PETER to No 18: Being free of the belief in an after-life, I am now free to actually be here, fully acknowledging the fact. <Snip> Having no belief in a past or future life enabled me to tackle the issue of my behaviour, my actions, my feelings and emotions, my experiences and, of course, my happiness, right now. Peter to No 18, 5.7.2000

RESPONDENT: Yes. Of the many uncoveries Richard made, one that has been of tremendous import to me has been that nothing is mine. That this sensate body I had considered as mine, is in fact the universe experiencing itself as a human being, and it brings about many interesting perspectives. Without the claim of my behaviour, actions, feelings and emotions, experiences and, of course, happiness, one is free to tackle them NOW without referring to the past ‘me’. Now I’m beginning to see how my this, my that, has been feeding the beast, the idea of a separate selfish identity.

PETER: What I wrote is the opposite of what you are agreeing with – 180 degrees opposite.

When I still had spiritual beliefs, I separated myself out from my behaviour, actions, feelings and emotions for I was a goody-two-shoes spiritual seeker. When I met Richard, I stopped pretending that my behaviour, actions, feelings and emotions were not mine. Then I discovered that I was, underneath the sugar-coating, both malicious and sorrowful. It was only by stopping this act of denial of splitting myself in two that I could accept the responsibility of cleaning myself up, so to speak. This splitting oneself in two, or creating a new identity, is what is known as dissociation, epitomized in spiritual belief by such phrases as ‘I am not my body’, ‘I am not my mind’, ‘I am not my feelings’, etc.

An actualist does not fall for the trap of merely pretending he or she is a flesh and blood body - adopting yet another identity or belief and thus ignoring or denying his or her unwanted or covered-up behaviour, actions, feelings and emotions. One doesn’t wave a magic wand by changing the name of things or learning a new language – the extinguishing of the instinctual passions that are ‘me’ at my core is the commitment of a life time.

As you said above, there are realizations everywhere at the moment about the stark differences between what spiritual people theorize about and how they actually are.

What I did was take my ‘self’ on – lock, stock and barrel, the lot, everything - and I will not stop until all of ‘me’ is extinguished, for only then will what is actual become apparent.

Just as an observation, to avoid confusion about what is being said and what is on offer on this list – I found that when I first read Richard’s writings I had to read a sentence two or three times in order to understand that what he was saying was not what I had assumed in my first reading. Then the next time I read the same section or sentence, it would well only take two readings to get the gist of what he was saying. The third time through sometimes heralded the beginning of an understanding of how radically different it was to what I had been taught or what I had believed to be true. But what kept pulling me back, despite my fears, to reading more and wanting to understand more was that actualism made sense – and I desperately wanted to be free of the Human Condition.

This business of becoming free of beliefs and instinctual passions means that the brain needs to be re-wired, re-programmed, and this is a purely physical process of breaking old synapses based on myths and beliefs and forging new one’s based on facts and actuality. This re-programming does take effort, time, attention, perseverance, intent, stubbornness, willingness, interest, vigour and ... a passionate desire to be free of malice and sorrow.

RESPONDENT: Which reminds me, it was when Jane Roberts began her intense contemplation of the universe as idea construction that Seth, the so called personality energy essence, made its entrance, from his discarnate multidimensional view point, (don’t laugh :-)) and began explaining (in the distorted terms that our linear and limited minds could understand) how beliefs create what Richard would call the ‘real world’ of the human condition and conditioning. Beliefs which Seth says are dispensed with when a human being makes certain realizations. But he also says ...<Snipped>

PETER: I do like to write to people who are interested in how to become actually free of malice and sorrow for this is the only way we human beings can stop fighting and feuding with each other – the only way we can put an end to all the rapes and murders, tortures and bloodshed, child abuse and persecution, conflict and wars. Given that this empirical approach to bringing an end to human malice and sorrow is so radically new, this writing often involves a lot of demolishing of Bronze Age spirit-ual perceptions and beliefs of good and evil spirits, loving beings and hateful beings, after-lives and other-worlds, etc. which people still espouse as being the ‘Truth’ about human existence on earth. Thus I inevitably find myself writing to passionate believers, the firmly convinced and even the fully deluded. Often, in order to justify or defend their beliefs, the stout defenders of the status quo will quote the supposedly truth-full teachings of long dead holy men, despite the fact that there is considerable doubt as to whether these holy men really existed as flesh and blood human beings.

