|
Peter’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List with Gary
PETER: Hi Gary, I have been considering replying to No. 22’s post to the list but could see no sense at all in directly conversing with someone who believes he is ‘the creator of all that is’, i.e. God-on-earth. As long as No. 22 thinks and feels he is God and not an ordinary flesh and blood human being like every one else, it is impossible have a sincere and sensible discussion about how to become free of malice and sorrow and how to experience peace, here on earth, in this lifetime. But given his latest offering to the list proselytizes the traditional Eastern religious teaching that the only way to escape human suffering is to choose to really-truly believe you are a Divine Being, I thought it worthwhile to make comment on his sermon. * PETER: The single most important factor standing in the way of peace on earth is the ancient belief in a spirit-world populated by good and evil spirits – Gods, Goddesses, Demons and Devils. To cower and prostrate yourself before some imaginary God, or to imagine that you are that God, does nothing but perpetuate the belief that suffering and belligerence are inherent, unchanging and unchangeable aspects of the human condition. As such, it is not sufficient for an actualist to be a fence-sitting agnostic – an actualist needs to become a thorough-going atheist, with all that implies. It is not sufficient to remain bamboozled by spiritual belief, nor is sufficient to be cowered, freaked-out, awed-out or psyched-out by the fear of a mythical God or the fear-full teachings of narcissistic God-men. To do so is to believe in, and remain affected by, their psychic power – to do so is to perpetuate the belief that peace on earth can only come about when One God rules the earth or, even more preposterous, when everyone on earth realizes they are God. Given that any and all spiritual belief stands in the way of personal peace on earth and global peace on earth eventuating, it is essential to examine and understand the narcissistic nature of spiritual teachings such as No 22’s, and to become aware of the all-encompassing psychic power that the spiritual concept of Good and Evil holds over humanity at large. I’ll pick a few statements from No 22’s last post to No 13 to make comment on
God-men always find it a bit of a bummer that they still require food, shelter, water, etc., but they are very skilled at sponging their earthly needs from their gullible disciples and grateful followers. God-men care not a fig for personal peace on earth, let alone global peace on earth, because their ‘peace’ is always realized by imagining they are some-thing other than a physical flesh and blood body – typified by such statements as ‘I am not the body’ – and by imagining they are some-where else other than on this physical planet – typified by such statements as ‘the world is an illusion’ or ‘all is Maya’. It’s a cop-out to go some-where else to find the self-centred feeling of peace – it’s a challenge to be right here, right now and self-lessly experience the already-always existing peace of the actual world we flesh and blood human beings actually live in. It’s no little thing to fully take on board the fact that up until now, everybody has got it 180 degrees wrong – but to do so is the starting point of irrevocable change.
No wonder he hasn’t found asking ‘how am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ effective. He has escaped the sanity of the real-world and opted for the Greater Insanity of being ‘the creator of all that is’, as in –
Asking the question ‘who is asking?’ is the common-and-garden hackneyed Eastern spiritual question that only leads to cultivating a new imaginary identity – a real ‘who’, a new persona, a pure-feeling spirit-only identity, a divine-connected Being, a higher Self, or whatever name. Asking the question ‘Who am I?’ can only lead to two possible answers – ‘I’ am a normal, suffering human identity, or ‘I’ can become the real ‘me’ – a paranormal, utterly dissociated Divine identity. Thus far, remaining human or becoming divine have been the only options available to human beings – typified by the philosophies or worldviews of materialism and spiritualism. The limitation of these two traditional choices is that neither offer a freedom from the human condition – both choices are within the human condition. In fact, neither is a conscious choice – the first option is simply the condition we unwittingly find ourselves born into, the other option is, at root, simply a willing surrender to the unconscious instinctual desire to become all-powerful, as in omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. This unconscious blind instinctual drive is otherwise known as narcissism as in
Either choice leaves one encumbered and ensnared by ‘being’ an instinctually-driven identity – a self has self-centred feelings, whereas a Self has Self-centred delusions of grandeur. To abandon a personal psychological identity and adopt a new impersonal divine-feeling megalomaniacal spirit-ual identity is to abandon all common sense and head off into a feeling-only altered state of consciousness. To feel oneself to be God-on-earth is to remain driven by the blind instinctual animal passions – mainly nurture disguised as Divine Love and desire disguised as an unquenchable need to be recognized as the Saviour of Mankind. The planet is littered with nutters who suffer from the delusion of divinity, all of whom are selfishly doing their own thing – proclaiming their own hackneyed message to be new or unique, avidly competing for customers, endlessly putting each other down, forming cults, starting sanghas, proselytising and preaching, preying on the gullible, spreading doom and gloom, seeking adulation and worship, craving respect, demanding trust, faith and hope, commanding humility and loyalty by threat of damnation and ostracization – forever promising, enticing, ensnaring and entrapping. And they have no shortage of followers, eager to believe that someone or something is in charge of the universe and ever-ready to ingratiate themselves to that someone or something, willing to believe the fairy story of life after death, desperate to justify their suffering as noble and meaningful and fervently seeking the glorious feeling of being God-on-earth for themselves. The spiritual message has been a pathetic litany of failure for millennia. The spiritual message only entrenches and institutionalises the feeling-fed imaginary battle betwixt good and evil. Far from relieving or ending human suffering, spirit-ual wisdom only serves to compound and add to human suffering and has inflamed generations of spiritualists to actively oppose the necessary changes required to bring an end to human malice and sorrow – to actively oppose peace on earth. For an actualist, asking the question ‘who am I’ is patent balderdash because ‘who’ I am is firstly understood, and then experienced in a pure consciousness experience, to be non-actual. In a pure consciousness experience it is startlingly obvious that this physical planet we humans live on is a magical place of pristine wonder and sensual delight and that it is ‘I’ as a thinker in the head and ‘me’ as a feeler in the heart whose very existence prevents this brief experience of actual freedom from being an ongoing permanent experience. For an actualist, the sincere and relentless asking of ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ leads to the awareness of, discovery of, and unmasking of ‘who’ I am in toto, both ‘who’ I think I am and ‘who’ I instinctively feel myself to be. This process of self-discovery leads to the experiential discovery of what I am which then inevitably leads to the ending of ‘who’ I am. The ending of ‘who’ I am is to be free from the human condition in toto – one is then free from both grim reality and its traditional seductive antidote: the fairy-tale of a Greater Reality. To be free of the human condition is to be actually here on this paradisiacal planet as this flesh and blood body only – totally free of a ‘who’ who constantly feels fearful, who feels angry and therefore needs to feel loving, who is instinctually narcissistic and never satisfied, who feels constantly restless and is never content, who feels forever separate and habitually yearns for Union. As is evident in a pure consciousness experience, genuine freedom, peace and happiness can only be found in the perfection and purity of the tangible physical-sensuous actual world and not, as is commonly believed, in an imaginary feeling-only spirit-ual world.
