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Peter’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List Correspondent No 73
RESPONDENT: Here are a few examples – in all cases here, what is stated for actual freedom is the completely same thing as what is taught by Goenka-style Vipassana. There is no 180-degree difference when most of actualism’s assertions are also asserted by the folks who are *supposed* to be 180 opposite.
No God in Vip., this becomes clear after practice. PETER: And yet your claim that there is no God in Vipassana is contradicted in the question and answers of a link you provided in your subsequent post as being an authoritative source of Goenka-style Vipassana –
I do realize that it is hard to conceive that actualism is 180 degrees opposite to spiritualism, and particularly so if one remains fixated on finding similarities rather than daring to set aside one’s beliefs and predilections for a while in order to be able to clearly discern the differences. Having trod the spiritual path for many years I had the advantage of being able to draw on my own experiences of spirituality in practice rather than attempt to discern the differences by wading through the oft confusing and never straight forward spiritual mythologies, legends and teachings. As such, I was able to draw upon a multitude of personal experiences in the form of anecdotes – which is why I do appreciate anecdotes as they often can serve to shed light on an issue that is intellectually baffling. Which leads me to an anecdote I recently heard about the practice of meditation. Recently I watched a documentary entitled ‘John Lennon’s Jukebox’ in which Donovan (a sixties folk singer) was reminiscing about meeting John Lennon in India at Maharishi Yogi’s ashram. Evidently John Lennon was keen on a girl called Prudence but she was told to do three days of meditation. Whilst John was waiting for her to come out he penned a song that went ‘The sun is shining and the grass is green … dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play?’ The lyric struck me as indicative that mediation (in whatever form) is a deliberate act of retreating from the world of the senses – i.e. that spiritualism and spiritual practices is 180 degrees opposite to the utterly down-to-earth application of actualism whereby one literally and figuratively comes to one’ senses.
RESPONDENT No 64 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. RESPONDENT: I could not agree more with your last long sentence. PETER: Yep. There is a simple choice offered in actualism – either stay as you are or set off on a path that is not only utterly contrary to one’s social conditioning but also goes completely against one’s instinctual survival passions. I can remember the decision as being somewhat daunting at the start so much so that I likened it to entering a tunnel with a large sign over it saying ‘Above all, do not enter here’. RESPONDENT: I do think that I have been deterred a bit by other people on this list. PETER: This is after all their sole aim in writing on this mailing list – to deter those who dare to get off their backsides, stand on their own two feet and begin the journey out of the human condition, from doing so. And as you can see, they will literally stop at nothing in their efforts to intimidate anyone who shows any interest whatsoever in actualism. RESPONDENT: But I also remember when I first discovered actualism, and the numerous PCE’s that followed. PETER: Despite all the bluff and bluster of the nay-sayers who would have you live your life according to their beliefs and their principles, there is a wonderful freedom in realizing that there is nobody standing in the way of freedom – a fact that is made startlingly evident in a pure consciousness experience. RESPONDENT: I am certainly curious of the motives that anyone has who speaks against the intent to be completely free of malice and sorrow. PETER: I find it useful to remember the vehemence to which past discoveries have been resisted by
those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Those who dared to question the teachings of the church in the Dark Ages were labelled
heretics and burnt at the stake The recent discovery of the means to bring about an actual freedom from the human condition of malice and sorrow is likewise being resisted and those who choose to be pioneers in this business will invariably bear the brunt of the wrath and scorn of those who have taken it upon themselves to be defenders of the human condition. RESPONDENT: In short, I see absolutely nothing wrong with giving full attention to each moment of being alive with the intention of becoming fully happy and harmless. PETER: I remember thinking at one stage how very odd it was that I was feeling guilty because I had made being happy and harmless the most important thing in my life. I soon tracked it down to the fact that I was feeling guilty for not feeling sad. As I mulled it over, the perversity of this feeling of guilt really began to set in – if everyone held on to this guilty feeling then nobody would ever become free of sorrow, which would mean that human suffering would never ever come to an end – which meant that if I held on to my guilt about not feeling sad, I would never be free of sorrow. Needless to say, very soon after I stopped living my life in accord with the morality of those who have a vested interest in maintaining not only their own emotional suffering but that of all of their fellow human beings. RESPONDENT: So far no one has supplied a decent argument to give reason to find fault with this. PETER: No, no one. I found that all I needed to do was work my way through the list of objections
and eventually I came to the conclusion that Eventually I got to the stage where I refused to be so silly as to be hooked into their beliefs and swayed by their opinions any more –actualism makes sense whereas spiritualism does not make sense and nor does it even claim to make sense. The other aspect of the objectors’ approach is that they use an array of tactics specifically designed to intimidate those who they regard as their opponents. Verbal intimidation is a well-known way of provoking fear in others and as such is one of the most powerful means of maintaining psychic power over others. It is useful to keep this in mind when reading intimidatory posts – whilst one may be able to easily see that their objections are silly, it is possible to still be affected by the intimidatory nature of their postings. The most effective way I found of dealing with this is to keep in mind the purity and perfection of the pure consciousness experience of the actual world … or at least to keep in mind that these people are, de facto, championing malice and sorrow by the very act of objecting to others who have set their sights on being happy and harmless.
