able to enjoy and delight in the company of my fellow human beings for as long as is appropriate. It may be rather constantly with Vineeto, or briefly with the check-out girl at the local supermarket. However, I am under no illusion, and know that the essential nature of people is malicious and sorrowful; in fact, now it is even more obvious to me, so well do I now know the Human Condition. I am now free to take people as I find them, without investment or expectation, suspicion or competition, attack or defence. Consequently my interactions are invariably delightful and interesting. I harbour no hidden suspicions or doubts, fears, secrets or ulterior motives – those feelings we usually label as ‘intuition’. What you see is sincerely what you get. It is such a relief not to have to battle it out or herd together with others in order to ‘survive’.

What I have found is that this is the only game to play in town, and it’s called actually becoming happy and harmless, not just pretending or avoiding. I become more free incrementally, as each belief is replaced with the facts. If something pops up that is preventing my happiness or causing me to be harmful to others right now then I have something else to look at. And I simply work my way through the list… Then the day will eventually come when being happy and harmless is my very nature, rather than being malicious and sorrowful, as is Human Nature. Only then it will be effortless – once my part is done.’ Peter’s Journal, People

 

It is indeed a wide and wondrous path to freedom.

16.1.2005

RESPONDENT to No 32: You live in the actual world too, you have access to the primary source. It’s all around you and within you.

PETER: Ah, right on cue, yet another teacher enters stage left, propagating yet another version of an imaginary/mythical overarching power/force/energy – in this case ‘the primary source’.

RESPONDENT to No 32: I already live in the actual world (there is only one after all), and that world includes my feeling responses to it. They belong here.

PETER: This statement makes it perfectly clear that you do not live in the actual world but that you live in a world that is tainted and distorted by your own affective responses – that which is commonly experienced as being grim reality.

RESPONDENT to No 32: ‘I have had a number of ‘major PCEs’ myself, …

PETER: That someone who claims to have had a number of major PCEs should firstly continue to believe in a ‘primary source’, secondly be so content with remaining trapped within the confines of their own affective world that they recommend it to others and lastly eagerly join in the latest beat-up on this list in order to champion the continuation of sorrow – sadness, unhappiness, grief, misery, distress, heartache, heartbreak, anguish, suffering, pain, woe, affliction, wretchedness, dejection, heaviness of heart, desolation, depression, disconsolateness, mourning and the like – leaves me dumfounded.

I’d suggest taking the time to read up on actualism in order that you at least get a basic inkling of what an actual freedom from the human condition is if you want your claims to have at least a smidgeon of credibility on this mailing list.

RESPONDENT to No 32: I’m participating in a discussion list and suggesting that some of its members are full of bullshit.

PETER: Over the years we have had many people who have come to this mailing list with this motive. It appears that for whatever personal reasons they are moved to fabricate distortions, concoct falsehoods, contrive exaggerations, broadcast innuendo, disseminate gossip, seed insinuations, create suspicion, encourage ambiguity, cast aspersions and, if that doesn’t work, revert to rudeness and even hostility, apparently for the sole reason of preventing other people from deciding for themselves as to whether or not they are interested in actualism or to cut them down a peg or two should they be so bold as to declare that they are interested in actualism. You are not the first to play this game, nor will you be the last, because there are currently in excess of 6 billion souls on this planet with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo of the current human condition.

Speaking personally, when I came across the challenge that is actualism, I could find nothing at all worthy of defending in the human condition – neither could I justify anger nor could I champion sorrow – which is, in hindsight, why I chose to devote my life to becoming happy and harmless.

17.1.2005

RESPONDENT: You live in the actual world too, you have access to the primary source. It’s all around you and within you.

PETER: Ah, right on cue, yet another teacher enters stage left, propagating yet another version of an imaginary/ mythical overarching power/ force/ energy – in this case ‘the primary source’.

RESPONDENT: FYI, ‘primary source’ is a well known term (especially in historical works) which refers to getting information from original artefacts, as opposed to interpretative works. It corresponds to the the colloquialism ‘getting it straight from the horse’s mouth’ which in this case meant simply: world, life. I am confident that No 32 understood this. No mystical/mythical meaning was intended. You probably assumed I was using the world ‘source’ as mystics and scientologists use it. Not so.