The much vaunted spiritualist’s advice can be summed up as – turn away, tune in, look inside and ‘be some-thing else altogether’ ... and if you are going to ‘be’ something else, why not ‘be’ Divine? Choosing to feel yourself to be divine sure beats feeling yourself to be human and having to feel anxiety, depression, anger or loathing. You may also notice the cunning juxtaposition of the words doing and being, as though they were one and the same thing. Doing is physical world activity, such as typing these very words on this keyboard, some thing that the writer of the above words denies both as an activity and as flesh and blood fingers and as a keyboard fashioned from the minerals of the earth of this planet. The writer regards all physical activity as ‘being’, and in order to make this leap of fantasy he has to regard both fingers and keyboard as illusionary – mere creations of his own Being. Solipsism is a weird psychic aberration and one only needs to look at the East with open eyes or read Zen at War (http://www.darkzen.com/) to realize that pursuing a solipsistic altered state of consciousness inevitably leads to an uncaring, callous and life-on-earth negating self-centredness.
When pushed for a sensible response, a God-man will always opt for the blanket-denial approach – it is all an illusion, no-thing matters, not-knowing, it cannot be spoken, it is beyond understanding, or whatever. Blanket-denial is the classic Eastern bluff disguised as a philosophical response – usually accompanied by an all-knowing Divine look or an out-flowing of all-loving energy designed to stifle or silence any sincere questioning. This astounding feat of denial can only be accomplished by an equally astounding feat of delusion – the belief-come-conviction that only ‘I’ exist as the Creator of all that is. The duplicity of the writer of the above words is equally astounding for it is He who has also declared –
* PETER:
And No 22 has made it very clear that he has chosen not to feel human – whereupon ‘suffering is quite necessary’ – and chosen to manifest as a new divine ‘I’ – thereby transcending the necessary suffering of earthly existence. By this leap of imagination, no-thing changes and human suffering is yet again perpetuated by yet another proselytiser of the doctrine of Eastern spiritual belief, in this case the pathos-based philosophy of Buddhism. T’would be all an amusing folly except for the fact that swapping a real-world view for a divine-world view is but a puerile emotion-backed fantasy that does bugger all to bring an end to human malice and sorrow. It is high time human beings got their heads out of the clouds and took a long clear-eyed look at what is really happening, right now, right here, on this planet.
I find it staggering that he can say that he has to ‘imagine’ these people where suffering. He clearly does not live on the same planet as I do. If ever there was a declaration of blanket denial, then this is it. To deny that human suffering exists is a act of astounding Self-centredness – narcissism run riot.
Eastern spiritual wisdom has it that ‘the actual source of suffering’ is in failing to recognize ‘who’ you really are – a divine being. And when you feel ‘who’ you really are – God, by whatever name – you then become so deluded and so self-centred that you then look down from your lofty perch and feel pity, or Divine Compassion, for those who are unaware of their divine nature. In No 22’s case his denial is seemingly so thorough that he can only ‘imagine’ other people are suffering. Human suffering is not a worldview, human suffering is not imaginary – human suffering is very, very real. Real people really fight and kill each other, real people really murder, rape and torture. There are real perpetrators and real victims – real suffering, real malice and real sorrow. As I type these words millions upon millions of human beings are suffering and are inflicting suffering on other human beings and no-one, but no-one, who cares enough to see it, can see any way to bring an end to it. The human condition is epitomized by hopelessness and despair which fuels the traditional hopeful fairy-tale stories of peace in a heavenly spirit-only realm, somewhere else other than here on this physical, material earth. Provided one is willing to abandon the ancient spiritual entrenched belief that to be human is to suffer and to become is the only relief, it is now possible, at the very dawning of this post-spiritual era, to experience peace on earth, in this lifetime. * PETER: Well Gary, that’s about it for No 22’s wisdom. While it is senseless to try and directly talk to a God-man of such things as peace on earth, it is nevertheless vital for an actualist to thoroughly understand that what they preach is non-sense and that what they offer as the antidote to instinctual fear is the choice to surrender to the instinctual lure of becoming an all-powerful Being. The post did get a bit long and it has all been said before, but the need to keep saying it will not cease until human beings change their beloved passionate human nature – until there is an end to the fantasy of a spirit-ual world that has beguiled humanity since time immemorial ... and until there is a final and actual end to human malice and sorrow. * As a general note to all on the list who are interested in actualism, Richard has produced a screen saver which is available as a download from the opening page of The Actual Freedom Trust Website. Whilst it has been road-tested on several computers, we would welcome any feedback as to how well it functions on other computers. Personally, I found it an excellent way to read and contemplate upon Richard’s words. (Editor’s note: The screensaver is no longer available due to its incompatibility with Windows 8)
PETER: Just wondering how you are doing with all the shouting and dumping that is happening on the list at the moment? It seems typical of any forum that is open to all, that the loudest voices are those of the protestors. Good thing it is only the net and words on a screen or I could be twice dead by now. And to think everyone who subscribed to this mailing list received the following introduction –
I seem to remember someone writing recently querying why no one had become free of the human condition before now. As can be seen from the current most vocal objectors, is there any wonder? Even if someone had managed to break free of the stranglehold of spiritual belief in the past and discovered an actual freedom from the human condition in toto, would they have dared to stick their head above the parapet in order to tell his or her fellow human beings about the discovery? They would have been hauled before a real court and tried as a heretic or attacked with far more than words. I remember Richard saying all he wanted to do was put his words out into the world and his initial plan was to do it anonymously – after all he knows the human condition – both inside and out. By the time I crossed paths with him he had his journal in draft form in a loose-leaf binder. As my experiments with actualism began to bear fruit and my enthusiasm grew, I suggested to Richard that he put his journal and other writings on the World Wide Web so as to make them widely available to anyone who may be interested in an actual freedom from the human condition.
After I had written my journal, Vineeto funded the publication of both Journals in paperback form – no publishers would publish such heretical material – so as to make actualism available to all English readers. She also established an actualism website based upon our own experiments and successes with actualism. Some months later Alan, I think it was, suggested we establish an actualism mailing list and at Richard’s invitation we then combined both web sites into one. And now the actualism mailing list has taken on a life of its own. Who would have ever thought it would come to this? I was watching a news report the other evening about an anti-globalisation protest and a reporter was interviewing participants as to what exactly they were protesting about. She interviewed one young man who looked a bit nonplussed and then said it’s about companies such as Nike exploiting cheap labour in third world. The reporter then asked ‘How come you’re wearing a pair of Nike shoes then?’ Quick as a wink, and without even blushing, he said ‘But it’s not about that, it’s about what Nike are doing’. If you want a take on what is happening on the mailing list at the moment you will find article 21 of Richard’s Journal very pertinent. I find it remarkable that I gave up talking to people I met about actualism because I realized that they would most likely only get offended or misunderstand it as spiritualism. I did so because I was sensitive to other people and I realized that the only way it was possible to communicate anything about actualism was if someone was sufficiently dissatisfied with the spiritual path and was willing to question deeper. So upon setting up an actualist mailing list as a home turf for those who are interested in actualism, what do we have – people deliberately signing on so they can remonstrate that they feel offended and/or so they can tell us that they Know and we don’t. Being a pioneer in any field of endeavour is not without its risks. What a grand adventure ...
