PETER: Hi,

RESPONDENT: I came across your website recently and took some time going through the discussions and the content in the website. I have been reading Jiddu Krishnamurti for a while and have been attracted to his style, clarity and his philosophy in general. While your writings take the excerpts and try to prove that he is yet another eastern philosopher in disguise, I find that the analysis may be incomplete in the sense that it leaves out other aspects looking only for the ‘spritualist signature’. If you have time and inclination, if you can take this piece, which is my favourite, and comment on the points raised by Krishnamurti, I will appreciate it greatly. http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/K/ObsWoMe.html

PETER: Eastern spirituality spawned two infamous Gurus in the 20^th Century, both of whom left a legacy of discourses very carefully tailored to suit their largely Western audience – Jiddu Krishnamurti and Mohan Rajneesh. Krishnamurti’s appeal was largely an intellectual one and his lasting legacy is a league of intellectual sluggards – faithful followers not only unwilling but incapable of thinking for themselves. On the other hand, Rajneesh’s appeal was largely the passionate lure an alternative, superior society and his lasting legacy is a reclusive social club – followers not only unwilling but incapable of standing on their own two feet.

That old spiritual dimwitticism, ‘leave your mind at the door, surrender your will and trust your feelings’ has suckered a whole generation of searchers of freedom and peace into becoming faithful mindless followers of Eastern religion. The post World War Two generation turned away from their naive interest in peace on earth and settled instead for the utterly selfish search for an inner peace and the ultimate self-gratifying Eastern experience – the dream-like state of God-realization, commonly known as Enlightenment.

The good thing is that you have serendipitously discovered actualism and now have a chance to break free from your own spiritual/ religious beliefs. It was my experience that one of the essential first aspects of this was to begin to stand on my own two feet and to dare to think for myself – the second was to learn how to do so.

Welcome to actualism.

25.3.2005

RESPONDENT: I am reading the ‘Audio-taped dialogues’ ... it is superb. It is more fluent and less formal than the writings. Everything seems to have been addressed in the web-site but still it is my own journey and my own discovery (following the general map plus the engine provided by Richard, with the travelogues by Peter and Vineeto and other actualists). Great work... just have no words to praise you all.

PETER: The audio-taped dialogues were an early attempt to convey the flavour of some of the discussions that Richard has had with various people about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being and Richard transcribed some of the tapes given that the quality of the recordings was very poor. I am glad you are enjoying the transcriptions because I am currently planning to video some similar informal discussions with some local actualists and make them available either on DVD or as on-line downloads. I have always been interested in presenting actualism in a format other than the printed word and am currently at the start of the learning curve of HD Video production and distribution. Timing is somewhat of an unknown but my current plan is that they will be available sometime this year .

26.4.2005

RESPONDENT: Hi Peter/Vineeto, Would you agree that the ‘me’ becomes thinner and thinner as you apply actualism and for you it must have become so thin that it is impossible to detect? Richard took a different path (or is it the same towards the end?) – so the identity was visible (in fact stupendous) when deciding to self-immolate... What I am thinking is that the decision to self-immolate might need to occur when the ‘me’ is still substantial instead of thinning out too far – for better success?

PETER: It is important to keep in mind that there are two aspects to actualism – firstly that it is an alternative to both materialism and spiritualism and secondly that it elucidates a method whereby it is possible to become actually free from the human condition in toto.

Of the two aspects, the most important aspect is the first because the spread of actualism will inevitably lead to a decline of both materialism – the mindless pursuit of power, fame, wealth and possessions – and spiritualism – the even more mindless pursuit of power, fame, wealth and possessions in a supposed spiritual realm. Actualism unabashedly offers a robust and sensible alternative to the traditional human pursuits that have existed up until now – rather than battling it out with one’s fellow human beings in a grim instinctual battle for survival or falling into the eons-old trap of indulging in any one of the myriad fantasies of a spirit-ual ‘other world’, one sets one’s sights on becoming as happy and as harmless as is possible, each moment again.

Therein lies the significance of actualism because as more and more people make being happy and harmless their primary aim in life, the less need will there be for human beings to be antagonistic towards their fellow human beings and the less need there will be for them to feel resentful about being here. The stealth-like, word-of-mouth, spread of actualism will be what eventually brings an end to more insidious facets of the human condition – genocide, warfare, murder, infanticide, rape, child abuse, torture, corruption and so on.