PETER: Okay. So the primary source has two meanings for you: one is ‘world’ and the other is ‘life’. Given that you have said that ‘that world includes my feeling responses to it’ (see below), are you not saying in effect that sometimes you feel angry towards the world, sometimes you feel sad about the world, sometimes you feel alienated from the world, sometimes you feel disenchanted with the world, sometimes you are bored with the world (that is ‘all around you and within you’) and so on?

The reason I am asking is that I can recall thinking that this was very odd, particularly as I was one of over 6 billion people on the planet doing exactly the same thing – living in a world whose very qualities warped according to my own fickle feelings. It then became obvious to me that everyone is in effect living in a world of their own making world – that there are currently over 6 billion affective beings busily superimposing their own affective worlds over the actual world of clouds, trees, rivers, oceans, beaches, mountains, cities, towns and villages. What you are referring to as being ‘the primary source’ may well be primary for you … but it is, in fact, only one of over 6 billion ‘secondary’ sources.

In the interest of discussing your other definition of the term primary source – life – perhaps you could explain what you mean by the word ‘life’ as you are using it in this case, as it has several distinct meanings. When you do so I will be more than happy to redefine what it is that you are teaching on this list.

RESPONDENT: I already live in the actual world (there is only one after all), and that world includes my feeling responses to it. They belong here.

PETER: This statement makes it perfectly clear that you do not live in the actual world but that you live in a world that is tainted and distorted by your own affective responses – that which is commonly experienced as being grim reality.

*

RESPONDENT: ‘I have had a number of ‘major PCEs’ myself, …

PETER: That someone who claims to have had a number of major PCEs should firstly continue to believe in a ‘primary source’, secondly be so content with remaining trapped within the confines of their own affective world that they recommend it to others and lastly eagerly join in the latest beat-up on this list in order to champion the continuation of sorrow – sadness, unhappiness, grief, misery, distress, heartache, heartbreak, anguish, suffering, pain, woe, affliction, wretchedness, dejection, heaviness of heart, desolation, depression, disconsolateness, mourning and the like – leaves me dumfounded.

I’d suggest taking the time to read up on actualism in order that you at least get a basic inkling of what an actual freedom from the human condition is if you want your claims to have at least a smidgeon of credibility on this mailing list.

RESPONDENT: [snipped arguments based on misinterpretation of ‘primary source’]

PETER: I am more than happy to rephrase my observation as you have failed to address the more pertinent issues I raised (more pertinent in that they relate directly to the thrust of your own current participation on this mailing list) –

[Peter]: That someone who claims to have had a number of major PCEs should continue to be so content with remaining trapped within the confines of their own affective world that they recommend it to others and not only that but eagerly join in the latest beat-up on this list in order to champion the continuation of sorrow – sadness, unhappiness, grief, misery, distress, heartache, heartbreak, anguish, suffering, pain, woe, affliction, wretchedness, dejection, heaviness of heart, desolation, depression, disconsolateness, mourning and the like – leaves me dumfounded.

I’d suggest taking the time to read up on actualism in order that you at least get a basic inkling of what an actual freedom from the human condition is if you want your claims to have at least a smidgeon of credibility on this mailing list. [endquote].

*

RESPONDENT: I’m participating in a discussion list and suggesting that some of its members are full of bullshit.

PETER: Over the years we have had many people who have come to this mailing list with this motive. It appears that for whatever personal reasons they are moved to fabricate distortions, concoct falsehoods, contrive exaggerations, broadcast innuendo, disseminate gossip, seed insinuations, create suspicion, encourage ambiguity, cast aspersions and, if that doesn’t work, revert to rudeness and even hostility, apparently for the sole reason of preventing other people from deciding for themselves as to whether or not they are interested in actualism or to cut them down a peg or two should they be so bold as to declare that they are interested in actualism. You are not the first to play this game, nor will you be the last, because there are currently in excess of 6 billion souls on this planet with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo of the current human condition.

RESPONDENT: [snipped arguments based on misinterpretation of ‘primary source’]

PETER: A snip too hastily snipped. The observation I made related solely to the motivations, tactics and ploys of a vocal minority who currently participate and have participated in the past on this discussion list – it was not based on the personal beliefs, philosophies, viewpoints or teachings of the correspondents in question.

*

PETER: Speaking personally, when I came across the challenge that is actualism, I could find nothing at all worthy of defending in the human condition – neither could I justify anger nor could I champion sorrow – which is, in hindsight, why I chose to devote my life to becoming happy and harmless.