PETER: Just wondering how you are doing with all the shouting and dumping that is happening on the list at the moment? It seems typical of any forum that is open to all, that the loudest voices are those of the protestors. Good thing it is only the net and words on a screen or I could be twice dead by now. GARY: I am following what is happening on the list at the moment from the quietude of the lurkdom mode, which undoubtedly the protestors would regard as being ‘hypocritical’ of me to do. But I think that they have far more important things to do in going after the ‘big-fry’ of the Actual Freedom mailing list than going after ‘small-fry’ like myself. My interest in coming to the mailing list is, as it was when I first came, to compare notes with people who are doing the method of actualism, to find out what they are experiencing, and to test the validity of the method for myself. I have little or no interest in the tit-for-tat, aggressive back-and-forth that I currently see going on now. It reminds me of the wars that would break out on the Krishnamurti Listening-L list from time to time- there would be various factions of people opposing other people as well as subgrouping and ganging up on other people. I found these little wars to be stimulating and fun to engage in as I had a large quotient of unrecognized malice and sorrow going on in myself and these little battles soothed me and provided distraction for a while. I remember it being quite a thrill to express my righteous indignation, annoyance, and exasperation. In the main, it was at bottom a feeling of being in the right, while others were wrong. From what I can discern of the present controversy, those who are speaking most loudly on this list at present are those who have a ‘personal’ interest at stake. First, it appears that the scoffers, for the most part, live in Australia and have met with Richard and you and Vineeto in the flesh, instead of communicating strictly by cyber means. Also, there appears to be the Sannyasin connection – I get the impression that as ex-sannyasins you and Vineeto have deeply offended them. Simply speaking, these people appear to be very pissed off at you. PETER: Only one objector met Richard in person and he was very civil while doing so. It does seem that communicating via the Internet serves to allow ‘other sides’ to appear and be expressed in written words as though there was not a fellow human being reading at the receiving end. * PETER: And to think everyone who subscribed to this mailing list received the following introduction –
I seem to remember someone writing recently querying why no one had become free of the human condition before now. As can be seen from the current most vocal objectors, is there any wonder? GARY: The key words that jump out at me from the green-highlighted introductory passage quoted above are ‘sincerity’ and ‘genuineness’. I see neither of these qualities among the current crop of cyber-terrorists that frequent this list. PETER: I once sent a copy of my journal to a
Those who are totally emerged in the spiritual/religious world – those who have a mature faith – are very often sincere and genuine in their belief. However, for those who have substantial doubts about the veracity of the spiritual/religious world, an actual freedom from the human condition as opposed to a spiritual freedom from the real world must be a very threatening offer – a threat to be passionately resisted at all costs. * PETER: Even if someone had managed to break free of the stranglehold of spiritual belief in the past and discovered an actual freedom from the human condition in toto, would they have dared to stick their head above the parapet in order to tell his or her fellow human beings about the discovery? They would have been hauled before a real court and tried as a heretic or attacked with far more than words. GARY: might regard the recent interest in discovering your name as a sinister development. It reveals further, I think, how personally involved the terrorists are. PETER: A lot of things are said in the heat of the moment that appear to be sinister but are not if taken in context of words on an Internet mailing list. Should rocks start appearing through my windows then that is another matter, but for now the advantages of world wide uncensored Internet communication far, far exceed its risks. * PETER: I remember Richard saying all he wanted to do was put his words out into the world and his initial plan was to do it anonymously – after all he knows the human condition – both inside and out. <Snip> And now the actualism mailing list has taken on a life of its own. Who would have ever thought it would come to this? GARY: There was talk recently of Listbot going belly up. What then? I get the impression from what has been said that the pissed-off ones are already dancing on the grave of the Actual Freedom Mailing List – are there any plans for a continuation of this forum in some other venue? PETER: This mailing list will continue and it is only a question of where is best. Stay tuned for an announcement as to change of venue. * PETER: If you want a take on what is happening on the mailing list at the moment you will find article 21 of Richard’s Journal very pertinent. GARY: Yes, and I see that in Article 21 in the first two sentences Richard talks about ‘fruitless discussion’ with no apparent point of agreement. The reason that I do not join in these back-and-forths is that I am not interested in fruitless discussions with people who have an agenda to push. My experiences with talking to people about Actual Freedom is that some people may be a little bit interested but once they realize that what you are talking about is final, irrevocable change, the wall goes up and discussion falls flat. Usually I leave it at that. As for Internet mailing lists, some posts are worth pursuing and some are not. PETER: When we first established this mailing list I remember declaring that this would be home turf – somewhere where the discussion would be fruitful, relevant and convivial. What I didn’t fully realize at the time was that this list is freely available to everyone and anyone and therefore there would be a degree of fruitless discussion on the list and a degree of Internet flaming as well. Given that actualism is about becoming happy and harmless in the world as it is with people as they are, then this mailing list is a perfect microcosm in which to test the integrity and genuineness of one’s own happiness and harmlessness. As such I welcome the challenge of being tested in the market place, while being sensible enough to take no nonsense unless I happen to want to go down that path with another person for a while. * PETER: I find it remarkable that I gave up talking to people I met about actualism because I realized that they would most likely only get offended or misunderstand it as spiritualism. I did so because I was sensitive to other people and I realized that the only way it was possible to communicate anything about actualism was if someone was sufficiently dissatisfied with the spiritual path and was willing to question deeper. So upon setting up an actualist mailing list as a home turf for those who are interested in actualism, what do we have – people deliberately signing on so they can remonstrate that they feel offended and/or so they can tell us that they Know and we don’t. GARY: Still in all, I must say that I have found some of the points raised by the protestors to be worthy of examination. For example, they have accused actualists of having a ‘point of view’, having traded one belief system for another. This is something that I have wondered about myself. Rather than levelling it as an accusation, however, I think it is an interesting question. Approaching actualism, I think one may fall into the trap of adopting it as a belief system, and it is not a belief system. I think we have talked of this before. PETER: Actualism can only be a belief unless one has a significant memory of a PCE to verify by one’s own direct experience exactly what is being offered. However if one is sincere and is attracted by what is on offer in actualism, then one invariably make one’s own sensible investigations and evaluations, thereby perhaps establishing a prima facie case such that one is moved to test it out in practice. What kept me enthralled in actualism was the sensibility of what was being discussed and elucidated. As I began to understand that it is ‘I’ as a social identity and ‘me’ as an instinctual being who is standing in the way of peace on earth, a memory of