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Peter’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List Correspondent No 71
RESPONDENT: I came across the actual freedom mailing list as I searched google.com for the phrase ‘left my guru’. I find it a very interesting website and many of the conversation threads (as presented as digests) are quite revealing. <….> I hope to learn from interactions on this list. PETER: Welcome to The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List. As you have apparently already discovered, the Actual Freedom website is the Actual Freedom Trust’s chosen means of making available the writings of actualism – the means to a virtual freedom from malice and sorrow which is the prerequisite to an actual freedom from the human condition. This mailing list was set up in response to a request to establish a forum in order for those who are interested in the writings to be able to discuss the issues raised and for those who are intrepid enough to put actualism in practice in their daily lives to swap notes as it were The reason I say this is that many people have come to this mailing list having read very little of what is written on the website and have not bothered to take the time or make the effort to understand how iconoclastic and radical actualism is. As such, I do recommend ‘doing your homework’ if you are interested in actualism – I know I had to read Richard’s Journal (the only writing available at the time) many times before I was capable of understanding it such that I could read it, not with blinkered eyes and preconceived mindset, but with clear eyes and a curious mind. When I did this, the facts spoke for themselves … and the facts in turn gave me the confidence to abandon the mind-numbing strictures of religion and spirituality – loyalty, faith, trust and hope. And ridding myself of these shackles was the essential precursor to beginning to becoming free from malice and sorrow … and as this process gained momentum I correspondingly found that I incrementally became free of the putative antidotal passions to malice and sorrow – love and compassion. As to the brief history of your searchings you have posted, I can relate to a good deal of it although I personally was indoctrinated into Western societal conditioning and not Eastern. You may well find my journal interesting reading as it documents not only a bit of my own history but also how the serendipitous discovery of actualism gave ‘my’ life impetus, direction and meaning.
RESPONDENT: ‘Beyond’ clearly means on the same path. PETER: Why do you assume that ‘beyond clearly means on the same path’? The Oxford Dictionary gives the following definitions of the word beyond –
When Richard uses the word beyond as in ‘beyond enlightenment’ he is obviously using the word as meaning ‘Surpassing or exceeding in quality or quantity; superior to; more than with’ along with ‘outside the limit of; out of the reach, comprehension, or range of; not subject to’. RESPONDENT: If that is the case, why is actual freedom, a state which lies ‘beyond’ spiritual enlightenment (according to Richard) ‘180 degrees opposite’ to enlightenment. PETER: Given that it is not ‘the case’, one only needs to read the writings of actualists to know that Enlightenment, a permanent state of dissociation from the world-as-it-is, with people as-they-are, is the antithesis of being happy and harmless in the world-as-it-is, with people as-they-are. Enlightenment and an actual freedom from the human condition are worlds apart – 180 degrees opposite. If you want the difference spelt out in detail, I recommend reading RESPONDENT: As enlightenment is an extinguishing of the ego, isn’t that a pre-cursor of the total annihilation of the psychic entity. PETER: My own experience of the altered state of consciousness commonly known as Enlightenment is that it is not an extinguishing of ego but it is a delusion whereby one’s personal identity is transformed into an impersonal grandiose identity. Having experienced this myself there is no way that I am going to become Enlightened – integrity, sensibility and sincerity stand in the way of such a calamity. RESPONDENT: And if so, is it enlightenment that is to be condemned or the stopping at that stage and not going further towards psychic self-immolation? PETER: Even before I came across actualism I was suss of the revered Godmen and Godesses – I was sucked in by the lure of their message but the end product in terms of how they lived their lives and how they treated their fellow human beings was far less appealing. When I became an actualist I passed through a phase of being angry at these charlatans and snake-oil sellers who prey upon the hearts and minds of their fellow human beings in return for their adulation and worship, particularly as the whole idea of having fellow human beings as fawning disciples never sat well with me. However, the more I became happy being here, the less interest I had in the beliefs and passions of others, hence I no longer condemn Enlightenment, or those who pursue it – indulging in any spiritual belief whatsoever is just a very silly way of wasting one’s time. RESPONDENT: On a relative scale, isn’t enlightenment a better state than the normal state of fearing and scheming and conniving and killing others? PETER: On a relative scale of comparing degrees of the carnage that following one’s instinctual passions can produce, I have read that Nazi officers who witnessed the Nanking slaughter by Japanese soldiers – soldiers who followed the common Eastern religious belief that ‘I am not the body’ – where appalled at the utter callousness of this belief put into action. The following excerpts may well be of interest –
But why bother about ‘relative scales’ within the human condition when it is obvious that there is something rotten at the very core of the human condition – something so fundamental that everyone is busy either denying it, turning away from it, covering it up, fervently hoping that ‘Good’ will triumph over ‘Evil’ or frenetically praying that there is a life after death. RESPONDENT: It may not deliver the goods totally but I don’t think it delivers nothing at all. PETER: Indeed, the whole pursuit of Enlightenment has ensures that billions of people in the East have remained in denial of the animal instinctive roots of the human condition and have avidly practiced dissociation, all in the hope of ending up in la-la-land – and this malaise is now infecting the West at an astounding rate. This worldwide obsession with Eastern religion and philosophy has delivered a New Dark Age – this time around based on the morals, ethics and superstitions of pantheism as distinct from monotheism. RESPONDENT: After all the only person who has so far achieved actual freedom arrived their stage ‘through’ enlightenment. PETER: And that same person has made it abundantly clear that it would be utterly silly for anyone to follow in his footsteps. RESPONDENT: Is it not possible that the way to actual freedom lies through enlightenment for all? PETER: No. It stands to reason that it is much easier to come to one’s senses from the condition of being a relatively normal human being than from being trapped in a delusionary state, whereby all of one’s passions are aggrandized. RESPONDENT: Why is it that others should avoid treading the same path? PETER: I can’t speak for others but integrity, sincerity and common sense are my reasons for avoiding Enlightenment. RESPONDENT: Whether it is easier to be actually free without being enlightened must be an open question as no one else has become actually free till date. PETER: Your statement makes no sense to me given that the only person thus far to become actually free has reported that there is an easier and more direct way – and he is speaking with the benefit of hindsight. Your post leaves me wondering whether you have any particular personal experience to draw upon in making such a definitive statement to your fellow correspondents on this mailing list … or are you just mounting a defence for the status quo, in this case the revered state of Enlightenment?