RESPONDENT: You aim to do this by eliminating your biologically and socially inherited ‘self’. I think your solution is too drastic, like a guillotine for a headache. I still think it may be possible to grow out of the worst of the human condition. That’s the path I choose.

PETER: The point I was making is that you have currently chosen, like many people in the past, to participate on this mailing list in order to make the point, by dubious means and in unambiguous terms, that those who have chosen, or are interested in, a more drastic solution – tackling the root cause of human malice and sorrow – are ‘full of bullshit’.

And in reply you tell me that you think it may be possible for you to grow out of the worst of the human condition. May I ask – do you have a time frame in mind as to when you think this might happen?

28.7.2005

RESPONDENT: Just a quick note to No 16 & No 32. Have to go guys, can’t stick around to respond to follow-ups. Catch you another time perhaps.

PETER: Let me see if I have got this right. In this your latest brief posting to this mailing list you stated –

[Respondent]: The only thing that really makes sense to me is to enjoy living here on earth to the utmost, without harming anyone or depriving other people of opportunities to be happy. This is not unlike the ‘wide and wondrous path’ I guess, except that I try to keep both eyes open and do my own exploring. Hey wake up 28.7.2005 11:28AM AEST

and yet you also took the opportunity to make the following observations about (unnamed) members of this mailing list –

[Respondent]: (Aside: this mailing list behaves in virtually the same way as any other social group; it has its social climbers and its politicians. You know who you are) ;-) Hey wake up 28.7.2005 11:28AM AEST

Indeed you began this latest two-day long hit-and-run raid with the following response to No 32’s question –

[Respondent No 32]: Hey, what’s this list mission? ... to share information about experiences or to experience the information presented?

[Respondent]: Here are some alternative suggestions ( :

a) To provide a forum in which a handful of hitherto insignificant people can enjoy presenting themselves as trail-blazing pioneers on [what they fantasise is] a vitally important mission for humankind. Failures and nobodies on the spiritual circuit are thereby magically transformed into world-leading experts in this, the most important enterprise ever undertaken by a human being, alive or dead. (‘Good hey?’)

b) Provide opportunities for these exalted ones to indiscriminately dismiss the entirety of human aspiration and human history, and to present ... themselves ... as models of the new post-human excellence.

c) To allow a few lost sheep to huddle together and convince themselves that they’re really onto something this time, even though, as you well know, nothing significant is happening to any of them.

d) To ask questions and offer answers in order to figure out why it isn’t working as advertised.

e) To provide a forum in which other people can pretend that it *is* working as advertised (presumably deriving some satisfaction from being counted among the folks on the hill). ‘tis pitiful in the extreme, but the motive is transparently obvious: better in fantasy than not at all. [emphasis added] Hey wake up 27.7.2005 5:54PM AEST

I am left bemused as to why someone who claims that that it ‘really makes sense to me [is] to enjoy living here on earth to the utmost, without harming anyone or depriving other people of opportunities to be happy’ should deliberately sit down and take the time and make the effort to write to this particular mailing list making disparaging comments about other (unnamed) members of this mailing list and to make derogatory comments about their reported happiness and harmlessness?

Whilst there have been a myriad of comments of this type over the years, your next statement is a doosey –

[Respondent]: This is not unlike the ‘wide and wondrous path’ I guess, except that I try to keep both eyes open and do my own exploring. Hey wake up 28.7.2005 11:28AM AEST

Whatever path it is that you think you are on, if your posts to this list are any guide then it is clear that your own particular path does not at all negate making cheap pot shots at your fellow human beings.

I always find it curious when people come across the actualism writings, obviously feel some attraction to what is being said in that they subscribe to this mailing list and hang around, but then desperately try to distance themselves from what is on offer by stubbornly insisting they have to do it ‘their way’ – all the while blithely ignoring the fact that this mailing list is an open forum whereby anyone is free to share with their fellow human beings their discoveries about the human condition and their successes in becoming free of various aspects of it as well as learn from the successes of others. In short given the option of openness, sharing and co-operation many choose to bunker down, clam up and close ranks.

Why anyone would let the feeling of pride stand in the way of their becoming happy and harmless by learning from others is beyond me. Pride was one of the first feelings I found I had to throw out the window – it’s such nonsense to deliberately attempt to puff up one’s ‘self’, particularly when one knows – deep down inside – that ‘I’ am the sole cause of all my problems and all my woes.

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