PETER: Hi Gary,

GARY: Thank you for the lengthy post on animal instincts.

PETER: I wrote the post because I wanted to note down the research into dolphin behaviour before I forgot the details and I thought you would also be interested. It’s essential for an actualist to understand exactly the nature of the animal instinctual programming and one of the easiest ways of doing this is to observe how it operates in other animals. While chimpanzees offer the best observation and information – having a reported 96% similar genetic makeup – dolphins are also interesting to observe given that their individual and their group behaviour oft resembles those of the human instinctual animal.

GARY: You wrote, in part, and I’m snipping most of the post to zero in on one particular part:

[Peter]: This safety by numbers strategy by no means fosters harmonious interactions – au contraire, inter-group conflict is often as malicious as group-to-group conflicts. What could be seen initially as a herding or socializing instinct could well be no more than a reluctant fear-driven imperative arising from the necessity to successfully propagate the species.

The resulting alliances are more like expedient strategic pacts formed solely to increase the odds of survival. There appears to be no instinctual bonding per se within the group at large, other than a crude necessity to huddle in groups so as to increase the chances of propagating and rearing offspring as well as increase the odds when waging warfare against other members of the species. Peter to Gary, 1.1.2002

PETER: The whole purpose of the actualism method is to track down and find the identity who has been taught to be a social identity, and all that implies, and who has been programmed by blind nature to be an instinctual being, and all that implies. The way to discover the nature of this identity is to become aware of the implications of thinking and feeling oneself to be a social-instinctual being and, needless to say, the most pertinent implications are manifest as malice and sorrow. Thus the quickest and most effective way of eliminating this thinking and feeling parasitical entity is to starve it of ‘his’ or ‘her’ nourishment – the feelings of malice and sorrow.

GARY: I was sitting in a staff meeting yesterday afternoon, one of the rare times when the entire staff in the whole building gets together for a training, and I was sitting there looking at the other people and in my mind I was thinking about the whole issue of ‘fitting in’, where, if anyplace, I fit in. Or, don’t fit in, as the case may be. And I found myself looking at another man and thinking ‘Yes, I like him. I’m a lot like him’. And there was this process of identification with that other individual going on and it occurred to me that the whole thing was a bit absurd, you know. Why does one identify to begin with? This is an extremely important question that I encountered in the actualism writings, a question originally posed by Richard, but one that I have often asked myself.

PETER: No. Because if one examines this process of identification at depth one comes across a deep need that is instinctive by nature and if one digs deeper into the full range of instinctual animal passions, the experience can be shattering, to say the least. Those who have dared to take even a brief look at fear have often been so traumatized that they then practice dis-identification or dissociation, à la Eastern spiritualism, fearfully declaring ‘I am not the body but ‘who’ I really am is a disembodied spirit-like being’.

The only way to eliminate identification is not via dis-identification and dissociation as is commonly practiced but to eliminate the social/instinctual identity altogether – which is brand new territory. Welcome to brand new territory.

GARY: So I think there is this bonding or forming alliances process going on all the time with human beings and, like the animals you cite, these alliances shift and change with the shifting winds. And there is this importance that people place on ‘relationships’ with others. Whereas, the longer I am at this actualism thing the more my experience is one of freeing myself from this process of identification, freeing myself from this whole absurd business of identifying with others, and really for the first time in my life looking into what is actually going on in this business of identification. It is interesting to see how the socialization process unfolds and how society is constructed, but from a very early age we are taught that we are social creatures and that we ‘need’ other people, and that ‘no man is an island’.

PETER: And this socialization process – the equivalent of an adult chimp training a young chimp to obey the rules and not run off – was very essential in the early hunting-gathering days of early humans. But given that an increasing numbers of human beings now do their hunting and gathering in the local supermarket, the species has moved on somewhat from ‘what can I eat, what can eat me’ crude survival mode. It’s just time to stop believing the old fairy tales, get our thinking up to date and get rid of being driven by crude survival mode passions.

GARY: I am finding this traditional wisdom to not be the case and I am finding that I ‘need’ other people less and less, but then that is considered pathological, according to the wisdom of humanity, and people who don’t need friends, or who don’t need to belong to a group, or a religion, or a social club or something are judged to be oddball loners or disgruntled misanthropes.

PETER: When I started to become free of malice and sorrow, I found my emotional bonds or ‘neediness’ with other people became noticeably weaker. The most noticeable effect of this was that I lost my former spiritual ‘friends’ because I was no longer a member of a group of fellow believers. As I progressively became free of malice, I was no longer interested in participating in conversations where the ills of the world were blamed on others. And as I became progressively free of sorrow, I was no longer interested in participating in conversations where being here was regarded as a miserable business and where it was firmly believed that succour or relief could only be found by retreating ‘inside’. There was a period of time where I felt an outsider or a loner but recently I had occasion to meet quite a few old friends at a social event and all feelings of being an outsider and a loner had totally disappeared. I had a pleasurable time with a group of fellow human beings, regardless of their beliefs, gender or cultural conditioning.

My experience is that autonomy leads to neither isolation nor ostracization as I feared it would at some stage, but if it is pursued diligently and persistently it leads to an actual intimacy and ease with all of my fellow human beings – and I, once again, experienced the peace on earth that already, always exists.

GARY: A short while ago I found myself wondering whether I have ‘schizoid personality disorder’ and it was an unsettling experience because it was like being a college student again and reading the abnormal psychology text and wondering if you fit into these categories or not, you know, and it dawned on me that this too was a process of identification where I was judging my behaviour as either ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’, ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. It is possible to live completely freely, completely autonomously, and in harmony with one’s fellow humans, but one must necessarily examine one’s identifications rigorously. They are part of the whole instinctual package needing deletion.

PETER: There is no doubt that an actual freedom from the human condition is an abnormal condition by all of society’s standards. Whenever I considered this I only had to turn on the television and see what was considered normal and it only served to confirm my intent to become free of being normal. The other thing I discovered was that everybody else is so absorbed with his or her own identity that nobody notices how different, and not-normal, I am.

There is a delicious anonymity in being autonomously here in the actual world, as you would know from your own PCEs. And from each of those experiences you glean a bit more information and gather a bit more confidence to once again gnaw away at the social/instinctual identity who stands in the way of a permanent, uninterruptible experience of peace on earth.

15.1.2002

PETER: I do appreciate the conversations we have had about the process of actualism, even more so because they have been in the form of posts to this mailing list. Vineeto and I have had many conversations with Richard, and Richard has had many conversations with people that have not been recorded in any way – the spoken words have all disappeared. Up until recently most of the correspondence on The Actual Freedom Trust website has been from objectors, very few of whom were willing to acknowledge that there might well be something new under the sun in the way of human experiencing. While this correspondence served as an excellent peer review process and has drawn a prolific amount of writing from Richard, it seems as though there could be a new phase beginning to happen where there will be increasing discussion about the doing of becoming happy and harmless rather than objections to becoming happy and harmless.