RESPONDENT: What is it that makes one want to conform to an ideal way of life, what is it that makes one want to imitate someone whom one considers as wise or more experienced? PETER: Speaking personally of my early years of adulthood, on those once rare occasions when I could sit back and contemplate on the state of my life, I often thought that I would like to be free of the lot of it. I had no idea that is was possible at the time so the best I could do was to be on the look-out for better ways of living in order that I could at least be less resentful of my lot in life and more able to be happy. Part of this being on the look-out was to assess how other people lived their lives. One of these checking out exercises that comes to mind was that I came across an architect who also was a builder and I liked his lifestyle as well as the way he did business and I liked how he was with the people he dealt with in his business. As soon as the opportunity presented itself, I unabashedly ‘imitated’ his way of working simply because it made good sense to me. In my spiritual years, I found no one who I would have liked to ‘imitate’ or emulate – I eventually came to see that Mohan Rajneesh was nought but an Indian God-man, a self-aggrandized snake-oil seller and this was made even clearer after his death when I realized that I had been suckered into yet another ‘olde time religion’ albeit of the Eastern variety. A few other gurus followed before I finally came to understand that there was nothing in any of the revered gurus, God-men or Pundits that I wanted to emulate – I didn’t like how they treated their followers, I didn’t like how they treated their women and I didn’t like their lifestyle. When I came across Richard, I quite naturally assumed he was of the same ilk as the spiritual gurus – it takes a while to come to fully understand that actualism is diametrically opposite to spiritualism – so I was particularly interested in how he was with other people, how his lifestyle was and how he was with his companion. Once I had established that he was totally free of both malice and sorrow, I knew that he was indeed the genuine article and I soon found myself compelled to emulate the freedom he lived as an ongoing 24/7 experience. RESPONDENT: Isn’t it an attempt to exalt oneself? PETER: I discovered that to want to imitate those who have risen to the top in the spiritual world is certainly an attempt to exalt oneself – or more precisely to seek the exaltation of others – after all spiritualism is, at root, all about self-aggrandizement. Actualism on the other hand is all about becoming happy and harmless and provided one fully commits oneself to the process one inevitable discovers that ‘I’ am rotten at core through no fault of mine – hardly the stuff worth exalting. RESPONDENT: These days, whenever I write or think something, Richard’s observations seem to be the controlling factor. I hesitate to use the words ‘love’ and ‘feelings’ in a positive way and I am all for ‘benevolence’ and ‘caring’ and ‘investigation’ ... PETER: Yeah. I found myself doing the same thing, simply because it made sense to no longer follow the herd of my fellow human beings who were all busy complaining about being here, blaming others for the universally-perceived ills of humanity, cherishing their capacity for feeling sad and being proud of their righteous anger. RESPONDENT: And I can see this same trait exists to a massive extent in Vineeto, and No 66, for example. PETER: I remember at one stage having to tackle the perversity of my feeling guilty about feeling happy when all those about me obviously liked to wallow in the bitter-sweet feeling of sorrow, who thought they were actually doing something for others by feeling sad for them, who saw it as their right to feel angry and who liked to share their feeling of anger and resentment with other like-feeling people. RESPONDENT: There must be something sinister in human psyche which repeatedly leads to such states of affairs. PETER: I do understand that many people will feel it sinister that some people will want to devote their lives to becoming both happy and harmless … but then again, those same people are very often those who make a virtue of feeling sad and of being angry. RESPONDENT: As I look at my own past, it has been a succession of buying into a thought-system and then leaving it for something else. PETER: Yep. Many people I know never ever left the thought-system they were born into and yet others fondly look backwards to ancient thought-systems somehow imagining that archaic thinking has an intrinsic value simply because it is ancient. The important thing I found was whenever I discovered something didn’t make sense or that something didn’t work was not to stick with it but to leave it behind and move on until I found something that makes sense and that does work. It sounds as though you have done well in this regard. RESPONDENT: Non-violence, then J Krishnamurti, then Vipassana, then Vedanta, then Actualism (which is continuing at the moment). Each of them felt just right at the time. Each of them felt as if it was not a thought system, but the real way to live life happily. PETER: Yep. Life is indeed an adventure. There is a lot of chaff to sort through, a mountain of it. The human condition is such a vast construct that it takes a good deal of persistence and a good dose of daring to get to the bottom of it all. It has often felt to me that I am pulling myself out of treacle, so sticky and glue-like are the revered wisdoms of the real world. RESPONDENT: And I see many of my friends who are caught in a circle which I have long escaped from, but who knows, this actualism might also be another trap, another attempt at self-glorification. PETER: Perhaps what I wrote to No 60 might be worth repeating at this juncture –
RESPONDENT: What a nature humans are endowed with! PETER: And yet … the seeing of it – and acting on that seeing – is both the way and the means of becoming free of ‘human nature’. * PETER: I would like to add a note to this post about the very real difficulties of being a pioneer in this business of actualism. I have written that at the start I saw that the path to becoming free of the human condition in toto had a big sign hanging over it saying ‘Go Back! Do Not Enter Here!’ As I looked at it I could see that the sign had two facets to its meaning. One was that this was what everybody else says in that humanity has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo – the very notion of ‘humanity’ itself is given credence by the fact that human beings are essentially feeling beings, no matter that the most salient of these feelings are sorrow and malice. It stands to reason that to deliberately set one’s sights on eliminating these hallowed feelings of malice and sorrow – the very core feelings of humanity, of what it is to feel oneself to be human – is to be literally a traitor to one’s fellow human beings. In seeing this perversity clearly – and I can only call it a perversity – I also saw that this is no-one’s fault but that it is the inevitable result of an ongoing process that has seen matter become animate, aware of being animate and finally aware of being aware of being animate and that the present stage in this process is the eradication of the brutish survival passions in order that the next stage – a self-less sensuous apperception – can flourish. This clear seeing of the ‘big picture’ as it were helped me to assuage the gut-instinctual fear that I felt at the beginning of the path because I knew that a decision to fully commit my life to becoming actually happy and harmless would be the end of ‘me’. As I umm-ed and ahh-ed for a while, I realized that all ‘I’ could do was procrastinate because having come across the path and despite having read the warning sign, I had nowhere else to go. Turning back was not an option because I had well and truly walked the traditional paths and had found both materialism and spiritualism wanting, to say the least. So I went ahead … there was simply no way I could go back. I don’t know whether you can relate to my experience or whether it is even relevant to what you were saying about looking back on where you have travelled and wondering about what you have now discovered, but I thought to ‘put my two bob in’ as the saying goes in this part of the planet.
PETER: I would like to comment on something you said to Richard as it is something that has confounded me about many of the correspondents that have come and gone on this mailing list over the years. RESPONDENT: Sensible discussions lead to clarifications, not to fighting and withdrawal of one party. PETER: Have you not noticed in your own experience that it requires all people involved in a discussion to be sensible in order for the discussion itself to be clarifying? There is a colloquial expression that goes something like ‘you can lead a horse to water but you can’t force it to drink’. RESPONDENT: Maybe it is the tenacity of the beliefs of the other person which lead to the final withdrawal and exasperation but is it too silly to consider that the conversational style might also be improved so as to not overwhelm the co-respondent with a barrage of cross-referencing, citations and lengthy arguments? PETER: Have you not noticed in your own experience that if a person tenaciously holds to their beliefs regardless of the facts of the matter then no matter what anyone else says and no matter how it is said, that person inevitably ends up engaging in impassioned argumentation as to who is right and who is wrong – and that the sole reason for this is because of the innate tendency of all human beings to tenaciously hold on to their beliefs? If you haven’t noticed this in your own experience then I suggest that you only need to take a clear look around you at the countless conflicts, large and small that are currently happening between human beings of all genders, in all cultures all over the planet and take note of the fact that these conflicts are invariably fought out over one belief or another. If you do so you might well notice that beliefs are the bane of humankind. RESPONDENT: I personally have found some of the arguments to become too involved for edification. Oft-times, there is also the sense in your words that ‘Admit first that you are wrong, only then we’ll proceed further.’ And in the effort to make the other admit that he is wrong, there is no stone that you’ll leave unturned. PETER: Have you not noticed that there is a seemingly endless queue of people who come onto this mailing list seemingly with the sole intent of proving Richard to be wrong by insisting that they are right? Have you ever considered why this is so – why it is so vitally important for people to find fault with Richard’s report that it is possible to radically and irrevocable change human nature, to finally bring an end to human malice and to human sorrow? Personally I never adopted this confrontational head-butting ‘I-am-right-and-you-are-wrong’ attitude to Richard’s report about what he has discovered, let alone indulge in ‘let’s-take-him-down-a-peg-or-two’ ad hominem attacks. What I did was sit down, listen and read and if necessary ask a few questions pertinent to me in order to ascertain whether or not what he was saying about the human condition made sense or not. When I had satisfied myself that it did make sense – the explanation that it is the genetically-encoded instinctual passions that give rise to human malice and sorrow and not some mythical Evil force was a significant factor in deciding this for me – I then set out to experientially discover how the human condition operated in me as ‘me’. What followed was a flurry of admissions that I had got it wrong and through no fault of mine, I should add. The list of ‘I got it wrong’ was enormous to say the least.
I won’t go on as I think you have got my drift by now – I got it wrong in so many ways. What attracted me to actualism in the first place was that I had an experiential understanding – garnered over many years of living in different places on the planet in different cultures – that something was wrong as well as an experiential understanding that no-one had or ever has had a workable solution. When I first met Richard the one thing that that stuck in mind was that he had said ‘Everone’s got it 180 degrees wrong’ – and the reason it struck a chord was that it explained why despite humankind’s best efforts to date wars and torture and rapes and murders and child abuse and corruption and the like still plague humankind … and why there is no end in sight in that nobody had yet come up with a pragmatic solution to ending the suffering that human beings inflict upon each other and upon themselves. For whatever reason I wasn’t so arrogant as to see myself as being superior to, or different to, or separate from, the rest of humanity which is seemingly why I had few problems in admitting that I had got it wrong – that I had been sold a dummy, as Vineeto recently put it. And not only did I discover that I had got it wrong in so many ways but I was well pleased to discover that I had got it wrong. because each discovery meant that I became free of a particular belief I dearly held to be true and each of these freedoms moved me inexorably closer to being able to become free of the whole of the human condition. Why other people have such difficulty in admitting that they have got it wrong, when they are obviously not content with their life as-it-is – else why be on this mailing list in the first place – is quite frankly beyond me.