However, I do draw the line, particularly on this list, as to making any comment on the so-called ‘Wisdom’ of a disembodied entity who has no existence other than in the fertile and passionate imagination of ‘his’ earthly channeller ... and of those who believe her story.

In my spiritual days, I once knew a woman who channelled a disembodied entity and she drew large crowds to meetings and a good clientele for private sessions. When she split up from her manager-boyfriend, the entity left as well, leaving her doubly mystified and saddened. I attempted to fill the gap in the local spiritual community by putting up posters, complete with pictures, offering ‘Garden Gnome Channelling’ but had no success. However I did better when, some time later, I placed an advertisement in the local spiritual newsletter offering sessions in ‘Capology – the Ancient Tibetan Art of Knee-cap Reading’. The advertisement described that the knees are a critical junction-point for the flow of ‘Quong energy’. I also offered half price to pensioners and amputees! I cheekily gave the telephone number of the local Concerned Christians, a cult-busting group, which had occasionally given Eastern spiritual people a hard time. I thought nothing more of it until the editor of the newsletter bailed me up one day to tell me that the Concerned Christians had rung up to complain that they had had so many phone calls wanting to book sessions. Which made me think, even then, that people will believe anything. It just took me a while to admit to the fact that I was as gullible as everyone else.

*

PETER: However, I do draw the line, particularly on this list, as to making any comment on the so-called ‘Wisdom’ of a disembodied entity who has no existence other than in the fertile and passionate imagination of ‘his’ earthly channeller and of those who believe her story.

RESPONDENT: Have you read any of the Seth Speaks, Peter? Jane Roberts was examined by a psychologist (I can find his name for you if you wish) who came to the conclusion that the entity he had conversed with spoke in a manner and with an intelligence that far exceeded that of Jane. Jane herself has no idea whether Seth was a figment of her psyche, that for some reason she was unable to consciously bring forward or whether he was what he said he was.

PETER: I’ll pass No 8, although I did put my foot in my mouth in a post to Gary entitled ‘disembodied morals’.

PETER: I noticed you made a comment on the following post to the list, and I thought I’d put my two bob in –

GARY to No 8:

[Jane Roberts channelling Seth]: ‘Killing while protecting one’s own body from death at the hands of another is a violation. Whether or not any justification seems apparent, the violation exists. (Long pause.) Because you believe that physical self-defence is the only way to counter such a situation then you will say, ‘If I am attacked by another person, are you telling me that I cannot aggressively counter his obvious intent to destroy me?’ Not at all. You could counter such an attack in several ways that do not involve killing. You would not be in such a hypothetical situation to begin with unless violent thoughts of your own, faced or unfaced, had attracted it to you.’ ‘The Nature of Personal Reality’ Seth via J. Roberts

This excerpt was meaningful to me because I am wondering how to face violence in myself, fully and comprehensively. I have, since I was young, been concerned with personal protection. I used to be unable to sleep unless I had a loaded gun nearby. During my ‘nerve wracking’ periods of facing fear, I seem to be very concerned with keeping myself fully armed. When I am really fearful, I stockpile ammunition and it gives me a feeling of safety and protection, albeit a false sense of safety. I realize that in a shooting war there is no place of safety, that bombs and planes can wipe you out in a second.

In any event, the statement ‘You would not be in such a hypothetical situation to begin with unless violent thoughts of your own, faced or unfaced, had attracted it to you.’ This seems particularly true. I wonder if I have really faced the violence that is at the core of such an exaggerated concern with personal safety and protection. I don’t think getting rid of my guns is the solution, for the problem lies with the beliefs, values, and instinctual passions that provide the fuel for such fear and aggression. I have noticed of late that I am not interested in the guns or ammunition stockpiling.

I have more of a sense of safety. Your posted material, while extensive, attracted me because this portion of it leapt out at me. Last night I awoke from a nightmare. I was howling in my sleep because something or somebody was killing me, I am sure. It takes a while to realize its’ just a dream....

PETER: I find it curious that these words of wisdom about physical self-defence supposedly come from a disembodied entity. As such, I would say that an ethereal entity without a physical body would be the least qualified to offer gratuitous moral advice to we corporeal earthly humans.

