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Peter’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List with Gary
PETER: Hi Gary, Just a little correction to start with. I noticed you put a link to the Glossary for No 21 the other day and as I accessed it I noticed a mistake in what I had written on imagination. I wrote –
It should read –
The most strident claims for other animals being intelligent seem to relate to training animals to do something other than stalk and kill for their food, like push a button or do tricks for humans. ‘Dolphin intelligence’ gets the most press but no one has yet discovered a dolphin shelter let alone an underwater city or hospital. Chimps are another favourite, despite the fact that they live in trees and indulge in rape, infanticide and cannibalism and wage wars with neighbouring tribes. To call the basic rudimentary adaptive instinctual reactions exhibited in other animals intelligence is to mightily abuse both the word and the attribute. So, after that bit of tidying up my own writing, on to your post. * PETER: The actualism writings are generally framed in terms of being a search for freedom, peace and happiness and the reason for this are two-fold. Richard’s discovery of the ‘self’-less pure consciousness state was a two stage process, an elimination of his social/ psychological self, or ego, and the final elimination of his instinctual/ psychic self, or soul. Having been Enlightened and then gone beyond it to actuality, his expertise and experience of the delusions of the spiritual world are second to none and his writings reflect that expertise, knowledge and approach. Similarly, Vineeto and I have had extensive insider experience of the world of the spiritual/ religious believer and our writings tend to be slanted towards our expertise. The other even more important aspect of this slant is that it is reasonable to assume that anyone interested in freedom, peace and happiness would be on, or interested in, the spiritual path – the only alternative thus far to remaining ‘normal’. GARY: Well, while probably most people interested in freedom, peace and happiness would be on, or interested in, the spiritual path, there may be others who are not. So far, perhaps that remains to be seen. PETER: The famed spiritual path is rapidly losing all credibility as time goes on. The West’s grand flirtation with Eastern religion is beginning to look a bit like a leaky sieve. At one end spiritualism is being watered down to moralistic self-love and stress-relieving techniques, à la Oprah Winfrey, while the increasing exposure of the necessary narcissism of the spiritual teachers, Gurus and God-men is spoiling their game no end. Things have changed enormously since I first tentatively trod the boards of the spiritual stage. So much more information is available for anyone to make his or her own assessment of what is on offer and whether it works. Many who come across actualism are so heavily indoctrinated by Eastern religion that they skim a bit of what is written, if at all that is, and dismiss it as spiritual. If they read a bit more they react strongly and then dismiss it as anti-spiritual. In time, the writings on this web-site will be simply acknowledged as non-spiritual and down-to-earth and, as more people become interested, actualism will increasingly become a vibrant and flourishing third alternative. GARY: I became interested in what Richard had to say while on the Krishnamurti list, it is true. But earlier in my life, I was on what I would call the ‘drug’ path – ‘better living through chemistry’. I cared not a snoot for religious or other spiritual thinking, although the ethos of that time – the Love Generation – was very much influenced by Eastern religions and ideas. PETER: And Richard got himself Enlightened without any knowledge of Eastern religion at all. I got myself involved in Eastern Religion after a dark night of the soul, knowing not a fig about what I was getting in to. Not that I knew it then but peace, love and brown rice was really religion, narcissism and poverty. GARY: I wonder to what extent the ‘drug’ path I was on was actually a kind of spiritual path. In any event, with the exception of a brief foray into the teachings of Timothy Leary, which were remarkably like that of Buddhism, and used some Buddhist-like doctrines, my approach to freedom, peace and happiness was by being permanently stoned. I was watching a TV program last night (I watch TV a lot at night) on Ecstasy. Apparently there is a lot of Ecstasy use among young people now. One woman was testifying to the mood enhancing properties of the drug and was an outspoken advocate for its’ legalization and widespread use as a panacea for modern day ills. She said she just wanted to be ‘happy’ and now was since she had found Ecstasy. I no longer use any drugs, alcohol, and (with the exception of an occasion coffee) have not for 15 years. I have not had any cannabis or psychedelics since about 1981, also the last time I took any LSD. I sometimes think I was helped by my drug use in a positive way. But I would not want to return to any type of drug use, no matter how alluring. It was hell. Because along with the highs came the inevitable lows, as it was a chase for the good feelings as a way of getting away from the bad feelings. At the end of it all, I was more filled with malice and sorrow than I had been at the start of it all. PETER: There is a good deal of evidence that links shamanism with the use of hallucinogens, both in the Eastern and Western religions, so much so that their early use could well explain many of the fairy tales that now pass for sacred texts and truths. I know from talking to people that many have had pure consciousness experiences after using mind-altering drugs and I have as well. The inherent problem is that it is a hit and miss affair and usually much more miss than hit. Paranoid experiences, altered state of consciousness, temporary highs, addiction, dependency and just plain weird experiences are the most common results rather than anything of value. There is nothing like having a drug-free PCE. It is the proof of the pudding of what is spontaneously possible, rather than artificially contrived – a pure unadulterated intelligence operating in a brain temporarily freed of the chemical flows that form the very foundation of the psychological and emotional persona. * PETER: The actualism writings have broadened in scope somewhat to now include the recent scientific discoveries about the instinctual passions and we have even presented these schematically to make the neurobiological processes even clearer. However there is no reason why the whole approach could not be slanted in terms of freeing oneself from the normal neurotic and psychotic conditions that result from being an instinctually-driven socially-subjugated ‘self’. This is, of course, what is meant by ‘self’-immolation and the resulting elimination of instinctual malice and sorrow. GARY: I remember when I approached actualism, Richard’s talk of ‘self-immolation’, extirpation, elimination, sacrificial offerings and such scared me out of my wits. It reminded me of the Nazis’ talk of the Final Solution and I would picture flaming bodies and torched cities. PETER: I also balked a bit at the word ‘self’-immolation but a check on the word’s meaning set me on the right track.