a significant PCE some ten years earlier surfaced. Armed with this direct knowledge and experience of actuality, I continued to use the method and eventually the effect of vigorously challenging my beliefs crystallized into the first of many PCEs. These direct experiences of actuality and more importantly, my increasing happiness and harmlessness, then became the proof of the pudding that actualism delivers the goods incrementally. GARY: Another accusation levelled by the protestors has been that Actual Freedom is a cult. I do not think there is anything wrong with examining whether there is any cult-like basis to what goes on on this list. Personally, I have looked at the question from all angles, and I do not think there is a shred of evidence of any cult-like phenomenon going on here. PETER: Again a PCE – a brief ‘self’-less experience of the already always existing peace on earth that exists in the physical actual world – verifies that in actualism, what is on offer is paramount rather than who is offering it. And what better anonymity for the pioneers of actualism than the Internet. It’s hard to run a personality cult from words appearing on a computer monitor, though some do try either to humbly prostrate themselves to in order to ingratiate themselves to The Guru or conversely vent their fury at The Guru, and His followers, for having their personal game spoiled, their personal views questioned or their pet beliefs challenged. GARY: It is when accusations are levelled such as ‘actualists are like Milosevic’ that things really seem to get out of control. That assertion is preposterous and shows how desperate the protestors are. Yet within that assertion are contained some commonplace fears and objections of people to actualism – for instance, if feelings, emotions, and passions are eliminated in toto, then one fears that one will become a psychopath, devoid of any human emotion and capable of butchery without guilt or remorse. It is the fear of irrevocable change that prevents one from going further and finding out the fact of the matter. PETER: When all else fails, the bottom line is to see actualism as Evil and actualists as psychopathic demons. If you place your faith in God and Good then you have to believe in the Devil and Evil. The only way out of the inherent duality of one’s social and spiritual conditioning is to stop believing in good fairies and then the notion of nasty goblins eventually disappears for want of credibility. * PETER: Being a pioneer in any field of endeavour is not without its risks. GARY: Indeed it is not. I must say that I have not detected a smidgen of annoyance or anger in all of your correspondences with the protestors, even when they level what most people would consider ‘personal’ insults and attacks against you. One’s state of mind, including one’s emotional state, can be communicated through the words one uses. Further evidence to me that the method of actualism reaps results. PETER: The extraordinary thing about the Web is that all of the actualism writings are available to anyone, anywhere, anytime for scrutiny. None of the correspondence has been edited, all is copied and catalogued verbatim both on the Website and in the various on-line mailing list archives. All is the result of direct one-to-one correspondence such as this and yet all is available for any who wish to examine the sincerity, genuineness and veracity of what is being discussed. This very process of direct communication by written word makes total nonsense of the notion of cultism and Guruism – for those with eyes to see. * PETER: What a grand adventure ... GARY: Yes it is. Running the question ‘How am I...’ makes any endeavour, large or small, interesting and fascinating. When one realizes the miraculousness of life itself, just being alive, being here ... it makes any enterprise a grand adventure. PETER: Actualism serves to give one’s life direction, meaning and sensible purpose for the first time in one’s life and then it is up to each as to how far they want to go with it.
PETER: I have been working a bit lately and have not been moved to write to the list, particularly given the subject matter of most of the posts. But I do like to discuss the nuts and bolts of actualism in practice and your post has got me off the couch again. GARY: I was thinking on the way home from work tonight what a fascinating and intriguing process it is to practice the actualism method and bring awareness to all of your moments of being here. It is well worth the effort and diligence that it takes to apply the method. PETER: I am always amazed that people subscribe to this list purely in order to push their own wheelbarrow or to indulge in intellectual arguments, ad absurdum. There is a word that I came across in the Oxford dictionary the other day that describes the bulk of objections to actualism – ‘Grübelsucht’. Having been also conditioned to be a man, you would probably know well this male propensity to endlessly intellectualise and philosophise about any subject – men seemingly have an innate propensity to explore and discover and while some do this physically and pragmatically, the majority of men are content to sit around commenting on, or armchair criticizing, those who dare to do. So many who have been on the spiritual path imagine that there is nothing to the actualism method, while others imagine they are already doing it, or have already done it, simply by being ‘above’ their unwanted or undesirable thoughts and feelings. They keep retreating ‘inside’ to a calm and utterly self-centred ‘safe’ space, thereby missing out on the ‘fascinating and intriguing process’ of asking yourself each moment again ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ GARY: This morning I was feeling a bit prickly and was interested in knowing why. I was able to trace the feeling of annoyance to simply feeling overwhelmed with the multitude of tasks I had to perform today and little time to accomplish them all. Yet it was a distinctly satisfying experience to realize that I completed all my allotted tasks and did the best I could under the circumstances. As I bring awareness to each and every one of my encounters, behaviours, and interactions with others, I discover some extremely interesting things about ‘me’. Whatever feeling or emotion comes up is available for scrutiny, examination, and ‘digging into’. PETER: What I discovered as I got to grips with the process of actualism was that I increasingly was able to become aware of how my emotional state or fluctuating moods interfered with my effective and efficient doing of things. This awareness produced a win-win result in that I was able to be less stressed and more relaxed in doing what I had to do and I was more able to be considerate of others in whatever I was doing. The other benefit of doing the things I needed to do more effectively and efficiently was that I then had more time to not do anything in particular. Not doing anything in particular, or doing nothing, is an essential activity in itself, simply because one then discovers that moods and emotions come by themselves for no apparent rhyme nor reason – there is no obvious trigger, encounter or event to blame for feeling sad or annoyed, to be labelled as cause and effect. This then reveals even more that it is ‘me’ that is the problem and not the solution and it is ‘me’ who has to facilitate his or her own radical change for the simple reason that there is no one else I can change, or need to change, but me. But I am in no way advocating retiring from the world of people, things and events into a do-nothing state of isolationism. For an actualist the market place is the best and most fertile testing ground for exploration – there is nothing like the boss at work, one’s partner, one’s parents or children, one’s friends, the TV news, the neighbours, etc. to bring to the surface the beliefs, morals, values, viewpoints and ethics that initially stand in the way of becoming happy and harmless. The whole point of actualism is to be happy and harmless in the world as-it-is – i.e. not to rant and rave about how bad the world is and not to fluctuate between being angry or sad at one’s lot in life. If you want to change your lot then you change it. Similarly the whole point of actualism is to be happy and harmless with people as-they-are – i.e. not to rant and rave about how bad people are and not to fluctuate between being angry or sad at the human condition. If you want to become free of the human condition then you set about irrevocably changing yourself. Once you get the gist