I remember you saying recently that you are on your own in this business of actualism, which you are in terms of only you can change yourself – however the knowledge that others are also going through an identical process and reporting success can only inspire confidence. While no doubt in due course there will be a veritable stampede for the door ‘out’, for the pioneers there will always be some trepidation in stepping out of the real world and into the actual world. For this reason alone this mailing list is invaluable, for you know for a fact that you are not alone in this enterprise of daring to be autonomous and free from the human condition.

There is as far as we know only one location in this infinite universe where intelligence – the ability to think, plan, reflect and communicate – is manifest and that is in the brain of the human species on this planet. The last century in particular has seen a blossoming of this intelligence such that most of the fear-ridden fairy stories that have been passed down as Wisdom can now be understood as being pure fiction and not fact.

That this intelligence will be freed from the burden of the crude animal survival instincts is an inevitable progression of the development of animate matter. In other words you are not alone in this business of being an actualist – with the discovery of a way to bring an end to malice and sorrow in the human species the universe itself is manifesting yet another amazing development in the ever on-going process of refinement and betterment.

It’s great fun to be at the very front end of this process – to be serendipitously in the emergence of this inevitability, as it were.

This is no small thing we do.

GARY: Just a brief reply to your recent post. You stated:

[Peter]: I wrote the post because I wanted to note down the research into dolphin behaviour before I forgot the details and I thought you would also be interested. It’s essential for an actualist to understand exactly nature of the animal instinctual programming and one of the easiest ways of doing this is to observe how it operates in other animals. While chimpanzees offer the best observation and information – having a reported 96% similar genetic makeup – dolphins are also interesting to observe given that their individual and their group behaviour oft resembles those of the human instinctual animal. Peter to Gary, 11.1.2002

PETER: We learnt the facts at school that the physical world we flesh and blood humans live in is made up of matter in either animal, vegetable or mineral form. This fact we take for granted but the priests and shamans tell us what we passionately want to believe – that humans are not flesh and blood animals but we are really spiritual beings whose real home is some sort of ethereal imaginary other-than-physical world. By so readily believing what the priests and shamans tell us we allow a make-believe Creator to usurp the magic of the constantly changing formations, transformations and mutations of the very matter of this infinite and eternal physical universe.

Every astronaut who has orbited this blue-white-green planet has been so astounded by the sight that they have felt awe and seen this life-abundant planet as evidence of a creator God, by whatever name. This belief is a debasement of the actuality of the in-no-way-passive matter of this astonishing universe. The process of actualism firstly debunks these ancient impassioned beliefs that stand in the way of a factually-based understanding of the actuality of the universe such that one can then increasingly turn one’s attention to a direct sensate-only appreciation of the actual world of people, things and events.

There is a world of difference between a spiritualist’s debasement or dismissal of the nature of matter, a materialist’s indifference and disinterest in the nature of matter and an actualist’s sensual appreciation of the magic inherent in the nature of matter. One only needs to see the multiplication of cells that occur when a sperm fertilizes an ovum, to see a plant seed burst open and begin to sprout, to see lava or hot springs bubbling from the earth or to feel the rain, wind or sun on one’s skin to experience the magical non-passiveness of the actual world.

GARY: The only other thing I would mention is that there is another easy way of understanding the nature of the animal instinctual programming that I have run across and that is to observe children. Granted that the children that I work with as a social worker have, in many cases, been horribly abused by their parents and caretakers, but they seem not to have developed the internal controls that are inculcated by society as morals, ethics, and values, and the underlying instinctual package is plain for all to see. The malice and sorrow of these little people, their fights with one another, their pain and suffering, is readily apparent. The children are very obviously in a primitive survival mode almost all the time. The destructiveness of these self-centred passions is something I wrestle with everyday in my work.

PETER: Having had children myself and watched others, it is readily apparent that fear, aggression, nurture and desire are instinctual passions and not something that is taught or picked up from others or one’s environment. Chinese anger is the same as African anger and Australian anger. As for the nature vs. nurture debate – the instinctual passions are ‘natural’ in that they are genetically encoded and ‘nurture’ plays a minor role in the degree and manner of suppression or expression of these passions. Even then, the role of ‘nurture’ in the suppression and control of the instinctual passions is by no means certain as innate differences can be readily observed in very young children even with identical upbringing.

Just as an aside, the whole nature vs. nurture debate as to which has most influence on human behaviour is really a debate about instinctual passions vs. social conditioning. While it has always been generally accepted that nurture and desire are natural attributes of the human species, there is an increasing amount of empirical research that confirms the fact that the instinctual passions of fear and aggression are also natural to the human species.

The recognition, acceptance and understanding of the fact that the instinctual passions of nurture and desire, as well as fear and aggression, are genetically encoded in each and every human being is brand new territory – and scary territory at that. For starters, it directly contradicts the universal belief that children are born innocent – a corner stone of most spiritual beliefs. Also, if one also accepts the other universal belief that ‘you can’t change human nature’ – presumably because nature is the work of some creator God – it leaves the human species apparently with no way to bring an end to malice and sorrow.

Enter the discovery of actualism and the solution to the conundrum becomes evident.

*

When I read of your recent job change, I was wondering how you would go working with young children. I see it is proving to be a wealth of information while no doubt being a handful at times. I also gleaned a wealth of information from my work in the market place during actualism, as well as being able to observe how I was experiencing a challenging and changing kaleidoscope of people, things and events. What I found was that as my malicious and sorrowful feelings diminished, I was much more able to easily do what was sensible and appropriate for the situation and that this sensibleness and appropriateness eventually became effortless.

As effortlessness set in, ‘I’ was more and more redundant as ‘I’ was no longer needed to be ‘in control’. When this stage is reached there is a delicious ‘slipping out from control’ that happens and then I really get to have fun being effortlessly happy and effortlessly harmless.

Nice to chat with you again ...

20.1.2002

PETER: I do appreciate the conversations we have had about the process of actualism, even more so because they have been in the form of posts to this mailing list. Vineeto and I have had many conversations with Richard, and Richard has had many conversations with people that have not been recorded in any way – the spoken words have all disappeared. Up until recently most of the correspondence on The Actual Freedom Trust website has been from objectors, very few of whom were willing to acknowledge that there might well be something new under the sun in the way of human experiencing. While this correspondence served as an excellent peer review process and has drawn a prolific amount of writing from Richard, it seems as though there could be a new phase beginning to happen where there will be increasing discussion about the doing of becoming happy and harmless rather than objections to becoming happy and harmless.

GARY: Yes, I think a slight shift is discernable in the tenor of the discussions on this list. The virulence of the objections to being happy and harmless seems to have diminished somewhat lately. And there are a couple of new people coming on to the list. I enjoy it when someone new turns up here as there is a freshness and vitality injected into the discussions. But, getting back to a possible new phase in the list, I wonder to what extent world events are spurring, for some at least, a desire to find a way to live in peace and harmony with others. News coverage in the past few weeks has included the grim news that a major clash is possible between Pakistan and India, two powers with nuclear capabilities. Too, there has been speculation as to whether humanity once again finds itself in the ‘deep muddy’ of world war – there have been enough indications of late of an increasingly violent and pernicious process at work in world events. All this goes to show that in spite of the spectacular progress made in scientific and technological realms, human beings are still fettered to a stone-age mentality in their dealings with one another. So, I find myself wondering if, on the whole, these world-wide events might be contributing to an increased interest in becoming happy and harmless.

