PETER to Richard: This first process had two components – an intellectual understanding such that the fact of being a human being made sense, and this involved a rigorous, challenging, exciting and revealing investigation into the Human Condition and its bedrock of Ancient Wisdom. This is essentially the understanding of the non-spiritual nature of Actual Freedom. The second component was the practical day to day stuff (and what else is there anyway?) of what it is to be a human being – the theory into practice if you like. The experience that Actual Freedom is not a philosophy, not a theory, but a down-to-earth experience as a flesh and blood body. Peter to Richard, 25.2.1999

ALAN: Couldn’t agree more. The combination of the two is vital – and perhaps inevitable. Sort of convincing ‘me’ that it is possible, while experiencing its actuality.

PETER: Just to clarify my post. Up until now the only path to freedom has been a spiritual path to a spiritual freedom – the traditional path of denial, renunciation and transcendence leading to an Altered State of Consciousness known as Enlightenment. The path leads to There – another dimension, a metaphysical realm.

The aim of the path to Actual Freedom is to come here to the actual world. The actual world is that which is evidenced and apparent in the PCE or peak experience and that is where the path to Actual Freedom leads. The actual world is the world as-it-is, stripped of the veneer of reality or Reality that the ‘self’ or ‘Self’ layers over it.

However, as the aim is to come here and be happy and harmless, one always has an immediate goal and aim every moment – to be as happy and harmless as one can possibly be right now. ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ is the key to firstly ascertaining how one is doing relative to one’s aim in life and, if necessary, finding out what is inhibiting my happiness, in this moment. This gives ‘me’ something to do – ‘I’ clean myself up as much as possible by rigorously and remorselessly examining all the beliefs that constitute the Human Condition – all the truths and Truths that form my social identity, and the instinctual behavioural patterns that blindly run ‘me’. This process, if undertaken with a sincere intent, will inevitably lead to a state of Virtual Freedom. One then goes to bed in the evening knowing that one has had a perfect day, and knowing that tomorrow, without doubt, will also be a perfect day. Unless one is willing to contemplate being happy and harmless, free of malice and sorrow, 99% of the time – then forget the whole business. One is back aiming for some ‘pie in the sky’, some miracle event to ‘make it all better’. And the Sannyas list was an eye opener as far as that was concerned. When offered an alternative to ‘getting out of it’, such that being happy and harmless became one’s aim in life – none were interested in this aspect; peace on earth got a similar response, living with a companion in peace and harmony hardly raised a murmur. Nobody believes that it is possible to be happy and harmless in the world as-it-is, on earth, here, now, as a flesh and blood body. This is, after all, the core of Ancient Wisdom – the sacred and inviolate centre-piece of the Human Condition.

PETER to Richard: I thought I would respond to a theme you were pursuing with Alan and relate it to my experiences lately. I seem to be having a good dig down deep into the instincts in the last months. My post to No. 5 was about exploring aggression at an instinctual level and, no doubt, I could shuffle around a lot more exploring the emotions that arise from these instincts, but another aspect of my instinctual program is beginning to fascinate me. It relates to your comment to Alan –

Richard: If anything, ‘I’ came from ‘back there’ in the biological hereditary and very earthy past (hence all the atavistic fears when one starts to break free from all the cultural mores). Richard, The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List, Alan

The genetically programmed instincts one is born with are located in the primitive brain or amygdala and consist in part as a hard-wired quick response mechanism that pumps the body and brain with chemicals as a reaction to any perceived danger. The amygdala also has its own independent memory section that is evidenced as an emotional memory as distinct from one’s cognitive memory.

A bit from LeDoux will confirm the scientific evidence of this independent (unconscious is the term he uses) memory.

[Joseph LeDoux]: ‘A fundamental assumption in this work is that the brain has multiple memory systems, each devoted to different kinds of memory functions. For traumatic memory, two systems are particularly important. For example, if you return to the scene of an accident, you will be reminded of the accident and will remember where you were going, who you were with, and other details about the experience. These are explicit (conscious) memories mediated by the hippocampus and other aspects of the temporal lobe memory system. In addition, your blood pressure and heart rate may rise, you may begin to sweat, and your muscles may tighten up. These are implicit (unconscious) memories mediated by the amygdala and its neural connections. They are memories in the sense that they cause your body to respond in a particular way as a result of past experiences. The conscious memory of the past experience and the physiological responses elicited thus reflect the operation of two separate memory systems that operate in parallel. <snip>

Only by taking these systems apart in the brain have neuroscientists been able to figure out that these are different kinds of memory, rather than one memory with multiple forms of expression. <snip> Learning and responding to stimuli that warn of danger involves neural pathways that send information about the outside world to the amygdala, which determines the significance of the stimulus and triggers emotional responses, like freezing or fleeing, as well changes in the inner workings of the body’s organs and glands. <snip>

The implication of these findings is that early on (perhaps since dinosaurs ruled the earth, or even before) evolution hit upon a way of wiring the brain to produce responses that are likely to keep the organism alive in dangerous situations. The solution was so effective that it has not been messed with much, and works pretty much the same in rats and people, as well as many if not all other vertebrate animals. Evolution seems to have gone with an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ rule when it comes to the fear system of the brain.’ LeDoux Lab., Centre for Neural Science, New York University

So, in investigating one’s instinctual self – which is programmed into the amygdala – one is not only investigating the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, one inevitably encounters the instinctual ‘memory’ as well. LeDoux’s studies are seemingly primarily concerned with the emotional memories imprinted on to the amygdala’s memory since birth. Thus we have imprinted the traumatic incidents in life since birth and those fears instilled in us, largely by our parents, in the very early years before the development of our cognitive memory. There is also scientific evidence that the foetus is influenced by the flow of chemicals via the placenta which would allow for a pre-birth encoding of emotions.

But it is obvious from a study of animals that certain actions and behaviour patterns are not taught after birth but must be genetically pre-programmed in the instinctual memory. The reaching for, finding and suckling the nipple in mammals, the waddle to the ocean of baby turtles, the unlearned migration patterns of birds, etc. There are multitudinous examples of non-cognitive animals who exhibit quite sophisticated behaviour and ‘knowledge’ that is not learnt but must solely be due to a pre-coded memory that is genetically inherited.

Given that the human animal is the most advanced of the primates, it does beg the question as to how much pre-memory is genetically programmed in the human amygdala and therefore ‘set in the flesh’, as it were. Two of these pre-codings are vital in understanding the human psyche –‘who’ one thinks and feels one is.

Firstly, there is most obviously an instinctual sense of self-recognition, a faculty we share with our closet genetic cousins – apes and chimps both recognize ‘themselves’ in a mirror. This instinctual primal ‘self’ is made more sophisticated in humans, for the cognitive neo-cortex (the ‘conscious’ to use LeDoux’s term) is only capable of detecting the chemical flows of the amygdala (non-cognitive and ‘unconscious’), and these are ‘felt’ as basic passions or emotions and interpreted as feelings – ‘my’ feelings. Thus, we ‘feel’ this genetic instinctual programming to be ‘me’ at my core. This program thus gives every human being an instinctual self which is translated into a ‘real’ self that is both psychic – LeDoux’s ‘unconscious’ made obvious and real by the ensuing flow of chemicals from the amygdala – and psychological – interpreted as thoughts by the modern cognitive brain. (The modern brain is also taught much after birth – one’s social identity – but I’m interested in the deeper level at this stage.)