RESPONDENT: Comments from experienced actualists, including Richard, invited As it has been said at many places on the Actual Freedom Trust website that the self will do anything but agree to being happy and harmless, then the method to be happy and harmless doesn’t even come into the picture. PETER: This may well be your attitude to actualism but it certainly wasn’t my attitude. In fact, as I have written many times before, it is not a matter of not agreeing (or agreeing) to become happy and harmless – au contraire, I found the path to becoming happy and harmless has a big sign over it saying ‘Warning! Do Not Enter Here!’ Despite the warning I found that I had no alternative but to go down that path – after all I had already found that there was no way I could be happy and harmless whilst being a materialist (it’s a ‘dog eat dog’ world and I didn’t like eating ‘dog’ given that the dogs were my fellow human beings) and I found that there was no way that I could be happy and harmless in the spiritual world (it’s a guru vs. guru world and I didn’t like how the gurus were as men, I didn’t like how they treated there fellow human beings and I didn’t like their lifestyle). RESPONDENT: It is the dis-inclination of humans towards change, the inertia that is so pervasive, that is the reason that all solutions have failed and will continue to fail, even actualism. PETER: Am I to take it that you hold to the belief that you can’t change human nature? The question I asked myself when I came across actualism was why not? What occurred to me was that if the answer to that question was no, then that would have mean I held a deeply cynical view about the possibility of there ever being peace on earth between human beings – and that was a view that I, for one, refused to hold to. RESPONDENT: The very reason people are staying away and leaving in droves from Actual Freedom (that they are unwilling to work hard and dismantle their identities and fond feelings) could be the reason spirituality has failed to bring peace on earth in the last 3000-5000 years, to wit, disinclination of normal human beings to enquire into their reactions, to dismantle their beliefs and to be ready to diligently and individually go beyond the frontiers of humanity. PETER: Why you suggest that any spiritualist should berate themselves for the failure of spirituality to bring an end to human malice and sorrow is quite frankly beyond me. The reason spirituality has failed to bring peace on earth is because peace on earth is simply not part of spiritual belief – spiritual belief has it that peace is only possible after physical death in some imaginary other-world. RESPONDENT: When the spiritual teachers point out that the student is not being sincere enough, hard-working enough, the actualists blast the teacher considering the method to be itself flawed. PETER: Again the spiritual method is not flawed, it’s not the spiritual teachers that are at fault, it is the spiritual teachings – the mishmash of ancient fairy stories, pathetic homilies and fear-ridden superstitions together with the venerated state of delusion known as enlightenment – that are hopelessly flawed. RESPONDENT: But actualists have similar answers when asked by people on the list why the actualism method is not working for them: lack of interest, lack of sincerity, lack of sustained application of the method, and so on. PETER: Judging by the responses to actualism thus far, the reason why ‘the actualism method is not working for them’ is that those people are still desperately clinging to their spiritual beliefs. To put it bluntly, it is impossible to turn around and head off in an entirely new direction unless one stops doing what one has been habitually doing for years, turns around and heads off in an entirely new direction. Perhaps I can give you a prosaic example because this is after all a prosaic matter. About 7 years ago it occurred to me that the profession I was involved in was undergoing a radical change – it was moving out of the pre-industrial age of pen, ink and paper into the electronic age of computer-aided design. I was faced with the prospect of being a dinosaur architect or moving with the times. After umming and ahhing for a few months I bought myself a CAD program and proceeded to learn how to use it part time whilst still continuing to use my drawing board for my paid work. I soon found that it was an impossible situation. By clinging to my old way of doing things I was not only incapable of devoting enough time and attention to learning something totally new but I also realized that by clinging to my past ways of doing things I was only forestalling the inevitable. When I realized this, I gave away my drawing board and haven’t looked back since. It was exactly the same thing with actualism – only when I completely abandoned spiritualism (‘olde time religion’ by another name) could I really dedicate my time and attention to actualism such that I could begin to be able to see clearly how the human condition operates – both universally and as ‘me’. RESPONDENT: The tenacity of humans to their way of thinking, feeling and living is not a small factor to consider when evaluating the success or failure of any technique envisaged to bring liberation for man. PETER: I remember realizing one day towards the end of my spiritual years that millions upon millions upon millions of human beings had devoted their lives to the spiritual teachings – that the East was littered with monasteries that have been filled with monks for millennia all of whom have diligently practiced the teachings from dawn to dusk, every day of their lives from childhood to death. I was suddenly struck by the fact that if I really wanted to succeed in the spiritual world, if I really wanted spiritual liberation, then I would at least have to do the same – turn my back on the world completely, become celibate, eat brown rice, beg for my food from others and so and then, when I had achieved liberation, have people venerate and worship me for having done so. As you can gather, it was about this time that I started to become suss of the whole spiritual liberation/spiritual slavery game. Personally I had no trouble evaluating the failure of spiritual liberation simply because I spent years inside the spiritual world and I know it inside out, as it were. The failure of spirituality is not only an endemic failure, it is systemic failure – not only the techniques (meditation and/or prayer is method whereby one practices dissociation and indulges in imagination) but the aims (spiritual liberation means that one becomes enslaved to some mythical God or believes oneself to be the reincarnation of some mythical God) as well as the results (no peace on earth because the whole thrust of spiritualism is that peace is ultimately only possible after physical death). * I happened to be polishing up the ‘Introduction to Actual Freedom’ yesterday – we plan to include it as a PowerPoint presentation on the DVDs – and I was struck yet again by the fact that the divergent and disparate nature of spiritual belief itself inevitably produces competing and conflicting groups of human beings all of whom feel their particular belief, be it monotheist, henotheistic, pantheistic, polytheistic, agnostic, Eastern, Western or whatever, to be superior to the beliefs of other human beings. Given that this innate feeling of superiority/inferiority is an inevitable by product of the very act of believing itself, the best feeling one can muster towards one’s fellow human beings in these circumstances is a feeling of tolerance towards those who do not happen to share one’s own particular belief. To feel superior to, to feel tolerant of, to feel compassion for or to feel pity for one’s fellow human beings is far from a salubrious situation and a far cry from an actual peace and harmony between fellow human beings. Even more insidious is the fact that the much-lauded Eastern spirituality that is so fashionable these days has inferiority/superiority inbuilt such that it is manifest in many Eastern cultures as an inviolate caste system. The belief in reincarnation, karma, dharma and imperfect souls calcifies the belief that some people are born superior to others and some are born inferior to others and the appalling results of this belief can be plainly seen in many Eastern cultures. The inbred arrogance and cultured indifference of those who feel themselves to be born spiritually superior to those whom they believe, and who believe themselves, to be born spiritually inferior results in an entrenched inequity that can only be described as abysmal. The odd thing about now being able to so clearly see how and why spiritualism has failed and always will fail to bring peace on earth is that I couldn’t see this whilst I was consumed by spiritual belief. There is indeed no way to be able to clearly see the facts of the matter whilst holding to a belief that is contrary to the facts of the matter – belief does indeed make one blind as it were.