Whilst I do acknowledge that it is an outrageous claim that the world-wide spread of actualism will inevitably result in the desperately longed-for peace on earth, it behoves one to take a clear-eyed look at what are commonly referred to as the ‘ills’ of humanity as well as make a dispassionate assessment of the continued failure of the traditional proposed solutions … and then to ask yourself, is it not high time to try something radically different and does it not make sense that this something involves you doing whatever is needed to eliminate malice and sorrow from your own life, to do your part to actualize peace on earth?

So as you can see, the first aspect of actualism will be of interest to those who are moved to do something practical about bringing about peace on earth by doing whatever they can to be as happy and as harmless as they possibly can, each moment again. Some people will however be attracted to take this pursuit even further and for those the second aspect of actualism is then available – an actual freedom from the human condition of malice and sorrow. You will notice that the first and second aspects of actualism are sequential – the first is the means to the second. To put it succinctly, it is obvious that one cannot expect to become actually free of malice and sorrow unless one is prepared to do everything possible to eliminate malice and sorrow from one’s life.

One of the attractions of actualism to me was that it is not an ‘all-or-nothing’ business and that it is not a group business. Anyone who is interested in actualism can take it as far as they want, or as far as they dare, and they will be the judge of their own success depending solely upon their own aspirations and expectations … whether that is to be a little more happy being here doing whatever it is they are doing as well as being a little more harmless to their fellow human beings, or whether it is to become actually free of the human condition.

As for your comment about a thinner ‘me’, my experience is that the incremental diminishing of the usual feelings of malice and sorrow certainly results in the feeling that ‘I’ am thinner or less substantial and yet – despite the fact that to live virtually free from malice and sorrow is way beyond human expectations – ‘I’ remain an ‘I’ until ‘I’ am no more.

10.5.2005

PETER: I like your observation as it demonstrates to me that you have been doing some down-to-earth thinking –

RESPONDENT: What appears to be contradictions to me …

‘Ancient wisdom for discussion... common sense for everyday life.’

PETER: The tendency of human beings to indulge in abstract thinking, aka philosophy, is legendary, particularly so amongst the males of the species and it has done nothing but produce a maize of contradictions and a plethora of obscurations as well as endless opportunities for argumentations.

In 1980, John Lennon, a man who had considerable wealth, fame and power, wrote a song for his son and a line from it went: ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans’. It strikes me that he could equally well have written ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy philosophizing about it.’

I remember being struck by the inanity of this propensity to philosophize when contemplating my own mortality and I wrote about it in my journal at the time –

[Peter]: ‘During my investigations into death over this last year, I have become aware that the most shocking thing for human beings is that we are able to contemplate our own death. It is amazing that, of all the animals on the planet, only we human beings, with our ability to think and reflect, know that we have a limited life span and, further, that we could die at any time. We know this, we can talk about it and think about it. We see other people and animals die, and we see our bodies aging and dying. We know that death is an inevitable fact. This is the fact of the situation, but we have avoided this fact largely by making ‘Why are we here?’ and ‘What happens after death?’ into great religious, philosophical and scientific questions. Indeed, for many humans the pursuit of the answer to these meaningless questions is deemed to be the very meaning of life. The search for what happens after life becomes the point of life and the Search is endless. One is forever on the Path. One never arrives.

That always seemed some sort of perversity to me. All that the religious and spiritual meanings of life have offered us is that they point to life after death – that’s where it is really at! ‘When you die, then you can really live!’’ Peter’s Journal, ‘Death’

In my experience there is nothing like contemplating the inevitability – the 100% certainty – of one’s own death to get one thinking back down-to-earth.

21.5.2005

PETER: I like your observation as it demonstrates to me that you have been doing some down-to-earth thinking –

RESPONDENT: Indeed... it is delicious... Thanks to you, Vineeto and Richard. Much of it I owe to all the writings that you have done... suddenly something will make sense… suddenly something else will... the ‘me’ will try to spoil... but something will click in spite of that... it is a very interesting process.

PETER: The other day I happened to look at something I had written a few years ago and it struck me that I had to do my own thinking for myself and by myself in order to be able to make sense of the human condition such that I could become free of a particular aspect of it. After all, the only way it’s ultimately possible to make sense of something is to do it yourself – no amount of book learning or relying on second-hand knowledge can substitute for hands-on experience. I have recently become interested in video production and whilst I have learnt a good deal from reading, the real-nitty gritty learning is coming from the doing-of-it myself.

RESPONDENT: In the beginning, I had ‘problems’ with your style and Vineeto’s – I thought you were nitpicking, confrontational etc. So I can see where others are coming from when they attack you. I have since then realized that such feelings were products of my own malicious and sorrowful world-view (which was reacting to being challenged).

