Selected Correspondence Peter

Evolution

PETER to Alan: I have been watching a bit of afternoon TV lately and have been particularly fascinated by the nature programs. In my childhood the word ‘environment’ was not even known. 40 years ago human beings on the planet simply used and often abused the land, water and air. Resources needed for human survival were seen as endless, and it was only with world-wide communications that more people are aware of the fact that we are very much a planet bound species – we are earthlings. This global view allowed the majority of humans to think about pollution and overpopulation. We are moving from a position of being hunters and gatherers on the planet into one of sensible custodianship. I use the word custodianship in the sense that humans are the predominant and intelligent species. This whole set-up is, after all, for our enjoyment, our delight as free humans. The tough business of early human beings – the very real struggle to survival involved fighting for territory, struggling for food, struggling against disease and sickness, etc. Despite the romantic ideal that ‘things were better in the old days’ or ‘in Ancient Times’ the facts point to millennia of warfare, plagues and famines – a constant battle to survive.

Now the ‘tough battle’ for human beings is to accept the challenge of being happy and harmless – to put an end to the battle to survive and rid ourselves of malice and sorrow. It is now possible for us to send people to Mars on a space ship but the major difficulty is that the voyage would be 18 months long and it’s impossible for the crew to live together without fighting for so long a time. The main problem is the human inability to relate to each other, let alone live together, in peace and harmony. The elimination of the very source of malice and sorrow is the next and vital stage in human evolution. This is the very cutting edge – an actual freedom from the Human Condition – the ending of a species.

It’s cute, isn’t it. We first have to stop believing the fairy tales of the God’s and God-men that we are meant to suffer on earth and that there is a ‘some-where’ else, and then we can get on with the job of ‘cleaning’ ourselves up.

So the point for me became – can I radically and irrevocably change to adapt to a new situation, here and now, that has SFA to do with Mr. Buddha’s times and bugger-all to do with my father’s time. Of course – it’s scientifically possible, one man has done it, a handful are actively doing it, a handful are intellectually interested and a further handful are cautiously curious – so who am ‘I’ to stand in the road! ‘I’ end up small, so mean, so utterly selfish and rotten, that to stand in the way is an impossible tenure.

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RESPONDENT: In order to best understand what I encounter on the second page of the introduction recommended to all newcomers, I would like to ask some preliminary questions that may not be found in the content of that same second page.

PETER: For ‘this astonishing universe’, see http://www.nasa.gov/gallery/photo/index.html.

I recently watched a television program documenting the first Voyageur spacecraft flyby of the planets in our solar system. It was intriguing to watch the scientists’ reactions as the first photos and data streamed in from the first planet. They were stunned at what they saw as the pictures began coming in – what was actual was indeed beyond their wildest imaginations and theories. As each successive flyby happened the scientists’ astonishment only increased to the point that by the last flyby of the outermost planet they had already abandoned their theories and concepts and were utterly fascinated by what they were seeing with their eyes. In a similar vein, I heard an entomologist say that the insects that exist in the average rubbish bin are far more astonishing than any imagined creature from another planet thus far dreamt up by any science fiction afflictionados.

RESPONDENT: In the understanding you are of the world view being called actualism, would it be correct to understand the posit:

PETER: As for the quote – ‘this astonishing universe has manifested an event of no little significance...’ – have you ever simply sat down and looked at your hand and contemplated upon the amazing physicality of it? Wave it through the air and you will notice that the whole of the surface is a sensate receptor, touch one finger with another and you will notice that not only can the hand feel the texture of the skin of the hand but that you can be aware of the texture. And not only the texture, but the temperature, the moistness and the softness as well. I find animate life an event of no little significance and that I am it, that I can think about it, that I can be aware of knowing it and that I can write about is extraordinary to say the least.

I know that in your current state you regard all that is physical, palpable, tangible, touchable, seeable, smellable, tasteable and audible as so insignificant as to be illusionary, so writing this to you is as meaningful as trying to sell coloured pencils to a blind man.