RESPONDENT: Why are you guys (Peter and Richard) charging money for online journals? PETER: The obvious answer is because The Actual Freedom Trust is charging for the journals. The Actual Freedom Trust made the decision to publish both journals as paperback books before the idea of the establishing a website came about. Since the establishment of the website we have also taken the opportunity of offering both journals in electronic form as a way of offering an alternative format. Perhaps you would like to flesh out the thrust of your question, given that your question focuses on some thousands of words whereas the Actual Freedom Trust makes freely available millions of words on the Actual Freedom Trust website. * PETER: See also –
RESPONDENT: Why are you guys (Peter and Richard) charging money for online journals? PETER: The obvious answer is because The Actual Freedom Trust is charging for the journals. The Actual Freedom Trust made the decision to publish both journals as paperback books before the idea of the establishing a website came about. Since the establishment of the website we have also taken the opportunity of offering both journals in electronic form as a way of offering an alternate format. Perhaps you would like to flesh out the thrust of your question, given that your question focuses on some thousands of words whereas the Actual Freedom Trust makes freely available millions of words on the Actual Freedom Trust website. RESPONDENT: No I would not, as you are inferring something I did not intend. Actually, I do not think the journals would be as valuable to me as the website itself. You definitely read something other than what I asked. On the basis of this further information, it appears that your question was not specifically related to ‘online journals’ but was related to the worth of the journals per se, regardless of their format. Your additional comment – ‘I do not think the journals would be as valuable to me as the website itself’ – now makes it clear that you think that the journals are worth less to you compared to words on the Actual Freedom website, hence your initial question. Personally I regard both journals as being priceless as reading Richard’s Journal inspired me to dare to begin the adventure of putting actualism into practice and writing my journal was instrumental in my becoming virtually free of malice and sorrow. RESPONDENT: I think that it is completely sensible to charge for the cost of publishing + materials and also distribution. PETER: It makes sense to me as well, however I do find it odd that many people not only have issues around the fact that the Actual Freedom Trust charges for the journals but also that so few people who purport to be interested in actualism seem interested in reading personal accounts of others who have actually trod the path to becoming free of the human condition. But then again sense is nowhere to be found whenever feelings rule the roost. And speaking of distribution – we did initially make attempts to interest publishers in the journals but none would touch them given the heretical nature of the writings and after we self-published the journals none of the distributors we approached would handle them nor would any of the bookshops we approached stock them.
RESPONDENT No 80: I was recently reading Time and they had an article about meditation and the mind and such. One part of the article talked about how scientist monitored the brain activity of Buddhist monks while they meditated and they found that these people had high activity in the part of the brain where happiness is experienced like nothing they had seen before. The subject title is all in fun, but I wonder if an actualist can produce similar results. Just something I was thinking about. PETER to No 80: I recently watched a television show along the same lines as the article you are
referring to and what struck me was the inanity of people seeking an ethereal happiness by deliberately cutting themselves off from the world, a
pursuit which stands in stark contrast to the utterly down-to-earth aim of an actualist – to become actually free from the human condition of
malice and sorrow in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are. A dissociated happiness is, after all, dissociative. RESPONDENT No 32: Hi Peter, when you say ‘the world as-it-is’ what do you mean ... the actual world or the world as it is perceived by ‘me’? PETER to No 32: I remember having a discussion with a spiritualist about this very topic soon after I abandoned spiritualism to become an actualist. He believed that the fact that everyone has a self-centred affective perception of the world meant that the physical world was a self-created illusion. We happened to be standing in front of his car at the time and I reached out and touched the glass of the headlight and asked whether or not the headlight existed in fact given that we could both see it and both touch it. He said that while we could both see it, we saw it from different perspectives, he from one angle, me from another, therefore we perceived it differently. I then realized that pursuing the matter was a waste of both his time and mine because here was a man who refused to talk sense and was determined to live, and remain living, in a world entirely of his own making. This incident, coming as it did in my early years of investigating the human condition, highlighted the fact that in my spiritual years I had also retreated from the world as-it-is – the world of interactions with fellow flesh and blood human, of tangible palpable things and actually occurring events – into an utterly self-centred world – a world of affective interactions like-feeling souls, of ethereal non-substantial things and supposedly illusionary non-consequential events. It was then that I realized that I had in fact wasted a good many years of my life trying to be anywhere but here and anywhen but now. But then again, it was hardly a waste of time because I know by experience the seduction of dissociation and lure of dissociative states. RESPONDENT No 32: Same question goes for ‘people as-they-are’. PETER to No 32: One of the things that never sat well with me in my spiritual years was the sense of superiority that believing in a spiritual teaching or belonging to a spiritual group inevitable engenders. Of course when you are busy being a fervent believer or a loyal group member it is difficult to clearly see that, by holding such beliefs, you are separating yourself from most of your fellow human beings and are cunningly laying the blame for the ills of humankind on those of your fellow human beings who don’t believe what you believe, thereby actively contributing to the divergence and acrimony that typifies the human condition. When I dropped my spiritual beliefs I then discovered a whole lot of secular beliefs that caused me to feel separate from or superior to my fellow human beings. The other aspect of setting your sights on being happy and harmless with people as-they-are is that one is compelled to stop the habitual and futile exercise of endlessly trying to change other people, or waiting and hoping that other people change, and focus one’s attention exclusively on changing the only person that one can change, and indeed needs to change – me. RESPONDENT No 32: No 80 questioned or thought whether or not the part of the brain with monitored high activity involved in producing happiness for the Buddhist monk while meditating is also involved in producing (a-caused) happiness for an actualist asking ‘Haietmoba?’ while apperception is operating. From your answer I can’t see any clear or implied ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘I don’t know’. PETER to No 32: From what I saw on the television program, I have no doubt that the Buddhist monk
felt happy when he meditated – I didn’t need to see an image of increase in neural activity in one part of his brain to tell me this. I have
experienced the very same thing whilst meditating – often I would feel blissful feelings and I presume these feelings resulted in increased
neural activity in parts of this brain as well. From what I understand, any feeling that a feeling being has results in increased neural activity
in some part or other of the brain, but it is not a subject that interests me at all, quite frankly. RESPONDENT: So, for the record – you are NOT willing to answer this question? PETER: If you care to look back at the original question I was asked – ‘if an actualist can produce similar results (to the high brain activity measured when Buddhist monks meditate)’ – you will see that I did answer in that I pointed to the fact that the aim of these monks is to find an inner feeling of bliss whereas the aim of an actualist is to be happy and harmless in the world-as-it-is with people-as-they-are. To put it plainly, the questioner wanted me to compare chalk and cheese. RESPONDENT: Are you to say that only feeling beings have neural activity? I am laughing right now as I type :) PETER: You are apparently laughing at a joke of your own making because this is not what I said. What I said was –
RESPONDENT: The spiritualists have their happiness backed up by scientific fact. PETER: Indeed, I have even read reports that scientists have discovered a so-called God-spot and are now debating whether this is a sign that God is an imaginary construct or whether God put the God-spot into humans so they would know of His/Her/Its existence. RESPONDENT: What would happen to an actualist who underwent the same study? PETER: No doubt the neurologically-obsessed would indulge in all sorts of fantasies dressed up as theories and speculations in trying to make sense of the effects of the instinctual passions, all the while ignoring the obvious root cause and the practical remedy now being pioneered. RESPONDENT: If no actualist is willing to undergo this study could we not conclude that Actualists are unwilling to look at the facts, while spiritualists are? This is absolutely absurd, but that is what is being propagated here. Peter, what you are saying makes complete sense, but both you and Richard are unwilling to open to such a scientific study. This would also give people much more information about actualism and what it can do... PETER: Okay, let’s take a walk in your speculations. Let’s suppose that a Buddhist monk and I were to have a ‘happiness shoot-out’ in matching MRI machines and let’s say he has more brain activity in certain areas than I do. Would that mean that the happiness he achieves by turning his back on the world and sitting in meditation is better than the happiness I experience in the world-as-it-is with people-as-they-are? If, on the other hand, I register more brain activity than he does in certain spots, then what does that mean? Given that this is not the first time you have raised this point on the mailing list, perhaps you could elaborate on precisely what ‘information’ such a ‘shoot-out’ would provide ‘about actualism and what it can do’ and of what value it be to those who are interested in the down-to-earth business that is actualism. Before you answer, I suggest that it would be useful to consider that scientists have an ingrained habit of measuring something, then speculating about the nature or cause of the measurement and then presenting the measurement as evidence that their theory is fact. Pretty soon other scientists are wont to take up the theory by taking more measurements of different things and speculating that they too are related to the theory and are thus ‘further proof’ of the initial … or speculate that the initial theory needs revising and hence more scientists are then able to take more measurements, construct more models or do more studies to support the initial theory or to support one of the newly emergent sub-theories. Sometimes this self-perpetuating chain of theorizing can keep a theory alive and running for generations upon generations until someone finally dares to touch base with common sense and challenge the status quo. No doubt you will see the relevance of what I am saying given that you are apparently demanding that the proof of the success of something that is utterly new in human history be based upon the scrutiny of scientific theories that are based upon a paradigm that has as its mantra that ‘it is impossible to change human nature … because this is the way it is, this is the way it always has been and this is the way it always will be’. RESPONDENT: But anyway, No 32 repeated a question that had not been originally answered, or secondarily answered. You have no speculation on the matter? PETER: At one stage I did become interested in the research being done on the human brain and its
workings, in particular the empirical evidence of the ‘quick and dirty pathway’ of the instinctual impassioned response that precedes and
predominates, and very often entirely prevents, a clear thinking reasoned response to either an actual or perceived danger. Due to this interest I
produced In short, actualism requires thinking outside the box, something that is impossible if one persists on remaining an inside-the-box-thinker … or persists in giving credence to the speculations of other inside-the-box-thinkers.
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