This explains that the spiritual journey ‘in’ is thus a journey to find one’s instinctual self – one’s roots, one’s original face, the Source, etc. If, on this inner journey, one ignores or denies the passions of aggression and fear and concentrates one’s attention on the passions of nurture and desire, one can shift one’s identity from the psychological thinking neo cortex – the ‘ego’ to use their term – and ‘become’, or associate with, or identify with, the good feelings of nurture and desire. This is a seductive and self-gratifying journey, for one is actively promoting the flow of chemicals that give rise to the good, pleasant, warm, light-headed, heart-full and ultimately ecstatic feelings. These flow of chemicals overwhelm the neo-cortex to such an extent that they become one’s primary experience, and the input of the physical world as perceived by the senses and the clear-thinking ability of the cognitive modern brain are both subjugated – or ‘transcended’ to use their term. One then ‘feels’ one has found one’s original ‘self’, which one has of course, though t’is all but a fantasy of one’s imagination.

I particularly remember when I first came across spiritual teachings, the mythology and poetry that alluded to this ‘inner’ world seemed to strike a deep cord with me – the tales of Ancient Wisdom ‘connected’ with this deep (unconscious) level which was a connection with the instinctual memory in the amygdala. I had ‘found’ someone who had the answers, was in touch with the Source, knew the meaning of life, the truth – I had come Home. I began a journey into the inner world of good feelings, made real by the ability to enhance the chemical flow of nurture and desire and dampen, suppress or ignore the feelings of aggression and fear. I was literally leaving the real world behind and seeking solace and succour in the spiritual world. I was thus forfeiting any chance of breaking free of my instinctual passions, in total, for a selfish bid for personal bliss and a permanent place in an imaginary ‘other world’ composed solely of chemically-supported blissful feelings.

Secondly, the other faculty I see as essentially pre-coded is an instinctual need to ‘belong’ to the herd – the herding instinct, as Vineeto puts it. It might seem banal and obvious given that humans, as a species, have perennially needed to maintain, at very least, a family grouping in order to ensure the survival of the species. Given that the human infant is helpless for such a long time compared with most other species, the immediate family group was the basic minimum need, and the chance of survival was considerably increased with larger and stronger groupings. This is an instinctual program that over-rides the individual’s own survival instincts for one is ultimately programmed to ensure survival of the species – not one’s own, as in self-preservation. Given that these involve more sophisticated programming than mere instantaneous ‘fight and flight’ reactions they must be encoded in the genetic memory of the amygdala, passed on from ‘way back there’, in the mists of time.

This instinct, implanted by blind nature to ensure the survival of the species, pumps the body with chemicals that induce the feeling of fear whenever one is straying too far away from the herd, abandoning other members of the family or group or being on one’s own. I remember particularly, in my early twenties, travelling across Europe and the Middle East on my way home from London and arriving at the border with Iran. I was turned away at an isolated border post as I didn’t have a visa and I was struck with a deep sense of panic, a feeling of utter loneliness. Looking back, it was as though I had gone too far striking off on my own and had hit the limit. This feeling of loneliness was to haunt me for many years – the image of becoming a lonely old man on a park bench, outcast and abandoned. It coincidentally was to prove one of the images that made me leap into the spiritual world with such gusto. I was to lose this fear later in life but living alone was always accompanied by a bitter-sweet feeling of loneliness. My major period of living alone was also the period when I began to have spiritual experiences, Satoris and an experience of Altered States of Consciousness aka Enlightenment.

From my investigations and experiences it is obvious that ‘who’ I think and feel I am – ‘me’ at the core – encompasses both a deep-set feeling of separateness from others and the world as perceived by the senses as well as a deep-set feeling of needing to ‘belong’.

This over-arching feeling of separateness – of being a ‘separate self’, who is forever yearning to ‘belong’ – is the root cause of sorrow in me and the all encompassing ‘ocean’ of human sorrow in the world.

The traditional approaches to these conflicting feelings has been either –

• to make the best of one’s lot in life, promoting the good feelings and chemical flows as much as possible, being a good and moral real-world citizen, or
• to throw one’s lot completely into the fanciful spirit-ual world, practicing ‘right-thinking’, ‘good-dreaming’ and ‘blissful feeling’. This transcending of the real world is a disassociation from the world-as-it-is. It involves identifying oneself with the instinctual passions of nurture and desire – the soul – and also satisfies the need to ‘belong’ with feelings of ‘Union’ and ‘Oneness’. It’s a very powerful instinctual lure, given substance and credence by the chemicals that flow from the amygdala. Most importantly, it not only maintains the instinctual self in existence but it also enhances it – ‘I’ become noble, grand, all-encompassing, all-powerful, rising above the world-as-it-is and people as-they-are – in short, Divine and Immortal.

Thankfully I’m pursuing a third alternative, which is the total elimination of my ‘self’ in total – the whole of the amygdala’s instinctual programming that gives rise to the animal passions. The startle, quick-scan function of the amygdala still operates as a physical safety function but the chemical surges that give rise to the emotions of fear, anger, nurture and desire have almost ceased to be of influence. I am left with a lot of shifting sensations in the head, neck, heart and belly that tell me something chemically is still happening but these very rarely translate into emotions or reactions.

I remember in the first few weeks of coming across Actual Freedom and realizing that to become actually free of the Human Condition would not only mean the ending of ‘me’ but also it would mean being a traitor to Humanity. To live without malice – to have no ‘me’ to defend and therefore no need to attack, no need to struggle to survive, achieve, be somebody – was to cop-out of the struggle. To live without sorrow – to not be sad, to not commiserate with others, to not seek consolation, to not wallow in self-pity or to pity others, to not play the game of ‘Oh what a miserable existence being a human being is’ – would be to be judged heart-less. And yet, here I am doing it and riding out the chemical surges that warn me – don’t do this, or else...! The thing that I have discovered is that there is no ‘or else...!’ As long as I don’t goad a fanatic, and I obey the laws of the land and sensibly avoid trouble, the world as-it-is is an eminently safe place – chock full of sensuous pleasure, delight. A life of consummate ease is readily and freely evident when one’s fears are seen for what they are.

I fully realize that this process has taken a considerable time – over 2 ½ years now – but I had to explore the nuts and bolts of it, finding out for myself. It’s a bit like when I first worked in an architect’s office after having studied the theory of design and building for 5 years. After 2 years of office work I gave up and ‘went building’ on building sites to find out what really happened in building. Same thing with Actual Freedom, but in this case a large part was unlearning the spiritual teachings and cynical view-point of the world as-it-is. To dare to consider that there is a third alternative to the human dilemma and then set off exploring it, on one’s own, has taken a while. I fully acknowledge your writings and guidance, Richard, and that my journey was only possible due to your efforts. What I do like is that I can explain the process, not in esoteric, poetic terms but in down-to-earth terms that fully concur with modern scientific studies and that can explain exactly why all past attempts at freedom have ended in narcissism.

It’s an extraordinary thing being a human being in 1999. It’s definitely not an experience to be missed.

RESPONDENT: On a retreat this August I wrote the following: My room has a window facing an inner area of the complex; there is grass and a stand of three pine trees in the middle of it, just about straight out the window. It’s quite light in here with the curtains open, especially sitting here at the desk right in front of the window, stopping writing every now and then to look out at the sun on the grass and gleaming on the edges of some of the pine needles. The trees look like Ponderosa pines, but they aren’t, quite. There’s a big shady place under the stand of pine trees. I may go sit there sometime while I’m here.

The room is simple, with a small bed, one pillow, a sink, a tiny little open closet space about a foot wide. It adjoins a bathroom, shared by the man next door whose face I have yet to see but whose snoring I can hear most of the time when he’s sleeping. It doesn’t bother me in the least. The room is part of a long hallway of twenty rooms on either side of the hallway. There being rooms on both sides of the hall, it is very dark — there aren’t any windows. I have taken to leaving the door to my room wide open. It creates a beautiful trapezoid of natural light in the hallway. Could life be this way too? An open door on to a simple room. Light inside. Nothing to hide, keep, or hang on to? I am: what is happening in the present moment. I am pain in my knees and gurgling in my belly. I am desire and the thought of love. I am the robin hopping with a cricket in its beak and I am the wind blowing a wasp to and fro near the pine boughs, a secret in the sun. And I am memory and sadness, a wound as big as the world, filled with tears. And I am the joy of those tears. And I am my misdeeds, and I am their consequence. And I am readiness for death. And readiness for life. These are wonderful opportunities. Thank you.