As for your own posit – ‘through the utterly chance arrangement of random material substance, a resulting circumstance of the same significance as every other resulting circumstance that appeared’ – this does sound a bit like that dismal materialist-nihilist view that human beings are but randomly produced scum infecting a randomly produced planet in a random event called the universe ... or something like that.

RESPONDENT: In the understanding you are of the world view being called actualism, would the tenets of that world view include the following posits:

PETER: You could try ‘inevitable’ as in – it has obviously happened and it exists in fact. According to one estimate –

[quote]: The total number of animal and plant species is estimated at between 2,000,000 and 4,500,000; authoritative estimates of the number of extinct species range from 15,000,000 up to 16,000,000,000. Encyclopedia Britannica

I would say that the inevitability has blossomed into a copious cornucopia of bewildering diversity.

As for randomness it does seem that quite specific and, as far as we know, quite unique circumstances existed on this planet for matter to become animate matter.

RESPONDENT:

2. present animate life is a direct advancement of previous, simpler animate life?

PETER: Physical evidence such as fossils and skeletal remains does indeed support this statement. It is certainly the only explanation that is supported by tangible substantiated evidence. There are many other theories as to the origins of human existence – about as many as there are religions or philosophies on the planet. The only proviso I would have is that ‘advancement’, as you put it, appears to have occurred as the result of spontaneous genetic mutations and not as some gradual process, as is commonly believed. In other words, the ‘missing link’ from animal to human is still a missing link.

RESPONDENT:

PETER: ‘Simple to more complex’ is not a description I would use to describe the manifestation of both consciousness and intelligence in the human animal. It is only humans who see these attributes as increased complexity, for humans have a predisposition to always make what is simple into something complex. You do seem to be fixated on randomness as being the only alternative to being premeditated, as in deliberately created, controlled or ordered by Someone or Something.

RESPONDENT:

PETER: When you refer to consciousness being separate from matter you are referring to ‘I’, as a disembodied consciousness, looking out through the eyes at the physical world and feeling separate from it? A pure consciousness experience is an experience where this separation simply does not exist for it is evident that ‘I’ am an illusion and my consciousness is a none other than this physical body’s consciousness. Or, to put it succinctly for you, this flesh and blood body is conscious animate life.

However if you really go with this feeling of ‘you’ being a separate disembodied entity and practice dissociation from the physical world, ‘you’ can feel as though you are Real and the outer world can appear unreal or illusionary. I have had a few of these experiences myself but when a God-man confirmed I was ‘on the right track’ I started to seriously doubt the sensibility of my glorious, ‘I am the centre of all existence’, experience. I began to see that becoming a God-man was a poor career choice because I had seen enough of the God-men up close to know that I did not like how they were with their women, I didn’t like their lifestyle, and I didn’t like how they were with their disciples and with each other.

RESPONDENT:

4. Objects have, of them selves, the characteristics revealed by the senses when they are not the subject of sensory perception.

PETER: Has this got something to do with that solipsistic nonsense that goes something like ‘if nobody sees a tree falling in the forest, does it really fall?’ I remember walking around the house once and turning around very quickly to see if I could catch some object that was a little slow in appearing to my senses. I gave up pretty quickly as I realized how foolish I was and how totally ‘self’-centred my neurosis was.

RESPONDENT:

5. Consciousness is the result of nascent material processes. Specifically, conscious processes (recognition, memory, logic, spatial awareness, sensory perception, calculation, reaction, response, deduction, induction, communication, awareness, morality, personality etc.) results from the interaction of the material substratum of the brain which is composed of varying chemicals which in and of there own chemical properties, and through and through the same chemical properties, no characteristic of conscious processes can be found.

PETER: As I said, humans have a predisposition to always make what is simple into something complex. In a normal person consciousness is what is happening when one is alive and awake. Unconsciousness is what is happening when alive and in deep sleep, concussed or anaesthetized and is epitomized by oblivion.

But I do understand your particular problem. The common interpretation of consciousness is self-consciousness or self-awareness and is epitomized by three faculties – the sensate awareness of what appears to be a separate ‘outer’ world and the cerebral awareness and affective awareness of one’s inner ‘self’. Thus in a normal person, consciousness usually refers to the consciousness of the psychological and psychic entity only. Thus ‘I’ am conscious of ‘me’ only – the normal ‘self’-centredness of normal people.