The second definition makes sense as ‘for the sake of something else’ is peace on earth. Given that the ‘deliberate destruction or loss’ is the ending of ‘me’, it is no less daunting, or scary, but the perspective does shift from sinister totalitarianism to individual altruism. * PETER: I liked what I have heard about the success of cognitive therapy, but I have little knowledge in psychology/ psychiatry/ sociology fields. At some stage, no doubt, more will be investigated and written about this particular area of study of the Human Condition. Gradually the emphasis in investigation and dealing with neurosis and psychosis will have to turn from coping and ‘normalizing’ – as in reducing the more extreme symptoms – to finding fixes and cures and thus eventually to seeking elimination – and actualism provides the method to completely eradicate one’s own malice and sorrow. The next 30 years are going to be fascinating indeed ... GARY: Yes, I agree, if we do not blow each other up in the mean time. PETER: Given that all life on this planet is estimated to cease when the life-sustaining sun burns out and ceases to be in a period estimated in terms of millions of years, and that the universe has always been here and always will be here, this would be of no significance whatsoever. Human beings have a pointless fascination with the past, a morbid anxiety about the future and a compulsive disregard for what is happening now. This neurosis is a universal neurosis, blindly driven by the instinctual drive to survive – at all costs. Given that this drive is species-specific, human beings think and feel themselves collectively to be the centre of existence – that Humanity is primary and of central importance and significance and ‘the rest’ – the physical universe, the actual world, is peripheral, remote and alien. The instinctual drive is also ‘self’-centred, which results in the perverseness of each and every human inevitably regarding the actual world, including their fellow human beings as separate, remote and alien. The spiritual practice of further turning ‘in’ only serves to strengthen this ‘self’-centred myopic view resulting in narcissism and solipsism. The idea of a ‘we’ as a species is a psychic illusion based upon these primitive survival instincts, hence Humanity thinks and feels it is essential that it survives, whereas this feeling is simply a crude operating program reinforced by social conditioning and religious beliefs resulting in senseless and relentless breeding, tribal conflicts and religious battles for supremacy. It is a weird Humanity – 6 billion ‘selfs’ involved in a grim instinctual battle for survival. From within the human condition it seems an impossible dream that there will ever be a species of fellow human beings living together in peace and harmony, concord and consensus. However, as I experience my own successes in eliminating malice and sorrow and witness the successes of others, the possibility of peace on earth changes from a future fantasy to a current fact. * PETER: Courage and intelligence has a way of eventually winning out over brute fear and superstition – a brief view of the facts of history attests to this. We don’t live in caves and hunt like animals anymore, we just instinctually act as if we do because that is the way we have been programmed to act. It is if of no use at all to feel guilt or shame about this genetic programming, or feel resentful or be cynically embittered about one’s lot in life – the situation we find ourselves in calls for an unfettered investigation and the instigation of sensible action such that we can become free of this condition we are all inevitably born into. GARY: You are optimistic. Usually when I look at the facts of history, I see brute fear and superstition winning out over courage and intelligence. I say that because I see that the human species has been unable to, despite the ardent hopes of many for a solution, end war and eliminate violence. If we as a species were so intelligent, we would have learned something from all this bloodshed down through the ages. Perhaps I am being a pessimist. It is true that we don’t live in caves and hunt like animals anymore, but doesn’t the observation that we instinctually act as if we do negate your observation about courage and intelligence? Maybe, though, I am taking this the wrong way. PETER: I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic, neither a soothsayer nor a doomsdayer, neither gullible nor cynical. What I am is naïve. For whatever reason I could not fully turn away into acceptance and the escapist fantasy of the spiritual world, nor was I sucked into resignation and the fatalistic cynicism of the real world. Methinks you are thus far underestimating the significance of actualism and its tried and tested method of eliminating malice and sorrow, which is more than understandable. This is no little thing we do here – the very beginnings of the ending of war, rape, murder, torture, child abuse, corruption, despair and suicide is being forged on this mailing list. It’s the only game to play in town. * PETER: I like what you wrote. I remember having exactly the same attitude. Very early on, after having established a prima-facie case that actualism made sense and was worth a whole-hearted go, I wanted to find out for myself if what Richard was saying was true, as in factual, and whether using the method would work, as in bring about actual change. Spurred on by my early successes I then wanted to write of my experiences, investigations and findings so as to put it on record for others to read and assess for themselves. At the time of writing my Journal I stopped seeing Richard on a regular basis and did a lot of investigating, sorting out, and making sense of the human condition as it manifested as ‘me’. GARY: I sometimes have the greatest doubts about what I am undertaking. And why shouldn’t I? Nobody I see, from the evidence around me, has taken it upon themselves to end their instinctual malice and sorrow forever. So occasionally it occurs to me ‘Maybe I am all wrong – maybe I’m way off base’. It occurs to me that I am just going through another of many phases that will end in my complete disillusionment, scrapping the whole thing, and finding something else to chase for awhile – in other words, it will end like all my spiritual searching – in abysmal failure. PETER: I can well relate to what you are saying. I went through a similar stage and included the fear chapter in my Journal deliberately to explain this phase. Certainly part of the reason for my doubt was that I had been so gullible in the past in taking on beliefs, ideals and causes, all of which proved failures. The only thing that got me over the hump, so to speak, was the success I was having in becoming more happy and harmless, confirmed by my interaction with others, and the memory of my pure consciousness experiences. I also saw that he fact that I was a failure in both the real world and the spiritual world gave a firm basis on which to dare to explore further afield. This dissatisfaction and disillusionment, based on life-experience and not theory, was to provide the backpressure that got me through doubt and on to certainty based on the confidence of success. I know you have read it before but my dead rabbit story from my journal may be relevant –
Just to make it clear, I am not saying don’t doubt, for that would involve either denying or suppressing it or looking for some other antidotal feeling such as faith, trust, hope or optimism. Doubt is a feeling and like all other feelings that arise it is a rich goldmine to experience, investigate, explore and understand in action. Doubt can also be a good tool in the pursuit of actuality for it serves to keep one’s feet on the ground as its only effective antidote is to continue to seek and take continual note of your practical successes in becoming more happy and more harmless. Without this proof of perceptible change, doubt can only be countered by belief, faith, trust and hope in an imaginary dream world of the ‘truth of actualism’. What I found I had to do regularly was to acknowledge my successes even to the point of figuratively patting myself on the back. And when things got really tough I took some time to sit down and ask myself again what it was that I wanted to do with my life, what was my goal – and soon the memory of a pure consciousness experience would swan in. A distinct memory of a PCE combined with an understanding of its significance is a very haunting experience after which it is very difficult to ever again settle for second best. What an adventure ... Today I met up with our local computer mechanic who is going to crank up this machine a notch or two, in exchange for a dollar or two. The eventual aim is to produce a flashy Flash version of the web-site and the first stage would be to do a Flash version of the Introduction to Actual Freedom, complete with animation, audio and video. So both Vineeto and I are on yet another learning curve but I have had a bee in my bonnet for a while now to present the words of actualism in a more visual way. It may even be useful for those suffering from literato-aversion or intellecto-evasion. I always found it strange that I ended up reading and writing so much. I did very poorly at school in both, read very little in my life and wrote even less. It was only when I met Richard that a fascination with studying the human condition overcame my previous lack of interest in the world in which I was living. But before I get off on yet another tangent, it’s time for coffee, couch ... and whatever other pleasures the night will bring ...