Personally, I enjoy being here and have no problem, should the need arise, in aggressively countering another’s obvious intent to destroy me. Obviously I would do all that was reasonable to avoid being in the situation in the first place, or get out of it with all the cunning I could muster, but if all else fails, to lay down and die for a moral principle is clearly silly.

The last platitude offered is the usual spiritual karmic nonsense that is easily dismissed by considering the ‘violent thoughts’ of the toddlers killed in the Oklahoma bombing, those villagers killed in the Lockerby plane crash, the school children shot at Columbine, the children hacked to pieces in Rwanda, etc.

All religious/ spiritual wisdom, no matter what its source, is a minefield of unliveable morals and pious ethics, aimed solely at crippling, controlling and burdening wayward souls with guilt and shame.

Well, I’ve blown it now – I’m now commenting on the writings of an imaginary disembodied entity – a bit like commenting on the words and actions of the Son of God in the Christian Bible or the Buddha who was an elephant in a previous life.

It’s a funny world ...

*

GARY: Yes, unless such a one was ‘God in human form’. That is essentially the Christian myth. So there is one (ie., Jesus, Seth, etc.) who knows all about being a human but at the same time is ‘beyond’ all that, having transcended it, and can supposedly guide us mere mortals. Now please note, I am not arguing from this position. I merely found the excerpted quotation interesting as I have struggled to understand how to deal with violence.

PETER: I found the business of delving back into Eastern spiritual teachings, meta-physical sciences, philosophy, psychology, sociology, etc. and finding the loop holes, so top speak, a very freeing experience. Digging beneath what is seemingly being said and finding the core argument, theory, concept or belief that underpins and substantiates what has passed as the great, profound and Sacred truths of the Human Condition is very daunting but it is the only way to actually free oneself of the Human Condition. Facts must replace beliefs for facts are actual but beliefs shackle ‘me’ to the Human Condition and keep ‘me’, the believer, in existence. This process of investigation is exactly why we actualists do tend to be a wordy lot and interested in exploring all of the aspects of the Human Condition.

RESPONDENT: Of all the brilliant schools of thought I have looked into, (Richard’s the most recent among them) and I discovered an astonishing number all replete in their tidy logic, Seth’s had the most profound effect on my life. Here I found no denying or avoiding honest investigation into the human condition either, except that Seth left me with no alternative not even a third one.

PETER: The only reason I dared to challenge the most sacred of all feelings (love) was that I found it did not work, it always came hand-in-glove with its savage dark side and ... I wanted something better. I’ve found it.

RESPONDENT: Here is Seth’s take on that dark side and how it ‘works’; from ‘The Nature of Personal Reality’ (1974)

[Jane Roberts]: ‘It is not that those emotions are opposites. It is that they are different aspects, and experienced differently.’

‘Hate is akin to love, for the hater is attracted to the object of his hatred by deep bonds. It can also be a method of communication, but it is never a steady constant state, and will automatically change if not tampered with.

If you believe that hate is wrong and evil, and then find yourself hating someone, you may try to inhibit the emotion or turn it against yourself – raging against yourself rather than another. On the other hand you may try to pretend the feeling out of existence, in which case you dam up that massive energy and cannot use it for other purposes. In its natural state, hatred has a powerful rousing characteristic that initiates change and action. Regardless of what you have been told, hatred does not initiate strong violence. As covered earlier in this book, the outbreak of violence is the result of a built-in sense of powerlessness. <Big Snip>

In this context is Seth’s frequent reminder that the expression of normal aggression prevents the build-up of anger into hatred.’ ‘The Nature of Personal Reality’ Seth via J. Roberts

PETER: Do you mean by ‘more ... than religious spirituality’ that Sethism is not a formal religion as such? A bit hard to have a photo of a spirit hanging on your wall or a cross with a spirit nailed to it on the altar. As a kid the Holy Ghost was always a big question mark for me.

Religion is defined as –

Belief in or sensing of some superhuman controlling power or powers, entitled to obedience, reverence, and worship, or in a system defining a code of living, esp. as a means to achieve spiritual or material improvement; acceptance of such belief (esp. as represented by an organized Church) as a standard of spiritual and practical life; the expression of this in worship etc. Oxford Dictionary

Methinks Sethism fits the bill and as you said Seth’s your man ... as in most ‘brilliant school of thought’.

But seriously, I find it a bit strange that your reply to my comment about my experiences was to post a long piece quoting someone else rather than post your experiences. After all, it was you who recently posted –

[Respondent]: ‘... we gather here on this list fully acknowledging our human tendency to fall into yet another senseless belief trap.