RESPONDENT: Cognitive dissonance can apply not just to people coming to understand a new paradigm, it can also happen to those who at the moment have committed themselves to that paradigm. PETER: I freely admit that I do have difficulty in understanding why people would have such difficulty in understanding a new paradigm but then again I do understand from personal experience that it is difficult, if not impossible, to understand something entirely new whilst still clinging to the past. RESPONDENT: It is quite remarkable how you have not understood the thrust of my message. PETER: Given that your post was entitled ‘the failure of spirituality or disinclination?’ I understood the thrust of your post was that human beings, as opposed to the spiritual teachings themselves, were to blame for the failure of spiritualism to bring an end to human malice and human sorrow. As such my response was to point out that the blame for the failure of spiritualism lies not with the followers but with the revered spiritual teachings themselves because the teachings are not at all concerned about peace on earth. I have re-read your response again and the phrase that I picked up on was your comment that –
And my point was that actualism is not any technique nor does it have anything at all to do with the old paradigm of spiritual liberation. Having explained why my apparent misunderstanding of the thrust of your message occurred (that which you call cognitive dissonance) – would you now explain what thrust of your message actually was? * RESPONDENT: Comments from experienced actualists, including Richard, invited As it has been said at many places on the Actual Freedom Trust website that the self will do anything but agree to being happy and harmless, then the method to be happy and harmless doesn’t even come into the picture. PETER: This may well be your attitude to actualism but it certainly wasn’t my attitude. RESPONDENT: Who is talking about attitudes here? All I am saying is that for one to start working towards peace and happiness, one has to, as it were, get off one’s butt and work hard at it. And since most people are ambivalent about inner work, the success or failure of a method (what one does after one gets off one’s butt) is immaterial at this stage. PETER: Okay. I thought you were also talking about your own attitude (as in – settled behaviour, as representing feeling or opinion; (also attitude of mind) settled mode of thinking), which is why I responded with a personal example – my own attitude with regard to making the decision to dedicate my life to becoming happy and harmless. Am I to take it that you were only talking about other people’s attitudes and not your own? * PETER: In fact, as I have written many times before, it is not a matter of not agreeing (or agreeing) to become happy and harmless – au contraire, I found the path to becoming happy and harmless has a big sign over it saying ‘Warning! Do Not Enter Here!’ RESPONDENT: Now that is being disingenuous. Despite the warnings, if you entered, that means the visions of success overshadowed the warnings. What I am saying is that most people don’t have the gumption to even move into anything other than their conditioned mind-set, be it spiritual discipline, actualism and so on. PETER: Far from being disingenuous I am talking about my own experience of actualism. The reason I mentioned feeling that there was a big warning sign was that I knew if I went down that path would be the end of ‘me’ – the feeling of fear was as if I was literally entering a tunnel from which their would be no return. At that stage I didn’t have ‘visions of success’ as you put it, rather a feeling of embarking on a path that led to oblivion. And yet despite the feeling, I did set off on the path and once I did so the fear of leaving the past behind was replaced with the thrill of discovery. The interesting thing about the feeling of fear of setting off in a new direction is that once you do wholeheartedly set off, the feeling of fear evaporates – fear is only a feeling after all. * PETER: Despite the warning I found that I had no alternative but to go down that path – after all I had already found that there was no way I could be happy and harmless whilst being a materialist (it’s a ‘dog eat dog’ world and I didn’t like eating ‘dog’ given that the dogs were my fellow human beings) … RESPONDENT: Okay, people who dedicate themselves to spirituality in order to find liberation would agree with you that the normal life of materialism is nought but suffering. (Just on a tangent here) Your teacher and perhaps yourself has no objection in eating his fellow creatures (e.g. cattle, chickens, et al). Why this selective liking of only your fellow-species? Oh, if you agree that violence is inevitable and one has to kill to eat anyway (the fond argument of your teacher), then when in crisis, I won’t be in the same room with you or your teacher because you might decide that at that moment killing your fellow human being is also sensible since you have to kill to eat anyway. PETER: This is definitely a tangent and a corny one at that. I presume you understand that when I talk of the dog-eat-dog world of materialism I mean that the current progenies of hunting and gathering humans still act as they have been genetically and socially programmed to do – they instinctually compete against other humans beings in a grim and ruthless battle of survival. The only difference being that what was once a brutal physical battle has now by-and-large become a brutal psychological and psychic battle (unless law and order breaks down that is and then the gloves are well and truly off and battle reverts to being a brutal physical battle for survival). As for my being a non-vegetarian, I see no reason why I should bow to the un-liveable highly selective
ethics What others choose to focus their time, energy and passion on is their business entirely. * PETER: … and I found that there was no way that I could be happy and harmless in the spiritual world (it’s a guru vs. guru world and I didn’t like how the gurus were as men, … RESPONDENT: I agree. PETER: I didn’t like how they treated their fellow human beings and I didn’t like their lifestyle). RESPONDENT: Perhaps a different viewpoint might be in order here: I guess you couldn’t stay away from sex and women, is that it? PETER: No. Your guess is wrong. I’ve written many a time that the reason I sought out a female companion after coming across actualism was that I wanted to prove that it was possible for me to live with at least one other person in utter peace and harmony, something I had failed to do previously. RESPONDENT: I say that because at the beginning of your actualist career, you proposed to a woman whom you found physically attractive (you didn’t consider your sexual instincts to be a hindrance to happiness then, did you?). PETER: Of course not. I started where I started – a normal bloke with a full set of instinctual passions intact, both the ones I proudly wore on my sleeve as a badge of honour and the ones I repressed and shamefully hid away from others. The very reason I chose to find a female human companion and not a male human companion was that I am heterosexual by nature and as such I was attracted to the proposition of being able to get to the root of my sexual predatory nature such that I could become free of its insidiousness. Besides which I always thought the Eastern approach of avoiding the temptations of the pleasure of sexual play, not to mention avoiding the difficulties of living with one other person in peace and harmony, was, to put it bluntly, a wank. * RESPONDENT: It is the dis-inclination of humans towards change, the inertia that is so pervasive, that is the reason that all solutions have failed and will continue to fail, even actualism. PETER: Am I to take it that you hold to the belief that you can’t change human nature? RESPONDENT: If you choose to read my sentence that way, that is certainly your choice. However, I clearly mention the word dis-inclination and not im-possibility is the reason why solutions continue to fail. PETER: Again, I thought you were talking personally rather than generally which is why I responded with a personal question to you and a personal answer from me. I’ve already said why the traditional solutions within the human condition fail and will continue to fail to bring an end to human malice and sorrow and I have already indicated that I chose to try something new. As I understand it, you are proposing that the reasons all the (traditional) solutions continue to fail is solely because humans are disinclined to change? If so, my response is that it is the traditional solutions that are wanting, not human beings per se. * PETER: [Am I to take it that you hold to the belief that you can’t change human nature?] The question I asked myself when I came across actualism was why not? What occurred to me was that if the answer to that question was no, then that would have mean I held a deeply cynical view about the possibility of there ever being peace on earth between human beings – and that was a view that I, for one, refused to hold to RESPONDENT: Have you been fundamentally able to change your nature since you started practicing actualism? Has your ego been demolished? Has your being been extirpated? PETER: I have had this question put to me many times over the years and whilst it is often asked as a way of denigrating my efforts of investigating my feelings, emotions and passions and of abandoning my beliefs and becoming as happy and harmless as humanly possible, it nevertheless is a fair question given that ‘I’ sill remain in existence. The only reason I can come up with as to why this is so is that becoming virtually free from malice and sorrow is relatively easy compared to taking the final step into an actual freedom from the human condition in toto – curiously enough, the same warning sign ‘Do not enter here’ – only this time the warning is purely instinctual. * RESPONDENT: The very reason people are staying away and leaving in droves from Actual Freedom (that they are unwilling to work hard and dismantle their identities and fond feelings) could be the reason spirituality has failed to bring peace on earth in the last 3000-5000 years, to wit, disinclination of normal human beings to enquire into their reactions, to dismantle their beliefs and to be ready to diligently and individually go beyond the frontiers of humanity. PETER: Why you suggest that any spiritualist should berate themselves for the failure of spirituality to bring an end to human malice and sorrow is quite frankly beyond me. RESPONDENT: Why you berate your fellow actualists for not practising sincerely enough comes in the same bucket, doesn’t it? PETER: Hmmm. Perhaps you could give me an example of my berating my ‘fellow actualists’ for not practicing sincerely enough. I readily admit to not being tolerant of dissociative practices, spiritual or metaphysical beliefs, philosophical ponderances and the like – I didn’t tolerate them in me which is why I have been able to come to my senses, so why should I give succour and support to any correspondent who comes to this mailing list trotting out the same old failed practices and wisdoms, no matter what version they are hawking? I would not be doing anyone a favour by supporting beliefs that do nothing but continue the mayhem and misery of the human condition on a mailing list dedicated to discussing the way and means of becoming free of the human condition. I found that only a scrupulous attention worked for me in order that I could make sense of the instinctual nature of the human condition and it is this need for scrupulous attention of one’s own beliefs and one’s own feelings, emotions and passions that I am attempting to pass on to those with an ear to