It is only in a Pure Consciousness Experience when the psychological and psychic entity’s affective and cerebral dominance is temporarily absent that the extraordinary perfection and purity of the actual is directly and sensately experienced.

Whereas, as you well know, in an Altered State of Consciousness the psychological and psychic entity’s affective and cerebral dominance becomes total and ‘I’ think and feel ‘I’ am absolutely Real and totally disembodied, and what is actual as in physical, tangible and palpable is experienced by ‘me’ as being unreal, dreamlike or illusionary.

RESPONDENT: The sharing of explanations you believe would add clarification to either actualism’s agreement or disagreement with the above posits is greatly appreciated. Also, I am deep appreciation of the attention you have offered to provide. In truth, there are several more preliminary enquiries I would like to share with you, but being the awareness of the complexity that may arise from what has been asked here above, will wait until these basic matters are addressed and distilled before adding to them.

PETER: I can assure you the complexity is all yours. There are approximately 10,000 words in the Introduction to Actualism and thus far you are busy studying the meaning of 17 of them. You are certainly not joking when you talk about ‘preliminary enquiries’.

But given that both the words on this screen and the screen itself are but illusionary matter to ‘you’, as a disembodied Consciousness only, answering any of your posits is as useful as ringing the doorbell of a deaf man’s house.

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PETER to No 22: With reference to the text you forwarded to this list which was sourced from the Creation Evidence Museum,

[quote]: EVIDENCE FOR CREATION...

1. The Fossil Record <>. 2. Decay of Earth’s Magnetic Field <>. 3. The Global Flood <>. 4. Population Statistics <>. 5. Radio Halos <>. 6. Human Artefacts throughout the Geologic Column <>. 7. Helium Content in Earth’s Atmosphere <>. 8. Expansion of Space Fabric <>. 9. Design in Living Systems <>. 10. Design in the Human Brain <>. http://www.creationevidence.org/HomePage/homepage.htm.

I am left wondering why you are now posting posts from a fundamental Christian group’s virulent crusade against scientific fact. Have you converted to Christianity, perchance?

It took the Catholic church some 400 years to begrudgingly acknowledge the fact that the earth revolves around the sun and some 150 years to again ignore the Bible, reluctantly accept the facts and declare that evolution could be seen as the way in which God goes about being creative within the world. The Creationists in the U.S., however, choose to take what the Bible says to be literally true and insist that the Christian God created the world in 6 days, some 6,000 years ago.

The Christian Church succeeded in prohibiting the teaching of anything that contradicted the Bible in most American schools until the 1960’s but common sense eventually prevailed as the biological, geological, anthropological and archaeological evidence to the contrary became so overwhelming. Nevertheless, the fundamentalists were in no mood to compromise, as the Catholics did, and instead they cooked up a pseudo scientific Creation Science, demanding that it be taught in schools and universities alongside the physical evidence-based sciences. This challenge went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court where it was decided that the science curriculum could only include evidence-based teachings and that Creationism did not fit this criteria.

The battle between faith and science is a fascinating on-going battle. Much of scientific theory is heavily influenced by faith – as can be readily seen by the influence of Eastern mysticism on the theoretical sciences of quantum physics and cosmology – and much of faith has bent over backwards to either accommodate and/or assimilate evidence-based science into their ancient beliefs and we have even seen spawning of many new pseudo-scientific religions. All this conflict, compromise and confusion is but the current episode in an eons-old attempt reconcile the irreconcilable – faith and facticity, belief and common sense, passion and intelligence, the super-natural and the natural.

This battle on-going has always been fought solely on the spiritually-led agenda of good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, spiritualism vs. materialism, meaning vs. meaningless, hope vs. despair, consciousness vs. ignorance, and so on. And the battle is even more complicated by the fact that there are over twelve hundred reported Gods and untold spiritual faiths on the planet, each with their own version of the Truth. This plethora of spiritual belief in itself is the cause of yet another battle that wages between human beings – exactly which Good is best, whose Right is right, whose Meaning is more meaningful, whose Love is more loving, whose Compassion is more deep, and whose Truth is the one and only.