I must say though, that from the posts I have read from the members on this list, they too seem just as committed to finding an alternative to spirituality, as you are Peter. I would not be here if I was not fully aware of those first bases you speak of above and the futility of continuing to play those games. I think it was extremely important that Richard created a space like this. As place where open, like minded friends can pour out and expose their programming for what it is and assist each other in wiping the drive and re-programming ...’ [endquote].

Your posting of the wisdom of the spirit called Seth contradicts your implied commitment to find an alternative to spirituality. You also state that you are ‘fully aware of those first bases [I] speak of’, the most significant of which is to question the facticity and validity of your spiritual beliefs. Despite this you post the words of others that you believe to be the truth as your reply to my posts. The problem with this is you post such a quantity that it would take me days to give a detailed reply to each of the articles posted. I recently wrote a detailed critique of a book of wisdom written by a spiritual teacher and simply do not have the interest at the moment in doing the same with the ‘channelled’ wisdom a disembodied spirit, the voice of God. I would much rather write to people about my experiences and hear of their experiences, so we can swap notes as it were. The fascinating human business of being able to safely ‘pour out and expose their programming for what it is and assist each other in wiping the drive and re-programming ...’

You also said in a previous post –

[Respondent]: ‘Sometimes I want to post in as though I am a very average, deeply programmed human being, not one (still programmed) that has studied nonduality and the human condition for many years,’ [endquote].

This is exactly the reason this list is here, for as human beings we are all born average – as in typical. Created by the cellular explosion that results from the meeting of a triggering sperm and a fertile egg, born utterly helpless into the world, looked after by others until we can do it ourselves. During this formative period of becoming who we think we are we were drilled as to what behaviour was right and wrong, told how to be and taught how to cope, all to a set of morals, values, ethics and beliefs of those who were here before us and those who were here before them. To dare to challenge this set-in-concrete mind set or programming is daunting to say the least. To dare to challenge it to the point of eliminating it altogether – to wipe the slate clean, so to speak, is to court ostracism and insanity but invite freedom and actuality. In short, provided one is willing to give up the archaic and nonsensical spirit-ual search for ‘Who you really are’, you get to discover what you are – without any tribal or animal identity whatsoever.

The Actual Freedom Trust website, and this mailing list, is devoted to assisting those who are eager and willing to undertake this process in themselves.

Of course, it ultimately matters not if people become free of this programming or not, or if the human species survives or not. Somewhere, sometime in the infinite and eternal universe another explosion of cells may produce consciousness again, or could well be doing it at this very moment, and thus the universe will marvel at itself in the guise of another animate life-form. The realization of this means that one’s happiness is one’s own responsibility exactly as one is responsible for one’s own malice and sorrow.

Good Hey.

GARY: In a recent post, No 8 wrote –

[Jane Roberts]: But the information is fascinating. Seth is no advocate of irresponsibility; he declares you are absolutely responsible for every minuscule event that ever happens to you. The archives of every word he spoke have been stored at Yale University and physicists are studying his probability theory which you can read about in a book titled Bridging Science and Spirituality. ‘The Nature of Personal Reality’ Seth via J.Roberts

[Peter]: ‘I’ll pass No 8, although I did put my foot in my mouth in a post to Gary entitled ‘disembodied morals’.’ Peter to No 8, 24.7.2000

PETER: It looks as though we have a crossed-post situation where I have answered most of the points you raised by answering your first post on the subject. At the moment I am quite busy working so I tend to be slow in my responses if the inbox gets full. I also like to respond in reasonable detail to questions raised which was another reason that I was attempting to pass on the longish piece of Sethism that No 8 posted, but it looks as though my attempt failed. You quoted No 8 –

[Jane Roberts]: ‘Seth is no advocate of irresponsibility; he declares you are absolutely responsible for every minuscule event that ever happens to you.’ ‘The Nature of Personal Reality’ Seth via J.Roberts

Common to most spiritual/ religious teachings is the moral principle that everyone is responsible for their actions, whereas one only has to take a clear-eyed look at the sacred teachings to discover that this is not so in fact.

In monotheist religions the issue is very clear. There is one God only, usually a creator God, and everyone is ultimately judged by this Big Daddy who offers the carrot of a heavenly after-life, or the stick of a hellish after-life.