listen. * PETER: The reason spirituality has failed to bring peace on earth is because peace on earth is simply not part of spiritual belief – … RESPONDENT: Have you managed to bring peace on earth, now that it is simply part of actualist belief? PETER: I would hazard a guess that almost everyone who is subscribed to this mailing list ‘knows’, as in has experienced, the utter peacefulness and stillness of this verdant planet literally hanging in the boundless vastness of space, no matter how briefly and no matter whether they can specifically remember having had the experience. Is not the nascent promise of this experience the inherent attraction to what is on offer on the Actual Freedom Trust website? Peace on earth? The peace that many people know is already here … if only …? The traditional ‘if only’ response is ‘if only everyone else would stop fighting and feuding’, and yet a little introspection reveals that the ‘if only’ applies only to ‘me’. A little introspection reveals that ‘if only’ ‘I’ stopped feeling resentful about being here ‘I’ could start to feel good about being here and eventually even start to appreciate being here and eventually even start to marvel at the wonder that not only this planet is but at the fact that the universe exists in its peerless infinite and is happening right now. ‘Peace on earth’ does not mean that actualism proposes that everyone has to become peaceful, far from it. Peace on earth means being able to experience the peace that is already here when ‘I’ am not here – the peace that everyone has experienced at some stage in their life, no matter how briefly, no matter whether they have a conscious memory of it or not. Very often people think that actualism is only about bringing an end to the suffering that human beings continue to inflict upon themselves and upon each other and yet whilst this appalling situation would come to an end if everyone on the planet were at least virtually free of malice and sorrow, it is the end goal of actualism which attracts people to actualism in the first place – the lure of the direct experience of the already existing peace on earth. Not as a nearly experience, not as an intellectual understanding, not as occasional experiences, not as temporary experiences but as a permanent 24/7 until physical death experience. Actualism is not an all or nothing business – by doing all you can to eliminate your own resentment, antagonism and sadness you are demonstrating by example the utter senselessness of being an instinctually driven being and by doing so you are concurrently taking the necessary steps towards becoming actually free of the human condition in toto. A win-win situation, a win for you personally and a win for your fellow human beings. * PETER: [The reason spirituality has failed to bring peace on earth is because peace on earth is simply not part of spiritual belief –] spiritual belief has it that peace is only possible after physical death in some imaginary other-world. RESPONDENT: Okay, if by peace is meant a total absence of any kind of pain, mental or physical, that is quite a true statement. As long as the body is there, physical pain (necessary at times to signal discordance in the organ systems) will also remain. PETER: If I were to follow your line of reasoning then indeed the only way to avoid physical pain is to be dead or even better still, not to be born in the first place. I for one am very appreciative that other human beings have invented drugs that not only relieve pain but that can render me unconscious should it be necessary prior to the pain becoming so strong that I would naturally become unconscious. But I fail to see what this has got to do with becoming free of the human condition … or are you saying that becoming free is impossible because human beings can have accidents, can become sick, certainly get old and certainly die in the end? If so, this sounds suspiciously close to the core of the Buddhist (fatalist?) philosophy that ‘Life on earth is essentially suffering’. * RESPONDENT: When the spiritual teachers point out that the student is not being sincere enough, hard-working enough, the actualists blast the teacher considering the method to be itself flawed. PETER: Again the spiritual method is not flawed, it’s not the spiritual teachers that are at fault, it is the spiritual *teachings* – the mishmash of ancient fairy stories, pathetic homilies and fear-ridden superstitions together with the venerated state of delusion known as enlightenment – that are hopelessly flawed. RESPONDENT: That’s what I said above. The teachings contain the method, don’t they? My point is, why do you neglect the insincerity of the student as a factor in the whole issue? PETER: Because as far as I can ascertain from the thrust of your post you are lumping actualism in the same category as spiritualism and what I am attempting to do is to point that out to you. Can you see that the whole question as to whether or not the ‘students’ of spiritualism are sincere or not is irrelevant because it is the spiritual teachings themselves that are flawed – not the students? When I was attracted to spiritualism I, along with many others, was attracted by the promise of peace on earth – of like-feeling people living in communes in peace and harmony. I was, in your words, a sincere student as were many others of my fellow seekers. What I eventually found was that the whole experiment failed, firstly because peace on earth was not part of the spiritual teachings, and secondly that the spiritual teachings did not acknowledge, let alone address, the fundamental reason for human malice and sorrow – the genetically encoded instinctual passions manifest in this body as ‘me’ a parasitical impassioned being. Whilst other people may like attempt to denigrate me by making snide remarks about my gullibility in treading the spiritual path, I am well pleased that I did because by having done so and having experienced first hand its failures I was able to firmly close the door on spiritual belief once and for all. * PETER: I remember realizing one day towards the end of my spiritual years that millions upon millions upon millions of human beings had devoted their lives to the spiritual teachings – that the East was littered with monasteries that have been filled with monks for millennia all of whom have diligently practiced the teachings from dawn to dusk, every day of their lives from childhood to death. RESPONDENT: No, only a few people had the gumption to go all the away and question everything that had been taught to them. Rest were just parrots or machines. No wonder they did not achieve liberation. PETER: I remember thinking one day what would happen if everyone in the world achieved spiritual liberation and all became enlightened all at once? Would a system of rosters be introduced such that the throne was rotated, who would bow down to whom, who would touch whose feet, whose teachings would be followed, who would clean the toilets, who would pull the rickshaws, who would be the most divine and who would be the most humble? As I said, I am not at all interested in spiritual belief let alone spiritual liberation – which is after all why I became an actualist. * PETER: I was suddenly struck by the fact that if I really wanted to succeed in the spiritual world, if I really wanted spiritual liberation, then I would at least have to do the same – turn my back on the world completely, become celibate, eat brown rice, beg for my food from others and so and … RESPONDENT: There have been enlightened teachers who were not monks, in case you forget. PETER: And yet I didn’t mention becoming a monk. I said that I realized that in order to become enlightened I would have to turn my back on the world and abide by the rules and regulations of whatever teachings or teacher I was following. But given that you have mentioned monks, do you not find it somewhat curious that in one of the Eastern countries where the whole society supports the monk business, the most revered of these monks, He whose teachings they follow and whose guidance they seek, got his most-revered-ship not by sincere spiritual practice but via the ‘miracle’ of reincarnation? * PETER: … then, when I had achieved liberation, have people venerate and worship me for having done so. As you can gather, it was about this time that I started to become suss of the whole spiritual liberation/spiritual slavery game. RESPONDENT: There have been enlightened teachers who actively discouraged veneration and worship, in case you forget. PETER: And there have been enlightened teachers who actively discouraged sex and disparaged women and yet were partial to a clandestine ‘bit on the side’ as it were. I have also heard it said that there are many enlightened people whom nobody knows about because they are completely anomous in that they don’t teach and aren’t teachers. There are all sorts of myths and legends about enlightened teachers which is why I am happy to have had the opportunity to observe the behaviour of a few of them up close so I could ascertain for myself the vast gulf between myth and fact. * PETER: Personally I had no trouble evaluating the failure of spiritual liberation simply because I spent years inside the spiritual world and I know it inside out, as it were. RESPONDENT: May I ask? How much effort did you put into your meditation / seeking before evaluating it as a failure? Just curious. PETER: I obviously spent enough time and made enough effort to come to the conclusion that enough was enough. * PETER: The failure of spirituality is not only an endemic failure, it is systemic failure – not only the techniques (meditation and/or prayer is method whereby one practices dissociation and indulges in imagination) … RESPONDENT: I agree. Dissociation is not the way. PETER: And yet how else do you suppose that the enlightened become enlightened if not by dissociating from, sublimating and transcending the so-called Evil passions whilst enhancing and identifying themselves with the so-called Good passions – why else would other people venerate them as being transcendent Beings? * PETER: [The failure of spirituality is not only an endemic failure, it is systemic failure – not only the techniques (meditation and/or prayer is method whereby one practices dissociation and indulges in imagination) … ] but the aims (spiritual liberation means that one becomes enslaved to some mythical God or believes oneself to be the reincarnation of some mythical God). RESPONDENT: Come on, the above is not true of the greatest teachers. PETER: Hmmm. Would those greatest teachers be those long dead teachers whose words and intent we cannot truly know because all we know of their teachings are interpretations of the words they supposedly said that have been passed down and reinterpreted from generation to generation of followers perhaps? Or are you talking about someone who is walking and talking – someone about whom we humans here today can make an accurate assessment of both their words and their deeds? * PETER: [The failure of spirituality is not only an endemic failure, it is systemic failure –] as well as the results (no peace on earth because the whole thrust of spiritualism is that peace is ultimately only possible after physical death). RESPONDENT: See my comment about physical pain above. PETER: See my comment about your comment about physical pain above. * PETER: I notice you made no comment about the insidious caste system that has evolved in much of the East as a direct result of the belief that some human beings are born with imperfect souls and some being born with presumably more advanced souls dependant upon some past-life misdeeds or good deeds. Did your lack of comment mean that you thought it irrelevant to the topic (the failure of spiritual belief) or was there some other reason?