In the midst of this madness and conflict, it is no wonder that most people choose to sit on the fence, quietly going about their lives, occasionally indulging in a bit of feel-good spirituality – in whatever form – when things get too tough. What has been lacking up until now is a genuine alternative – a way of living that cuts through all of the faith, superstition, belief and calenture that has held human beings captivated since time immemorial. A way of living that is sincere in that it is rooted in facticity, common sense and intelligence and that, if pursued with pure intent, leads to the eventual elimination of the animal instinctual passions that are the root cause of all of human malice and sorrow.

As you have posted the text to the list without any personal comment from yourself, it is impossible to precisely know your motives. I can only assume that your intent mirrors that of the Creationists – that you too are desperately trying to reconcile the gulf between faith and facticity, belief and common sense, passion and intelligence, the super-natural and the natural. Given that the world is so awash with pseudo-scientific spirituality, it would have better served your purpose to have selected a less transparent example other than a fundamental Christian group unwilling to follow the well-worn ploy of confusion, compromise or assimilation.

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PETER: By the way, this survival program is not conditioning endowed by evolution over time – it is genetically encoded as an indivisible package in each and every human being born, i.e. it is not a progressive conditioning, it is an instantaneous condition. The instinctual program is the (human) condition and it is universal to every human being whereas social conditioning is individual in that it has slight cultural and gender variations.

RESPONDENT: I was talking about evolutionary conditioning of a species, not an individual.

PETER: Yes but the instinctual survival mechanism that gives rise to the instinctual passions (fear, aggression, nurture and desire) is universal to the human species – each and every human being is born with them. The instinctual survival mechanism is not conditioning – ‘evolutionary conditioning’ is something you have made up, it is not a fact.

Social conditioning is somewhat individual and slightly varied but the instinctual survival mechanism – that which is the root cause of all human animosity and all human anguish – is universal in that it is genetically-encoded within all the sentient animal species and not just the human animal species.

It’s not for nothing that it is said that ‘he fought like a tiger’ or ‘she squealed like a pig’ … or that ‘they acted like sheep’.

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RESPONDENT: So none of your books endorse the term ‘evolutionary conditioning’? So what if I ‘made it up’? You make up whole sentences.

PETER: I don’t ‘endorse the term ‘evolutionary conditioning’ for the simple reason that ‘evolutionary conditioning’ is a not a fact

RESPONDENT: Let me define the meaning for you – ‘naturally selected patterns imprinted across entire species, that guide the behaviour and appearance of individuals’.

PETER: Nice try, but you have again ignored the fact that there is no such thing as ‘evolutionary conditioning’ – the instinctual passions are genetically encoded as one cohesive package and they are not a matter of conditioning because the word conditioning means something that happens over time.

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RESPONDENT: It’s true to say that the genetic coding is supplied complete to each individual.

PETER: Oh, good. Can we agree then that the instinctual survival mechanism – that which gives rise to the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire in human beings – ‘is supplied complete’ to each and every member of the human species?

Do realize that this is no little thing to agree to because it is completely at odds with all of the spiritual teachings that have it that we are born innocent beings and only corrupted by conditioning or that we are all blank slate souls who have to suffer the trails of being trapped in a corporeal body in an alien physical world?

RESPONDENT: The conditioning, however, takes huge amounts of time and works on species.

PETER: Well if you can see the sense – and accept the scientific evidence – that the instinctual survival passions are genetically-encoded and as such are ‘supplied complete’ to each and every member of the human species – then can also probably see that conditioning – be it ethnic, racial, social, cultural, religious or whatever – is what happens to each and every human being after birth?

Let me put it another way. The instinctual passions are universal to all human beings – there is no difference between the fear a Greek woman feels or the fear a Liberian man feels, there is no difference to the anger a Roman centurion felt to that which a Stone Age girl felt. In other words, whilst there are undoubtedly ethnic, racial, social, cultural and religious differences between these people, the feelings they feel and the passions they are driven by are universal to all human beings.

RESPONDENT: Hey, I never disagreed with that!