This threat of Divine punishment and the promise of Divine reward ultimately means that everyone is responsible only to God for his or her actions and to no-one else. Thus a mythical God becomes one’s ultimate authority and the beleaguered believers dance to the tune of their God as well as His or Her earthly representatives – the Popes, Bishops, priests, Gurus and God-men, pundits, teachers, etc. When my God is ‘The one and only God’ it means that all other Gods are impostors, fakes and competitors, and those who follow other Gods are therefore non-believers, heathens or barbarians.

This battle of the ‘I-am-the-one-and-only’ type Gods has meant that millions upon millions upon millions of impassioned believers have attacked, slaughtered, maimed, killed and tortured other human beings in thousands upon thousands of pogroms, missions, retributions cleansings, wars and crusades, that have gone on for at least 3,500 years of recorded history. This senseless violence, spawned of religious belief, is still on-going with no sign of abating as all the prayers for peace on earth to these self-same mythical Gods have curiously gone unanswered.

In the monotheist system violence and killing is not only condoned as in ‘I’m fighting for God’ or ‘I lay down my life for God’ but it is Glorified in that the very action of killing, or being killed, ‘for God’s sake’ is a guarantee of a glorious redemption and salvation for one’s immortal soul.

This action of deliberately surrendering one’s responsibility is predicated on believing in the ancient ignorant beliefs and superstitions of good and evil spirits, Forces or Beings as the underlying cause of the animal-instinctual savage and tender passions in operation in human beings. As such, to hold any skerrick of belief in any of the ‘I-am-the-one-and-only’ type Gods – by whatever name – is to renounce responsibility for one’s actions and ignore the fact that every flesh and blood human is automatically driven by instinctual animal passions. These passions arise from a genetically-encoded very crude program instilled by ‘blind’ nature purely in order to ensure the survival of the strongest (i.e. most brutish) of the species. Animal ‘evolution’ in action is not a pretty business ...

Last century, when the last world war after the ‘War to end all Wars’ finished and yet another (Cold) War developed with each side playing a game called MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction – many people who were desperate for peace on earth turned their backs on Western Religion and adopted Eastern ‘spirituality’ with open-hearts and lofty expectations. Given that any belief demands faith, trust, hope and unquestioning agreement, none bothered to stop and investigate the basic tenets of this ‘spiritual movement’ – Eastern religion and philosophy. The core belief that underpins Eastern religion and philosophy is that ‘who-one-truly-is’ is spirit only and one is most definitely not the body. To sustain this belief one needs to deny the body and its functions, as in ‘I am not the body, I am not the mind’, etc. This belief, if fully indulged, can lead to a state of solipsism:

‘the view or theory that only the self really exists or can be known’ Oxford dictionary –

which is the most extreme form of denial, pathological dissociation. This denial represents an abdication of any and all actions that ‘the body’ and ‘the mind’ happen to do for they are not ‘me’, they are but vessels for ‘my’ earthly journey or even ethereal manifestations of the real, substantive ‘Me’. This core belief in the East is most graphically seen in the teachings of Ramesh Balsekar and the wisdom and culture of Zen Buddhism.

A bit from Ramesh Balsekar which you may think of as extreme, but it is nothing other than a ‘tell it like it is’, unambiguous description of the deep-seated belief that ultimately prevents a spiritual believer for taking full responsibility for their malicious and sorrowful words, thoughts, feelings and behaviour –

[WIE]: Do you mean to say that if an individual acts in a way that ends up hurting another, then the person who did it, or, as you say, the ‘body/mind organism’ who did it, is not responsible?

[Balsekar]: What I’m saying here is that you know that ‘I’ didn’t do it. I’m not saying I’m not sorry that it hurt someone. The fact that someone was hurt will bring about a feeling of compassion and the feeling of compassion will result in my trying to do whatever I can to assuage the hurt. But there will be no feeling of guilt: I didn’t do it!

The other side of this is that an action happens which the society lauds and gives me a reward for. I’m not saying that happiness will not arise because of the reward. Just as compassion arose because of the hurt, a feeling of satisfaction or happiness may arise because of a reward. But there’ll be no pride.

[WIE]: But do you literally mean that if I go and hit someone, it’s not me doing it? I just want to get clear about this.