PETER: Two things occur to me in response.

I recently watched a CNN programme where some 30 Nobel Peace Prize winners were part of a televised forum set up to discuss world peace. It seems that some of the panel had compiled a report declaring that talking and negotiation were the only way to end conflict and they were proposing themselves as a roving peace force for the world. However, not all of the peace prize-winners agreed and some were dissenters from the report. Amongst these were resistance leaders from Bosnia and East Timor, both of whom said that the only way suppression, torture and murder had been ended in their countries was by intervention of armed peacekeeping forces and that there was no way possible for the unarmed and suppressed to negotiate peace and freedom with armed and determined repressors.

There was polite applause from the audience at this point but the discussion quickly turned away from the pragmatic freedoms gained by meeting force with even more force and moved back to idealism and morality. Apart from re-running the old tried and failed notion that discussion and negotiation can resolve and end conflict, there were the usual noises made about religious tolerance as a way to resolve and end religious conflict, the fashionable railing against globalisation and pleas for a return to tribalism and a strengthening of cultural differences. What was blatantly obvious from watching the show was the marked aversion that human beings have towards facts and pragmatism and the fondness they have for beliefs and ideals.

I was reminded yet again that Humanity plays its game by a fixed set of rules – the inviolate morals and ethics that ensures that ‘this is the way it is, because this is the way it has always been, and this is the way it will always be’. At one time I used to waver between optimism and pessimism for Humanity until I realized that Humanity is unchangeable by its very nature. Humanity is locked into a perpetual cycle of conflict between those who willingly submit to the social morals and mores and the angry and frustrated who rile against them.

The little town I live in is a cesspool of conflict between family members, neighbours, rival community groups, competing spiritual groups, opposing political organizations, and the like – all of whom are endlessly blaming others for not seeing or respecting, let alone agreeing with their particular point of view. Consensus, consideration, care and co-operation are nowhere to be seen.

The traditional ways for Humanity to seek to end conflict have always been, and always will be, bound to morals and ethics and this compulsive fixation does nothing but ensure that Humanity will always be exemplified by a battle betwixt good and evil – by whatever name good is called and by whatever name evil is called. Within this perverse game, those who claim to be peacemakers are those who claim the moral and ethical high ground – notably the pacifists who live in counties where law and order is well maintained by efficient armed police and disciplinarian legal systems, and the priests and God-men who advocate egalitarianism and tolerance whilst simultaneously preaching that their own God is the greatest.

As you might have gathered by now, I have abandoned any hope for Humanity as it simply keeps going around in circles, endlessly re-running the tried and failed methods, ideals and beliefs. The next generation frantically digs through the trash bin of history, looks for something that feels good or seems right, dusts it off, blindly ignores all of the evidence of the past failures, forms a group around a charismatic leader and starts to passionately fight the good fight. Enough is enough.

Which brings me to the other aspect that occurred to me about your comment about current world events. I’ve written about it in my journal but I’ll repeat it here, as it is directly relevant to our discussion. Before I came across actualism, there was a period of some 18 months where I lived alone in a self-contained flat by the ocean and started to really enjoy my own company for the first time in my life. Living was easy; safety, comfort, leisure and pleasure abounded and I was, what I would describe in hindsight, as being at peace with myself – rather like a Buddhist monk would be hiding in a comfortable cave.

I was reading spiritual books at the time and induced a full-blown Satori experience, which was confirmed by a local Guru as being the ‘genuine article’. I remember being a bit perplexed at the time for it seemed as though I was inexorably heading for a career as God-man – whereas I had already determined that I didn’t like their lifestyle, I didn’t like how they were with their women and nor did I like the whole Guru-disciple business. The other doubt I had was that the experience was so utterly self-centred that it seemed not only was the world enrapturing, as in beguiling, but it was also chameleon-like as in unreal, dream-like, insubstantial, illusionary.

While it was marvellous, to say the least, to have such an altered state of consciousness experience, it did also mean that all of the other people in the world also appeared to be unreal, insubstantial and illusionary as well, which only served to confirm my dislikes of the exalted state of the God-men and how they treated other people. I eventually came to understand that the revered spiritual states of consciousness were in fact a retreat from the world of people, things and events such that the entire physical world appeared to be an illusion and it felt as though only ‘I’ existed. Hence, despite the fact that I lived a life dripping in safety, comfort, leisure and pleasure, the only way I could manifest a feeling of perfect peace was to retreat from the world and go ‘inside’, evoking a dream-like state of utter self-centredness and self-glorification.

This period of my life proved to be a valuable experience, for when I met Richard and heard him say ‘everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong’, for a brief moment the penny dropped, as it were. All of a sudden, all the doubts I had about the God-men and the spiritual search were crystallized into an ‘of course, the God-men are trying to get out of it by going ‘there’, retreating ‘inside’ – whereas what Richard is talking about is coming here to the actual world where we flesh and blood human bodies really live.’ That brief moment of understanding proved to be sufficiently revealing that I likened it to a crack in the door – and I have been persistently widening that crack ever since.

So, in a bid to rope in this rave and wrap it up, the two thoughts that occurred to me was the futility of Humanity’s search for peace by persisting with the long-tried and always-failed methods and how this contrasts with the radical new approach – the do-it-yourself method.

If all else fails, which it clearly is – take unilateral action.

*

PETER: I remember you saying recently that you are on your own in this business of actualism, which you are in terms of only you can change yourself – however the knowledge that others are also going through an identical process and reporting success can only inspire confidence. While no doubt in due course there will be a veritable stampede for the door ‘out’, for the pioneers there will always be some trepidation in stepping out of the real world and into the actual world. For this reason alone this mailing list is invaluable, for you know for a fact that you are not alone in this enterprise of daring to be autonomous and free from the human condition.

GARY: It seems that almost simultaneously to saying that I am on my own in this business of actualism that I am taking a renewed pleasure and interest in the discussions on the list. My interest has waxed and waned historically in the short time that I have contributed to the list. Lately it seems to be on the upswing. I think there was a prolonged stage for me where to be ‘on my own’ meant breaking free from any form of anchorage, involving belief and group affiliations. It also involved a kind of imposed isolation from others, a sort of hermitude. Now that is changing somewhat and I am seeing the silliness of remaining in a kind of ‘self’-imposed isolation from my fellow humans. It almost seems like it was a necessary stage but one which is diminishing somewhat. I am a rather introverted individual and always have been. I don’t see that that is going to change much. But you never know...

PETER: I can relate to what you are saying because, particularly when I was working out a lot of things, I did a lot of withdrawing, a lot of putting my feet up and contemplating on life, the universe and what it is to be a human being. It was a period when it felt as though I was completely ‘self’-obsessed. When I got to the stage of being virtually free of malice and sorrow, I decided to write my journal simply to let others know that actualism worked – i.e. it delivered the goods. I surprised myself by discovering that I could write and have been a reasonably constant letter-writer ever since. What I particularly like is the fact that all this writing also serves the purpose of making the process of actualism totally transparent so that anyone, anywhere in the world who has access to the Net, can make of it what they will ... or won’t as the case may be.