that actualism is about going down the road never travelled before in human history you start to realize the full implications of the fact that everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong. One then starts to see the folly of the human condition in toto and the envy, umbrage and criticism of others still ensnared by the old ways can be easily and clearly seen for what it is. GARY: I thought of someone’s advice to apply the method to interactions with various types of people and find out what you are aware of (I think it was Vineeto). For instance, how do I feel when I am in the presence of women ... how does that differ from my feelings when with a man, or a particular type of man. How do I feel about religious people? Do I have sexual feelings and towards whom? All these types of questions are extremely interesting to look into and it is very different to be aware of one’s experience instead of just taking it for granted or leaving it unexamined. PETER: My whole exploration into the instinctual sexual drive has brought immense rewards for I no longer am driven by the sexual imperative to blindly spread my semen. This means that I no longer look at women as sexual objects to be given the ‘once-over’ – to be feared, foxed or lusted for. I am now equally comfortable and intimate with all humans regardless of their appendages and appearances. I am now also free of the sexual power that women have had over me in the past, a freedom that was a precursor to becoming autonomous and being able to have an actual intimacy with my sexual companion rather than a fickle emotional relationship based on sexual desire, mutual dependency, need and security. Just the other day I had a conversation with a woman about sex and intimacy that I could have equally had with Vineeto or with a man if he were willing and able to broach such subjects. In the past I had often found women much more down to earth than men, much more interested in what is really going on in life. Talking to men was another story but sometimes they let their competitive guard down long enough to allow a little sensible talk. Having explored and eliminated the social mores and instinctual programming that divide the human species into two warring gender camps, there is now no thought or feeling of a man-woman divide from my side to inhibit any communication or interaction with a fellow human being of either sex. For me there are no male topics, no female topics, no men’s business, no women’s business, no taboos, no secrets, no differences. I am very well pleased with the efforts and results of my investigations into the sexual imperative. GARY: I also think that our fundamental resentment as human beings of being here – being born and being in this world – as the resentment has been identified – underlies much of malcontent, misery, unhappiness, and ineffectiveness that many people experience. Perhaps I should speak of myself here. One can be perfectly aware of one’s tendency to feel sorry for oneself, ‘bitch’ or grouse about various injustices, and just plain be unhappy and discontent. Many of times in my own experience I am able to identify that I am simply resentful about having to be where I am at the time and doing what I am doing. This morning it went like this ‘Poor me, I have so much to do ... when will I ever get it all done?’ PETER: Feeling sorry for oneself is an insidious emotional undercurrent that you soon discover in actualism. It becomes readily apparent that the feeling of sorrow is the fall-back position of the human condition – it is the very glue that binds humanity together and the very fuel for all of humanity’s religious and spiritual fantasies. As you dig into sorrow you will inevitably discover all of the social conditioning that sets sorrow in concrete as part and parcel of being human. Most of what passes for entertainment, meaning, interaction, connection, gratification and fulfilment in the human condition is predicated on the bitter-sweetness of the feeling of sorrow. These ingrained layers of one’s own social/spiritual conditioning need to be peeled away if one is to ever become actually free of sorrow. I remember dutifully following the social rules of the game played in the ‘real’ world and, by the time I got to the stage of having a wife, two kids, two cars and a mortgage by age 32, I discovered that neither I, nor any others in the ‘real’ world, were free of sorrow. It simply wasn’t part of the social rules to be free of sorrow – in fact the rules themselves actively conspired to prevent anyone from becoming genuinely happy and prevent anyone from becoming authentically autonomous. Some 17 years later the same was apparent in following the rules of the spiritual world – practicing Eastern dissociative philosophies and spiritual theories didn’t bring a genuine end to sorrow at all. Dissociation is founded upon escaping the ‘essential’ sorrow of the real world – sorrow is set in concrete in the real world, it is deemed to be part and parcel of being human. The Eastern solution is to dissociate from being a physical human and become a Divine blissful spirit, steeped in Divine Love and Compassion – a love and compassion that both needs and feeds off other sorrowful human beings in order to exist. Becoming a Divine blissful spirit didn’t sit at all well with me which is why I went for the jugular – eliminating malice and sorrow from this flesh and blood body and leapt into the ‘fascinating and intriguing process’ of actualism, as you called it. Just as an aside, I heard a one-liner on TV the other day that twigged my ear. I think it was an archaeologist who said ‘War, pestilence and other acts of God’. Such a simple throw away line but it struck me yet again how essentially evil the Gods are that human beings insist on praying to and how perverse all of human ‘wisdom’ really is. GARY: The pay-off is being able to sweep away all the garbage that awareness has brought to light, once one has identified that it is ‘me’ or ‘I’ that is making me unhappy and potentially harmful, nobody else. PETER: What you call ‘sweep away all the garbage’, I used to call cleaning out the cupboards, and I would find myself going back in there time and again on each issue that arose until I made sure there was nothing left. Genuine intent and sincerity in action – nothing glossed over or dismissed, nothing repressed or sublimated, nothing swept under the carpet or ignored. Great fun once you get the hang of it. GARY: So, with the actualism method, one is actually doing the process of change, not merely talking about it. One can talk about irrevocable change until the cows come home but unless and until one actually changes, it is all theoretical. How do you know you have changed – ask yourself the question honestly and with the utmost sincerity – ‘How am I experiencing this present moment of being alive?’ The answer will astound you sometimes. PETER: The spiritual solution to becoming free is to think one is free or feel one is free – to become ‘Who’ you really think and feel you are. The actualism solution is to irrevocably change oneself – to become what you are and not to remain ‘who’ you think and feel you are, whoever that may be. As you are experiencing, this process of incremental change brings palpable and tangible results, changes that can be talked about, shared with others, made sense of, and even passed on to others if anyone else is willing to listen. For me, the first significant change that I experienced was that marvellous sense of autonomy and freedom of being free of being a devoted and loyal follower of a God-man or, its alternative for some, a resentful cynic forever ensnared within the narrow confines of the spiritual world and its belief systems. The second change was in stopping blaming other people for my own anger and my own sadness, which then meant I was becoming harmless to others. The third change was in incrementally replacing the fickleness and ‘self’-centredness of ‘my’ normal cerebral and emotional experiencing with a rock-solid sensibleness and sensuous ‘self’-less experiencing of the actual world we humans live in. All these are down-to-earth changes, down-to-earth hard won freedoms, not without their consequences and difficulties but abundant in their and astounding tangible rewards. Well it is time to rope this one in, but it was good to have a chance to talk about actualism again on this list. The clouds have cleared and the sun has come out and I may well go for a walk purely for the pleasure of that wonderful golden light of the late afternoon setting sun.