[Balsekar]: The original fact, the original concept still remains: you hit somebody. The additional concept arises that whatever happens is God’s will, and God’s will with respect to each body/mind organism is the destiny of that body/mind organism.

[WIE]: So I could just say, ‘Well, it was God’s will that I did that; it’s not my fault.’

[Balsekar]: Sure. An act happens because it is the destiny of this body/mind organism, and because it is God’s will. And the consequences of that action are also the destiny of that body/ mind organism.’ Interview with Ramesh Balsekar from ‘What is Enlightenment’ magazine, Moksha press.

The most telling expose of Zen Buddhism I have come across can be found at http://www.darkzen.com/ and, in the interests of brevity and non-repetition, I’ll let you follow it up if you are interested.

As a rough rule of thumb it is useful to bear in mind that when Western religions talk of peace they talk of ‘Rest in Peace’ as in peace after death. Peace on earth is usually only referred to when a day of reckoning happens and whichever of the ‘I-am-the-one-and-only’ type Gods returns to earth and saves His people and wipes out rest, usually in some horrific cataclysmic slaughter. When Eastern religions talk of peace they talk of ‘inner’ peace only – retreating ‘in’ to find one’s true self as a way to escape from the suffering of the material physical world. In this scenario earthly existence is seen as suffering, i.e. as earthly suffering is essential and end to it is neither desirable nor possible in this belief -system therefore peace on earth is not on the spiritual agenda. As such, to hold any skerrick of Eastern spiritual belief is to renounce the possibility of peace on earth for the utterly self’-ish feeling of ‘inner’ peace (Nirvana) and the promise of an eternal peace after death (Parinirvana).

Some interesting recent correspondence I had on a spiritual mailing list about spiritual teachings and peace can be found here.

I know that some people regard actualism as an endless repetitive denunciation of religion and spirituality but they miss the point entirely for one cannot begin to come to grips with instinctual aggression, let alone sorrow, while at the same time holding on to any religious/spiritual belief, whether it be Western or Eastern, Earth-bound or inter-Galactic.

Becoming aware of anger in oneself is a great start – acknowledgement is an essential first step in any cure. For those who have trod the Eastern spiritual path this step seems almost an impossibility for they have been so immersed in the practice of denial that the program has become both automatic and overwhelming. Not only did I have to take this step of abandoning the spiritual path, but then I came across the suppressed underlying Western-spiritual feelings of guilt and shame that shrouded, inhibited and crippled my common sense investigations of aggression and anger.

These investigations are not for the faint of heart, but the reward of an actual peace on earth, in this lifetime, as this flesh and blood body, is now, for the very first time, alluringly available ... and the tantalizing prospect that this could spread like a chain letter around the world over time is breathtaking in its implications.

PETER: Well, things have moved on since this post to me and in your last post to the list you have made your position very clear –

RESPONDENT: Yes, Seth was a red herring, and it was as predictable as tomorrow, that the sharks would start feeding. What else could one expect from cold-blooded creatures with nothing but bodily instincts and the remnants of a rudimentary intellect to guide their ravenous and rapacious appetite for survival. A grizzly sight indeed. Peace on Earth? ... my foot!

PETER: Given that you seem to have ‘spat the dummy’ and disappeared over the hill I did consider not answering this post, but there are others on this list who are genuinely interested in actualism, so I will pen a reply to both of you (No 8 and their pseudonym on List B) anyway.

*

PETER: I came to realize how limited human imagination is when I began to look at the Human Condition from a wider perspective.

Most of what humans treasure as great literature, art, poetry, sacred texts, music, fables and legends has as their basis either malice or sorrow. Most of what we regard as entertainment is based on violence or sadness. The test of greatness of human imaginative stories is the extent that we are stirred to feel vengeful for the aggrieved, pity for the underdog, saddened at loss, moved by hardship, outraged by the offensive, angered at the hard done by, stimulated by violence, distressed by suffering, etc.