PETER: Then why do you insist on using the word ‘conditioning’ which means something that happens over time. And not only that, you continue to post quotes from spiritualists who also believe that conditioning is the problem and not the ‘supplied complete’ condition itself.

RESPONDENT: I looked up ‘amygdala’ on my search engine not long ago, and was surprised to find how many ‘developmental’ groups had picked up on this recent neuro-scientific discovery, and were advocating various ways of affecting a modification of its function in order (presumably) to achieve perpetual happiness.

PETER: As you may have observed, all religions have a chameleon-like ability to eventually clip-on or adapt any discoveries into their belief-system. The one I find real cute is that Jesus was Enlightened, conveniently ignoring the fact that he was sent by his father to do a job of instilling everlasting guilt in a benighted Humanity.

RESPONDENT: My instinct (maybe one of the automatic functions you wish to eliminate?) tells me that it’s a red herring, but I’ve no objection to anyone else exploring the possibilities.

PETER: For me, I observed that my intuition or gut-feeling was always ‘self’-centred and was always a fear-based guestimate, as accurate or not as most guesses. When I realized this, it gave me fuel to totally eliminate fear from my life.

RESPONDENT: What I find interesting about the concept is that your amygdala is monitoring your inputs about itself, and loading them with emotional tags in favour of the ‘Actual Freedom’ idea. Hmmmm, things get tricky when you start fooling with the brain, don’t they?

PETER: This assumption is predicated on the notion that the primitive reptilian brain is capable of intelligent thinking and sensible reflection whereas there is no evidence of this at all in any of the animal species. Actualism is a method of freeing intelligence from the insidious influence of the crude instinctual animal passions. It’s so simple and glaringly obvious that eliminating the influence of the instinctual animal passions is the only way to bring peace on earth and bring an end to human suffering – so dauntingly obvious, that people will do anything, including turning back to believing in ancient mythical Gods and spirits, rather than acknowledge the fact.

RESPONDENT: If this was a sci-fi story, I’d characterize the ‘lizard brain’ as definitely not wanting to be eliminated. After all, it contains about 99% of all human evolution!

PETER: Contrary to popular belief, evolutionary development is not a gradual imperceptible process but has always occurred by mutations as an adaptation to changed circumstances. Until the emergence of intelligence in the human species, these mutations meant the strongest and most brutish survived. It is clearly time, for those who are interested, to rid intelligence of the brutish blind passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire.

RESPONDENT: You say every human being born into this world has a pre-programmed instinctual ‘self’ that is fully developed by about age two.

PETER: I don’t know if you have ever had children or had the opportunity to closely observe a baby’s development from birth to toddler. If so, you would have seen the gradual emergence of what could best be described as an independent will. The infant changes from being a pliant demander of food and comfort to showing signs of aggressive behaviour, fear of people, likes and dislikes, moodiness, stubbornness and the classic temper tantrums. All this is the sign of an emergence of an instinctual ‘self’ and this stage marks the beginning of the parent’s carrot and stick approach to teaching the infant what is right and good, and what is wrong and bad, behaviour. The infant is taught an appropriate social code of ethics and morals by a combination of reward and punishment in order that the infant can eventually learn appropriate behaviour to make him or her a fit, able and good member of society. Thus it is that the instinctual ‘self’ we are born with is overlaid with a social identity consisting of the morals, ethics, values, psittacisms and beliefs of our peers. I know this genetic programming and social programming very well for I have parented two children and have observed identical behaviour in all children and parents I have come across.

This programming is common to each and every infant born into the world. No-one escapes this genetic and social programming that eventually makes up ‘who’ we think and feel we are – an instinctual ‘self’ overlaid with a social identity.

The instinctual ‘self’ is located in the primitive brain, commonly known as the reptilian brain, and the associated instinctual are animal in nature and very crude and brutish in operation – and when push comes to shove, readily able to override any common sense or moral and ethical considerations.

Thus, despite the myth of ancient wisdom, we humans are not born ‘innocent’ and then corrupted by our peers and evils of the material world. Nor are we eternal spirits who forget ‘who’ we really are when loaded into a foetus and born into a material world with the task of remembering ‘who’ we really are – an immortal spirit – and when we do become ‘who we really are’, we seek to tell others that they should remember that they too are eternal spirits who ...