GARY: I wanted to respond to your post pertaining to Atheism, etc., but I think I’ll have to pare it down a bit by snipping certain sections out to make it more manageable. PETER: We seem to have about 3 posts going at once and I have slipped from being one behind to losing the plot completely. I’ll snip rigorously and only make a further comment on religious belief ... from the atheism (1) post ... * GARY: If belief, any belief, is the problem, then what good does it do to discard one system of belief and pick up another? PETER: None at all, for holding any belief is nonsensical. I remember even as a teenager in a Christian society the idea of a white-bearded God sitting on a cloud and overseeing all this was pretty silly to me. And as for sending his Son down so he could do a few miracles, start a Religion, be nailed to a cross, and after a few days go back up to sit alongside Dad and see how it works out ...! I remember thinking, if there was a God, how come he made the mess in the first place, and if he was responsible for this mess, why the hell didn’t he just come down and sort it out. Despite this early discarding of one religious belief, some 25 years later I was shocked one night to discover I had merely taken another. GARY: It is remarkable how firmly the Christian fairy-tale has gotten a hold of people down through the ages. But understanding something about one’s emotions, passions, and calentures helps one to see the enormous emotional appeal of religion to ‘me’ as a soulful entity. I like what you said about spiritual talk being ‘music to my soul’. It is indeed so. At one time, not so long ago in fact, I thought that the enormity of the bloodshed of the World Wars, Nazism, nationalism, etc, etc., all the tremendous turmoil of the last hundred years or so in the West, could be blamed all on Christianity. But I think that is a gross oversimplification. The problem really is the emotions, passions, and calentures. Religious figures whip up such passions in their followers. I remember clearly being in the grip of such powerful emotions and it is indeed potent stuff. At the time, I had little or no understanding of the destructiveness of these emotions. It was interesting to read the article, a while back, on the Actual Freedom website about the relation between Zen Buddhism and the Japanese warrior cult and atrocities that were committed during WW2 by the Japanese. Also, the article about the atrocities in China. This is important information. Christianity, as one of the world’s major religions, is not the only religion that inclines its followers to violence. I can clearly remember believing that the religions of the East were much to be preferred because they had ushered in a reign of peace and harmony in the Eastern world. Clearly not so. This is another myth we have been fed. PETER: I have posted links to http://www.darkzen.com/ that article to several people, but have never received comment back. The revelations cut to the quick of what can happen if one takes the belief that ‘I am not the body’ to heart – complete and utter dissociation from what ‘the body’ is doing and what is actually happening. In the town where I live there are many people practicing martial arts, all of them seemingly in ignorance of the real significance of the philosophy that underpins the practice. What is most clear for me is that dissociating from and feeling that one has transcended the malice and sorrow in the world can only be achieved by dissociating from one’s personal malice and sorrow – or to put it into play ground language, ‘I am one of the good guys and the others are the baddies’. As you said, there is indeed a great deal of myth about peace and harmony in the East, yet a little reading reveals an almost continuous history of warfare, conflict and brutality in the East exactly as there is in the West. Further, the combination of a fatalistic acceptance and dissociative religious beliefs has ensured the faithful believers, in India in particular, remain ensnared in appalling poverty and suffering. It is amazing to think I once believed that the religious philosophy that enshrines and perpetuates the poverty, repression and superstition in India was Wisdom or the Truth, but then again I was simply thoroughly investigating the only alternative to being normal that was available at the time. It is an interesting exercise to be able to look back over my life experiences without any emotional memory clouding or colouring the events. What I see is ‘failure’ writ large and clear. I am definitely a failure in real world terms. I have failed at love – and eventually I gave it up. I have failed to find meaning and fulfillment in my career – eventually I worked in order to buy myself time to do nothing. I have failed at fatherhood – I eventually gave up when my son was able to take care of himself and I cut my emotional bonds. I failed to be a ‘good’ member of society for I saw no sense in fighting for causes while blaming others for the ills. In short, I failed to play the game of belonging, or not belonging, to the various groups that make up society and I failed to play the games I was supposed to play. With the benefit of hindsight, whenever I found something that didn’t work, and by its very nature was unworkable, I eventually abandoned it and kept looking for a better way of doing something – to find something that actually worked. It was exactly the same thing when I was on the spiritual path when I eventually discovered and finally admitted religion/ spiritualism didn’t work and never could work to bring peace on earth. Again in hindsight, it is clear to me that the most important attribute that kept me from settling for second best was integrity, combined with a naïve and deep-seated desire for peace on earth.