RESPONDENT: Cognitive dissonance can apply not just to people coming to understand a new paradigm, it can also happen to those who at the moment have committed themselves to that paradigm. PETER: I freely admit that I do have difficulty in understanding why people would have such difficulty in understanding a new paradigm but then again I do understand from personal experience that it is difficult, if not impossible, to understand something entirely new whilst still clinging to the past. RESPONDENT: I meant cognitive dissonance as in failure to see what the other is actually saying, not the failure of another to understand oneself. PETER: This particular comment was but a preamble as I did understand that your reference to cognitive dissonance referred to my ‘quite remarkable’ inability to understand the thrust of your message – an inability that apparently turned out to be not an inability after all (see immediately below). * RESPONDENT: It is quite remarkable how you have not understood the thrust of my message. PETER: Given that your post was entitled ‘the failure of spirituality or disinclination?’ I understood the thrust of your post was that human beings, as opposed to the spiritual teachings themselves, were to blame for the failure of spiritualism to bring an end to human malice and human sorrow. RESPONDENT: That was the thrust of my post, yes. * PETER: As such my response was to point out that the blame for the failure of spiritualism lies not with the followers but with the revered spiritual teachings themselves because the teachings are not at all concerned about peace on earth. RESPONDENT: Failure of spiritualism in the sense of people not getting enlightened, and not finding peace and bliss (which, without exception, all enlightened beings have reported). For that, the AF website says at many locations that a method which works for only 0.00001 percent, is to be discarded. I am saying that that is not a good enough reason for discarding or berating spiritualism. By the way, ‘Not at all’ seems a rather extreme adverb in your above para. It is just that they consider the ultimate peace to lie beyond the physical world. PETER: And what I am saying is that the question of how many people become enlightened is irrelevant as neither the enlightened teachers, let alone the self-realized teachers, let alone the hallowed sacred teachings are at all concerned with peace on earth – what they are teaching is an inner feeling of bliss (a transcendence of earthly suffering) prior to an ultimate peace after physical death. If an ultimate after-death peace and a feeling of bliss is what you want, then there is every reason to support spiritualism and obviously no reason to discard spiritualism. * PETER: I have re-read your response again and the phrase that I picked up on was your comment that –
And my point was that actualism is not any technique nor does it have anything at all to do with the old paradigm of spiritual liberation. RESPONDENT: It is a technique which promises an end to suffering as a goal. I mean the end of suffering as liberation. Not ‘spiritual liberation’. Of course liberation in spirituality is ‘spiritual liberation’. PETER: In order to clearly distinguish between the two paradigms –
* PETER: Having explained why my apparent misunderstanding of the thrust of your message occurred (that which you call cognitive dissonance) – would you now explain what thrust of your message actually was? RESPONDENT: The fact that only 0.00001 percent (or thereabouts, I don’t remember the exact percentage) people have succeeded in reaching their goal in their spiritual endeavours is no failure of spirituality. In the same vein, it won’t be a failure of actualism if only a few people become actually free. PETER: Indeed. Actualism is entirely a do-it-yourself business – once one fully understands this, it matters not at all what others choose to do with their lives. Actualism is not about changing the world, actualism is about changing me and me only – not only because I am the only person that I can change but also because I am the only person I need to change. * PETER: Despite the warning I found that I had no alternative but to go down that path – after all I had already found that there was no way I could be happy and harmless whilst being a materialist (it’s a ‘dog eat dog’ world and I didn’t like eating ‘dog’ given that the dogs were my fellow human beings) … RESPONDENT: Okay, people who dedicate themselves to spirituality in order to find liberation would agree with you that the normal life of materialism is nought but suffering. (Just on a tangent here) Your teacher and perhaps yourself has no objection in eating his fellow creatures (e.g. cattle, chickens, et al). Why this selective liking of only your fellow-species? Oh, if you agree that violence is inevitable and one has to kill to eat anyway (the fond argument of your teacher), then when in crisis, I won’t be in the same room with you or your teacher because you might decide that at that moment killing your fellow human being is also sensible since you have to kill to eat anyway. PETER: This is definitely a tangent and a corny one at that. I presume you understand that when I talk of the dog-eat-dog world of materialism I mean that the current progenies of hunting and gathering humans still act as they have been genetically and socially programmed to do – they instinctually compete against other humans beings in a grim and ruthless battle of survival. The only difference being that what was once a brutal physical battle has now by-and-large become a brutal psychological and psychic battle (unless law and order breaks down that is and then the gloves are well and truly off and battle reverts to being a brutal physical battle for survival). RESPONDENT: I do understand that dog-eat-dog is a metaphor. But my tangential query was about vegetarianism (since that is also ongoing in another thread). Why do you say it is a ‘corny’ tangent? PETER: I was using the word ‘corny’ in the colloquial sense as in a corny joke that relies on a play of words – taking one meaning of a word or phrase and replacing it with another it thereby making the original into something nonsensical or humorous. In this sense your taking my dog-eat-dog comment and asking a question about man-eat-fish could be said to be corny. I see from the dictionary that corny also has negative connotations but I often like corny things as they are often unsophisticated and corny humour as it is often without malice. By the way, my ‘corny’ comment had nothing to do with your comment about me killing my fellow human beings as being ‘also sensible’ – extrapolative exaggerations such as these do nothing to foster an ongoing sensible conversation. * PETER: As for my being a non-vegetarian, I see no reason why I should bow to the un-liveable
highly selective ethics RESPONDENT: Just because some religion says something about vegetarianism does not make it per-se a un-liveable highly selective ‘ethics’. Why do you bring religion into the picture? I was talking about being vegetarian. PETER: The reason I brought religion into the picture is quite straightforward. I was born in a meat-eating society and the notion that eating meat was somehow wrong was only introduced to this country in the 1970’s on the back of a wave of a burgeoning interest in Eastern religions. Now that Eastern religion has gained such widespread acceptance in this country its followers now make such a virtue out of their belief in Ahimsa that those who do not bow to their belief are deemed to be evil (as in your ‘I won’t be in the same room with you’ comment?) RESPONDENT: Can we evaluate vegetarianism on its own merits (or de-merits)? PETER: The problem with evaluating the merits of vegetarianism is that any such evaluation is inevitably based upon social, as in cultural/ religious/ generational evaluations of right and wrong, good and bad – all of which are human-animal emotional reactions to the fact that the only way life on earth has germinated, and can survive, is by feeding off other life. If however, one moves past the moral and ethical objections to this fact of life then one can come across a deeper more visceral reaction such as revulsion … what one discovers is that one is being revolted by a fact of life – the very cycle of birth, sustenance and death that I, as a flesh and blood mortal body, am inextricably a product of. A little clear-eyed investigation will throw some light on the nature of this revulsion – am I revolted by the birds outside my window gaily chirping away while they busily swoop down into the garden in order to kill and eat insects, am I revolted by the dolphins off the cape killing and eating other fish, am I revolted by other animals hunting for prey and eating their catch? If I am able to clearly see all this happening as a fact of life then I am also able to clearly see that whether or not some human beings see merit or find fault in being selective in what other life forms animals eat in order that they can dissociate themselves from the fact that all this life-feeding-off-life is going on all the time under their very noses, or in their very noses, matters not a fig in the vast scope of things. * PETER: Given that it is a fact of life that life feeds off life and given that as an intelligent human animal I am able to make a choice, I choose to devote my time, energy and passion on becoming free from the animal instinctual passions in order that I could be harmless, i.e. to be without malice, towards my fellow human beings. RESPONDENT: Does it take any energy to refrain from eating meat? PETER: I went through a period of being a vegetarian in my spiritual years, although for some reason an occasional meal of fish was deemed to be an acceptable transgression, and the one cut of meat I did miss was bacon. Speaking personally I do like the smell of fried bacon. Needless to say when I gave up my spiritual beliefs I also gave up my vegetarian beliefs and now enjoy bacon whenever the whim takes me. I do like the down-to-earth befits of no longer being hobbled by belief. In contrast to the constant energy required in order to maintain and defend, each of one’s beliefs, once one frees oneself from a particular belief, the subsequent freedom is effortless. * PETER: What others choose to focus their time, energy and passion on is their business entirely. RESPONDENT: This is a dismissal of this particular thread of conversation by saying it is not an important enough issue for you. Am I reading you right? PETER: You might have missed the fact that rather than dismiss this particular tangent to the topic we were discussing I have spent a good deal of time here at the keyboard answering your questions about this particular thread. However, you are right in saying that it is not an important issue for me nowadays simply because I have personally investigated the matter of vegetarianism/ non-vegetarianism and found that at root I had a socially enhanced instinctual revulsion to the fact that life feeds off life. When I clearly experienced that the root of this particular emotion was fear itself, this particular manifestation of a thoughtless instinctual passion never raised its head again. It is an exercise in futility and masochism to feel guilty and be revolted about what one is – a corporeal mortal flesh and blood body. I do realize that acknowledging facts is not fashionable in this day and age – particularly now that the Eastern Wisdom of ‘not-knowing’ has become so highly prized and Mr. Einstein’s subjective theory that space and time are relative and not absolute is now taken to be true and Mr. Heisenberg’s mathematical musings that matter itself is uncertain is taken to mean that we live in a virtual world – but I personally found not-knowing to be an excuse for not bothering to find out, subjectivity to be an excuse for not making the effort to see the bigger picture and uncertainty to be an excuse for continuing to dither about finding out what I am. I also realize that this whole business of investigating the human condition in action, as ‘me’, is not everyone’s cup of tea but I’ve found the whole business to be utterly fascinating once I got past the initial hang-ups and inhibitions of my own societal morals and ethics. I will stop here and send this off, as it’s getting a bit long. I have tried writing shorter posts but I know from experience that some of these issues are so close to the bone that they do take a bit of nutting out. Whilst ultimately it is only you who can do the nutting out of these issues and only you can be aware of the feelings, emotions and passions that are stirred up by addressing these issues I often find myself whiling away a day passing on my experience to those who may be interested. * NB. Part 2 will follow dependant upon earning money commitments and other dalliances.