As for being introverted, it is a criticism often levelled at people who enjoy their own company.

*

PETER: There is as far as we know only one location in this infinite universe where intelligence – the ability to think, plan, reflect and communicate – is manifest and that is in the brain of the human species on this planet. The last century in particular has seen a blossoming of this intelligence such that most of the fear-ridden fairy stories that have been passed down as Wisdom can now be understood as being pure fiction and not fact.

That this intelligence will be freed from the burden of the crude animal survival instincts is an inevitable progression of the development of animate matter. In other words you are not alone in this business of being an actualist – with the discovery of a way to bring an end to malice and sorrow in the human species the universe itself is manifesting yet another amazing development in the ever on-going process of refinement and betterment. It’s great fun to be at the very front end of this process – to be serendipitously in the emergence of this inevitability, as it were.

This is no small thing we do.

GARY: Yes, there is a tremendously expansive sense of freedom when at first the bonds of instinct appear to be loosening and then one realizes that they are really disappearing from one’s life ... perhaps forever. I say ‘perhaps’ because, as you, I have not experienced anything like ‘self-immolation’. There is nothing ‘mystical’ about this process – it all seems incredibly straight forward, at least at this point.

PETER: The way I investigated the business of ‘perhaps’ was to ask myself if I could ever turn back to being how I was, or ‘who’ I was, before I started this process. When the answer came ‘no way’, the ‘perhaps’ disappeared and I knew there was only one way to go – forward. There is nothing ‘mystical’ about the process of actualism and yet it is magical – for to experience and be aware that the human brain can not only think, plan reflect and communicate but can also delete its obsolete social programming and its redundant instinctual program is breathtakingly magical ... and yet so ordinary and incredibly straight forward, as you said.

*

GARY: The only other thing I would mention is that there is another easy way of understanding the nature of the animal instinctual programming that I have run across and that is to observe children. Granted that the children that I work with as a social worker have, in many cases, been horribly abused by their parents and caretakers, but they seem not to have developed the internal controls that are inculcated by society as morals, ethics, and values, and the underlying instinctual package is plain for all to see. The malice and sorrow of these little people, their fights with one another, their pain and suffering, is readily apparent. The children are very obviously in a primitive survival mode almost all the time. The destructiveness of these self-centred passions is something I wrestle with everyday in my work.

PETER: Having had children myself and watched others, it is readily apparent that fear, aggression, nurture and desire are instinctual passions and not something that is taught or picked up from others or one’s environment. Chinese anger is the same as African anger and Australian anger. As for the nature vs. nurture debate – the instinctual passions are ‘natural’ in that they are genetically encoded and ‘nurture’ plays a minor role in the degree and manner of suppression or expression of these passions. Even then, the role of ‘nurture’ in the suppression and control of the instinctual passions is by no means certain as innate differences can be readily observed in very young children even with identical upbringing.

GARY: There is another thing about nurture, aside from the ‘nature vs. nurture’ debate. There seems to be a feeling among those who I am going to dub ‘nurturists’ that if only enough nurture is supplied to each and every human being, the problems of humanity will be solved and there will no wars, no violence, etc. It’s the old ‘what the world needs now is Love Sweet Love’ syndrome, and it is strong among those who are positive, nurturing types. Obviously children need a great deal of nurturing, and I am not suggesting to stop nurturing them. But nurture does not eliminate the genetically encoded instinctual passions of aggression and fear.

PETER: That love fails, and always has failed, can be seen in the bitter-sweet sadness of love songs and the tragedies and melodramas that pass for great love stories. Only in the fairy stories do people live happily ever after and only in mythology do loving societies exist.

My experience is when the instinctual passion of nurture kicks in with regard to caring for children, it invariably triggers off the full range of associated instinctual passions. Fear abounds in protecting and providing, aggression kicks in the form of jealousy and possessiveness and desire simply changes focus from sexual hunting to nest-building security, both of which are pursued relentlessly. Exactly as love always fails, the instinctual passion of nurture also fails to deliver the goods for the simple reason that it is impossible to separate the good from the bad in the intertwined package of instinctual passions.

*

PETER: When I read of your recent job change, I was wondering how you would go working with young children.

GARY: I was wondering the same thing. I feel a bit hypocritical at times as I find myself falling back on what I learned and was taught in dealing with situations, and I think what I learned and was taught was based on the same values, morals, ethics, etc., that constitute the ‘Tried and Failed’. So there is this hypocritical feeling often. But I seemingly do not react to emotionally charged situations and I am not intimidated by people whose aim is to push other people’s buttons. That doesn’t mean I stick around to become their punching bag, it just means that I can be level-headed in a situation.

PETER: Once I began to get some understanding as to the nature of the human condition I remember passing through some difficult phases in my work and with people I met. Firstly I had to overcome the hurdle of wanting to tell others about my discoveries about how the human condition operates but I soon saw I was falling for that perennial trap of wanting to change others. When this urge subsided, I found myself feeling like an outsider because I no longer believed what everyone else believed and I was increasingly more happy and harmless, in a world awash with sadness, blame, resentment, competition and affront. In hindsight it was really a matter of riding out the storm, keeping my own counsel as to what was going on and accept the fact that actualism means change, that this change requires effort and that change is at times an uncomfortable and disconcerting business.

At the risk of making this post a marathon, there is another story that is relevant to the subject of work as well as the topic of beauty that No 37 was interested in. As an architect I was trained to consider architecture to be a fine art and consequently great emphasis was placed on aesthetics in my education. The look and feel of a building was considered paramount and its functionality, workability and build-ability were considered secondary.

As a consequence of this teaching, beauty and style became personal issues to be honed, cherished, defended and fought for over the course of one’s career. Because of this many of my interactions with clients became subtle battles of will as I attempted to impose my style and sense of beauty on their building. Despite the fact that I could see that beauty was a subjective value and by no means an absolute and that it was influenced by fashion, location, culture and personality, it took a long time to rid myself of the aesthetic values I had been taught in architecture school.

Last year I found myself designing a house that was completely foreign to what I would normally consider my style and yet I did the job I was paid to do without a glimmer of resentment or frustration? I did the best I could to give the client what she wanted in the way of style and used my experience and knowledge to ensure that she got best practical value for her money. It was a liberating exercise for me, for not only had I broken free of the values imposed by my vocational training but also of the belief that there is an intrinsic and absolute beauty. As there was no conflict at all between the client and myself, everyone won out of the situation.

*

PETER: I see it is proving to be a wealth of information while no doubt being a handful at times. I also gleaned a wealth of information from my work in the market place during actualism, as well as being able to observe how I was experiencing a challenging and changing kaleidoscope of people, things and events. What I found was that as my malicious and sorrowful feelings diminished, I was much more able to easily do what was sensible and appropriate for the situation and that this sensibleness and appropriateness eventually became effortless.

As effortlessness set in, ‘I’ was more and more redundant as ‘I’ was no longer needed to be ‘in control’. When this stage is reached there is a delicious ‘slipping out from control’ that happens and then I really get to have fun being effortlessly happy and effortlessly harmless.