PETER: Yes, I remember my days of meditating and going on retreats and the wonderful feelings induced. The heart full of love, the sittings, the silences, the fellow travellers. I once spent about $1000 to travel thousands of kilometres to spend 3 days with a particular Guru for a bit of bliss. But, of course, the problem was it was only a temporary relief from the ‘real’ world – the bliss was an antidote to suffering, the silence a relief to the neurosis, and the ‘loving’ company an escape from loneliness. It was totally dependant on the Guru’s ‘energy’ or that of the group and indeed was a getting out of it or rising above it into some ethereal other spiritual realm. All a figment of my imagination and as fickle and as impermanent as any other emotional state.

By the time I came across Richard I was ready to give the whole lot up, not only for the failure of the system but in seeing how these Gurus were as ordinary people. In the end they offered little to emulate and much to avoid. What really lit me up about what Richard was saying more than anything was the possibility that I could live with a woman in peace and harmony. It is a point that many spiritual seekers completely ignore, and indeed many scorn. Some have relationships based on them being the guru and their companion being a disciple or student but that to me is a complete sham and deceit.

Equity, peace and harmony is a more accurate description of what I have with Vineeto. If it is not possible to demonstrate as an actuality with one other person in my life I figured peace on earth would forever remain but a dream. And I have proved it, which is why I can say with utter confidence that it is now possible for anyone and everyone – should they want it. So it is good to see your interest in something non-spiritual and down to earth. Something actual rather than something imaginary. If the Gurus can’t put their money where their mouth is in their personal relationships it’s time for them to shut up.

Or better still it’s time for their followers to give up hoping and trusting that they will produce the goods – and I think peace on earth is a good basic goal. And peace at home is undoubtedly the first essential step. In breaking free of the all – enveloping spiritual mindset, a useful tool for me was to realise that just because everybody believes something doesn’t necessarily mean it is a fact. And becoming a detective in search of the facts is a fascinating activity – sort of like growing up and finding out for myself, rather than believing what I had been programmed to believe. It’s so good to be free of the need to go on retreats or meditate to find stillness, peace and contentment when I can now experience that right here, now.

It is effortlessly available right here in the actual world – it is the very nature of the physical universe.

RESPONDENT: This question arose as I was thinking about what you wrote. It seems possible that when an emotion looses its hold then so do all the associated beliefs. So I wonder why the beliefs have to be questioned one by one. Why not get down to the task of seeking out the emotions and not the beliefs as such. Or is it that it does not really matter which belief is questioned, as once the associated emotion is disbanded, other beliefs based on the same emotion will also loose their authenticity.

PETER: It may be useful to look at the different path and process that Richard took to Actual Freedom and the one we are pursuing. As you will probably have read, Richard experienced a Pure Consciousness Experience wherein he experienced a ‘self’-less state of purity and perfection lasting some 4 hours. Over the next 9 months he used the method of ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ to question and virtually eliminate all the bad feelings and emotions. At the end of this period, instead of achieving what he was aiming for – the PCE as a constant state – he died an ‘ego-death’ to emerge into what he called Absolute Freedom – a state he soon discovered was akin to the coveted Enlightenment of the Eastern Teachings. While his aim was the PCE, he had lobbed inadvertently into an Altered State of Consciousness. He was not at all familiar with Eastern teaching or philosophy during this process, so it would appear that the inevitable result of tackling and eliminating the ‘bad’ is that one can end up with a new identity – the ‘Good One’, or in full blown delusion ‘God’. I suspect many seekers of freedom have befallen this trap despite their sincere intentions at the beginning of their search, while others have made a blatant and obvious bee-line for the Glamour, Glory and Glitz. As you know, it then took Richard a further 11 years to dismantle and eliminate this second identity – soul, Self, spirit, being, or whatever. Now, the path I am following is to run these two stages together, if you like – to eliminate both ego and soul, to eliminate both good and bad feelings to achieve a complete ‘self’-less state as is evident by the PCE.

The path to Enlightenment is a well-worn track and given that the bad, ‘evil’ and socially frowned-upon values are the easiest to eliminate, and one gets enormous kudos for doing so – to be adored and worshipped as a God-man or Goddess is about as much kudos as one can possibly get! But in questioning and eliminating the so-called good there is nothing in it for ‘me’ – indeed, it is the end of ‘me’ as a social identity and instinctual being. I become an anonymous non-entity, or non-identity, as well as having no instinctual-based self. It became very apparent to me that this social identity held the clue to tackling the other half of the feelings and emotions – the social identity is the ‘guardian at the gate’, as I have written recently. It is impossible for a ‘moral’ person to tackle the so-called good feelings, it is impossible for a ‘spiritual’ person to tackle the idea of a spirit, it is impossible for a ‘ethical’ person to tackle right and wrong, it is impossible for a ‘prudish’ person to tackle sexual issues. One must dismantle these values taught by Humanity in order to dig deeper – to get below the surface, as it were.

In my experience, this social identity is a conglomerate of all the beliefs, morals, ethics, values, principles and psittacisms that I have been programmed with since birth. It is only when I have eliminated or wiped this programming back to a stage where I cease to be a believer, where I cease the very act of believing, that I can look and investigate the core instinctual being that is ‘me’. A lot of work is done on the way in eliminating the effect of these emotions on one’s daily life such that one achieves a virtual freedom – a stable ‘base’ from which one can look with clear eyes at one’s instinctual self, without the guardians of the social morals, ethics, principles, etc. relentlessly churning and stirring. Another way of putting it is that one is then able to dismantle the psychic entity without the psychological entity ‘jumping up and down’ so much. You have reduced the effects of the instinctual emotions in daily life to almost zero such that ‘I’ is almost ephemeral, ethereal, ghostly and hardly able to maintain its existence.

Now this is, at the moment, just the experience of a few but I would say, on the basis of the evidence so far, that in order to avoid the trap of enlightenment, one needs to dismantle the beliefs that form one’s social identity in order to avoid the trap of becoming yet another Grand and Glorious identity. I would suppose that, as more and more people become actually free, that this ‘step outside Humanity’ will become less fearful and dramatic as one will have the confidence of knowing that others have done it.

As I wrote in my Journal –

[Peter]: ... ‘So far, only Richard had left this squabbling, sorrowful ‘Humanity’ behind but he had gone a torturous route through Enlightenment and out the other side. I saw myself as a pioneer on a new, much easier, more direct course. I am full of admiration for the Richard who did it. He likened it to discovering a new continent in the days of old, in a tiny, leaky sailing ship, taking years for the perilous journey. Once discovered it was then easier for others, and now people can fly there comfortably in hours. I likened myself similarly, knowing what I was looking for, but plotting an easier course, avoiding the ‘Rock of Enlightenment’ that had thwarted all previous attempts.’ ... Peter’s Journal, ‘Intelligence’

This avoiding the ‘Rock of Enlightenment’ is at the very crux of tackling beliefs – unless the belief in God, an after-life – any form of ‘something else’, ‘somewhere else’ or ‘sometime else’ – is fully investigated and de-bunked you could end up Enlightened. And for those who have experienced a PCE, to end up a God-man is but a piffling waste. Then once one has done one’s homework, demolished one’s social identity one takes the final step with confidence born out of surety of the many PCEs experienced in Virtual Freedom, not to mention the glimpses of ASC’s experienced as a contrast.