PETER: Continued from Pt.1 RESPONDENT: I say that because at the beginning of your actualist career, you proposed to a woman whom you found physically attractive (you didn’t consider your sexual instincts to be a hindrance to happiness then, did you?). PETER: Of course not. I started where I started – a normal bloke with a full set of instinctual passions intact, both the ones I proudly wore on my sleeve as a badge of honour and the ones I repressed and shamefully hid away from others. The very reason I chose to find a female human companion and not a male human companion was that I am heterosexual by nature and as such I was attracted to the proposition of being able to get to the root of my sexual predatory nature such that I could become free of its insidiousness. RESPONDENT: Ok. Makes sense. PETER: Besides which I always thought the Eastern approach of avoiding the temptations of the pleasure of sexual play, not to mention avoiding the difficulties of living with one other person in peace and harmony, was, to put it bluntly, a wank. RESPONDENT: Why do you start berating eastern spirituality in every other paragraph? PETER: What I am doing is pointing to the faults and failures of the teachings themselves rather than berate the followers of eastern spirituality as in –
But to get back to the topic – many Eastern spiritual teachings are also utterly chauvinist in that women, by the very fact that they are born female, are deemed to be second class and inferior in that they are excluded from spiritual practices, from temples, ashrams and monasteries and even deemed to be incapable of spiritual liberation until reborn as a male. RESPONDENT: What you did in spirituality was entirely your choice. Did they pull you in and cage you? PETER: No, like most people I was seduced into spirituality by an instinctive lure in that the spiritual world was ‘my’ rightful place as a spirit-ual being, a place where ‘I’ felt at home and a place where I could truly be ‘me’ … and hopefully where I could finally become ‘Me’ in all my glory. * RESPONDENT: It is the dis-inclination of humans towards change, the inertia that is so pervasive, that is the reason that all solutions have failed and will continue to fail, even actualism. PETER: Am I to take it that you hold to the belief that you can’t change human nature? RESPONDENT: If you choose to read my sentence that way, that is certainly your choice. However, I clearly mention the word dis-inclination and not im-possibility is the reason why solutions continue to fail. PETER: Again, I thought you were talking personally rather than generally which is why I responded with a personal question to you and a personal answer from me. I’ve already said why the traditional solutions within the human condition fail and will continue to fail to bring an end to human malice and sorrow and I have already indicated that I chose to try something new. As I understand it, you are proposing that the reasons all the (traditional) solutions continue to fail is solely because humans are disinclined to change? If so, my response is that it is the traditional solutions that are wanting, not human beings per se. RESPONDENT: Again, by failure my meaning is failure to reach the goal promised by that particular technique. PETER: And yet I understood you weren’t talking of a particular technique but all techniques, as in –
Given that eastern spiritualism has a 3,500 years track record of failure, do you not think it a somewhat premature to declare actualism a failure given that the means to an actual freedom from the human condition only started to be made public less than a decade ago? * RESPONDENT: Have you been fundamentally able to change your nature since you started practicing actualism? Has your ego been demolished? Has your being been extirpated? PETER: I have had this question put to me many times over the years and whilst it is often asked as a way of denigrating my efforts of investigating my feelings, emotions and passions and of abandoning my beliefs and becoming as happy and harmless as humanly possible, it nevertheless is a fair question given that ‘I’ sill remain in existence. The only reason I can come up with as to why this is so is that becoming virtually free from malice and sorrow is relatively easy compared to taking the final step into an actual freedom from the human condition in toto – curiously enough, the same warning sign ‘Do not enter here’ – only this time the warning is purely instinctual. RESPONDENT: And this is exactly what I am considering as the reason for most spiritual seekers to not reach spiritual liberation. Failure/ fear in going all the way. PETER: Again I do understand this is the thrust of your post, but the reason why I didn’t go all the way to spiritual liberation was that I started to be firstly suss of those who were liberated and then began to have doubts about the state of liberation itself and then I started to question the spiritual teachings themselves. I also know of other seekers on the spiritual path who turned away from seeking spiritual liberation for the same reasons although they didn’t dare question the teachings and most have settled for being weekend spiritualists and weekday materialists. * RESPONDENT: The very reason people are staying away and leaving in droves from Actual Freedom (that they are unwilling to work hard and dismantle their identities and fond feelings) could be the reason spirituality has failed to bring peace on earth in the last 3000-5000 years, to wit, disinclination of normal human beings to enquire into their reactions, to dismantle their beliefs and to be ready to diligently and individually go beyond the frontiers of humanity. PETER: Why you suggest that any spiritualist should berate themselves for the failure of spirituality to bring an end to human malice and sorrow is quite frankly beyond me. RESPONDENT: Why you berate your fellow actualists for not practising sincerely enough comes in the same bucket, doesn’t it? PETER: Hmmm. Perhaps you could give me an example of my berating my ‘fellow actualists’ for not practicing sincerely enough. RESPONDENT: Richard is on record for having told (No 33, I think) that the reason actualist method is not working for him is his lack of interest, and diligence of application (in some other words). PETER: No 60 provided the following link ( * PETER: Very often people think that actualism is only about bringing an end to the suffering that human beings continue to inflict upon themselves and upon each other and yet whilst this appalling situation would come to an end if everyone on the planet were at least virtually free of malice and sorrow, it is the end goal of actualism which attracts people to actualism in the first place – the lure of the direct experience of the already existing peace on earth. Not as a nearly experience, not as an intellectual understanding, not as occasional experiences, not as temporary experiences but as a permanent 24/7 until physical death experience. Actualism is not an all or nothing business – by doing all you can to eliminate your own resentment, antagonism and sadness you are demonstrating by example the utter senselessness of being an instinctually driven being and by doing so you are concurrently taking the necessary steps towards becoming actually free of the human condition in toto. A win-win situation, a win for you personally and a win for your fellow human beings. RESPONDENT: Ok, understood what you mean ‘peace on earth’. It is a state of experiencing only possible when the identity is in abeyance, correct? PETER: No, peace on earth is not a personal ‘state of experiencing’ but it is the manifestation of the perfection and purity of the physical universe manifest as this planet we call earth. Only when the identity is in abeyance as in a PCE does the fact that the earth is intrinsically peaceful become startlingly obvious. Many people also have had brief glimpses of this innate peacefulness in what are known as nature experiences – away from other people, sitting quietly watching the setting of the sun, walking languidly along a deserted beach, looking idly up at the star-filled night sky, and so on and many people seek out these experiences in order to ‘tune into’ the innate peacefulness of the universe so as to feel peaceful themselves. But to get back to the point – in a PCE it is obvious that nothing needs to be done in terms of changing society, changing other people, changing political systems, philosophical viewpoints and so on because the peace that one is looking for ‘out there’, so to speak, is already always existing in the actual world … and the only one I need to change is ‘me’. RESPONDENT: And spirituality precludes such experiencing by not eliminating the self in totality. PETER: Yep. Tripping off into La La land only takes one even further away from the opportunity of the sensate-only experiencing of the tranquillity and perfection of this life-abundant planet. RESPONDENT: It is an inner way of looking at things, not an outer state of affairs, as it were. PETER: Again, peace on earth is not ‘an inner way of looking at things’ – peacefulness is the very nature of the physical universe itself. ‘An inner way of looking at things’ produces a self-centred fear-filled illusionary grim reality together with its opposite of a Self-centred awe-filled delusionary Greater Reality The essential failing of spirituality is that it is based on an either-or scenario – either one lives in an outer world, a grim fear-filled reality or one retreats into an inner ‘peaceful’ world. If you are successful is sustaining this second illusion then you can get to paste this illusion of peacefulness, or stillness or nothingness, over the previous illusion of a grim or frantic or chaotic reality, thereby blotting out one illusion with an other illusion. Mind you, it was only when I abandoned my spiritual beliefs that I could see what nonsense it was to try to escape an illusion by escaping into yet another illusion predicated upon the original illusion. RESPONDENT: If so, I have a question for you: If in a PCE you observe a rape happening, would you still say there is peace on earth for you? PETER: I have never observed a rape happening whilst having a PCE but I have observed people being very angry as well as people being very sad. I have also watched the news on television whilst having a PCE and have been fully cognizant of the fact that human beings all over the planet are murdering or being murdered, abusing or being abused, raping