GARY: ‘Effortlessness’ is a very good way to describe it. Once one grasps the folly of remaining a passionate feeling being, the emotional faculty seems to just run out of steam or fall flat from lack of use. One is no longer pumping up one’s emotional muscles.

PETER: Just to make it clear for anyone else who may be reading this – the stage of effortlessness only occurs as a result of making the supreme effort to be happy and harmless. And anyone who thinks that being happy and harmless is easy, need only try for themselves to experience the obstacles that need diligently removing from the path.

GARY: A curious change begins to take place. I am still in the midst of this change and so there are certain parts of it that are not entirely clear to me. But the daunting or fear-evoking elements of it appear to be subsiding, being replaced by an increasing sense of ease and comfort. My experience of emotions, if they do arise in the head and heart, is that they are recognized at once and fall flat, without needing to be expressed or suppressed. It is indeed a process that involves no effort from ‘me’. Indeed, if I get hooked by an emotion, it is ‘me’ in all my glory, and the experience can be pumped for all the information possible about this particular emotion or feeling, and the corresponding belief or attitude that may be associated with it.

PETER: Yes. I can relate to that. I was always wary that I may be kidding myself that some belief or moral or ethic had disappeared out of my life and I would often do what I described as sweeping out the cupboard. I would deliberately check over some issue, looking for deeper layers or something I had missed. But life is excellent at throwing up opportunities in the way of people, things and events that serve as a challenge to your happiness and as a prod to how harmless you really are. The only thing you have to be is sincere, but then again while it may be possible to fool others, to fool oneself is really silly.

*

I’ve noticed I’ve gotten into what could be described as a story telling mode, but my experience is that I have gleaned as much information from listening to Richard’s down-to-earth stories as I have from listening to or reading his Journal and his correspondence. In hindsight, the process of actualism for me firstly involved backtracking out of that great fantasy diversion that all seekers of freedom and peace have traditionally made – the spiritual path. Having got out of that mess, I then found myself back where I left off before I went up that track – making sense of and becoming free of the real-world. I had done a bit of it in my time before I became a spiritualist but I was emboldened and encouraged by Richard’s discovery to go all the way.

I guess that’s why I am writing more about day-to-day down-to-earth ‘real’-word issues with you, because once I got my head out of the spiritual clouds, these are what became my fascination.

29.1.2002

GARY: Yes, there is a tremendously expansive sense of freedom when at first the bonds of instinct appear to be loosening and then one realizes that they are really disappearing from one’s life ... perhaps forever. I say ‘perhaps’ because, as you, I have not experienced anything like ‘self-immolation’.

PETER: The way I investigated the business of ‘perhaps’ was to ask myself if I could ever turn back to being how I was, or ‘who’ I was, before I started this process. When the answer came ‘no way’, the ‘perhaps’ disappeared and I knew there was only one way to go – forward.

GARY: This was the most helpful part of your post to me. I had not been aware of the full implications of that modifier ‘perhaps’. It indicates a holding-back and a fear of proceeding, I think.

PETER: Not necessarily. It can also be indicative of a sensible caution and of sincerity.

However, if you find aspects of your life have changed such that you know you could never go back to thinking, feeling and believing what everyone else thinks, feels and believes, then it is always good to chalk up successes. The only way you can have the confidence not to hold back and proceed despite the fear is to acknowledge that what you have been doing up to now results in tangible freedoms.

GARY: But I can honestly say that I could not go back even if I wanted – and I do not want to. Because these ‘bonds of instinct’, even though they have not been completely and totally eradicated, have been so weakened and the benefit is so tangible from this that there is no comparison to before. I was reminded of this yesterday. We had a mass staff gathering for the purposes of having a corporate retreat to discuss work issues. To make a long story short, the powers that be made it perfectly clear that they expect and recommend an approach to problem solving that says ‘If I have a problem with you, I’m going to tell you about it’. I was reminded of the drab results that I personally had always gotten from this confrontative approach, and how many times it backfired and made things worse. I was, at the same time, reminded of Vineeto’s recent remarks on this approach to ‘letting it all hang out’.

PETER: In the same vein, the prime minister of the country where I live recently announced a new initiative to promote harmony within the 200 odd ethnic groups that live in this country and suggested as part of this initiative that people should ‘celebrate their differences’. It obviously never occurred to him, or those who wrote his speech, that it is precisely because people cling to their differences – their old cultural, social and ethnic conditioning – that there is ethnic conflict and disharmony in the first place. In the case of your observation, the idea that encouraging people to continually air their grievances towards each other can achieve peace and harmony in the workplace makes no sense at all.

Humanity is chock a block full of examples of people digging up old failed notions and beliefs and presenting them as some new initiative or declaring that they didn’t worked in past because no one did it well enough. The classic current example is humanity’s fascination for Eastern religion – so much so that I have even heard it said that the mythical Jesus was an Enlightened Master, totally ignoring the fact that he is said to be the son of the Christian God. I have also noticed that Western followers of Buddhism are very quick nowadays to declare that Buddhism is not a religion despite the fact that it has a strong moral and ethical structure, that it is founded upon a belief in an other-than-physical world complete with an after-life and is predicated on the teachings of a mythical being of which there is no evidence of his flesh and blood existence other than in the sacred texts themselves.

In my line of work, the latest belief to be trotted out for another run is the ancient Chinese superstition of Feng Shui. When one of my clients mentioned using Feng Shui I responded that I didn’t believe in good spirits and bad spirits. There was a silence that indicated that my client had not considered that believing in Feng Shui meant that he believed that his happiness , wellbeing, good fortune and wealth was solely dependant upon encouraging good spirits and appeasing evil spirits

As you no doubt have experienced, it takes quite an effort to give up our revered beliefs and stop the habit of being a believer because beliefs are so much a part of our identity. Each group within society has its own set of beliefs and if you stop believing what a particular group believes then you find yourself outside of that group. As more and more beliefs are replaced by facts you eventually get to the stage where you stop being a believer and you start to rely solely on facts and sensate experience and evidence. Rather than feel an social outcast or outsider you start to feel an earthling for the first time in your life – and an attentive sensuality gradually replaces the normal fearful, uncomfortable, feeling of alienation.

Actualism is such good fun.

5.2.2002

PETER: In the same vein, the prime minister of the country where I live recently announced a new initiative to promote harmony within the 200 odd ethnic groups that live in this country and suggested as part of this initiative that people should ‘celebrate their differences’. It obviously never occurred to him, or those who wrote his speech, that it is precisely because people cling to their differences – their old cultural, social and ethnic conditioning – that there is ethnic conflict and disharmony in the first place. In the case of your observation, the idea that encouraging people to continually air their grievances towards each other can achieve peace and harmony in the workplace makes no sense at all. <snip>.

GARY: It is much the same in the US, a multi-ethnic society as is Australia. There is the same ‘celebrate diversity’ theme trotted out again and again as a means of promoting ‘tolerance’ for others of a different stripe ethnically or racially. Yet only because there is disharmony, hatred, intolerance, greed, aggression, expansionism, etc is there this need to promulgate the antidotal tolerance, love, and compassion for others different.

PETER: And a clear-eyed observation will reveal that there is as much disharmony, hatred, intolerance, greed, aggression, conflict, competition and expansionism evident in the forces of good – i.e. in those who preach faith, tolerance, love and compassion – as there are in the forces of evil.