PETER: Well, I’ve been ruthless in my pruning again, so just some comments on a few points from Atheism 2. * PETER: In my later years as a Rajneeshee I plunged head-on into expressive type therapies and found them lacking in substance. I was also shocked soon after to find myself overcome by anger one day and started to be aware that all of my spiritual colleagues suffered from similar slippages. Not only did these type of therapies lack substance but they simply did not work long term to alleviate anger or sorrow. There was a particular group who followed the ‘I am all right as I am’ path of ‘self’-love and these people had no qualms at all about expressing their anger at others, nor about being sad and spreading their sorrow to others. Suppression doesn’t work, emoting doesn’t work, nor does transcendence; otherwise there would be peace on earth by now. GARY: One extremely useful and practical thing I have learned from actualism is how to put emotions in a bind: one can put them in a bind when they come up by neither expressing nor repressing them. Any emotion or passion, indeed any movement, can be brought to the full light of a sensuous awareness and looked at as-it-is. One need neither give vent to the emotion nor suppress nor repress. One can also instantly appraise the probable consequence of those actions were one to take them and at a glance determine for oneself what is happening in the moment. When one’s emotions are put in a bind this way, a curious thing happens: they literally dry up – run out of steam – run out of gas – crash and burn. Any particularly vexing emotion or problematic situation can be dealt with in this way. With repeated use of this technique, I have found myself becoming much less emotional. When emotions come up, I can keep my hands in my pockets, observe what is happening, and determine how to get back to being happy and harmless in the moment. When the emotion is experienced fully, the energy is dissipated and gradually exhausted. With each succeeding experience like this, something is happening in the emotional part, the primitive part of the brain (speculation here), something which, given time, persistence and repeated practice, spells doom to ‘me’. I am experiencing a thrill even as I write these words this morning, because this is something that is entirely new, unheard of before, so far as I can determine. It is exciting to be talking like this, experimenting with these things, trying them on for size. PETER: An excellent description. Just in case anyone missed the opening sentence – ‘One extremely useful and practical thing I have learned from actualism is ... ’ The only way this method can be effective, as in producing lasting results, is if it is combined with an active investigation of the beliefs, morals, ethics, values and psittacisms that form our social identity – ‘the guardian at the gate’ that prevents one from having a clear-eyed look at the emotions and passions in action. This method needs to be combined with labelling the emotion or feeling and understanding its source and this is where reading the web-site is essential. Richard spent years investigating and exploring the human condition and my investigations were subsequently so much easier because I was able to read what he had written and pick his brain for information. My particular discoveries combined with Vineeto’s are now available for others to read so this process becomes even easier again for those following. Your description adds to a growing body of evidence that the process works, and I would only add another comment for others who may be reading. Anyone who regards actualism as a process designed only to eliminate emotions is missing the point and needs to read more. If anyone attempts merely to eliminate emotions without having a goal to be free of the Human Condition they would only end up in some non-feeling zombie-like state – perhaps dwelling in some rationalist cold no-man’s land. The aim of the method, so well described above, is to reduce the insidious effects of both the savage and tender passions and aim for the felicitous feelings, such as feeling fine, feeling good, feeling excellent, etc. Until the whole of the psychological and psychic identity is extinguished one is still a feeling being but this process, if undertaken with sincere intent, serves to weaken and diminish one’s identity and eventually facilitates its immolation. One’s own integrity combined with the memory that purity and perfection is only possible in a ‘self’-less state will always serve to prevent one from entering into imaginary delusionary states of Actual Freedom. The immediate and readily obtainable aim in the initial stages of actualism is to get to a Virtual Freedom from the human condition. It could well be described as learning to walk before you fly, lest you fall into the ‘I am already That’ trap. Another way of putting it is you always keep your feet on the ground, lest you end up with your head in the clouds. Discovering what is actual, as opposed to what we think and feel is real, is immense fun. * PETER: Most, if not all, people have had PCEs in their life but they become quickly forgotten for, being ‘self’-less experiences, they leave no emotional memory. Others quickly possess the experience as there own as their emotions flood in and the experience becomes one of passionate awe and imaginary Oneness, rather than one of fascinating wonder and sensuous intimacy. GARY: Hmm ... that’s interesting. I never thought to consider that these PCEs leave no emotional memory, but of course not. PETER: So we could well say it is vitally important to remember the exact nature of pure consciousness experiences for they are vibrant experiences of the pure and sensuous nature of ‘self’-lessness. The traditional mischief has been to claim these experiences as ‘mine’, either sometime during the experience or immediately afterwards, which is exactly what all spiritual seekers have been trained to do. Even without this spiritual intent fear can well up, the passionate instincts of survival can automatically kick in and the instinctual lust for power and immortality can completely take over – giving rise to the ‘I am God’ or the ‘God and I are best mates’ syndromes. Once you know the dangers to be avoided, and maybe even had a taste of them, the next times you are able to check out what is happening during the experience, as in checking out for any emotions or identity present. This should be a relatively simple task for you because, by having the benefit of having read and understood so much about the spiritual imperative, you are forewarned of the instinctual lures that have seduced past seekers of freedom, peace and happiness. * PETER: Just a postscript to finish and it relates to the following comment you made in a previous post.