Well, that got a bit long, but I hope it is of use and may explain what many regard as the obsession of actualist with anything spiritual . One cannot be obsessed, preoccupied, consumed, engrossed and curious enough as to the machinations of the spiritual and psychic worlds. Not only are beliefs and passions preventing your being actually happy and harmless, there are also 160,000,000 million people who have died in wars fought this century alone and have died senselessly for these very same beliefs and passions.

When I talk of a sensible, sensate only experience I talk of it at the end of some 2 years of intensive effort aimed at eliminating the debilitating effects of having a social identity and having an instinctual self. I am talking of an experience whereby I have so totally and thoroughly changed myself to the point where feelings and instincts play no role in my life.

RESPONDENT: I do not know what to say to you Peter except that you seem to be obsessed with Osho. Twenty years of following Osho, it must be hard to let go of him. You are worse than some of Osho’s devotees.

PETER: It took me about 3 years to let go and a few years of checking out 2 other God-men and then about 6 months to ditch the lot after meeting Richard. It’s not easy to ditch the ingrained proposition that the only possible freedom from misery and sorrow is to become Enlightened. But if I can do it anyone can – it only requires that one looks at the facts as opposed to dearly hanging on to one’s beliefs. To find out the facts for oneself one only needs to read. As for being obsessed by Rajneesh it is you who are a disciple of his, it is you who keep mentioning him on this non-spiritual mailing list. But we could have a pact if you like – you don’t mention him and then I won’t. But I warn you, should you mention him then I will continue to point out what it is that he was flogging and I will quote his words so as to present the facts and avoid any emotionally-biased interpretations. As for being worse than some of Rajneesh’s devotees, the usual response from his disciples is that I am worse than a ‘born-again’ Christian.

RESPONDENT: Nonetheless, what I will not allow you to do is for you to shove your experiences and your interpretations down my throat. I am going to conduct my experiments and find out things by myself.

PETER: I take it you are going back to the Sannyas list then – they never question the Teachings there, let alone they dare to question the Teacher.

What is on offer here is an alternative to the whole Master-disciple business. The aim of this list is to offer and spell out this third alternative to remaining ‘normal’ or becoming ‘spiritual’.

Many people in the world seek a freedom from being trapped in ‘normal’, many aspire to something better and many have had glimpses of that possibility. Up until now there has been only one other alternative – spiritual ‘freedom’ or transcendence, which inevitably and inexorably leads one to an Altered State of Consciousness, resulting in the continuation of the Master-disciple business and thence to religious devotion, bigotry, persecution, hostility and war.

Now there is a simple choice, a third alternative is available, and it is for you to judge what you want to do with your life.

So, if you want me not to type some of Osho’s long discourses and not waste beautiful spring (autumn) days on this task then don’t quote him as an authority in your posts. He hadn’t a clue what we are talking about – after all, actual freedom hadn’t even been discovered before his death. It is factually impossible for him to have known about Actual Freedom.

But if you do mention Rajneesh, I do enjoy delving into some of Ancient Wisdom for a bit of de-bunking of myths and beliefs. I don’t even need to interpret – it is all written down in their very own words quite plainly what they are on about.

RESPONDENT: Long time, no read. I’m wrestling with some questions about religion. I can understand the facts that are against any form of religion = (belief). I know God = religion = war, separation and all that comes with it. I know on a personal basis that religion (belief) feeling guilty, taboos, = struggle and loss of freedom. Intellectually I do understand that any kind of religion doesn’t work. That also means no religion, no god to believe in. But I wonder where a figure like Jesus does or doesn’t fit in. What is the message? How about the bible? Is there nothing true about it? Are there only fairytales in it? I mean is there nothing practical to get from. Or was it at that moment the best that one could get. I hope you know what I mean.

PETER: As you know we have been having a lot of correspondence about the animal instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire lately on the list, and the fact that scientists are making the first discoveries to plot the source of instinctual feelings and behaviour in the human brain. For a fair while now attempts have been made to study human behaviour and get to the roots of both fear and aggression, and a particular study that shook me up was done by Stanley Milgram – it’s in the Peace chapter of my journal. It’s presently not on our web-site, so I’ll post it here as it may be of use in your deliberations –

[Peter]: ‘At one point in my investigation of the Human Condition I was studying what the psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and the like had discovered about human behaviour. I came across an experiment the results of which rocked me to my very core. A series of experiments were conducted at Yale University in the early sixties to test people’s obedience to authority. The most famous was the ‘Milgram experiment’. Stanley Milgram advertised for participants to undertake a ‘memory study’, and subsequently pairs of volunteers would turn up at the laboratory at the appointed time. One was designated as ‘teacher’, the other as ‘learner’, and it was explained to them that the study was concerned with the effects of punishment on learning. The ‘learner’ was then conducted into a room, seated in a chair, his arms strapped to prevent excessive movement, and an electrode attached to each wrist.

The real focus of the experiment was the ‘teacher’. After watching the ‘learner’ being strapped into place, he was taken into the main room and seated before an impressive shock generator. It had a row of thirty switches ranging from 15 volts – ‘Slight Shock’, to 450 volts – ‘DANGER, Severe Shock’. The ‘teacher’ was then told to administer the learning test to the man in the other room. When the ‘learner’ responded correctly, the ‘teacher’ moved on to the next item; when the other man gave an incorrect answer, the ‘teacher’ was told to give him an electric shock. He was to start at the lowest level and increase the level each time the ‘learner’ made an error.

The ‘teacher’ was a genuine ordinary participant, but he did not know that the ‘learner’ was actually an actor who received no shock at all, but was faking a response. The real aim of the experiment was to see how far a person would proceed in a situation in which he is ordered to inflict increasing pain on a protesting victim.

The actor-learner’s ‘response’ at about 150 volts was a demand for release, at 300 volts an agonizing scream; at 450 volts he was writhing in tortured agony. In the test EVERY participant went on to administer 300 volts to the learner, with sixty-five percent going to the full 450 volts! Most participants obeyed the instructor, no matter how vehement the pleading of the person being shocked, no matter how painful the shocks seemed to be, and no matter how much the victim pleaded and screamed to be let out. This experiment has since been repeated thousands of times at different universities, with identical results. And those participants were just the ‘you and me’ of this world! Ordinary, average, typical human beings!

Reading about this experiment had an earth-shattering effect on me. I had already had glimpses of this behaviour in myself. The willingness to kill for a cause in Rajneeshpuram, the thrill of killing that I had felt, the joy of revenge – and this is ‘me’ at my core! What more incentive did I need than this to rid myself of this lust for violence? This instinctual passions of aggression that blind nature has programmed in us all. I also read books and watched programs on TV about that horrendous outbreak of genocide – the Holocaust; the systematic starving, gassing and burning of millions of people. The camp guards were ordinary 50-year-old men and women – ordinary people like those in Milgram’s experiments, the ‘you and me’ of this world. When push comes to shove, human beings become monsters, and it does not take much pushing – we even seem to enjoy it! (...) Peter’s Journal, ‘Peace’

A year after writing this, the same issue is coming home to me again as I find that, after 2 years of ‘cleaning myself’ up – digging deep into my psyche and exploring the roots of fear and aggression, it is blatantly obvious that there is nothing that can be done, within the Human Condition, to eliminate malice and sorrow. No matter how good, moral, ethical or well intentioned the individual or group attempts to be, the instincts will always win out. There have been billions of people who have prayed for peace, attempted to live moral and good lives but peace on earth is still no closer to happening.

Peace on earth is an impossibility while human beings are instinctually driven to fight each other.