or being raped solely because they are instinctually-driven feeling beings. What is extraordinary in this situation is that in a PCE the entire affective faculty that is part and parcel of ‘me’ is temporarily absent, which means that it is impossible to feel angry, sad, remorseful, pitiful and so on about what other human beings either choose to do to each other or are instinctually driven to do to each other – it is clearly seen for what it is, senseless. No doubt some people can relate to having had a similar experience to this at some time in their life, and if so, the important thing is what does one do with that clear and direct experience of the senselessness of impassioned human beings? My answer, when I was back being one of those impassioned human beings, was to take a clear-eyed look at my own feelings, my own passions, my own beliefs and so on such that I was able to be more peaceful and more benign and hence more happy. Whilst it’s not an actual freedom from malice and sorrow it sure is a big step towards it. * RESPONDENT: (…) As long as the body is there, physical pain (necessary at times to signal discordance in the organ systems) will also remain. PETER: If I were to follow your line of reasoning then indeed the only way to avoid physical pain is to be dead or even better still, not to be born in the first place. (…) RESPONDENT: Becoming free of physical pain is impossible, yes. PETER: And yet, regardless of whether you or anyone else is in physical pain or mental pain or emotional pain or not, this planet and beyond will continue on being utterly peaceful, perceptively still and inconceivably vast. Have you noticed some times that ‘I’ have such a narrow and self-centred view of the world that essentially ‘I’ think and feel that ‘I’ am the centre of ‘my’ world and that the human species in general have an intellectual and affective anthropomorphic view of the universe and that this combination of ego-centricity and soul-centricity is what stands in the way of being able to clearly see, let alone directly experience, the world as-it-is and people as-they-are? * PETER: If so, this sounds suspiciously close to the core of the Buddhist (fatalist?) philosophy that ‘Life on earth is essentially suffering’. RESPONDENT: Life on earth, for the vast majority of creatures, including human beings, is about evading pain and hunger and achieving a modicum of security, shelter and a continued source of food and pleasure. Whether or not that rhymes with Buddhism is of little concern to me. PETER: And yet one species has triumphed over others in the instinctual battle for survival and a good many of them are actually living in safety, comfort, leisure and pleasure the likes of which has never ever existed before … and the only pain that many of them are suffering from is emotional pains all of which are entirely ‘self’-inflicted. Such a situation belies Buddhism’s central tenant that human life on earth is essentially suffering. When I contemplated upon my life circumstances I realized that the fundamental reason for ‘my’ suffering was ’me’ and all of ‘my’ affective feelings … not just a part of the package but the entire package, both the good and the bad. RESPONDENT: When the spiritual teachers point out that the student is not being sincere enough, hard-working enough, the actualists blast the teacher considering the method to be itself flawed. PETER: Again the spiritual method is not flawed, it’s not the spiritual teachers that are at fault, it is the spiritual teachings – the mishmash of ancient fairy stories, pathetic homilies and fear-ridden superstitions together with the venerated state of delusion known as enlightenment – that are hopelessly flawed. RESPONDENT: That’s what I said above. The teachings contain the method, don’t they? My point is, why do you neglect the insincerity of the student as a factor in the whole issue? PETER: Because as far as I can ascertain from the thrust of your post you are lumping actualism in the same category as spiritualism and what I am attempting to do is to point that out to you. Can you see that the whole question as to whether or not the ‘students’ of spiritualism are sincere or not is irrelevant because it is the spiritual teachings themselves that are flawed – not the students? RESPONDENT: I am trying to question whether a set of techniques can be criticised for not benefiting more than a certain miniscule number of its adherents without taking into account that most people are dis-inclined/dis-honest about practicing a technique diligently. PETER: And what I am attempting to point to is rather than focus your concern on the students and followers, or on the techniques for that matter … why not question the teachings themselves? * PETER: When I was attracted to spiritualism I, along with many others, was attracted by the promise of peace on earth – of like-feeling people living in communes in peace and harmony. I was, in your words, a sincere student as were many others of my fellow seekers. What I eventually found was that the whole experiment failed, firstly because peace on earth was not part of the spiritual teachings, and secondly that the spiritual teachings did not acknowledge, let alone address, the fundamental reason for human malice and sorrow – the genetically encoded instinctual passions manifest in this body as ‘me’ a parasitical impassioned being. Whilst other people may like attempt to denigrate me by making snide remarks about my gullibility in treading the spiritual path, I am well pleased that I did because by having done so and having experienced first hand its failures I was able to firmly close the door on spiritual belief once and for all. RESPONDENT: I can relate with you here. My three-year association with an enlightened master showed me first hand what enlightenment means in real life. To wit, a renouncing of common sense, a denigration of life on earth, claims of exclusivity and a looking down upon people for their private/ personal life-style choices, boundless narcissism and righteousness and so on. Without that experience, I would have been stuck in spiritual practices for many more years. PETER: There is no substitute for hands-on experience in order to understand how something really works in practice. * RESPONDENT: There have been enlightened teachers who actively discouraged veneration and worship, in case you forget. PETER: And there have been enlightened teachers who actively discouraged sex and disparaged women and yet were partial to a clandestine ‘bit on the side’ as it were. I have also heard it said that there are many enlightened people whom nobody knows about because they are completely anomous in that they don’t teach and aren’t teachers. There are all sorts of myths and legends about enlightened teachers which is why I am happy to have had the opportunity to observe the behaviour of a few of them up close so I could ascertain for myself the vast gulf between myth and fact. RESPONDENT: Okay, just as an example, Krishnamurti is on record as never having encouraged veneration/worship. PETER: If that is the case, then do you not find it curious that he allowed a foundation to be set up in his name whilst he was still alive, lived off devotee’s contributions and travelled the world giving dissertations to thousands of people? RESPONDENT: However, something I found curious in Nisargadatta’s dialogues. One questioner asked him why people offered him flowers, garlands and did a pooja etc. of his body, and he answered that he had no objection to it and that neither pooja nor its lack would affect him. PETER: Personally I find the whole business of human beings being worshipped by other human beings very weird, to say the least. Whether he had no objection to being worshipped or not is besides the point as far as I am concerned as what all such people have done, and are doing still doing, is being an active participant in what can only be described as institutionalized psychic slavery. * RESPONDENT: May I ask? How much effort did you put into your meditation / seeking before evaluating it as a failure? Just curious. PETER: I obviously spent enough time and made enough effort to come to the conclusion that enough was enough. RESPONDENT: I ask because it can also be a case of sour grapes. PETER: When you said the following –
was this ‘a case of sour grapes’ or had you ‘spent enough time and made enough effort to come to the conclusion that enough was enough’? * PETER: [The failure of spirituality is not only an endemic failure, it is systemic failure – not only the techniques (meditation and/or prayer is method whereby one practices dissociation and indulges in imagination) … ] but the aims (spiritual liberation means that one becomes enslaved to some mythical God or believes oneself to be the reincarnation of some mythical God). RESPONDENT: Come on, the above is not true of the greatest teachers. PETER: Hmmm. Would those greatest teachers be those long dead teachers whose words and intent we cannot truly know because all we know of their teachings are interpretations of the words they supposedly said that have been passed down and reinterpreted from generation to generation of followers perhaps? Or are you talking about someone who is walking and talking – someone about whom we humans here today can make an accurate assessment of both their words and their deeds? RESPONDENT: Did Krishnamurti or Aurobindo believe themselves to be re-incarnations of anybody? PETER: Everyone who is genuinely enlightened is by the very nature of enlightenment ‘At One With the Ultimate Source’, whether it be a personal He or She, a Father or a Mother or whomever or whether it be an impersonal It, or That or Void or Essence or Truth or Intelligence or Energy or whatever. Do you think these ‘greatest teachers’ are at core any different to the enlightened master you followed for 3 years and found so lacking?
And to take that question a little further down the same line – could it be that not only the enlightened masters are lacking but that the venerated state of enlightenment itself and the sacred teachings they promulgate are lacking – the whole package?
PETER: With regard to
The fact that I know I am having a PCE and that I know that it is temporary and that it will end is a sure sign to me that, although for all intents and purpose there is no ‘I’ present, only ‘I’ could know that the experience is temporary because only ‘I’ can know that ‘I’ will eventually return.
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