I also came to see that impassioned human imagination was so meagre and paltry when compared to inventiveness, resourcefulness and ingenuity of the electro-chemical brain that is the human body. One only needs to look out at the stars at night to know that what is actual far, far exceeds human impassioned imagination. And yet when cosmologists contemplate the universe they imagine black holes and dark matter – an escape portal to other worlds or some ‘other-universe’ within this universe. This planet is estimated to have between 2,000,000 and 4,500,00 plant and animal species, offering such a variety as to be mind-boggling when compared with the fantasy alien life-forms from outer space created by human imagination. The insect world has such a plethora of species that it may well be an impossible task to ever categorize them. The oceans provide such an amazing multiplicity of life forms that defy any limits of human imagination. Each day brings a new, fresh and unique combination of weather conditions, each moment animate life is arranging and rearranging itself into a myriad of new forms, and this occurs on a paradisiacal planet that is so huge that it is impossible for a single human being to see all of it in a lifetime. The fact that the astounding actuality of this infinite physical universe is beyond the comprehension of a ‘self’-centred human mind has lead to wonder and amazement which has traditionally lead to feelings of awe and reverence and humility – the seeds of the spiritual ‘the Universe, God and I are One’ delusion.

Actuality is far, far bigger than mere feelings or impassioned imagination for it is actual, patently palpable, infinitely varied, observably tangible, manifestly obvious, always apparent, clearly evident, eternally existing and it is happening right here and right now, under our very noses as it were.

RESPONDENT: Yes Actuality is too vast for us to consciously follow, but then, from my observations, so too is the imagination.

PETER: Given that you have yet to indicate by personal description that you have understood one iota of what actualism is about, this comment is nonsensical. It is doubly so when your version of what is actual is based on the ‘Actuality’ of a bodiless spirit – a spirit that is ethereal, that you cannot touch, feel, smell, touch, talk to, or write an e-mail to and get an answer. ‘He’, as pure spirit, who does not eat, drink, sleep, walk, sweat, bleed, fart, defecate, age or die can know nothing of actuality – that which is palpable, tangible, touchable, visible, sensually and sensately experienced.

As you said ... Seth is a red herring!

RESPONDENT: For the following reasons I am not yet convinced that the Actual Freedom perspective is such a wide and wondrous path. I do not limit the imagination in the ways you referred to above, e.g. ‘stirred to feel vengeful for the aggrieved, pity for the underdog, saddened at loss, moved by hardship, outraged by the offensive, angered at the hard done by, stimulated by violence, distressed by suffering, etc. etc?’ For me these are but momentary events or reflections and the majority of the day is spent using the creative imagination happily and harmlessly.

PETER: For an actualist these ‘momentary events or reflections’ are vitally significant for these bleed-throughs of instinctual passions are opportunities to investigate one’s psyche in action. Some people do reasonably well in coping with, or ignoring these momentary flashes of anger, irritation, or frustration, gloominess, melancholy or despair, but for others these feelings can permeate for days or weeks or flare up into more serious ‘events or reflections’ such as outbreaks of verbal or physical aggression or experiences of overwhelming sadness or despair. These feelings and emotions that directly arise from our instinctual programming are the root cause of all the violence that humans inflict on each other and all the sorrow and despair so evident on the 7 o’clock news. You do well to stick with ‘creative imagination’ for the ‘real’ world of human interaction is a ferocious place.

Actualism is only for those who are unwilling, or unable, to turn away to the imaginary spirit-ual world.

*

PETER: Seth the Red Herring –

[Jane Roberts]: ‘Your actual experience is far too vast for you to physically follow. Your particular kind of consciousness is the result of specialized focus within a particular area. You imagine it to be ‘absolute,’ in that it seems to involve an all-exclusive state that includes (or does not) your identity – as you think of I – only you give it boundaries like a kingdom. There are no such limits.’ ‘The Nature of Personal Reality’ Seth via J. Roberts

Thus spoke a bodiless spirit who is free of the boundaries of being a flesh and blood human being on the planet and soars through the ether of the cosmos ... occasionally sending messages to those spirits still trapped on earth that ‘things are really okay and one day, you too will get to soar with me. Believe in me and one day ... after you die ... you too will get to be a disembodied ethereal spirit’.

This fantasy reminds me of that 70’s American television program called Charlie’s Angels.