PETER: I am always amazed that people subscribe to this list purely in order to push their own wheelbarrow or to indulge in intellectual arguments, ad absurdum. There is a word that I came across in the Oxford dictionary the other day that describes the bulk of objections to actualism – ‘Grübelsucht’. Having been also conditioned to be a man, you would probably know well this male propensity to endlessly intellectualise and philosophise about any subject – men seemingly have an innate propensity to explore and discover and while some do this physically and pragmatically, the majority of men are content to sit around commenting on, or armchair criticizing, those who dare to do. GARY: ‘Grübelsucht’. What a great word. But I don’t know how you come up with the umlauts on your program. I’ve never figured out how. Perhaps I need to run another program. Someone once explained it to me, but I still couldn’t figure. PETER: I copied and pasted it came complete with umlauts from Oxford Talking Dictionary, a most useful program, but if you ever need a little icing on your vowels ... in Microsoft Word go to Insert /Symbol and you will find a whole lot of squiggles and squoggles. GARY: One can, through investigating and experiencing the instincts in oneself, see them more clearly in other people. I had talked at a previous time of changing my scope of practice as a social worker – I got a job in a treatment program for children. I had never worked with children before and, for me, it was a daunting prospect because being with children always seemed to trigger me to re-experience the anguish, anger, resentment, and hurts tied up in my own painful childhood. Despite years of insight-based therapy, I was still subject to bouts of convulsive crying, deep sorrow, and debilitating depression at times. It was heart-rending to go through these painful emotions and they made little sense to me. I had been told by supervisors that I ought to work with children, that it would be good experience, etc. Yet I was afraid to do this and I gradually began to want to be free from this fear. PETER: Everybody has had a painful childhood, everyone suffered from reward and punishment, everyone felt an outsider, everyone became deceitful and was deceived by others. Much of one’s social identity was formed in the early years of childhood as a coping mechanism to being born within the human condition and revisiting past childhood events and reliving these hurtful memories does nothing but strengthen one’s identity as a fully paid-up member of the ‘life’s a bitch’ club. It is telling that those therapists who most advocate revisiting childhood hurts or even past-life hurts are very often those who offer other-wordly solutions to the trouble and strife of being here. * PETER: But I am in no way advocating retiring from the world of people, things and events into a do-nothing state of isolationism. For an actualist the market place is the best and most fertile testing ground for exploration – there is nothing like the boss at work, one’s partner, one’s parents or children, one’s friends, the TV news, the neighbours, etc. to bring to the surface the beliefs, morals, values, viewpoints and ethics that initially stand in the way of becoming happy and harmless. GARY: Yes, I am relating in an improved way to people at work, ie, where I spend the most amount of my waking time. I am open to new ways of doing things and not being so darned ... stubborn, in a word. At least at the job, I realized that I had zilch experience working in this area and was open to imbibing what others had learned and had to teach me. PETER: It is such a straight-forward business learning something new. Do a bit of checking around, see what is working and what doesn’t, go with what does. In the case of my work, I was taught a whole lot of theory, intermixed with unworkable idealism and it took me 30 years of unlearning all the pap I had been taught such that I was able to make decisions on the basis of common sense and not some flawed idealism, impassioned ‘self’-centred dream or knee-jerk emotional reaction. Not that clients now listen to what I have to say because they all want ‘their dream’, want to be followers of the current fashion, or want to make an ‘individual’ statement, but that is neither here nor there. The main point is that I am now free of having to rely on regurgitating the beliefs and failures of others – I have learnt what works and what doesn’t work largely on the basis of my own trial and error experiments. GARY: It must be that way with actualism as far as I am concerned. There are people on this list with far, far more experience than I (you for one) and I want to learn what it is that you have to convey. PETER: Yep. When I came across Richard I was emboldened to go all the way into my doubts as to what everyone else was emphatically insisting and passionately believing was right and wrong, good and bad – i.e. I started to really question the sensibility of the beliefs, morals and ethics that are imposed by society in order to keep a lid on the instinctual animal passions. This outer crust of one’s social identity is what needs to be tackled and demolished first in order to get at the core of one’s instinctual identity as a human being. * PETER: The whole point of actualism is to be happy and harmless in the world as-it-is – i.e. not to rant and rave about how bad the world is and not to fluctuate between being angry or sad at one’s lot in life. If you want to change your lot then you change it. Similarly the whole point of actualism is to be happy and harmless with people as-they-are – i.e. not to rant and rave about how bad people are and not to fluctuate between being angry or sad at the human condition. If you want to become free of the human condition then you set about irrevocably changing yourself. Once you get the gist that actualism is about going down the road never travelled before in human history you start to realize the full implications of the fact that everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong. One then starts to see the folly of the human condition in toto and the envy, umbrage and criticism of others still ensnared by the old ways can be easily and clearly seen for what it is. GARY: Yes, I think it has never been done before but now it is and I want to be in on it in a front seat. It means the end of ‘me’ and nothing but experiencing the 24hour a day perfection and purity of this physical universe, all while doing what one usually does, whether it be working, driving, tending a garden, going to meetings, whatever. The virtually free state or the PCE is at once an extraordinary and ordinary experience ... I don’t know if you know what I mean about ‘ordinary’. I don’t mean ordinary in the sense of dull or mundane, it is certainly not that. But I mean ordinary in comparison to the ecstatic Altered States of Consciousness. As it is a purely sensory experience, completely devoid of emotional content, it can be part and parcel of one’s ordinary sensory experiencing of life in general. It is something that everyone has experienced before and may be potentially experiencing as soon as they focus their awareness on attention and sensuousness. It is indeed something that is right here and right now. One needn’t go off to some monastery or trooping off to Byron Bay to make a pilgrimage to visit Richard to begin to experience this pure sensuous quality of life. It is right here right now. One becomes progressively more and more practiced in identifying what it is that is standing in the way of experiencing this perfection all the time, 24 hours a day. PETER: Yes. Actualism is about getting in to being fully alive for the first time in one’s life. It isn’t about getting out of it, as in escaping from this physical world into an imaginary spiritual world. It isn’t about having instantaneous access to some Cosmic Wisdom, being Chosen to be a Saviour of mankind, acquiring Divine Protection as an antidote to one’s primordial fears or having Existence miraculously provide for one’s basic needs. Actualism is firstly about freeing this body’s intelligence from any belief that there is any form of Higher Intelligence whatsoever in the universe, then progressively becoming free from the piffle that passes for Wisdom in the human species and then becoming free from the instinctual passions that give rise to the deep-seated emotions of malice and sorrow and their antidotal pacifiers, love and compassion. From my experience the order is important – you start with the outer layers of nonsense and work your way deeper. And as you diligently go about this process you increasingly become aware of the extraordinariness of what is usually dismissed by realists as ordinary and prosaic or by spiritualists as illusionary and secondary. One’s first PCE is a very startling experience, as if a curtain has suddenly been ripped away to reveal a previously hidden paradise, the utter purity and