25.11.1998

PETER: Hi,

RESPONDENT: I like what was written on the sannyas list; I like the content and the way it was written. I also like the first page of the web site. I intend to read more. My initial impression is that your approach is, or may be, in alignment with mine and I would like to keep in touch. This impression and intention may change. For now I am happy to receive emails from you in the next few days. My contract for those few days is to explore together any contact that we have in those few days.

PETER: I’m happy to respond to anyone’s comments or questions but if you are interested there is plenty to read. I have told my story on my web-site and there is enough information and facts there and on Richard’s web-site for anyone, given sincere intent to free themselves of the Human Condition of malice and sorrow. There is no Movement, group, leader, followers, energy meetings, etc. If you believe in God or some other Authority then this is not for you.

RESPONDENT: I have been reading more of your site and still find many things you say resonate with me, but I am feeling that one of the things that causes me to feel some distance in regard to you is your constant naming of our departed friend as Rajneesh, instead of the name he came to prefer, OSHO. I cannot understand this lack of respect, and I cannot understand why you like to call yourself an ex-Rajneeshee. In my experience Sannyasins rarely called ourselves Rajneeshees, it always seemed to be a term flung at us by the media and others who wanted to cast us in a certain light. I have always found the term a bit offensive. Perhaps this is a result of my beliefs and conditioning. I will look into myself further around this. Meanwhile I just want to put this out. I love the name OSHO, I love the being OSHO, and I find that the way you choose to speak of him stands in my mind as something between us. So I put it out to you, into the space between us. Isn’t that part of the method you love? To examine everything that prevents us becoming intimate and equal. Well, this is something I would like to examine with you.

PETER: I had a conversation with someone yesterday, who said that how I talked and wrote was offensive. I asked whether she found what I was saying was offensive or how I said it. Few bother to make the distinction. I have had mostly criticism of what I have said in my story but to date no disputing of facts. I take from this that the responses are emotional ones based on my stepping on someone’s dearly held belief. And of course they feel personally attacked. On a bigger scale this leads to religious wars and persecutions. For me I truck with nothing Religious or Spiritual. I have no religious tolerance whatsoever, so all call me evil, but given that I was a Sannyasin, particularly the followers of Mr. Chandra Mohan call me evil.

13.2.1999

PETER: I found your comments so interesting I thought I would reply,

RESPONDENT to No 23: I have decided that anything more ABOUT Peter and Vineeto bores me right now, also. I am going to interact with them elsewhere, else-time.

PETER: I take it you are talking of some sort of ‘next lifetime’ interaction, so favoured by many. You surely won’t be meeting me in that great commune in the sky, or on Sirius for that matter.

RESPONDENT to No 23: No, their written material will be highly regarded by our children.

PETER: This comment really intrigued me. Are you saying that the next generation will be the one who will finally abandon the idea of good and evil spirits roaming the earth, and that the earth will no longer be a place where humans are forever meant to suffer and fight, as some sort of cosmic ‘penal’ colony. That the next generation will finally get around to doing something about the endemic suffering and fighting on the planet.

Why is it always the ‘next’ generation that is going to find the answer as this generation fails yet again to find the solution to the Human Dilemma and inevitably turns to praying to the Gods for salvation and redemption?

I wrote a bit in my journal on what happened to the last generation –

[Peter]: ... ‘I marched to stop the Vietnam war, I poster-pasted to save the forests, I grooved to the Rolling Stones in Hyde Park in London, I hung around in Amsterdam, I travelled to the East, I became politically and socially concerned and involved. I’ve thought about these times during the last twelve months – what happened to the dreams, the enthusiasm of those times? Remember John Lennon singing ‘Imagine’ or ‘Give Peace a Chance’, or watching Woodstock? We were going to change the world! And then it all started to fade a bit – I got rather lost in the daily business of wife, two kids and two cars. And then, when that crashed, I was off to the East with thousands of others, seduced and fired up by the promise of a New Man, Peace, Love, Utopia and an end to my personal suffering. In fact, the whole of the revolution of the sixties was simply sucked into the mystery, confusion and ‘mindlessness’ of the Eastern religions.’ ... Peter’s Journal, ‘Peace’

And a bit more –

[Peter]: ... ‘In my life I have been involved in many revolutionary movements and I had many ideals about changing things. In some thirty years of adult life, I have been involved and concerned with movements for peace; for environmental, political, social and spiritual change. And I have come to see all of them as revolutionary – in other words, going around in circles. I participated in a spiritual revolution with a living Guru deriding the past traditions and the idea of religions only to see him eventually form his very own Religion and become part of the traditional religious warring campus. And the so-called ‘New Age’ of today is really nothing but a return to the Dark Age of spirits, omens, divination, witches and shamans.