GARY: Differences are a simple fact of life for biological creatures. Biologically, we seem to share much more in common as human beings than we have different.

PETER: I have travelled to all five continents, met people from hundreds of tribes and seen people from hundreds more tribes on television and apart from differences in physical appearances, education and living standards I have seen no biological differences between human beings that are of any consequence. To claim that there is some type of biological diversity within the human species that needs to be passionately maintained can be traced to a fear of losing one’s own precious social identity and one’s own instinct-protected animal identity as a being. History has shown, and is showing, that human beings will desperately cling to their trivial race, creed and ethnic differences with all that entails, rather than happily become anonymous harmless citizens of the world.

GARY: Social differences are also apparent, whether differences in customs, mores, ethical practices, etc. I think it is not so much differences that are the root cause of hatred, intolerance, warfare and strife but identity in any form.

PETER: Given that passionately holding on to one’s own historical cultural, religious and social differences only causes disharmony, intolerance, hatred, greed, aggression and competition – in short, malicious feelings – it behoves anyone interested in becoming happy and harmless to set about diligently and painstakingly dismantling his or her social identity. It is not that an actualist retreats from the world of people, things and events – quite the opposite in fact. An actualist devotes his or her life to being happy and harmless in the world-as-it-is with people as-they-are and discovers en-route – by cultivating an on-going attentiveness – that his or her social identity is the first layer of identity that stands in the way of actualizing this aim.

GARY: It is the instinctual passions that form the rudimentary sense of identity in sentient creatures that are the root cause of our inability to get along with each other and live in peace and harmony. Once the root cause of the problem is eliminated, along with it go any sense of being unique, different from others, as well as any need to defend worn-out ideals, beliefs, truisms, and political, social, or religious systems of thought.

PETER: If I may, I will put what you are saying another way that may be more pertinent for those who are reading but who are yet to begin the process of actualism.

The first thing an actualist does is to make becoming happy and harmless one’s burning ambition and single-pointed aim in life. This of course means that he or she aims to progressively eliminate any feelings of malice and sorrow from their life. Now despite the fact that the root cause of malice and sorrow are the genetically encoded animal survival passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, he or she will soon discover in their investigations that it is the defence of their own social identity that initially triggers most of their feelings of malice and sorrow.

To reiterate, an actualist experientially discovers that the ingrained habit of defending the beliefs, morals, ethics, values and psittacisms that he or she has been taught to be truths is what initially gives rise to his or her malicious and sorrowful feelings and thus becomes aware that it is this outer layer of identity that needs to be demolished first.

The only way to undertake this process of actually demolish one’s social identity, and not take it on as a theory or an intellectual understanding, is to make being happy and harmless one’s burning ambition in life. Unless one does that, there is insufficient motive to move beyond an intellectual-only interest and no impetus to become aware of, investigate and question the feelings that arise from being a social identity.

GARY: The actualist’s solution to conflict and disharmony is self-immolation – the elimination of all that stands in the way of living with other human beings in peace and harmony. It is the end of ‘me’. With the end of ‘me’, there is no need to be defensive or even on my guard against possible encroachments. Gone too is any sense of insult and every form of grievance. Because any kind of identity for human beings seems to be a breeding ground for resentment and grievance, I think.

PETER: As a social identity – an impassioned member of a racial, religious, spiritual, ethnic, national or gender group – one is not only obliged to believe what everyone else in the group believes and to feel what everyone else in the group feels but one is also compelled to carry the burdens of anger, resentment sorrow and grief from all the other members of the group, including the long-dead ones. The desire for retribution and the lust for revenge for past wrongs and hurts inflicted on long-dead members of the group is passed on from generation to generation, sometimes openly, sometimes covertly. Thus, one’s social identity literally starts with the mother’s milk.

This fact can be readily seen in the historic foundations for many of today’s disharmonies, discords, conflicts and wars. Many conflicts are rooted in conflicts that happened hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. As if this was not madness enough, many of these conflicts are purely mythical – they either never happened or they have been so embellished and distorted in the on-telling of the story that it is now impossible to discern what is fact from what is fiction.

To vainly look for rights and wrongs, goods and bads in this endless tale of mayhem and misery – the cherished Humanity – is an utterly futile exercise. The only practical contribution anyone can make towards ending this madness is to divest himself or herself of all of the cherished beliefs and associated feelings that causes him or her to feel the need to be a part of this ongoing saga of mayhem and misery.

A way out of this madness has now been discovered, has been thoroughly mapped and extensively documented and is now being disseminated, discussed and put into practice – and, as you are confirming by your own investigations, the first part of this way out is to divest oneself of one’s own social identity.

GARY: There recently was a retrospective of the Roots program of the 1970s on TV. I remember watching this back in those days. There was the interest at that time for people, particularly Americans, to find out their ‘roots’, and there was a proliferation of the uncovering or the discovering of ‘who I am’ as one’s ethnic identity. In any event, I was struck while watching the program by the anger of the people they were interviewing as they talked about their reactions to the program. There was this universal feeling of rage and anger among people they interviewed, this abhorrence of slavery, the realization that they were themselves descended from slaves and that these horrors were perpetrated against their own ancestors. But I was particularly struck by the anger, and it seemed to me that it makes no sense to be angry about these things because if one is angry and holds a grievance, then sooner or later that feeling is going to be expressed, it must be expressed, in some sort of action against others. If one is angry, then one essentially feels that someone is to blame for these horrors. In my personal experience, anger must always have a target. It always comes out one way or another.

PETER: Well said. If we were sailing mates, I’d say ‘I like the cut of your jib’.

Just as an aside, one of the aspects of the spiritual misuse and abuse of words that particularly struck me lately is the spiritual use of selfless or no-self to describe the delusionary state of God-realization. The person suffering from this altered state of consciousness often claims to have no identity when the fact is that they believe, feel and proclaim that they have become a timeless and spaceless psychic identity – aka God by whatever name – temporarily residing in a flesh and blood mortal body. Thus, he spiritualists should be up-front and describe their exalted and acclaimed state as a body-less or a no-body experience – the very antithesis of a self-less experience.

Spiritualism is all about inflating both the social identity and instinctual identity such that one feels like god – and its hard to imagine a bigger identity than feeling oneself to be God – whereas actualism is about incrementally eliminating both the social and instinctual identity. 180 degrees opposite.

Well, I’m off to yet more delights. Nice chatting with you.

10.2.2002

GARY: I wanted to write a post on the subject of relationships. I have been wondering just what a ‘relationship’ is and what the word means to me.

So, let me pose the question: What is a ‘relationship’ between two human beings? Are relationships important? Why? Do you and Vineeto have a ‘relationship’ together? Wherein does it consist?

PETER: I will answer this at the bottom of the post as you have also raised similar questions later in the post.