I can well relate to your initial reaction for I had a similar reaction, but for me it was staring death and madness in the face. The intensity of these initial gut-wrenching reactions reminded me of the reactions of many people to the prospect of eliminating genetically-inherited diseases. Cries of the breeding of a Master Race à la Nazism or the Eugenics movement are trotted out as dire warnings as well as the traditional ‘we are meddling in God’s business’ moral objection. I could understand the fear that drove these objections but a recent television documentary provided me with yet another twist. A pioneering medical development has meant that it is possible to implant a simple hearing amplifier in infants who are born deaf such that they can hear and speak normally without needing to learn sign language. This implant has to be done before the age of about two in order for effective communication skills to develop normally. This medical procedure has been opposed by many in the deaf community with some even stridently accusing the doctors of genocide. The ‘genocide’ they see is the deliberate wiping out of the deaf community – as in eventual extinction. Their counter argument, offered as a concession, is that the procedure should not be done without the child’s consent. The problem with this is that the procedure needs to be done at an early age, prior to the development stage of communication skills in order for the child to develop without a handicap in speech and comprehension. This is not a moral or ethical objection but the deep-seated fear of a community or group feeling as though it is facing extinction. After the documentary, I was left befuddled at how deep the instinctual passions survival run.
PETER: I have come to like the way we have three alternating posts running. I find it gives a bit of time from when I first skim your reply till when it comes time to break it up into sections and then thoroughly read each response and observation before my fingers hit the keyboard. Sometimes I have done some thinking about something you wrote in between but often as not, not. This reading twice is a great way to be able to skim first and then zero in on the pertinent points where more thinking is required in order to understand fully what is being said, or simply to respond to what twigs my interest, or catches my eye. I remember when I first read Richard’s Journal I had to read it very thoroughly and repeatedly in order to understand exactly what he was saying, and when I did, it was as if I was struck by thunderbolts of common sense, or realizations, or flashes of pure thinking unfettered by any beliefs, ethics, morals, values or passions. This was not the spiritual Truth I was reading, but the facts of how to become free of the Human Condition. My life-long longing for peace on earth meant I could not turn away – this was an opportunity to be seized with both hands. I needed to find out not only for myself, but for the many others I knew who longed for peace on earth, whether this worked or not. I certainly knew what was possible from my pure consciousness experiences – glimpses of the vibrant sensuous purity and peacefulness of the actual world we live in. I eventually came to realize from these experiences that it was ‘I’ who stood in the way of the 24 hrs. a day, every day living of peace on earth. The process of actualism happens in two consecutive stages – firstly a period of deliberate active dismantling of one’s social and instinctual identity such that you diminish this identity to the point where you are virtually free of malice and sorrow. This reasonable stable plateau is known as Virtual Freedom, whereby one is happy and harmless for 99.9% of the time. Virtual Freedom, with the bulk of the active work having largely been done, is a period of becoming accustomed to living in increasingly long periods of near self’-lessness. In this stage, apart from a few remaining issues and investigations, one’s social and instinctual identity, or ‘self’ – who I think and feel I am – has increasingly nothing left to do but to get out of the road. Eventually the ‘self’ becomes so thin and ethereal as to be understood, recognized and eventually unequivocally experienced as being non-substantial, i.e. non-actual. The permanent experiencing of ‘self’-lessness is to be actually free of malice and sorrow – you then have arrived, sans ‘self’, permanently and irrevocably in the actual world. * GARY: Reading your post this morning, what jumped out at me is what you wrote in the following passage:
I have often in the past berated myself for being a ‘failure’. And I think I can see now that I can make friends with that aspect of my life experiences and that I need not berate myself. I thank you very much for contributing these thoughts because it has helped me to make sense of something that I have felt for a long time. I remember that my aunt once dubbed me, when I was about age 21 or so, the ‘auslander’ (foreigner or outsider) of the family. That has stuck with me and is indeed how I think of myself. I have broken most ties with my family and tribe (some emotive ties remain but I am working on that), I broke ties with religion/spirituality, I broke ties with my professional identity, etc, etc. The list goes on and on. And I related to your saying that you failed in love. I have given that up also myself, although some bonds of the sticky-syrupy ‘love’ feeling still crop up from time to time. In all these things, like you, when I finally became disappointed, disenchanted, and abandoned these things, it was a springboard to something better. I have always been looking for something better – to find, as you say, ‘something that actually worked’. In short, I have turned my back on many a thing that formerly brought me, as I said previously, comfort and succourance, and sometimes it has been a lonely, lonely place with much ‘self’-derision, and ‘self’-beratement. I think that now I am looking at it differently. I need not berate myself, but to do so is exactly what you and Richard have commented about spiritual seekers: how they rarely question the teachings and wisdom themselves but revert to blaming themselves mercilessly and feeling ashamed for having failed to conform to the pattern the teachings proscribe. I think exactly this sort of thing has happened to me many a time. Perhaps others identify with this. Why should I continue to berate myself for falling out of rank with a rotten-to-the-core Humanity? If one has investigated into these things, seen clearly that Humanity is ‘me’ and ‘I’ am Humanity, and ‘I’ am rotten-to-the-core, then there is no shame about it, one leaves ‘me’ with my various identities and group affiliations, behind. But, I am still investigating, clearly. PETER: There are three alternatives to dealing with one’s lot in life, i.e. being born with genetically encoded animal instinctual passions and being ensnared by one’s own social identity into forever remaining within the flock. Within Humanity there are only two alternatives – to remain normal and begrudgingly accept one’s