And so it has been going on for millennia ... round and round in circles ... revolution after revolution. It is so good to be free of that nonsense and to have found a process that is evolutionary, that actually works. A process that is easy, simple, uncomplicated, describable, direct, and that produces both instant results and an assured evolutionary change – to eventually become actually free of malice and sorrow. It is now possible to change Human Nature. There is now a cure available for the disease called the Human Condition – for those who want to be free of it.’ ... Peter’s Journal, ‘Evolution’

The ‘next’ generation was of no concern to me, I wanted freedom for myself, here, now, on earth – no matter what the cost.

And I ended up becoming the ‘next’ generation anyway ... Cute Hey.

14.2.1999

RESPONDENT: I am not wanting to be actively involved on the Sannyas list right now. But I am more than happy to respond to your questions privately.

PETER: I have no questions. I was simply replying to some comments you made on the list.

*

RESPONDENT to No 23: I have decided that anything more ABOUT Peter and Vineeto bores me right now, also. I am going to interact with them elsewhere, else-time.

PETER: I take it you are talking of some sort of ‘next lifetime’ interaction, so favoured by many. You surely won’t be meeting me in that great commune in the sky, or on Sirius for that matter.

RESPONDENT: Your assumption about my state of mind surprises me. In no way was I referring to a ‘next lifetime’ interaction. wherever did you get that idea?

PETER: I make no assumptions about your state of mind at all. Given the fact that you were corresponding on a Sannyas list ‘elsewhere, else-time’ could easily refer to some imaginary next lifetime or some ethereal plane of existence. You also indicated your boredom and that Actual Freedom may be interesting to the ‘our children’.

RESPONDENT: I hope you see that I was NOT saying that you and Vineeto bore me. Far from it. I was saying that I do not want to be further involved in discussing ABOUT you. At least not on the Sannyas list.

PETER: I like to take what people say at face value. It saves any interpreting or second or third guessing. That is why writing is such a good medium. The words don’t disappear and a page full of ... ‘ums’ and ... ‘ers’ and ... ‘you know what I mean’ look exactly what they are.

*

RESPONDENT to No 23: No, their written material will be highly regarded by our children.

PETER: This comment really intrigued me. Are you saying that the next generation will be the one who will finally abandon the idea of good and evil spirits roaming the earth, and that the earth will no longer be a place where humans are forever meant to suffer and fight, as some sort of cosmic ‘penal’ colony.

RESPONDENT: No Peter, I was not addressing that. I believe it is a cop-out to place responsibility on future generations to ‘do something’.

Part of the reason I get off the Sannyas list for awhile is I am becoming more and more aware of my tendency to write unclear sentences. I have a tendency to allude to things rather than state them clearly. As I write, my meaning seems clear to me, but the feedback I get is undeniable – my language is open to multiple interpretations. I admire your ability to be more literal. I do not rest with this; I aim to learn. In fact I am learning.

The comment above is more directed to No 23 personally. It was a reply to his statement that what you guys write is a load of crap and perhaps if he met you personally he may find something of value. Clearly he does not place much value on your written material. I do. Here and now it is interesting, fascinating and valuable to me. It changes me. I am guilty of throwing a barbed spear at No 23 – ‘if you can’t understand, perhaps your children will’. It is this communication via barbed spears that I am wanting to cease.