GARY: I hear many people around me talk about the importance, indeed, the primacy of having relationships in one’s life. The longer I practice actualism, the less and less important ‘relationships’ seem to be to me. This sometimes causes the reflection that I am indeed an outcast and I sometimes experience anxiety to realize that I am no longer part of any particular group, nor do I want to be. However, the anxiety is only occasional, and at other times there is this enormous sense of freedom and ease, a freedom that can only come when one is free from the obligations of being a member of a particular group, a family, a profession, a community, etc, etc. There is a tremendous comfort for me in just being alone, just sitting in my chair, for instance, doing nothing in particular.

PETER: A few thoughts come to mind from my own experience. One of things I noticed when I started to abandon my spiritual beliefs was that I felt myself an outsider but I also observed that if I stopped calling my friends, they also stopped calling me. I came to realize that relationships take effort to maintain and sustain and if either party stops putting in the required effort, then relationships invariable collapse.

The other aspect that I started to become aware of was that my relationships within my spiritual group were invariably based on beliefs-in-common and when I stopped believing, a large component of the emotional glue that held the relationship together also disappeared. But as actualism started to produce results, I found I was more and more content to enjoy my own company, which in turn meant I was less and less likely to seek the company of others in order to fill an emotional void or provide a relief from boredom.

GARY: I seem to fluctuate between a sense of alarm and anxiety at my ‘aloneness’ and the thrill of the realization that I am really getting somewhere by using the actualism method. And where I am getting is to be completely and totally free from being a member of the human club. When I set out upon learning about an Actual Freedom, I had many basic questions, some of which persist. For instance, I wondered: will I be able to work? Will I be able to provide for myself and my partner? Will I have a social life? What will that look like? and other questions such as these.

Regarding my ability to work, I have found that I am able to work, and that my capacity for work has, if anything, increased. I am better able to prioritize tasks, think things through and get done what needs to be done.

PETER: Your experience regarding working for money closely mirrors my own experiences. By becoming virtually free of malice and sorrow I am not only able to work more efficiently but I am also now able to do my work much better. By no longer resenting having to work, no longer being annoyed by other people, no longer being frustrated that I do not get ‘my’ way and so on, not only am I happier but I no longer create ripples for those around me by ‘my’ incessant demands. I am now equally interested that my clients are as satisfied with my work as I am and that they get as much value for their money as I do for my time committed.

The other issue with work is that I no longer seek meaning, kudos and identity from my work as I had been taught to both expect and/or demand. I am not special in what I do when I work for money – anyone can do my job and many do so, equally as well. My time spent working is what it is – selling my time and expertise to someone else in return for money to pay for food, shelter, clothes and the like. By eliminating all the beliefs and values around the issue of work a good deal of my social identity fell away – and those I work for, and with, are better off for it.

The ‘will I be able to work’ issue also occurred to me when I thought about the consequences of becoming free from Humanity. But I eventually came to realize that this was a belief I had, based on my observation of those who had ‘made it’ to the top in the spiritual world and who then become incapable of functioning and working in the world and end up having to rely on the financial and emotional support of their followers or disciples for their sustenance.

Need I point out that being able to more happily, sensibly and efficiently function in the world is further evidence that actualism is the antithesis of spiritualism.

GARY: However, regarding my ‘social life’, I find that I no longer feel the need to affiliate with other human beings the way I once used to.

In days gone by, I used to think that having ‘friends’ was very important, yet now I cannot really say that I have any ‘friends’ nor do I want any. Because the word ‘friendship’ implies an obligation to stick with another person through thick and thin, and I find that I am not prepared to do that. I would much prefer to go my own way and allow someone else the freedom to do the same, so I cannot say that anyone is my ‘friend’ in that sense. I feel much the same about family relationships (and I am talking about family of origin here, not family of procreation). I keep in touch with members of my family. But compared to other people who I see around me, my sense of a family identity is very weak indeed.

PETER: During the first two years of practicing actualism I also experienced that my ‘friendships’ dropped away but lately I have had occasion to meet several of these former ‘friends’ and to do work for several members of the spiritual group I was in before. All of these meetings have been delightful as am now meeting fellow human beings, I am interested in them as fellow human beings and, as such, have enjoyed their company. The difference between now and before is that I now make no emotional demands of people I meet which then frees them of the burden of ‘me’, nor do I have emotional expectations of them which then frees me from the constant need to intuit and imagine what they were thinking and feeling about ‘me’.

There is great significance in the phrase ‘fellow human beings’ because the only way you can begin to treat your fellow human beings as fellow human beings is to firstly demolish your own social identity. The first component that has to go is one’s spiritual identity because a Christian never meets a Buddhist as a fellow human being, a Rajneeshee never meets a Krishnamurti-ite as a fellow human being, and so on, because each have different beliefs, that make for differing identities. The very best that spiritualists can muster up is a feeling of oneness – a feeling that always fails to translate into a practical and tangible peace and harmony between members of a spiritual group, let alone between members of competing groups.

Then there are other aspects of one’s social identity that demand attention if one is to ever get to the stage where one can see and treat one’s fellow human beings as fellow human beings and not continue to think and feel them to be separate ‘beings’. A man never meets a woman and sees her or treats her as a fellow human being because men and women have been instilled with opposing gender identities – identities that are mandated by each side in the battle of the sexes and are rife with mutual feelings of suspicion, fear, ignorance and superstition. Similarly, a father never meets a son and a mother never meets a daughter for each has a socially-imposed identity relative to each other – a complex set of social obligations, emotional demands and needs, expectations and resentments that serve to prevent each from either seeing or treating each other as fellow human beings. Similarly, an American never meets an Australian, a Lithuanian never meets a Nigerian and so on, for each believe they belong to a different culture and each call a particular piece of the planet ‘home’. The list goes on, but I won’t, for you will have got the gist by now.

What normally happens in relationships when things start to go wrong, as they inevitably do, is that the each party blames the other for failing to meet their needs, fulfill their expectations, nurture them sufficiently, respect their feelings, and such like. Often a begrudging compromise is reached in relationships or failure is allowed to run its natural course. As you well know from your experience with actualism, the only way out of this mess is to demolish one’s own social identity, piece-by-piece, element-by-element.

And the proof that this process works is that you begin to not only see but to treat the fellow human beings you come in contact with as exactly that – fellow human beings, regardless of their age, gender, kin, race, religion, culture, nationality, and so on.

GARY: On the subject of my ‘relationship’ with my partner, the matter gets a bit stickier. Since my need to affiliate with other human beings in groups has greatly lessened, to the point of almost being totally absent, I have wondered at times if I transferred these feelings on to my partner and whether I am clinging to her to get these self-same needs met. I do enjoy our being together, and I look forward to our weekends and holidays together, even our simple presence together in the evening when the day is done is very enjoyable. To be honest: I do find myself clinging to her at times with feelings of ‘love’ and affection. Yet I can say that for every moment in which there is this feeling of love and affection, there are counterpoised moments when the invidious passions are in evidence: resentment, peevishness, annoyance. In short, malice. It increases my feeling that you cannot have the positive, loving emotions without having the whole instinctual package. At least, that’s the way I think of it at this point. In other words, the entire package needs to be deleted.