The clearly unworkable, unliveable and unsuccessful reliance on morals and ethics to bring peace on earth – let alone within tribal groups, families or couples – can surely now be abandoned as a failure. Of course, one would not want to venture off and begin to question the ‘good’ if one had no evidence that there was something better, and that evidence is the Pure Consciousness Experience. One of the prime qualities of the ‘self’-less state of the PCE is the fairy-tale like purity and perfection of the actual world, and the quality of a human being in a PCE is one of innocence – there is a total absence of instinctual fear and aggression. This is the innocence much sought after on the spiritual path but what one ends up with is feeling Good or becoming Divine – a perversion and human corruption of the actual state of innocence. A synthetic, fragile, supposed innocence that does nothing to tackle the inbuilt programming of fear and aggression in the amygdala – the ‘primitive brain’ within humans.

I had about 17 years of experience on the spiritual path and came to know at least four of the Gurus well enough to see that they didn’t practice what they preached. From this personal observation and a little bit of reading it is evident that the personal lives of all the Gurus are tainted by ‘normal’ emotions and behaviour despite their claims of Divineness. They get away with it because their disciples ‘turn a blind eye’ and as you said, because there has been nothing better on offer. The shenanigans and hypocrisy of the Gurus are reasonably well documented, as are those of most religious groups.

As one goes further back in time to the ancient and usually mythical God-men, such as Jesus, Buddha and Mahavira, we have to rely on the fairy stories of miracles and Divine attributes told in the Sacred texts and Holy Books. Many people attempt to claim that these Divine figures actually existed as flesh and blood human beings in some Golden Era, but an open-eyed reading of any of the texts reveals their purely mythical nature. I remember as a kid thinking what a funny idea the Western God was, and later being appalled when I read of the atrocities carried out in the name of various Gods and the churches. The war mongering – and whore mongering – of the Popes was particularly stunning. And I later found out that the Eastern Religions are no different. Modern ‘Spiritual’ belief is firmly founded on the fairy stories spun around mythical God-men and their fables, miracles and unliveable teachings. So, we are faced with the continuing failure of any spiritual or religious teachings to bring peace on earth after 5,000 years of billions of people attempting to live the unliveable and attain the unattainable – an actual innocence. An actual innocence is only attainable if one can rid oneself of the instinctual animal passions. Both the so called ‘good’ ones and the ‘bad’ ones – both have to go, for the experiment of praying to the Gods for help, living a Good life or becoming a God-man or Goddess, has clearly failed.

I have lived in a virtual freedom from instinctual passions for some 12 months now – ‘virtual’ as in as near as actual freedom as one can get while remaining a ‘self’. All of the coarser feelings and emotions such as anger, grievance, despair, sadness, resentment, etc. have disappeared from my life and my ties to a blighted Humanity are almost non-existent. But just in the last 2 days I have noticed a touch of annoyance on several occasions which is a clear sign that the only solution for my personal peace and for peace on earth is the complete elimination of my instinctual self – there are no short-cuts, there is no ‘other’ solution, for all have been tried and found wanting, by me and billions of others.

I remember when I first met Richard I joked to him that he should have a sign above the door that says – ‘Abandon hope – all who enter here’. I was fortunately ready to abandon hope (and trust) that following the traditional methods could ever make me happy and harmless. I had seen too much of the hypocrisy, power-plays, corruption, deception and duplicity in all religious and spiritual worlds. The utterly ‘self’-ish search for immortality that has forever plagued human beings must be clearly seen for what it is – narcissism in the extreme.

But it is not something that one person convinces another of – it is for each to make their own discoveries, make their own decisions as to what they want to do with their lives. It takes a bold decision to admit to failing to find peace and happiness, to admit that one is not being the best one can be, to admit that one is neither happy nor harmless. And then to decide to set out in completely the opposite direction to what everyone else is doing, one needs to be both desperate and daring.

For me, I always enjoy writing of the third alternative to remaining ‘normal’ or becoming ‘spiritual’ and participating in – and documenting – its success. To not only point out what doesn’t work but also to report on what does. This physical actual universe is too grand, too magnificent, too amazing for human beings to be forever trapped in primitive survival mode – endlessly battling it out for survival, endlessly living in fear. And we have all had glimpses of that – now there is a chance to put an end to malice and sorrow for those who want to.

But beware – it works!

RESPONDENT: Thanks for your words of encouragement ... (for personal peace and ‘peace-on-earth’) ... do you know anyone, (other than Richard), who has achieved, actual freedom permanently?

PETER: No. When I first met Richard I soon twigged that what he was on about was an actual peace that was already existing – and has always existed – in the actual world. This seemed so blindingly obvious and something I had always suspected and had glimpses of in Pure Consciousness Experiences. Surely others had seen it, were writing of it and living it? I spent about 3 months digging into both conventional wisdom and spiritual wisdom and found zilch. ‘Normal’ real world wisdom is that needs to be normally neurotic – bound by confused and conflicting morals and ethics, controlling one’s instinctual passions within tolerable limits and blindly fulfilling one’s instinctual and societal obligations as best one can. Generally it all works pretty well – except for all the wars, rapes, murders, tortures, corruption, suicides, etc. and people are quite often happy. Spiritual wisdom is that life on earth is an ‘unsatisfactory’ experience or that human suffering is essential in the Grand Scheme of things and that personal peace is to be realized by living as a God in a higher metaphysical ‘other world’.

Real world wisdom is that ‘you can’t change human nature’ – you just have to make the best of it. Spiritual wisdom is that ‘you can’t change human nature’ – you just have to transcend it and find your Divine Nature.

All I found was evidence of a trail of human investigation, experimentation and effort over millennia but inevitably the instinctual drive of the parasitical alien entity ‘self’ to stay in existence lead to altered states of consciousness and not a permanent freedom from one’s ‘self’. Personally, I found this wonderfully challenging, exciting and freeing as it lead to an understanding of why, after all the past efforts, peace on earth had not happened and could not happen. It meant I was able to do something about my personal peacefulness – being happy and harmless – and in doing so prove that peace on earth was possible. Being the first, sixth, sixtieth or six thousandth is irrelevant when it is your own peace that is at stake.

I just didn’t want to miss the bus that serendipitously arrived at my doorstep ...

P.S. – U.G. Krishnamurti seems to have arrived at some state ‘beyond Enlightenment’ but he doesn’t know how he got there, claims he is a sport of nature and doesn’t seem to fully enjoy being alive. Even the not-yet-permanent 99.9% perfection of Virtual Freedom seems far, far better than his state as he describes it. (...)

*

RESPONDENT: I, (this body), has left the marriage and the things I love many times but we reunite to enjoy the fruits of our life together ... of less than 100% companionship, less than 100% intimacy. I want 100% actual freedom ... 100% actual intimacy... and I know the cost is 100% high ... and believe the rewards are 100% great. Any comments about gambling?

The other realization was that the current Western fashionable interest in ‘spirituality’ I was involved in was a mere blimp on the history of Eastern religious pursuit. Literally billions had been pursuing Buddhism, Hinduism and the like for thousands of years and there are few more serious or intense devotees than the millions of Buddhists monks who devote their entire adult lives to meditation and ‘right’ thinking. And for what result – rampant narcissism, appalling poverty, stifling repression, entrenched ignorance, endemic corruption, debilitating theocracies, insidious sexism, etc.

Oh, and a few new God-men every now and again, to keep the system going.

I saw I was senselessly pissing into the wind – gambling my life away – all for my own ‘self’ interest. The odds are steep but becoming a God on Earth is the grandest of prizes. So, when the spiritual balloon finally popped for me – and I had already found the real world less than fulfilling – I figured I had ‘nothing left to lose’, which is the title I chose for my journal cover.

If you have ‘nothing left to lose’ then the path to Actual Freedom is a cinch. I firstly made it the most important thing to do in my life – numero uno ambition. I still worked, did all my normal daily things and most definitely did not retreat from the world as it is. Running the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive’ the method that allows you complete freedom to maintain normal life while cleaning yourself up on the way. This involved occasional adjustments or betterments to normal life but the actual changes are internal – to the brain’s programming.