PETER: One of the reasons I wrote my journal was to make sense of life. To check out for myself what my experience had shown were the facts of being a human being on the planet, as opposed to the beliefs I had taken on board. I deliberately avoided much contact with Richard and dipping into his writing at the time as a way of checking it out for myself. I wanted to check if what he was saying stood up to the test of common sense and gelled with the facts. It did and 100% so. Of course, I freely acknowledge bleeding him for information, and his encyclopaedic knowledge of the Human Condition. His experiences of Enlightenment are unprecedented in that he is the only one who has escaped from the massive delusion of Divinity.

So, writing is such a useful tool for clarity, I always want to say what I want to say clearly and concisely. It also means I have to know clearly what it is I want to say – for me that is simple, as all I do is state the facts. What others do with the facts is their business.

*

PETER: ... That the next generation will finally get around to doing something about the endemic suffering and fighting on the planet.

Why is it always the ‘next’ generation that is going to find the answer as this generation fails yet again to find the solution to the Human Dilemma and inevitably turns to praying to the Gods for salvation and redemption?

RESPONDENT: Indeed. Absolutely. Why? It is because this generation hides behind political, religious and spiritual answers. In other words this generation, like those that have come before, hides behind fantasies, reacts against the truth. Doris Lessing, ‘This planet is allergic to the truth.’

PETER: No, there is this myth that everybody reacts against the truth. Each peddler of the Truth accuses the other peddler of the Truth of missing the point. Thus, Mr. Rajneesh attracted many Western followers with the simplistic message that all Western religions are at fault, while he himself was merely a peddler of Eastern Religion. Thus his followers were seduced into the idea that what he was saying was revolutionary, and of some significance. Everyone loves to rebel and fight against authority and perceived evil and wrongs. Rajneeshees against Christian, Christian against Muslim, Catholic against Protestant, ... the slaughter that has resulted from inanities like that of Doris Lessing or Rajneesh’s tirades against the Christians is legendary and the near-disaster of the Ranch did little or nothing to stop Rajneeshees from desperately clinging to their version of the Truth.

The solution lies not in the Truth – or it would have worked by now. It is as simple, clear, obvious and direct as that.

Just like your computer, if the program not only doesn’t work but has a serious virus, then just get rid of the lot, and the result is a freedom the likes of which has never been before in history.

True courage and intelligence is to investigate and discover the facts for oneself – no matter what the dire consequences may appear to be. I can reliably report that the Devil and Evil is as much a fantasy as God and the Good.

There is indeed a perfect and pure actual world right under our noses, right now, right here.

16.2.1999

RESPONDENT: Can you see that out of three indications (on the sannyas list; the word boredom in a sentence; reference to ‘our children’), you made an assumption?

Each of those indications involved an assumption on your part. Assumptions built up into meta-assumptions, and before you knew it you saw it as obvious that I was talking about some sort of next lifetime interaction. I was not. That is a fact. Can you see that your assumptions led you to an erroneous conclusion? The conclusion was in regard to how I was thinking about things, so surely you reached an assumption about my state of mind. is it the case that you began with the pre-supposition that No 8 is speaking from a spiritual mind-set and then you let my words prove that to you? Ok, do that if you like. But I am really glad that we can write words to each other so that you can begin to understand me a little more clearly.

PETER: If you say so. But I obviously can’t ‘assume’ anything by the words that you write.

As you yourself have said –

[Respondent]: ‘I seem to do it the opposite way around to you. For years, decades, (lifetimes?) I seem to have been asking myself who I am, or what is beyond, or what am I for, or who is experiencing’ [endquote].

It still seems a spiritual mind-set to me – oh. well. Maybe next lifetime?

RESPONDENT: I find that sometimes after I have taken someone at face value, I get to communicate with them more deeply, and then I really understand what they were communicating to me from the beginning of our interaction and then I wonder how in hell I could have got the original impression at all! Sure, written communication is great here. It is great to go back to the words that someone wrote to us and say ‘Ah! I didn’t see that the words meant that, before’

PETER: As you yourself have said – ‘part of the reason I get off the Sannyas list for awhile is I am becoming more and more aware of my tendency to write unclear sentences. I have a tendency to allude to things rather than state them clearly.’

RESPONDENT: I am still fascinated by what Richard and you are saying. I am slowly going through the journals. As I read I relate your words to my experience.