The facts about ‘who’ we think we are, and ‘who we feel we are deep down inside, is deeply abhorrent to spiritual seekers, for it reveals that freedom, peace and happiness can only be found by abandoning all of the notions of ancient wisdom, tuning one’s backs on one’s precious spiritual achievements and dismantling one’s prized spiritual identity – something few will dare to do for the lot of a pioneer is a daunting one to say the least.

From this modern, clear-eyed, empirical understanding of the source of human malice and sorrow it is readily apparent that freedom, peace and happiness is only possible when both one’s social identity and one’s instinctual ‘self’ – both ego and soul – are eradicated from the flesh and blood body.

RESPONDENT: My question: Who or what did the pre-programming?

PETER: Well, on the planet at the moment there are evidently over 2,000 active religions, each with a different story about ‘Who’ did it, and the current New Dark Age has seen a fashionable revival of many ancient beliefs and theories and the creation of quite a few new ones. The spiritual world offers a potpourri of Gods, Goddesses, spirits, Demons, Energies, aliens, Forces, stories, reasons, explanations, theories and beliefs as to the existence of Good and Evil on the planet. It is curious to note that all the explanations put the praise or blame on a ‘Who’, a Higher Power, with the exception of the Eastern Religions who tend to blame a ‘what’, as in Mr. Buddha’s first Noble Truth – ‘life is fundamentally disappointment and suffering’.

The ineludible answer to your question is far more extraordinary and amazing than any of the fairy stories that humans have concocted over millennia.

In at least one solar system, this astonishing universe has manifested an event of no little significance, by providing a fresh opportunity for carbon-based life-forms to emerge out of itself ... and thus matter became animate matter. This shimmeringly blue verdant planet exudes a humid and nutrient-rich atmosphere that is the primordial womb of the only life that is so far known to exist in the universe. The circumstances on earth were ripe for the chemical processes that gave rise to the cellular structures of a prolific vegetate life and for amoeba to form, grow, combine and recombine to develop into extraordinary and bizarre variations of animate life and to begin the inevitable progression towards conscious animate life. So abundant and luxuriant is carbon-based life on the planet that it is estimated that there are currently between 2 and 4.5 million individual animal and plant species on the planet.

The multiplicity of organisms that has developed and redeveloped has done so through the biological feed-back mechanism of the primal creature’s involuntary response to environmental dictates. Their ‘life-successful’ reactions are genetically encoded as automated survival instincts. The human species, the most sophisticated of life forms, the only intelligent animal species on Earth, capable of thinking, planning and reflecting, and of being conscious of their own thoughts and actions, represents the pinnacle of the emergence and development of carbon-based life forms known in the universe.

... Isn’t the actual so much more remarkable, breathtaking and vital than the imaginary grim fairy tales we have been taught?

There is no ‘Who’ running this universe and no helpless despairing ‘what’ that makes human malice and sorrow an unalterable fate. As is clearly evidenced in a Pure Consciousness Experience, this physical universe is perfect and pure for it is infinite and eternal – there is no outside to this universe and it is always happening now. In a PCE it is abundantly clear that it is ‘me’ and ‘my’ feelings and passions that stand in the way of this purity and perfection being actualized in this flesh and blood body.

The ending of one’s own malice and sorrow is thus in one’s own hands ... and not in the hands of some imaginary ‘Who’.

Good, hey. It was the best news I had ever heard in my life.

RESPONDENT: Isn’t it a gas that Peter says in his last diatribe: ‘If the posts are brief and concise we will try to respond in kind.’ Give us a break.

PETER: I am well aware that many want us to ‘go away’ so they can get on with their spirit-ual ways.

But your writing to me gives me a chance to say this – briefly and concisely...

We humans – the homo sapiens species – are at an interesting stage of evolution.

We have all been born with a primitive self and a programmed in set of survival instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. This is evidenced by behavioural studies of our closest genetic group – apes and chimpanzees: similar studies in humans have been banned as un-ethical. However, simple observation of the species as a whole and oneself in particular will reveal these instinctual feelings and the resulting behaviour to be the case.