lot, always feeling resentful, or to become spiritual and dwell in the world of fantasy, always in denial. There is now a third alternative – step out of the real world and into the actual world and leave your ‘self’ behind. By actively doing something about your lot in life you give up either denying or accepting what ‘you’ are really thinking and feeling. You cut to the very quick of the problem that prevents humans from living together in peace and harmony. By doing so, any lingering feelings of resentment and shame, or any loitering desires for transcendence – to go ‘somewhere’ else – eventually wither as you incrementally eliminate malice and sorrow from your life. GARY: There is one more thing that I would like to ask you about though. In a previous post (I tried to find it in the archives but could not find the exact passage), you stated that you had had recently a glimpse or a preview of Actual Freedom, and that it occurred to you to mention that one would have to be considerably well prepared to ‘self-immolate’. I responded to you from that previous post, but skipped over this section entirely and then, after I sent the post off, found myself wondering just exactly what you had gone through. So it has occurred to me to question you about this experience you had:
PETER: In the period leading up to Virtual Freedom I had many realizations and many PCEs in what was a fairly tumultuous period. It was as though my familiar normal/ spiritual world was collapsing and any pure consciousness experiences literally felt as though I was entering another world, which the actual world is compared to ‘my’ reality. These PCE offer a glimpse of the human condition while standing outside of it, as it where, and the trick is to not only experience the delight of the actual world but also take a clear-eyed look at the appalling malice and debilitating sorrow of the human condition. Thus informed, I always had something to do when entering back into ‘my’ reality. The next period of Virtual Freedom was largely concerned with removing any of these residual feelings that create the gulf and that stand in the way of a permanent pure experience of the actual world. In Virtual Freedom pure consciousness experiences are more like glimpses of normality, as in ‘I have always been here, it’s just that this ‘person’ keeps getting in the way’. In both these stages I always knew that the PCEs that crept up on me were temporary experiences and that eventually they would imperceptibly fade away and some neurosis or feeling would creep in, no matter how subtle or how fleeting. However, twice during this period of Virtual Freedom, I have had experiences that were more explicit in nature. In these PCEs I clearly and startlingly realized that in order for me, this body, to permanently experience actuality, ‘me’, this identity, would have to die or disappear entirely. The experience I recently wrote about was of the same ilk, I simply walked through the sliding door one morning out on to our balcony and had a glimpse of how it would be if there was no way back to being normal. I remember thinking – ‘this is how it must have been for Richard when his whole psychological and psychic identity collapsed and he had no way back’. I understood then the nature of his angst at being the first human on the planet to have no psychological and psychic identity whatsoever – to have no ‘self’ dwelling inside his body. The latest experience on our balcony was very brief and the automatic fear and subsequent thrill took my breath away for a second or two before the realization of the nature of the experience kicked in. The fear quickly passed as I began to muse on the consequences of what I had experienced. From this experience I realized that what I needed to do was to slip out from control, now that I had sufficient practical experience of the utter safety, purity and perfection of being here, sans identity, in this actual physical tangible world. Since then more often than not, whenever I ask myself ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ I do not get an ‘I’ - answer for there is no ‘I’ operating in this moment. A similar thing would occur whenever someone asked me, as a greeting, ‘How are you?’ – I could muster no ‘I’-answer for the answer was always that I was excellent as a near ‘self’-less experience is always ambrosial. Another thing that has happened since this experience is that I have no interest in, or desire for, realizations any more. It is clear to me that the time for realizations is over and I am now ready for the real thing – the final ending of any ‘self’ centred thoughts or inner conversations and the final ending of the entire affective faculty, i.e. the end of the chemical flows that are automatically experienced as instinctual passions. It is a thrilling and enthralling time, yet utterly and exquisitely normal at the same time.
GARY: Recently you wrote on intelligence in animals. A few points occurred to me, as well as some questions: PETER: Just a little correction to start with. I noticed you put a link to the Glossary for No 21 the other day and as I accessed it I noticed a mistake in what I had written on imagination. I wrote –
It should read –
The most strident claims for other animals being intelligent seem to relate to training animals to do something other than stalk and kill for their food, like push a button or do tricks for humans. ‘Dolphin intelligence’ gets the most press but no one has yet discovered a dolphin shelter let alone an underwater city or hospital. Chimps are another favourite, despite the fact that they live in trees and indulge in rape, infanticide and cannibalism and wage wars with neighbouring tribes. To call the basic rudimentary adaptive instinctual reactions exhibited in other animals intelligence is to mightily abuse both the word and the attribute. GARY: While chimps certainly engage in brutal behaviour to other chimps, I am also aware that chimpanzees exhibit the use of crude tools, for instance, the use of small sticks and other objects to extract for example small insects from all-too-tight spots that the fingers and hands cannot reach. Also, I saw a segment on TV of a chimpanzee using a club to attack a mock tiger lying in its domain. Don’t you think that these examples might indicate a form of intelligence, albeit crude by human standards, but intelligence nonetheless? PETER: I have seen chimps using sticks to dig insect out of holes, even stripping leaves off the stick before using it. However to call a stick a tool does seem to be a case of stretching one definition in order to prove another. In a similar vein, to call a tree branch a club or weapon is to ignore that the chimp does nothing to fashion or improve the stick or rock as a tool or a weapon. I have also seen chimps using rocks to break open food and they have to spend a great deal of time teaching their young to do even this simple task. Any intelligence present in chimps operates at a very basic level, inhibited by physical incapacity, not opportunity, education, desire or will. GARY: A look at the definition of intelligence in my desktop computer dictionary yields the following definition:
I am leaving out the other definitions of intelligence, as they do not really seem relevant to the matter at hand. If intelligence is regarded solely as the ability to engage in abstract thinking, manipulation of symbols, ability to communicate by symbols, etc, that leaves the dolphins and chimps behind humans by a country mile, and in those terms they would not be considered ‘intelligent’. But by the dictionary definition of intelligence, I think we can regard these higher life forms as having a type of intelligence. PETER: If you ignore the fact that intelligence includes the ability to engage in practical thinking, the ability to communicate and learn by words, the ability to reflect, review and plan, the ability to be aware of thinking itself, the ability to adapt and even radically change learned concepts and behaviour to suit changing situations, then you seem to be missing the most salient aspects of the definition of intelligence. Intelligence has allowed humans to fashion from the materials of the earth extraordinary machines to transport people across the land, through the air, beneath the sea and even to the moon. The technological advances of this last one hundred years in medical procedures, communication systems, engineering, computing, agriculture, etc. are quite amazing. This has been directly and obviously the result of human intelligence only. One definition of intelligence that I particularly like is that human beings are the only animal species capable of studying their own brain. The latest discovery about the human brain is that it is also intelligent enough to delete both its learned and its instinctual programming, a feat of daring audacity bordering on the reckless. GARY: Now, it is true that dolphins can administer to and care for sick kiddies swimming in their pool, but I am not sure I would regard that behaviour as a form of intelligence as some people do. Rather, I personally would view it as instinctual behaviour. PETER: By ‘administer to and care for’ do you mean rub up against and nuzzle, rather like our family cat used to do when it was feeding time or when it would sit in someone’s lap when it wanted a warm soft place to lay and maybe get stroked? I used to see this as the clever behaviour of a tame friendly animal but was also aghast when it would quickly turn into a little tiger when defending its territory or into a monster when torturing its prey for hours and hours. Later in life I came face to face with a feral cat in the desert and I saw for myself that the difference between tame and friendly and wild and ferocious was solely due to a change in circumstance. It is common for people to see the instinctual passions in operation in other animals as a sign of intelligence as they often exhibit similar emotions and behaviour as humans. In this empathetic viewpoint, they focus on the tender animal passions and the savage animal passions are always ignored. The practice of highly selective over-emphasis, combined with highly selective denial, is a prime example of intelligence blinded by self-centred passion. GARY: Returning for a moment to the chimps using tools and objects to obtain food in their natural environment – don’t you think that that would indicate an ability to reflect on the demands of the situation and also perchance to communicate those findings to other chimps, including the young? PETER: I have no trouble at all if someone wants to assign a crude or rudimentary form of intelligence to some other animals. Personally I think the intelligence gulf is so vast that I prefer to make a very clear distinction. I have met many people who assign intelligence and a human-like persona or personality to all sorts of animals, plants, innate objects or even machines. In primitive humans this misinformation or lack of factual understanding gave rise to rampant anthropomorphism, which is the basis of the earliest recorded instance of religious/spiritual belief in humans. These myths and beliefs still hold a stranglehold over Humanity and shackle intelligence to ignorance and superstition. There is a great deal to be learnt about the Human Condition in the study of other animals for we are able to see the survival instincts in action, unfettered by intelligence and social conditioning. Animals exhibit exactly the same fear, aggression, nurture and desire as do humans. Chimp behaviour is particularly fascinating as both species evidently share some 95% similar genes. Both chimps and humans have a ‘self’ – in chimps it could be termed a rudimentary sense of self, whereas in humans it has developed in to a full-blown psychological and psychic entity. Thus fear, aggression, nurture and desire are evident in both species not only as simple automatic responses but are evidenced as willful self-centred passions played out with many devious and cunning variations. The human species takes the crude instinctual passions displayed by the chimps a step further, for we are the only species who are capable of instilling in their young a complex and rigid social identity. These instilled social beliefs, morals, ethics and values cause humans to fight not only for territory and possessions but also to fight for their rights, principles and values to the point of not only justifying the killing of other humans but making it into an act of glory. Chimps have been witnessed pining away at the death of a parent or even exhibiting remorse or sadness but the human species not only suffer from grief, sadness and sorrow, they have made suffering into a virtue and in their social and spiritual/religious beliefs they have enshrined the notion of human existence on earth as being one of perpetual suffering. Much can be learned about the instinctual passions by studying other animals provided one does so with clear eyes, free of empathy and anthropomorphism, but personally I see nothing to be gained by studying the supposed intelligence of animals. Perhaps it is telling that the human species often turn to other animals for solace and comfort when they fail to get it from their fellow human beings but when they look for intelligence elsewhere in the universe they are looking for a different kind of intelligence, poles apart from using sticks and rocks as tools or weapons. It’s such good fun to dissect beliefs and myths, investigate their source, find out how and why they started, examine why they persist, understand why they are passionately defended, and experientially explore one’s own belligerent and stubborn resistance to facts. The common fear is that if I abandon belief, imagination and ‘my’ instinctual passions that I will only end up defenceless within a grim stark reality. And yet, a single experience of self-lessness – a pure consciousness experience – combined with the practical experience that actualism works is sufficient to shatter the granddaddy of all myths ... that ‘you can’t change human nature’. It would be deeply cynical, and darkly depressing, not to consider otherwise.