PETER: Just a suggestion – if you try and relate what is being said to your experience you will end up no-where. What the words relate to is that the fact that, at last, ‘there is something new under the sun’. New, as in never seen before, new as in never experienced before (except in a PCE), new as in non-spiritual, new as in down-to-earth. To attempt to fit it in with your existing ‘experience’, terminology and spiritual mind-set is a total waste of time. You will confuse both yourself and those you attempt to communicate with. Exactly as Mr Edison would have stared in wonder at this computer and would have had to sit down and learn it from first principles, Mr Buddha would have had to throw out all his beliefs, concepts and ideas of spirits, other worlds, perpetual suffering, etc. and simply begin again.

What a wonderful, amazing thing – to wipe the slate clean of old psittacisms, to begin life again. Not only free of all that has been programmed in us and that we have adopted in order to be a ‘fit’ member of this fighting, squabbling, fearsome and suspicious Humanity, but to be actually free of malice and sorrow. To have gone beyond the limits of Enlightenment.

The spiritual path is nothing more than an ancient attempt to transcend our instinctual malice and sorrow with the idea of Good, good spirits, God and a better place ‘somewhere’ else. And it not only has failed to produce peace on earth after five thousand years – it has actively and mightily contributed to the appalling violence, misery and suffering on the planet.

RESPONDENT: I am surprised that you do not find it a fact that people react against the truth. You say it is a myth. This seems strange to me.

You say ‘True courage and intelligence is to investigate and discover the facts for oneself’. Yes. That is so. True courage and intelligence is to investigate and discover truth for oneself. Have you not discovered facts? Have you not presented those facts to people on the sannyas list. Have you not presented truth? And do you not find a gross allergic reaction to the truth – the facts – that you are presenting?

I agree with Doris Lessing. It is my observation also. The more one presents the facts, the more reaction is generated.

PETER: This is nonsense. Doris Lessing was talking of meta-physical truth not facts. They have as much similarity as Santa Claus and his ‘flying reindeer’ do to Neil Armstrong and the Apollo moon mission. One is a fairy tale belief and the other is factual – as evidenced by sufficient witnesses, written, audio and film evidence, as well as physical objects, such as capsule, rocket, etc. such as to very reliably taken as a fact.

No wonder people ‘assume wrongly’ what you say. As you yourself said –

[Respondent]: ‘I have a tendency to allude to things rather than state them clearly.’ [endquote].

It does seems a deliberate policy in that it enables you to attempt to assimilate what is obviously new and factually based, into what is obviously the same old fairy tale of truths.

The spiritual world is literally twice removed from the actual world, in that common sense is completely absent in the spiritual scriptures and in those who follow them.

To equate a ‘truth’ and a fact is nonsense.

RESPONDENT: Yes Peter, [Peter]: ‘There is indeed a perfect and pure actual world right under our noses, right now, right here.’ [endquote]. And most people are allergic to being told anything about it.

PETER: As you yourself said – ‘I can report what I like, to myself or to you. It does not necessarily make it true.’

And just because everybody believes something to be the true, doesn’t necessarily make it a fact. A brief, open eyed, look at history will affirm this as a factual statement. At one point everyone believed the earth was flat. At one point everyone believed the sun went around the earth. At one point everyone believed that there was a physical bit in the body called the soul. At one point everyone believed malice was the result of evil spirits possessing the body. At one point people believed that we humans were meant to forever suffer on earth as some sort of cosmic penal colony – woops ... I’ve jumped ahead a bit there ...

Oh well, It’s all such good fun, such a delight to be free of ancient truths – such a liberation, such freedom.

17.2.1999

PETER: This is nonsense. Doris Lessing was talking of meta-physical truth not facts. They have as much similarity as Santa Claus and his ‘flying reindeer’ do to Neil Armstrong and the Apollo moon mission. One is a fairy tale belief and the other is factual – as evidenced by sufficient witnesses, written, audio and film evidence, as well as physical objects, such as capsule, rocket, etc. such as to very reliably taken as a fact.

No wonder people ‘assume wrongly’ what you say. As you yourself said –

[Respondent]: ‘I have a tendency to allude to things rather than state them clearly.’ [endquote].

I looked at your post for a while and thought it better to get off the tis’/ tisn’t loggerhead and back to the topic at hand.