peacefulness of the actual physical world. But as one proceeds to deconstruct this ‘curtain’, these pure consciousness experiences become less starling and seemingly other-worldly and become more ordinary, down-to-earth and familiar – hence what was once humdrum grim and grey reality becomes increasingly a sensuously extraordinary actuality. * PETER: Just the other day I had a conversation with a woman about sex and intimacy that I could have equally had with Vineeto or with a man if he were willing and able to broach such subjects. In the past I had often found women much more down to earth than men, much more interested in what is really going on in life. Talking to men was another story but sometimes they let their competitive guard down long enough to allow a little sensible talk. Having explored and eliminated the social mores and instinctual programming that divide the human species into two warring gender camps, there is now no thought or feeling of a man-woman divide from my side to inhibit any communication or interaction with a fellow human being of either sex. For me there are no male topics, no female topics, no men’s business, no women’s business, no taboos, no secrets, no differences. I am very well pleased with the efforts and results of my investigations into the sexual imperative. GARY: Sound like you are reaping great rewards from your investigations into the sex drive. I am still a bit hung up sexually. One of the things I have really needed to look into was the guilt that was always associated with sex. As I said, the emotional-memory part of my psyche appears to be undergoing somewhat of a progressive shrinkage, and with it is disappearing the guilt feelings associated with the sex act. These guilt feelings are extremely deeply ingrained and a major hurdle to experiencing the pure delight of enjoyable sex. I still am quite inhibited sexually. I think, however, that the feelings of guilt are gradually diminishing as I have been examining these feelings when they do pop up. As I continue with this examination, I am less and less ‘driven’ sexually, and I am freer to examine what you call the sexual imperative. PETER: I like it that your description of your investigations indicates that any investigation into the passions that prevent one from being a happy and harmless citizen of the world must first be an exploration into the societal beliefs, morals and ethics we have been imbibed with since birth. It confirms what I was saying above and what Richard says – you need to first start investigating the outer layers of social programming in order to expose the deeper layers of instinctual programming. . So many people want to take a short cut and somehow imagine that they can get to the core of the problem without penetrating the outer crust. Sex is a fascinating topic to explore in that it is so obvious that one needs to first investigate and eliminate one’s morals and ethics in order to become free of inhibitions, hang-ups and taboos. It also is clear that one needs to stop believing what others say about sex for everyone stuffs it up be they in the real world or the spiritual world. One local Tantric teacher has made it very plain in his sermons that sex is evil and only by making sex into a consciousness-raising exercise can it be purified of its innate evilness. He, of course, was then ready and willing to ‘raise the consciousness’ of any gullible and pretty young women who crossed his path. The carrying-on of such Eastern gurus was the inspiration of my ‘money for nothing and your chicks for free’ comment in my journal. Personally I found the exploration into sex most revealing as to both the extent and deep-seatedness of my social and spiritual conditioning. It was a very close to the bone exploration as it was always apparent that it was ‘me’ and ‘my’ morality, imagination and fears that stood in the way of the possibility of unencumbered and guileless sexual enjoyment. It also became clear that as I began to break free of this outer layer of conditioning what new and fresh unexplored territory lays beneath – delicious sensuousness and an exquisite actual intimacy and mateship. Then the thrill of being here really starts to kicks in. * PETER: Feeling sorry for oneself is an insidious emotional undercurrent that you soon discover in actualism. It becomes readily apparent that the feeling of sorrow is the fall-back position of the human condition – it is the very glue that binds humanity together and the very fuel for all of humanity’s religious and spiritual fantasies. GARY: I agree. Were it not for the sorrow of humanity, there would not be the attraction of the supernatural world or the spiritual world. This is very clear to me at this time. PETER: Such a simply understanding of a fact, but one of immense consequences. Provided one is prepared to act on this understanding one then irrevocably cuts out the possibility of blindly following the traditional escape route of denial and fantasy and begins the process of coming here to the actual world. I likened these acknowledgements of facts as painting my ‘self’ into a corner from whence there was no escape. * GARY: It is extremely rewarding to be progressively and incrementally experiencing freedom from the grip of this age-old sorrow of the human race. But as soon as one begins on this road, someone pops up saying ‘You can’t do that – it’s insanity’ or starts in preaching to you about the dire consequences of becoming free from the Human Condition. PETER: All sorts of condemnations, accusations and threats will come your way for daring to become free of malice and sorrow. All manner of heart strings will be tugged by others and all manner of barbs and hooks will be employed and each of these will be but another opportunity for investigation provided one’s intent is to become actually free of malice and sorrow. * GARY: So, with the actualism method, one is actually doing the process of change, not merely talking about it. One can talk about irrevocable change until the cows come home but unless and until one actually changes, it is all theoretical. How do you know you have changed – ask yourself the question honestly and with the utmost sincerity – ‘How am I experiencing this present moment of being alive?’ The answer will astound you sometimes. PETER: The spiritual solution to becoming free is to think one is free or feel one is free – to become ‘Who’ you really think and feel you are. The actualism solution is to irrevocably change oneself – to become what you are and not to remain ‘who’ you think and feel you are, whoever that may be. As you are experiencing, this process of incremental change brings palpable and tangible results, changes that can be talked about, shared with others, made sense of, and even passed on to others if anyone else is willing to listen. GARY: This seems to be the real value of this list to me ... talking about and identifying ‘changes that can be talked about, shared with others, made sense of, and even passed on to others if anyone else is willing to listen’ . Since I have started in actualism, I have quit a number of things that were simply not working anymore. I quit AA, I quit Krishnanmurtiism, and I think have quit the exclusive club called Humanity. I am no longer a card-carrying member of the Human Condition, whilst still subject to the conundrums that characterize and typify that condition, I am able to look very clearly and very comprehensively at just what is happening at the time when it happens. I do not think it is hypocritical to say that I do not want to belong anymore, nor do I want to identify. PETER: The majority of people who have corresponded with Richard over the years have chosen to enter into an intellectual debate with him, defending their spiritual beliefs and attacking what is actual. Eventually they wimp away, or get sillier and sillier in trying to defend the indefensible, but what is noticeable is that their interest is theoretical and abstracted and not down-to-earth and personal. When I came across Richard I first checked out whether what he was saying made sense, i.e. that it could withstand a thorough intellectual scrutiny. Once I established this and came to understand that what was on offer was a do-it-yourself method, it then became a case of give it a go to see if it works. This divide between those who are interested in intellectual theorizing and those who are interested in practical change can be seen in the response of many who correspond with either Vineeto or I. We are usually dismissed as clones or disciples of the Guru whereas what we are is the proof that actualism works to rid oneself of malice and sorrow. At one stage we jokingly referred to ourselves as the litmus test – corresponding with us was the measure by which to ascertain whether someone was merely intellectually theorizing or was genuinely interested in practical change. Which is why it is always a pleasure to talk some common sense with you.