The process is one of self-immolation, and personally I found the ridding myself of my social identity easy. I had already chopped and changed from normal to spiritual, had moved to different places, had different groups of friends, etc. so to extricate myself from the mess was not overly difficult. It did mean abandoning my spiritual friends who all stubbornly kept insisting that life on earth is a miserable experience. The business of replacing belief with fact was one of fascinating discovery, and the replacing of right and wrong, good and bad with silly and sensible was wonderfully liberating. The instinctual levels were a bit more of a ‘new territory’ as one is abandoning Humanity – in defiance of the genetically-encoded instinctual program that makes ‘me’ one of the species – but no emotional scars or memories whatsoever remain of what were, on occasions, ‘interesting’ experiences.

It’s been 2 ½ years now since I first came across Actual Freedom and the results are stunning. As one demolishes one’s self the actual world of purity and perfection becomes increasingly apparent and obvious – for it is always here, happening right now.

It is an amazing thing to journey into one’s own psyche and rewire one’s own brain ... and to experience the effects that result.

JONATHAN: 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 without fear of being ostracized or declared malicious and sorrowful for not being able to take on actualism lock stock and barrel and extirpating the psyche immediately, without considerable thought and investigation.

PETER: Firstly I am not finding an alternative to spirituality – I have found the alternative to spirituality which is why I can write with authority both about this new alternative and of the failings of the spiritual path. I know both very well indeed, from an experiential understanding, not an intellectual observation. I can only go by what you write to this list, and while you say you would not be here on this list if you were not fully aware of ‘the futility of continuing to play those (spiritual?) games’, you also post large chunks of wisdom from a channelled dis-embodied imaginary being who presumable resides in a mythical other-world. As such, I take what you post at face value and you appear to be at the stage of being in the spiritual camp, and testing the waters of actualism to see whether you are going to investigate further. You may well also be having glimpses, that to pursue actualism will be the end of No 8, as she is now. I could well be wrong, but this is what happened to me.

When I came across Richard I already had considerable motives for wanting to be free of the Human Condition, not the least of which was that I wanted to get rid of malice and sorrow from my life. One of the first steps towards doing this was to acknowledge that I did indeed harbour thoughts/ feelings of anger, irritation, blame, exasperation, frustration, resentment, impatience, antagonism, etc. on one hand and sadness, melancholy, loneliness, unhappiness, discontent, etc. on the other.

It’s a bit like Alcoholics Anonymous where the initial step in a cure for alcoholism is to admit you are an alcoholic. It is exactly the same with actualism. The initial step in eliminating the animal instinctual passions is to admit to their existence and to experience them in action in oneself. This is not as easy as it appears for we have been taught to deny them, repress them, control them or, in Eastern religious practice, transcend them. This is exactly the purpose of running the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ – to become aware of the beliefs, morals, and ethics that prevent this experiential investigation, so that one is then able to get down to the core instinctual being that is the very source of the instinctual passions.

When you say you are feeling as though you are being ostracized or declared malicious or sorrowful – what I did was acknowledge, despite my years of feeling special on the spiritual path, that I was simply an average human being and therefore, deep down, a malicious and sorrowful one. I found this acknowledgement a great blow to my spiritual pride of course, but when combined with the tantalizing lure that I could do something about the situation, I found I could not help but jump in.

As for this list, it’s simply the best forum on the planet and an ideal adjunct to and testing ground for the process of eliminating the ‘me’ who is blindly programmed to fight or flee, feel offended or seek revenge, etc. It’s the best thing since sliced bread.

PETER: Given that you qualified your question with the comment

[Jonathan]: ‘I ask because I have noticed that just reading about the human condition on the AF web site has made me loose my appetite for a lot of the music I once enjoyed’  [endquote]

perhaps you would like to share the reason you think you have lost your appetite?

JONATHAN: I like rock music. Most any genre of music has its negative side but something I have noticed recently is that almost every song that comes on the local rock station here is a song in worship of suffering. It’s like a badge of honour to feel depressed or alone. I have always been turned off by whinny music but in reading about the nuances of suffering I have become more aware of this revelling in sadness and pain in the music I listen to.

PETER: I’ve always found it very odd that people write to this mailing list complaining of the fact that what is on offer has been labelled actualism (purely in order to define it as being an alternative to the other ‘isms’, materialism and spiritualism) and likewise some people object that it has a method (cultivating an objective unconditional awareness as an alternative to remaining unaware or practicing a subjective conditional awareness so as to avoid unwanted feelings) or that they object that what is on offer involves an intent to do something (setting one’s sights on becoming happy and harmless, free of malice and sorrow as opposed to the materialist and spiritualist intent of having power over others).

As such it is somewhat refreshing to hear you report that you have understood something about the human condition simply by the act of becoming aware of the feelings and passions that underpin the human condition as they happen in your own experience.

After all, such a straightforward act of immediate awareness is exactly what asking oneself ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ is designed to promote as constant and ongoing – no more and no less.

RESPONDENT: Hi Peter/Vineeto, Would you agree that the ‘me’ becomes thinner and thinner as you apply actualism and for you it must have become so thin that it is impossible to detect? Richard took a different path (or is it the same towards the end?) – so the identity was visible (in fact stupendous) when deciding to self-immolate... What I am thinking is that the decision to self-immolate might need to occur when the ‘me’ is still substantial instead of thinning out too far – for better success?

PETER: It is important to keep in mind that there are two aspects to actualism – firstly that it is an alternative to both materialism and spiritualism and secondly that it elucidates a method whereby it is possible to become actually free from the human condition in toto.

Of the two aspects, the most important aspect is the first because the spread of actualism will inevitably lead to a decline of both materialism – the mindless pursuit of power, fame, wealth and possessions – and spiritualism – the even more mindless pursuit of power, fame, wealth and possessions in a supposed spiritual realm. Actualism unabashedly offers a robust and sensible alternative to the traditional human pursuits that have existed up until now – rather than battling it out with one’s fellow human beings in a grim instinctual battle for survival or falling into the eons-old trap of indulging in any one of the myriad fantasies of a spirit-ual ‘other world’, one sets one’s sights on becoming as happy and as harmless as is possible, each moment again.

Therein lies the significance of actualism because as more and more people make being happy and harmless their primary aim in life, the less need will there be for human beings to be antagonistic towards their fellow human beings and the less need there will be for them to feel resentful about being here. The stealth-like, word-of-mouth, spread of actualism will be what eventually brings an end to more insidious facets of the human condition – genocide, warfare, murder, infanticide, rape, child abuse, torture, corruption and so on.

Whilst I do acknowledge that it is an outrageous claim that the world-wide spread of actualism will inevitably result in the desperately longed-for peace on earth, it behoves one to take a clear-eyed look at what are commonly referred to as the ‘ills’ of humanity as well as make a dispassionate assessment of the continued failure of the traditional proposed solutions … and then to ask yourself, is it not high time to try something radically different and does it not make sense that this something involves you doing whatever is needed to eliminate malice and sorrow from your own life, to do your part to actualize peace on earth?

So as you can see, the first aspect of actualism will be of interest to those who are moved to do something practical about bringing about peace on earth by doing whatever they can to be as happy and as harmless as they possibly can, each moment again. Some people will however be attracted to take this pursuit even further and for those the second aspect of actualism is then available – an actual freedom from the human condition of malice and sorrow. You will notice that the first and second aspects of actualism are sequential – the first is the means to the second. To put it succinctly, it is obvious that one cannot expect to become actually free of malice and sorrow unless one is prepared to do everything possible to eliminate malice and sorrow from one’s life.