So, in response to your letter –

It does seems a deliberate policy in that it enables you to attempt to assimilate what is obviously new and factually based, into what is obviously the same old fairy tale of truths. The spiritual world is literally twice removed from the actual world, in that common sense is completely absent in the spiritual scriptures and in those who follow them. To equate a ‘truth’ and a fact is nonsense.

PETER: We have been corresponding with the Sannyas list for about three months and have made it a constant point, in many, many posts, to distinguish between the spiritual truth and facts. The spiritual pundits have made the word truth meaningless to give credence to their particular philosophy or mythical tale. Many, many times in the spiritual world one will see the word truth used, often with capitalisation to denote a Divine Truth. Given that there are about 6,000 religions on the planet, there are at least that many versions of truth or Truth (as in God’s Word). My local new-age bookshop has thousands of books all proclaiming a truth about human existence – and most, if not all, offer contradictory versions, and wildly so. Even within one religion, such as Rajneeshism, there are so many versions of the truth, as he spoke on so many religions and philosophies offering a broad church of Eastern Mysticism to his followers. It is in this context that the word truth, both in the spiritual world and the real world, has lost any meaning, any sense, any credibility as to what may have been a useful dictionary definition.

It is for this reason that the words actual and fact are used in our correspondence and deliberately so. We leave the word truth to the duplicity and deviousness of the spiritual world.

RESPONDENT: You will surely find that the word truth refers to facts not beliefs. Once you understand that I use the word truth to refer to facts rather than ‘one’s own truth’ you will see that what I say is very close to what you are saying.

I cannot speak for Doris. You seem to know a lot more than me about her. I take her words at face value. Whatever she meant from it, I mean that the world is allergic to truth, as in facts. I am not talking about meta-physical truth, I am talking about facts.

PETER: This is a good illustration of the dangers of interchanging the words truth and fact. Doris Lessing clearly points to a meta-physical truth, not a fact.

No 12 first quoted Doris Lessing, ‘This planet is allergic to the truth’ in the context of a post about war.

I responded –

[Peter]: ‘As for Doris Lessing, she also wrote – ‘We are all of us made by war, twisted and warped by war, but we seem to forget it.’ Then in the 70’s and 80’s she got in to Sufi Mysticism and ‘evolution of consciousness’ theories. She then wrote cosmic fantasies, dreamscapes, and science fiction and she turned away from the concerns of war. She indeed seemed ‘to forget it’ herself in her later years.’ [endquote].

She is without doubt, for sure, absolutely, undeniably, talking of a spiritual, ethereal, other-worldly, mystical, meta-physical truth.

So when you say that you agree with Doris Lessing and indicate that she is talking of the same thing as we are, I do get a little confused.

RESPONDENT: I am interested in finding out what spiritual beliefs I still hold on to, and examining them, finding out if any facts are associated with them and getting rid of the garbage. Keeping the facts.

But in the end one can be as clear as glass and people will still come to what one writes with their rose coloured glasses. Surely you experience that through your conversations on the Sannyas list. Did you not find that no matter how you precisely formulated your posts, most of the responses came from people who twisted what you were saying? I find your writing pretty clear, but still it does not get through. Perhaps slowly some begin to understand what you are talking about, through repetition and through your tenacity. Good on ya.

PETER: When I first came across Richard’s writing it was totally bewildering to me. It would give me headaches trying to read it, it was as though the world was upside down. I would try and fit it into my concepts by changing the meanings of words or missing out a few words here and there to make a sentence more readable. It is as though one is reading a different language, although the words are in English so it seems we should be able to easily understand. It takes patience, effort, contemplation, perseverance, sincerity, interest, curiosity, and a desire like you have never had before, to dig in to the job of demolishing one’s very self.

I like your tenacity – maybe we can move on from the more pedantic issues and get to discuss the differences between the spiritual world and the actual world.

For therein lies the chance of a meaningful discussion and exploration – the interesting, the new, the vital, the alive, the challenging, the confrontational, the life changing, the adventure, the fun.

And then I will be interested – and not have to revert to – ‘if you say so’.

Continued on Actual Freedom Mailing List No 12