GARY: What you wrote recently to PETER: The main reason I wrote was to try and stir some conversation on the list about the events of the past fortnight as the full gamut of the human condition is played out in forte. Thanks to modern communications we get to see all sides, hear all opinions and experience all the passions in a way that was impossible for previous generations. Speaking personally, I have always found television to be an invaluable tool for studying the human condition and no more so than in times like these. This ‘wanting to find out’ contrasts with the attitudes of my former spiritual friends who either shun television and haughtily dismiss what their fellow human beings are doing to each other as something happening ‘out there’ or avidly watch in morbid anticipation of a spiritually-promised doomsday. * PETER: I find it hard to think how much worse human beings could treat their fellow human beings. For a start, the amount of bloodshed, torment, anguish and suffering that religious and spiritual belief has caused, and is still causing, in the world beggars description. Words like horror, repulsion and repugnance fail to convey the full extent of the carnage that has been wrought, and is still being wrought, in the name of the followers of some make-believe God against the followers of some other make-believe God. And what is the best the pious God-fearing priests and followers have to offer as a solution to ending this on-going savagery – religious tolerance. Not an end to the madness, but a rehash of the same old failed message of ‘be tolerant towards those who hold different religious or spiritual beliefs than you do’. Nowhere does one hear a clear and unambiguous voice declaring that it is archaic and inane religious and spiritual belief itself that is the very cause of so much human conflict, animosity, misery and suffering and that it is high time to abandon such beliefs to the scrap heap of history. Blame is always laid at the feet of the believers who are either too fervent in their belief or not fervent enough – but nobody is willing to question the efficacy of the sacred teachings themselves. GARY: Yes. There is a cute commercial on the tele admonishing us now to be ‘tolerant’ of others with differing religious beliefs. I find it interesting in the current world crisis that religious belief goes hand in hand with nationalism and patriotism. Particularly in the US at this time, one sees continually the juxtaposition of God-fearing sentiments along with exhortations to patriotic defence of the homeland against the evil of world terrorism. PETER: It is interesting to see how collective, and interconnected, the human passions of malice and sorrow are. Fuelled by fear, there is a collective reaction to rally together in defence, lash out in revenge or recoil into sorrow and pity. One can clearly see that the compassion merchants, those with vested interests, come into their forte spreading fear of God and sadness with every prayer, song, speech or discourse. It is not a little thing to do to break free of – to dare to step outside of – Humanity, to actively rid oneself of both sorrow and malice. GARY: The presentation of these views, coupled as they are repeatedly, is by no means any coincidence, as in order to be willing to sacrifice oneself for one’s country one must be a passionate believer and feeler in a righteous cause, whatever that may be. One might think that since humanity appears to be going down the same old road it has been down so many, many times before, it might give pause to think what is the insanity all about, but so many are willing to get right into the thick of it. In the US at the current time we are being told that we are at war. But it seems like a phoney war to me. Since no invading army has come, and there is no general mobilization of martial forces taking place against the US, we have a situation akin to the Sitzkrieg of WWII, only that time there were two opposing armies on the to-be battle field waiting for the hostilities to start. PETER: As I see it, anyone who strikes at the financial, military and governmental heart of a country is declaring war against that country. It is akin to criminals bombing the police station or students bombing their school – it is an act that cannot go unpunished in the world as-it-is, lest anarchy rules. In school playground terms, it’s time for the teacher to step in and break things up, before things get really out of hand. GARY: I find there is an electric excitement in the air from here – when the animal instinctual passions are unleashed in their full fury, there is no telling what they will do. However, in order for the carnage to start, the defenders of the cause, whether it be religious, moral, or nationalistic, must first whip themselves up into a frenzy of righteous indignation. Fuelled by passionate belief in a Supreme Being that protects one and one’s comrades, whilst simultaneously aiding one in the destruction of one’s enemies, man’s inhumanity to man is simply unstoppable. PETER: One of the aspects that has most interested me in the current situation are the comments of the pacifists and their totally unrealistic head-in-the-cloud attitudes. Many of the so-called pacifists even hold the opinion that ‘America deserved what it got’, which is either supporting one side in the fight against the other or a blind lashing out against authority by people who refuse to let go of their adolescent riling against the world as-it-is. GARY: Actualism pulls the rug right out from under this whole rotten mess, as one begins to question the action of believing itself, whether it be belief in a religious or spiritual cause, or belief and allegiance to one’s country, race, group, or tribe. But again, one is entirely on one’s own in this enterprise, because to be fully autonomous and independent, one will never align themselves with a cause or a belief. Even non-alliance with a cause or belief could become a belief in itself if one is not vigilant to what is happening in one’s heart and mind. PETER: Yes. It is no good to merely believe that there is no solution within the human condition – least of all the puerile nonsense of praying to non-existent Gods – one has to both understand and experience that the only solution lies in stepping out of the human condition in toto. Perhaps this is what you mean by vigilance. What I did was deliberately not turn away from what was happening in the world as-it-is, but I literally ‘tuned in’. In this way, firstly I stopped avoiding or ‘turning away’. Secondly, I was able to make sense of what was going on, i.e. I came to understand the human condition in all its facets and thirdly I was able to understand and experience ‘my’ emotional bondage to Humanity and the human condition. This way you progressively become free of the human condition itself – and you have a fascinating time doing it. Win-win – and how else could it be in perfection and purity. * PETER: I have been fascinated to observe and contemplate upon the machinations that are occurring in the most recent flair-up of a religious conflict that has been ongoing for some two thousand years. There is a wealth of information to be had about the human condition simply by observing and thinking clearly about what is happening. There is also a salient opportunity to check on one’s own emotional reactions so as to ascertain where one is hooked, by one’s own social programming. in to feeling anger, sorrow, despair, fear, piousness, aloofness, or whatever. GARY: The current world crisis is tremendously fertile ground for one’s own ‘self’-investigations, I agree. One sees the Human Condition is action in the most extravagant ways possible. One sees full-fledged savagery in action and one can, unless one is completely self-immolated, feel the tug of these emotions and feelings in one’s own heart. Yet whilst practicing actualism, I have found that my emotional life is curiously attenuated. The only discernible emotional reaction, and I am not even sure that it was an emotional reaction, to the news of the WTC collapse was that the hairs on the back of my neck stood up for a few seconds. I have felt none of the horror, shock, resentment, desire for revenge and retaliation. Surprise yes. There has been a recognition of the fear too that is sweeping humanity at present time as the hostilities are about to commence. It is fear that binds ‘me’ to humanity, indeed, that makes ‘me’ a human being, and it is fear, along with the other savage passions and tender passions that is making life on this otherwise fair planet a living hell. PETER: I too got a whiff of fear when I first saw the World Trade Centre towers collapse. But since that initial instinctual reaction, I have had no emotional response at all to what is happening. In the process of actualism, I have already experientially explored deeply all of the instinctual passions, be they fear, aggression, nurture or desire and these explorations have enabled me to become free of their instinctual grip. I did very carefully check myself out for I am aware that many spiritual people also have no apparent emotional reaction in that they have disassociated themselves from what is actually happening in the physical world. They, of course, believe they are pure spirit beings and therefore have no association at all with what is happening in the physical world – which is definitely not so in my case. I was searching for a word that describes my response to the suffering that human beings wantonly, or inadvertently, cause to other human beings and the best word I could come up with was that I am appalled, but without the emotion usually associated with the word. When you know by your own experience that it is possible to incrementally remove malice and sorrow from your life, then what human beings do to each other, and to themselves, all seems so utterly needless and wasteful. Just as an aside. I hear a lot of people categorize fear as the major factor in their life but it is my experience that sorrow is the predominant and hallowed emotion and it is sorrow that begets malice. GARY: But it seems that everybody else has gone off in the wrong direction looking for a completely wrong reason for the mess that humanity is in. Meanwhile, life from here has not changed in any significant respect. There is no fear in the lovely fall foliage, nor in the lovely sun-dappled and dew-dropped grass on the lawn. There is no fear in the hills that surround us, nor in the cool breeze that gently caresses my cheeks as I make my way yet again to the car for the ride to get breakfast this morning. The hills will still be here after ‘I’ am gone. As ‘I’ am doomed to extinction anyway, why not make the best of it right now? PETER: Indeed. If I could encapsulate Richard’s method in a few words – why waste time being miserable and malicious when it is such a sensual delight being here in the perfection and purity of the actual world we flesh and blood humans live in?
Peter’s & Richard’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved. Disclaimer |