Seth the Red Herring –

[Jane Roberts]: ‘The playfulness and creativity of dreams are vastly under-rated. Children often frighten themselves on purpose through games, knowing the game’s framework all the time. The bogeyman in the garden vanishes at the sound of the supper bell. The child returns to the safe universe of milk and cookies. Dreams serve the same purpose. Fears are encountered, but the dawn breaks. The dreamer awakes for breakfast. The fears, after all, are seen as groundless. This is a reminder that not all such events are neurotic or indicative of endless future physical problems.’ ‘Jane and Joseph have a kitten. In its great exuberant physical energy it chases its own tail, scales the furniture and tires itself out. Man’s mind exuberantly plays with itself in somewhat the same fashion. In dreams it uses all those splendid energetic abilities freely, without the necessity for physical feedback, caution, or questioning. It seeks realities, giving birth to psychological patterns. It uses itself fully in mental activity in the same way that the kitten does in physical play.’ ‘The Nature of Personal Reality’ Seth via J. Roberts

Most people never really emerge from their childhood fairy-tale world for if do they are only confronted with grim reality and soon go back ‘inside’. Some people who do escape from the security of childhood fantasy emerge reluctantly into the world only to find grim reality so horrific that they turn to the ‘adult’ dream world of believing in a creator Big-Daddy God or spirit who is looking after things. They practice retreating into an ‘inner’ sanctuary of peace and contentment, they search for the holy grail of becoming God-on-earth and they believe the pie in the sky stories of an ‘other-world’ were their soul goes after the death of their bodies.

There is now an alternative to both escapist imagination and grim reality.

Seth the Red Herring –

[Jane Roberts]: ‘When you try to explore the psyche in deadly seriousness, it will always escape you. Your dreams can be interpreted as dramas, perhaps, but never as diagrams. By trying to bring ‘vastness of the imagination’ down to your level, you are unable to playfully enter that reality, and allow your own waking consciousness to rise into a freer kind of interpretation of events, in which energy is not bounded by space, time, or human limitations.’ ‘The Nature of Personal Reality’ Seth via J. Roberts

So No 8, you have taken Seth’s ‘vastness of the imagination’ and translated it into ‘Actuality is too vast for us to consciously follow’. Do you have nothing to say that relates to your own personal experience as a human being on this planet?

T’would make for far more interesting, and relevant, posts for us mere mortals.

RESPONDENT: It is vitally important for me to be sure that the extirpation of the psyche (instinctual passions and the imagination) is not (no offence meant) a cop out. Yep I have been gullible many a time, and it taught me not to underestimate the power of denial. Humans are renowned for their tendency to take the line of least resistance and simply exterminate or suppress what they cannot master.

PETER: It is impossible to be totally sure of anything as a human being on this planet, in the world as-it-is, with people as-they are. The set-up on earth is a veritable kaleidoscope of people, things and events, all happening at this very moment on this immense lump of rock that is spinning like a top and hurtling through limitless space.

Human life is not without risk – there is the risk of being attacked by human beings and wild animals, there are fast moving cars, plane crashes, lightning strikes, volcanoes erupting, floods, cyclones, etc. And yet, we find ourselves firmly stuck by gravity, in a constant sure cycle of night and day, generally able to not only survive, but to thrive. For many, comfort, safety, leisure and pleasure are the staples of life. Such is the ease and lack of danger for many on the planet that there is an innate tendency, apart from those driven to seek physical danger as a means to artificially evoke the feeling of ‘being alive’, for most to settle for being comfortably numb.

But it is impossible to be sure at the start of the journey to become free of the Human Condition what the journey will be like for you. The adventure into one’s own psyche can never be predictable, sure or without risk ... but then again, statistics provide evidence that most people die quietly in their beds, praying that there are going to go to a ‘better world’ and a ‘better next life’.

The actual world is simply the best for it is actual, therefore it requires no imagination ... and it is already happening now, and therefore it needs no postponement.

We humans all have brief glimpses of the stunning actuality of this paradisiacal planet and yet afterwards we drift back into the grim reality of normal life or into the traditional patterns of fantasy escapism. Some who have these glimpses of unbounded purity and perfection desperately want to claim the experience as ‘my’ experience thereby leading to ‘me’ having grandiose feelings of Love, Unity, Oneness, etc.

Provided these experiences remain pure experiences, as in a PCE, it can clearly be seen that human existence on earth is a grim instinctual battle for survival whether fought between family members at the dining table, in relationships in the bedroom, in the boardroom, in the ashram, between humans of different nationalities, between believers of different religions, amongst friends or between enemies.

What is on offer in actualism is the chance to step out of both grim reality and the fantasy of a spiritual greater-Reality and into the actual world of sensual delight. What ‘you’ can do is to deliberately, and with forethought, set about a process that phases out ‘you’, the usurper, the fraud, the walk-in ... until ‘you’ disappear!