PETER: I too can see where others are coming from when they are confrontational to actualists but I don’t understand why they feel compelled to do it as it was not something that I did when I came across actualism. I’ve never been a fan of the head-banging that typifies much of human interactions, particularly amongst the males of the species, as I have always preferred to listen carefully to what others have to say in order to determine whether what they are saying makes sense to me or not.

RESPONDENT: Now when I read yours or Vineeto’s (Richard was getting a ‘special’ treatment as a ‘Guru’ but now I think of him as an ‘expert’) make 100% sense to me.

PETER: Again I would acknowledge that what we write is confrontational in that the very subject matter is confrontational – how can the fact that everybody has got it 180 degrees wrong not be confrontational. For those who are interested enough in what is on offer on the Actual Freedom Trust website however – interested enough to actually make the effort and take the time to read what is written such that they stay around for a while – not just weeks but years and years in many cases – there is a chance that what we are saying will make sense to that particular person.

*

RESPONDENT: What appears to be contradictions to me … ‘Nothing can be known with certainty’ – certainly. ‘There is no matter – only sensations produced by ‘brain!’ exist’. ‘Quantum Physics for discussions/highest truth... common sense for everyday life’. ‘Ancient wisdom for discussion... common sense for everyday life’.

PETER: The tendency of human beings to indulge in abstract thinking, aka philosophy, is legendary, particularly so amongst the males of the species and it has done nothing but produce a maize of contradictions and a plethora of obscurations as well as endless opportunities for argumentations.

In 1980, John Lennon, a man who had considerable wealth, fame and power, wrote a song for his son and a line from it went: ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans’. It strikes me that he could equally well have written ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy philosophizing about it.’

RESPONDENT: I come from a different background than you and have valued philosophy and have spent enormous time philosophizing as well as reading a lot of philosophies. However, I don’t value them anymore – given that actualism is available. It is a lot of time wasting... I could not have said this a while ago though – I guess my ‘social identity as a philosopher, thinker’ has lost his grounds.

PETER: Vineeto and I were talking about a particular philosophy the other night and she mentioned that she had learnt about philosophy at school which prompted me to remark that I never learnt philosophy nor did it ever interest me whenever I came across it. Maybe that contributed to my having little difficulty in grasping the fact that actualism is utterly pragmatic and completely down-to-earth.

*

PETER: I remember being struck by the inanity of this propensity to philosophize when contemplating my own mortality and I wrote about it in my journal at the time – <snip>

In my experience there is nothing like contemplating the inevitability – the 100% certainty – of one’s own death to get one’s thinking back down-to-earth.

RESPONDENT: In another thread Richard has made it clear about how death takes away the ‘grimness’ or ‘seriousness’ out of living... thus ended my ‘seriousness’ to some extent :).

PETER: I happened to have a conversation recently with a man who was interested in actualism and we touched upon this very subject. He was someone who became interested in actualism after talking to someone who had met Richard about 7 years ago and whose interest has only recently blossomed to the point that he is now having substantive success in becoming more happy and less harmful. This particular man’s interest in actualism had also laid dormant for several years and had only recently vitalized to the point that he had talked to a friend about it and had rung me up to ask if he could bring his friend around to buy both journals. The reason I mention this is that afterwards it occurred to me that I had just met someone who had heard about actualism from someone who had heard about actualism from someone who had heard about actualism from Richard – in other words, it was a practical demonstration of the word-of-mouth (i.e. chain-letter) spread of actualism.

But I digress from the topic at hand – what came up in the conversation was that the fact that everybody dies means that any of the traditional pursuits in life (wealth, fame and power, be it material wealth, fame and power or spiritual wealth, fame and power) are, in the end, meaningless. As the conversation continued a smile came to the man’s face as the inherent seriousness that comes from being unwittingly inculcated as a responsible member of society gradually lifted and the realization that life was indeed easy and was indeed fun gradually dawned upon him.

RESPONDENT: All the philosophies are filled with contradictions... they are not liveable, practicable at all. They are good only for idle talk. Which is okay, if there is not so much suffering.

PETER: I can see that many people are already wont to make actualism into a philosophy and no doubt the numbers of those so inclined will increase over the years. This will eventually represent a paradigm shift in traditional philosophy in that philosophy will no longer be the realm of abstracted head-in-the-clouds thinking or disengaged ivory-tower thinking but will be more and more influenced by down-to-earth thinking and eventually by the pragmatic results of this type of thinking in action – a gradual perceptible diminishing of human malice and human sorrow on the planet.

Or to put it another way, the more common sense down-to-earth thinking there is in the world, the better.

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