So, I guess where this leaves me is to say that I think the closest thing I have to a ‘normal relationship’ is my relationship with my partner. It is here that the instinctual passions of nurture and desire occur most clearly and cleanly, compared to my other everyday ‘relationships’. To sum this all up: it seems to me that a ‘relationship’ is about sharing joy and sorrow, sharing the complete pathos and movement of human emotion and human feeling. If one is freeing oneself from the Human Condition, does one need or desire relationships then? In an actual intimacy, is there any ‘relationship’ with the other that one is relating to? Is there any ‘connection’ at all, or is this entirely absent? These are just a couple of the questions that occur.

PETER: So, if I may, I’ll now include your questions from the first part of the post, shuffle the order a bit and work my way through the list –

[Gary]: What is a ‘relationship’ between two human beings? If one is freeing oneself from the Human Condition, does one need or desire relationships then? Are relationships important? Why? Do you and Vineeto have a ‘relationship’ together? Is there any ‘connection’ at all, or is this entirely absent? Wherein does it consist? In an actual intimacy, is there any ‘relationship’ with the other that one is relating to? [endquote].

To take your questions one at a time –

• [Gary]: What is a ‘relationship’ between two human beings? [endquote].

If you are part of the human condition then ‘you’, as an alien-feeling psychological and psychic entity, need to relate to similar alien-feeling entities, otherwise you feel even more desperately lonely and alien. As you are discovering, the nature of this relating can only be emotive – ‘it seems to me that a ‘relationship’ is about sharing joy and sorrow, sharing the complete pathos and movement of human emotion and human feeling.’

• [Gary]: If one is freeing oneself from the Human Condition, does one need or desire relationships then? [endquote].

As you actively diminish and wither both your social ‘self’ and your instinctual ‘self’ – your personality and being, or your ego and soul if you like – there is less ‘I’ and ‘me’ remaining to think and feel ‘he or ‘she’ needs or desires a relationship with other ‘he’s or ‘she’s.

I am not being clever here, because if you set off on a moral or ethical course of not needing or not desiring relationships with other people – take it on as a shouldn’t – you can only end up feeling an outcast or alien or becoming a hermit and a celibate. If you do so, history shows that the emotional void that is created by this act of withdrawal will commonly be filled by the ‘discovery of a greater love and meaning – a God, by whatever name.

To retreat from the world of people, things and events is to fall into the spiritual trap of withdrawal and denial which when combined with the fantasy of sublimation and transcendence leads to the pathological state of dissociation and solipsism. In actualism you go the other way – you deliberately move closer, you deliberately become more intimate whenever the opportunity arises. It is only by daring to do this can you discover the previously hidden or repressed layers of affective feelings and passions that are preventing ‘your’ demise and therefore inhibiting an actual intimacy with the world of people, things and events from occurring.

• [Gary]: Are relationships important? Why? [endquote].

I find relationships vitally important for me as a practicing actualist for they hold the key to becoming aware of, exploring and incrementally removing the obstacles that inhibit an actual intimacy from one’s fellow human beings. Spiritualists always put relationships with their God, or their Self, first and relationships with their fellow human beings second – but for an actualist the exact opposite is the case.

For an actualist, the closer the relationship, the more valuable the relationship for only close relationships are emotive enough and powerful enough to bring to the surface the emotions that are normally suppressed or glossed-over in ‘normal’ stand-offish relating. It is good to remember that if you are avoiding something or denying something, it is impossible to experientially investigate it and this is nowhere more obvious than in discovering precisely what is preventing you from being intimate with another human being – one to one.

• [Gary]: Do you and Vineeto have a ‘relationship’ together? [endquote].

Both I and Vineeto have already written a good deal about our relationship and the explorations we made. I won’t go over this territory again but it may be relevant to note that, thus far, it seems that we are the only man and woman who are living together who have a common interest in practicing actualism. Because of this our relationship could be seen as being unique, but it is important to grasp that the process of actualism is an individual process – i.e. an actualist’s becoming happy and harmless is not in any way dependant on anyone else becoming happy and harmless. Vineeto did her thing, I did mine – we just happened to be serendipitously doing it at the same time, whilst living together.

Because Vineeto and I share a common interest in actualism, the main focus of our relationship was a mutual agreement that each would investigate what stood in the way of our living together in utter peace and harmony. Once I stopped my habitual program of trying to change others to suit ‘my’ whims, moods, foibles, demands and expectations, I was then able to become aware of, and be fully responsible for, my feelings, passions and behaviour that were causing me to not be able to live with Vineeto in peace and harmony. Just to make it clear – you don’t need another’s agreement to do this work, because it is something only you can do for yourself and for others you come in contact with.

It is an enormous step you take when you fully grasp the reality that expecting or demanding that your companion, wife, husband, son, daughter or whoever, should change in order to please ‘you’ is an essentially malicious intrusion – and that wanting to or trying to change them is an utterly futile exercise that can only provoke hostility and resentment. Then and only then, can you can get on with your own business of changing yourself. This does not negate the fact that you, as an actualist, can share your discoveries with a fellow human being – provided they are interested, of course.

• [Gary]: Is there any ‘connection’ at all, or is this entirely absent? Wherein does it consist? [endquote].

After years of effort, I am virtually free of malice and sorrow, which means I have no reason to get angry with Vineeto or feel resentful of something she may, or may not, have done because feelings of anger and resentment no longer course through my veins, as it were. Likewise, I am no longer subject to bouts of sadness nor am I overcome by a seeping melancholy at having to be here, which means I make no demands nor have any expectations that she should provide emotional support and a feeling of connection in order to fill the aching void of ‘my’ loneliness.

What ‘I’ have also done, by ‘my’ own efforts, is free her of ‘my’ ungracious demands and capricious expectations and I am thus more happy for being more harmless – which in turn makes me more delightful and more fun to live with. Becoming more happy and harmless is a win-win situation – not only do I gain from the effort, but others benefit from the result, and none more so that those closest to me.

• [Gary]: In an actual intimacy, is there any ‘relationship’ with the other that one is relating to? [endquote].

I can only talk about a virtual intimacy – an experience that far exceeds the ‘normal’ fickle feeling of love and so-called intimate relationships. In a virtual freedom from malice and sorrow, ‘I’ and ‘my’ thoughts and feelings are so weakened and emaciated that I am unable to impose, let alone sustain, any emotional demands or expectations on any fellow human being – let alone the one I have chosen to live with. By becoming virtually happy and harmless, I am more able to be what-I-am as opposed to ‘who’ I think and feel I am and this has resulted in an on-going, virtually constant, sense of well-being. This on-going sense of well-being in turn negates the need to constantly seek emotional succour or support from others in a vain attempt to assuage ‘my’ feelings of loneliness and alienation.

In virtual freedom, there is a palpable sense of autonomy based upon the factual evidence that I am perfectly capable of looking after myself and providing for all of my needs. The overarching and debilitating sense of needing to survive has been replaced by the simple need to ensure that, when I place a plastic card in a machine downtown and type in a few numbers, that sufficient bits of paper come out to meet my food and shelter requirements. Similarly, my need for a ‘relationship’ has been replaced by the fact that I do not live alone but that I live with a companion with whom I am able to share the delight of living on this verdant planet.

And not only do I get to do things together with a fellow human being that I would not have necessarily done had I been living alone, but I get to wallow in that most intimate of human one-to-one activities – the sensual mutual pleasure of sex.

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