One of the attractions of actualism to me was that it is not an ‘all-or-nothing’ business and that it is not a group business. Anyone who is interested in actualism can take it as far as they want, or as far as they dare, and they will be the judge of their own success depending solely upon their own aspirations and expectations … whether that is to be a little more happy being here doing whatever it is they are doing as well as being a little more harmless to their fellow human beings, or whether it is to become actually free of the human condition.

As for your comment about a thinner ‘me’, my experience is that the incremental diminishing of the usual feelings of malice and sorrow certainly results in the feeling that ‘I’ am thinner or less substantial and yet – despite the fact that to live virtually free from malice and sorrow is way beyond human expectations – ‘I’ remain an ‘I’ until ‘I’ am no more.

PETER: Many people in the world seem to hold the belief that the ills of humanity are due to evil political or social systems or evil political leaders. In this scenario, resentment and anger leads to protest, dissent, rebellion and anarchy. If these feelings persist and take root, the thin veneer of civilization can readily break down and murder and acts of terrorism, war and genocide result.

RESPONDENT: What I am saying is that it may make a lot of a difference wether one believes (or used to believe) in a Dutch, a French, an American or Zimbabwean god, be this god Roman Catholic or Islamic and so on. To me it feels that the essence of alienation very well may be rooted in tribal conditioning; our very neighbours are in fact aliens, that has been a rather shocking revelation as I feel in fact that anyone I have ever known or been with only relatively was less alien to me; that includes my family ‘loved’ ones and acquaintances with two exceptions my niece and nephew who I find for some reason not to be alien but in fact fellow human beings, but then again the feeling of being human can only be inferred as from concluding that my parents where human so my sister must be and hence most likely my niece and nephew are also. I guess I still have to do some work...

PETER: The other day I was musing about the current set of conflicts and wars on the planet. The armed conflicts that readily came to mind are those between various Christian sects, between Muslims and Christians, between Hindus and Muslims, between Jews and Muslims and between various Animist sects. There are also armed conflicts between followers of various political and social ideologies – democracy versus communism, capitalism versus socialism, environmentalism versus consumerism and ludditism versus globalisation being the more obvious conflicts. As if this weren’t enough, are also territorial conflicts and disputes, many of which have been ongoing for millennia.

If one adds to this list the many inter-tribal conflicts and the ubiquitous inter-family conflicts, it is no wonder that the idea of ‘turning away’ from being here and searching for an ‘inner’ peace, or an imaginary peace after death, is so appealing. Rather than turn away and retreat ‘inside’, it makes sense to question why one believes in a God in the first place, why one feels nationalistic pride, why one favours one ideology over another, why one resents authority and why one blames others for having the exact same feelings and passions as one nurses in one’s own bosom?

So, yes, it sounds as if you have discovered that you have some work to do. But what a wonderful opportunity that you have found out that you can do something about your own malice and sorrow – that there is work to do and that there is an on-line resource to aid you in your work.

I thought to post a bit of my Journal because it relates to a time when I saw the work to be done literally as a mountain –

[Peter]: ... ‘This process of identifying various aspects of the human condition within me became a full-time occupation. Whenever I was not experiencing myself at the optimum level possible at the time, I had something, some aspect of the Human Condition, to look at. This constant looking within myself – my psyche – would then expose that particular belief or instinctual passion as silly, not sensible, and it would eventually disappear. Often the change was sudden and dramatic with a corresponding thrill of freedom, while other issues brought a slow, sluggish release. Often I found myself impatient at an apparent lack of progress, just to realise that this was exactly the issue to look at – perhaps the desire for excitement and achievement, or good old boredom. It was extraordinary that the next thing would come along, and the right circumstances and events would occur, confronting and aiding me. Sometimes, seeing through some part of ‘me’ as a mere belief or instinctual pattern would come as a flash of realisation, sometimes as a slow painful dawning, which I would fight tooth and nail, reluctant to even acknowledge, let alone throw out. But gradually I could notice the psychological entity becoming thinner, actually weakening its hold over me. It then became apparent to me that I was indeed fixing myself up as much as ‘I’ could!

At first it felt like a very delicate process, as I was extremely sceptical and wary, given the failures I had endured previously. I was aware of the gullibility and cunning that ‘I’ was capable of, but I knew that fooling myself was stupid in the extreme! I would continuously check myself, being scrupulously honest with myself. Whenever some issue was on the table, or even if I thought it had been resolved, I would ‘sweep around in the cupboard with a broom’ – as I called it. I would check around to make sure that nothing was hiding and no ‘dirt’ remained.

It felt like I was actually re-wiring my brain, and that is exactly was I was doing. I, as a human being had been wired or programmed in a certain way. This wiring consists of the beliefs that had been instilled in me from the time when I was first rewarded for ‘good’, or punished for ‘bad’ behaviour and included the morals, values and ethics that made me a fit member of society. On top of it, and developing from the age of about seven were the beliefs and traits I would take on and develop as ‘my own’ identity. Underlying all of it were the animal instinctual passions of aggression, fear, nurture and desire that we are born with.

I remember lying in bed one night and seeing all of this programming as a huge mountain that loomed over me – vast and impossible to climb. Then I went to sleep, forgot about it, and the next day found I was busy demolishing some particular part of it. It reminded me of how I would deal with fear in my life. I would stop my mind from going off into all the worst possibilities and just do the next thing that needed to be done. Applied to the process I was involved in, it worked well, and if it sometimes didn’t, it just meant waiting for the fear to wear itself out – which it always does – and then getting on with the job. So, I found myself using my own intelligence to re-wire my brain. With correct intent, diligence, and a reliance on ‘silly and sensible’, I found that I could challenge beliefs with the facts of the situation.

It is plainly silly to continue to believe something when the facts of the situation prove the belief to be without substance. If it doesn’t work, and I couldn’t make it work after all those years and after all that trying, then ‘get rid of it – try something new’, became my approach. Particularly when that belief is causing me to suffer or causing me to inflict suffering on others! The multitudinous beliefs around gender and sex are potent examples of the continual failure of the traditional mish-mash. There is always a third alternative to the traditional, failed approach – always! The third alternative to staying ‘normal’ or being religious or spiritual is to use my own intelligence to contemplate and discover the facts of what it is to be a human being. Without a belief in a God, there is nothing else to use anyway.’ Peters Journal, Intelligence

PETER to No 7: Just a note to follow on from my recent post.

I realized that I had posted two consecutive quotes from Mohan Rajneesh to the List and thought I would include a quote from Jiddu Krishnamurti just to indicate that the ‘I do not know – therefore I am Wise and Holy’ syndrome is endemic in all spiritual teachings –

[J. Krishnamurti]: December 20 I do not know.

‘If one can really come to that state of saying, ‘I do not know,’ it indicates an extraordinary sense of humility; there is no arrogance of knowledge; there is no self-assertive answer to make an impression. When you can actually say, ‘I do not know,’ which very few are capable of saying, then in that state all fear ceases because all sense of recognition, the search into memory, has come to an end; there is no longer inquiry into the field of the known. Then comes the extraordinary thing. If you have so far followed what I am talking about, not just verbally, but if you are actually experiencing it, you will find that when you can say, ‘I do not know,’ all conditioning has stopped. And what then is the state of the mind? ...

We are seeking something permanent – permanent in the sense of time, something enduring, everlasting. We see that everything about us is transient, in flux, being born, withering, and dying, and our search is. But that which is truly sacred is beyond the measure of time; it is not to be found within the field of the known’. The Book of Life: Daily Meditation with J. Krishnamurti

The other reason to include this quote is to indicate that I have no particular axe to grind in relation to Rajneesh – he was merely yet another in a long, long, long line of failed Gurus who promised lotus flowers and left nothing but mud, bewilderment, ignorance, unliveable teachings and shattered dreams in their wake. Krishnamurti exited quietly leaving behind stories of clandestine love affairs, intrigues and malicious legal battles. Rajneesh had the temerity to declare ‘I leave you my dream’ on his death bed. ‘His Dream’ had collapsed in tatters around him in Oregon ten years earlier while he sat in his room in Splendid Isolation, above the mundane activities of the building and running of a ‘City to Challenge God’. His dream failed, a ‘million lights’ didn’t light up the world, and peace is yet to miraculously descend on the planet, let alone in the Pune Ashram. And yet another religion is born, yet another group following their own particular dead God-man who for them was the master of masters, the only God, the beloved, the Sacred One. So ‘in love’ with their God-man, so trusting, so unquestioning loyal and devoted, that they will figuratively and literally surrender their life for Him.