The instinctual self, feelings, emotions and instincts can now be eliminated in whoever desires to make the effort.

The result is to free oneself of malice and sorrow.

This shift from instinct driven ‘self’-ish behaviour will eventually result in a genuine peace on earth when humans stop fighting and fearing each other.

It may take centuries, but I write to let others know of this option.

The time is now ripe for each of us to fix ourselves up and stop believing that the imaginary Gods and spirits will do it for us.

PETER: Well for me it ‘hit me like a ton of bricks’ one day when I realised that the spiritual path is not a new thing – millions if not billions of Easterners have painstakingly and diligently practiced meditation, witnessing, watching, retreating from the real world, etc. for thousands of years with so few ‘reaching’ and no tangible, actual change in the Human Condition for the rest – humans are still firmly in the grip of malice and sorrow. The problem with the world AS IT IS is that humans still fight horrendous wars 160,000,000 killed in wars this century alone and the proffered hallowed solutions are a mere fantasy escape from this reality.

RESPONDENT: The last 20 years has seen a drastic change of the number of people killed in wars. Actually since shortly after WW II there was a sharp drop-off of deaths. Now the mortality rate of a soldier in the world is the same as that of a nurse. It always is helpful to have additional facts when one is writing about the ‘world AS IT IS..’

PETER: There have been two major wars fought this century – the first, a horrendous war as the leaders of both sides fought a war of attrition sacrificing millions for a few kilometres of ground gained. The second world war saw the innovation of aerial bombing such that all sides slaughtered not only soldiers but women and children living in cities far behind the ‘front lines’. The culmination of this new phase saw the development of REALLY BIG BOMBS called atomic bombs. It is no exaggeration to say that for the first time Humanity ‘scared even itself’ as to it’s collective insanity.

Further we had the ‘Mexican stand off’ with tens of thousands of nuclear armed missiles held by two sides in a scenario termed MAD – mutually assured destruction. And further still, modern communications and TV coverage (Vietnam, Iraq, Israel, Northern Ireland, Afghanistan etc.) has increased our awareness of the horror of war. Less and less is it a thing that men go off with honour and dignity to do for ‘a clear and just cause’. Further innovation has led to the development of smart stand-off weapons which radically decrease the likelihood of soldiers on the more wealthy side being killed.

So, the reduction in deaths has been wrought by the advances in technology and communications that have occurred this century – the cruise missile has replaced the bayonet charge, and I for one welcome it. It has meant that I have lived my life, to date, without having to be ‘cannon fodder’ in some imperialistic or religious war.

It is not for a some mythical ‘change in consciousness’ that deaths have been reduced given that the ‘friends’ of Jesus still battle it out with the ‘friends’ of Mohamed in the Middle East, the ‘friends’ of Krishna battle it out with the ‘friends’ of Nanak in India, etc. etc. The most telling issue is that any ‘peace’ or ‘truce’ in the world is still maintained at the point of the gun and at the present time in history we have ‘one big policeman’ for the world at large – with lots of guns, or missiles. Hence, we have a ‘relatively’ peaceful period in history at present.

All this has done little or nothing to reduce the murders, rapes, terrorism, domestic violence, repression, depression, suicides, etc that are still endemic in the world, but it is a definite and decisive change – as you have noted.

The thing I really like is that these same technological advances and marvels of communication, such as this very one we are now using, allows for the first time in history, a free and open conversation and discussion to happen about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being. Uncensored and unfettered, freewheeling and as instant as mouse click to send anywhere in the world. It is only now with this freedom and access to information that an actual freedom from the Ancient, Holy and Sacred is possible, and available, for those who wish to take it on. For those willing to do something about ridding themselves of the instinctual fear and aggression that is the cause of the continual ‘battles’ that the human species still wage with each other on this paradisiacal planet.

RESPONDENT: ‘It is always helpful to have some additional facts when one is writing about the world as it is’ – as you so well pointed out.

PETER: It is so very essential, as it is the only way to make sense of it all in this place, and this time, that we find ourselves living in.

So, it’s a very good and balmy night from me...