PETER: Just a note on the subject of failure. You do realize that an actualist is someone who is sick and tired of failing to find peace and happiness, draws a line in the sand, and says enough is enough ... no more failure. Now to continue on with the thread of intelligence vs. instinctual behaviour... GARY: In answer to my question regarding intelligence in animals, you wrote:
It may seem like a minor point to debate, but I think that there is a very slight intelligence in animals. PETER: I don’t see this as a minor point to discuss at all for we are discussing what is instinctual behaviour and what is intelligent behaviour. An inordinate amount of human effort has and still is devoted to controlling, repressing, avoiding, denying or attempting to disassociate from our genetically-encoded animal passions. An understanding of how intelligence operates can lead to apperception – the mind becoming aware of itself or an awareness of pure ‘self’-less intelligence in operation. Equally important, an understanding of how the instinctual animal passions operate can lead to the end of the social and psychological being that parasitically resides in this flesh and blood body. We are doing actualism right here, right now, Gary. These communications and discussions about the actual world we live in, about the situation in which we find ourselves born into as human beings, and about how anyone can go about eliminating their malice and sorrow such that there will be peace on earth are the very means of becoming free of the Human Condition. These discussions are about putting my foot down, putting my hand up and saying enough is enough – ‘I’m getting out of this nightmare world of being a ‘self’ and coming to the utter peacefulness and sensual delight of this actual world that I already live in ... and always have.’ GARY: However, even our closest relatives, the apes, notably lack those important attributes of human intelligence that you remark on as ‘the ability to cogitate, reflect, and communicate’. PETER: As a kid, we used to have a parrot in a wire cage at home and he would make a noise that sounded like ‘Pretty Polly’ and he would come out with this cry occasionally during the day or when he was prompted to perform. He had a few other noises, all of which only sounded like squawks and as such his ‘vocabulary’ was very limited indeed. Consequently I didn’t spend much time talking to it. GARY: As far as the ability to communicate, I assume you mean communicate symbolically, through words and language. PETER: What people normally take to be communication is a symbolic communication, as in ‘the sharing and use of common symbols, as language or gestures performing a linguistic function in human communication’ . This form of communication is but an expression of ‘my’ feelings, be they fearful, aggressive, pity-full, envious, lustful, resentful, dependant, submissive, dominant, devious, nurturing, loving, craving, longing, etc, and they are either expressed by words and psychic vibes, conveyed by moods and gestures, and interpreted, or misinterpreted, by intuition or gut feelings. This type of communication is never direct and can only rarely be taken literally. To communicate through words and language, free of any affectation and guile is to communicate actually, literally, i.e. through words and language, exactly as we are now. This form of communication is intelligence in action. Designating or pertaining to a sense or interpretation of a text obtained by taking words in their primary or customary meaning, and applying the ordinary rules of grammar, without mysticism, allegory, or metaphor. That is so in its literal sense, without metaphor, exaggeration, or inaccuracy; literally so called; colloq. so called with some exaggeration etc. Free from figures of speech, exaggeration, inaccuracy, distortion, or allusion. Oxford Dictionary * GARY: In an article by William H. Calvin, entitled ‘The Emergence of Intelligence’, in Scientific American (November 1998), the author expounds on a rather advanced aspect of human intelligence: the ability to engage in advance planning. PETER: From observing documentaries on humans who, due to isolation, still live a primitive hunter-gathering lifestyle, they also engage in planning – they make shelters, they store food, they share workloads, they make tools and weapons, they plan attacks, they organize defences, etc. It is clear that it is human knowledge that has advanced and not human intelligence given that that modern humans still fight and kill each other – ‘excepting they fight with cruise missiles ’stead of spears’ ... to plagiarize Banjo Patterson. GARY: He also commented on the lack of the advance planning ability in animals by saying: ‘Aside from hormonally triggered preparations for winter, animals exhibit surprisingly little evidence of advance planning. For instance, some chimpanzees use long twigs to pull termites from their nests. Yet as Jacob Bronowski observed, none of the termite-fishing chimps ‘spends the evening going round and tearing off a nice tidy supply of a dozen probes for tomorrow.’ So much for this facet of intelligence in chimps. It is obviously very rudimentary. PETER: And yet, murder, rape, warfare, domestic violence, retribution, despair and suicide are endemic in our closest genetic cousins in their ‘natural’ condition. All this despite their supposed innocence, lack of worldly worries and no-mind rudimentary intelligence. Cute they may be provided you ignore their savagery, clever they may be provided you ignore their dumbness. GARY: I suppose that I was, in part, reacting to the statement: ‘The human brain with its ability to cogitate, reflect and communicate is the only intelligence known to be currently manifest in the universe.’ My reaction was to the words ‘only intelligence’. The human brain, with its’ ability to cogitate, reflect, and communicate, is the only intelligence of its type known to be currently manifest in the universe. I have no trouble at all agreeing with this statement. PETER: The question I ran with for a while was why did I empathize with animals suffering or displaying nurturing behaviour and yet I turned away from or was repelled by their savagery? Why did I think the mother chimp suckling her baby as being so human-like and yet see the sight of a chimp mother tucking in with others to eat her own baby when it was murdered by another member of the group, as being so brutally animal-like. Why was my instinct blindness so selective? Why was my instinct blindness so selective in recognizing, labelling and acknowledging my own tender and savage instinctual animal passions? * PETER: I have no trouble at all if someone wants to assign a crude or rudimentary form of intelligence to some other animals. GARY: Good. I think that was my point entirely. After I did some looking around on the Internet regarding intelligence in animals, humans included, I think I revised my opinion of the intelligence of our primate cousins downward somewhat. I think there is a rudimentary form of intelligence in animals, including family pets. But a lot of animal behaviour is instinctual. PETER: All animal behaviour is instinctual, but some of this behaviour can be tamed, controlled or restricted by training based on reward and punishment, by providing a constant reliable supply of food, by keeping them isolated from predators and competitors, etc. Spaying or castration is sometimes also used to curtail the instinctual sexual predatory behaviour in animals – a necessary surgical celibacy to stop them running amok. Just as an aside, this same animal sexual instinct is also acknowledged in many religions as being primary, rampant and brutish in humans and consequently celibacy has also been used to stop many amonk running amok. GARY: Prior to my involvement in The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List, I think I greatly underestimated or ignored the instinctual basis for much of human behaviour. This is an example of what the ethnologists call ‘instinct blindness’. PETER: As you would have noticed, I have already picked up on the term ‘instinct blindness’. It is also fascinating to observe that the tender instincts are only instilled in animals in order to ensure the propagation of the species and consequently it is the tender instinctual passions that are the most difficult to see clearly as being equally debilitating as are the savage passions. This blindness – reinforced by the social teaching of good and evil, right and wrong – is why the tender passions have always got off scot free in anyone’s previous search for peace on earth. And there is none more blind to, or in denial of, their senseless instinctual passions than a ‘self’ that feels and imagines he or she is already perfect or feels and imagines her or she is no longer a ‘self’ but has become a ‘Self’, a God on earth, or feels and imagines themselves to be specially ‘chosen’, having a personal relationship or connection with a particular God-man or Goddess. To finish with a relevant quote –
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