The only reason I write about Mohan Rajneesh is that I know the whole Rajneesh Religion ‘inside-out’, so to speak. I participated fully in a contemporary formation of a religion – a microcosm of the founding of the thousands of religions that have been formed before and are still forming around God-men and God-women.

Yesterday someone asked me if I had had any feedback from friends to whom I had given a copy of my Journal. I said the silence had been deafening and one had even told me ‘it was good that I had got what Rajneesh had been teaching’ and wondered why I was not grateful to him. Thinking about it again, I realized that many who read the writings of Actual Freedom and its uncompromising non-spiritual stance, conveniently see it merely as Guru-bashing and miss the main point.

It is obvious that gurus have been gleefully indulging in bashing their fellow-Gurus for millennia as a ‘device’ to collect and gather more disciples who are willing and eager to believe that they, and only they, are peddling something new and special. This is nothing more than the power battles of the God men, a Divine and psychic version of the secular, instinct-fuelled battles that rage between various groups of humans animals on the planet. The bigger slice of the market the more power for the Guru and it matters not a fig whether he or she is still alive. More often than not it is better if the Guru is dead as imagination, myth and surrender are better sustained if one’s God is ‘on the other shore’, waiting for you after death.

But to see Actual Freedom in spiritual terms and to see it as mere Guru-bashing is to miss the point entirely of what is being offered here on this List and in the writings. What is required of an actualist is to undertake a complete, thorough and clear-eyed examination of what it is that is being taught by these God-men and exactly why it has been, and still is, so seductively attractive. This process, if undertaken with scrupulous sincerity, will bring one to the realization that the whole of Ancient Wisdom is based upon various myths and imaginary fairy tale beliefs of life after death. This spirit-ual belief in an after-life is constantly fuelled and fired by the survival instincts and, as such, is a passionately held belief given credence by hormonally-charged hallucinations and delusionary states. ‘I’, the parasitic entity that dwells in the flesh and blood body, will do anything to survive, will actively and passionately do anything to stay in existence – anything to deny the fact of physical death. So passionate is this belief that millions, upon millions, upon millions of human beings have killed for, and died for, their own particular version of this spiritual belief. The very survival instinct within human beings is directly responsible for the continuous carnage of warfare on this planet – all pursuit of a fairy-tale of life after death for ‘me’ who lives inside this flesh and blood, physical, mortal body.

This is why one needs to read the words of the God-men and see for oneself exactly what is on offer, and exactly what has been delivered.

I got to musing a bit more about the reaction to my Journal, and to Richard’s Journal, and wondered at the lack of reaction evident in most. I remembered back to my first reading of Richard’s Journal and what my reactions were at the time.

Firstly, what he was saying made sense – it was obvious to me that everyone has got it wrong; everyone knows that because fear and aggression in the form of sorrow and malice are endemic on the planet. It took a bit of digging into both Richard’s writings and those of the Gurus to understand that what he was saying was brand spanking new and a quantum leap in the opposite direction to the spiritual. When a Guru says ‘everyone has got it wrong’, what he means is ‘everyone else has got it wrong and only I have got it Right, for I am the messenger of the Divine’. This shallow Guru-bashing then is passed off as ‘the real Truth, the only Path’, whereas what can initially appear as the Wisdom of the God-man is no more than his particular condemnation of the religions of other God-men. Merely to claim that others have got it wrong while blindly ignoring their own role in the on-going tragedy is both ignorance and denial, but then again, if one feels oneself to be God, one is undeniably deluded and absolutely blinded to any common sense.

Actual Freedom is a freedom from the insidious fairy-tales told by all the Gurus – no exceptions, no maybes, no ‘it’s only the same thing that everybody else is saying’. For me, this meant that I would have to desert my Master, not only being ungrateful but disloyal as well. It soon became obvious that this meant I would also have to desert Humanity – be a traitor to Humanity – to be ‘a rat deserting a sinking ship’, as Richard put it recently.

And the only way ‘out’ – to actually become free – was to do it, despite these values, ethics and morals that bound me to Humanity’s perpetual suffering and fighting. Once one begins to break these bonds and ties, to actualize one’s own freedom, one discovers that one has been instinctually programmed to be a member of the species, and to break with Humanity – the emotional-backed concept that binds the species together – necessitates an extinction of the these instincts in operation in this flesh and blood body. The ending of ‘my’ connection to Humanity is the ending of ‘me’.

So, even in the first weeks after reading Richard’s Journal, I knew what the consequences of my actions would be if I gave the path to Actual Freedom a ‘go’. But I had had enough experience to not get into the trap of believing what others said merely because it sounded ‘right’ – so I wanted some practical proof that Actual Freedom worked. In the beginning of the Richard’s Journal are the chapters on living together in peace and harmony, ending the battle of the sexes and unravelling the mystique of sex, and this is what I decided I would ‘cut my teeth on’ – to see if this would work. I simply acknowledged that what I, and every body else, had been doing didn’t work and would never work, and decided to actually try something new. Not just read, study and understand, but put it into practice and see if it worked. To see if I could live with one other person in peace and harmony and get to the bottom of the mess of human sexuality. Actualism is not a cerebral pastime nor a feeling-based escape from ‘reality’ – it is a full blooded commitment to expunging the alien entity within this flesh and blood body that prevents one being the universe experiencing itself as a human being. Anything less is chicken shit.

The spiritual path eternally promises, dreams and offers hope but it never has, and never can, deliver peace on earth. Actualism delivers the dream of peace that many humans sincerely seek and puts it into practice, but only for those willing to head in the opposite direction to the ‘Tried and Failed’. My friend who said I was living what Rajneesh taught was half-right in that I am living beyond the wildest dreams of Humanity. But I only do that because I abandoned the hackneyed spiritual Wisdom based on denial and ignorance, ‘back-tracked’ all the way out of the spiritual world and set off down the path of intrepid investigation in pursuit of common sense. The path that is 180 degrees in the opposite direction to that which every one else follows. The path that everyone says don’t go on or you will end up irresponsible, evil, insane, and a traitor to Humanity to boot! That is the meaning of everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong.

But the first thing one needs to do is find out whether you have been ‘sold a dummy’, or not. That was my first reaction to the idea that there is a third alternative to staying ‘normal’ or becoming ‘spiritual’ – ‘Does that mean I have been sold a dummy?’ But the only way to know that was to find out for myself. And to undertake that investigation is to go against one’s instinctual programming that binds one to being a member of the herd called Humanity.

The return for the effort is peace, on earth, in this lifetime, as this flesh and blood body. Peace is a simple, unambiguous term meaning actually free of malice and sorrow.

So, maybe this has been of use to you. I personally always find it useful to dig in and find out what the common objections to being happy and harmless are – in other words, what ‘my’ objections are – and then dare to look at the facts of what it is to be a human animal.

To explore, within one’s own psyche, the emotional passions of malice and sorrow and to investigate the commonly held beliefs that perpetuate their existence.

To discover the illusions, ‘within’ and ‘without’, will bring one – inevitably and inexorably – to one’s senses.

And then you get to find out the meaning of life.

And it’s the journey of a ‘life’-time.

Absolutely thrilling ...