PETER: When I first came across actualism one of its major attractions was my interest in getting to the root of the sexual malaise such that I could freely enjoy the sensual delights of sexual play – something that I found impossible to do whilst shackled by religious/spiritual morality, be it either the Western variety or the Eastern, whilst remaining firmly ensconced on one side of the gender divide, let alone whilst being compelled by the animal instinctual passions to be a sexual predator.

RESPONDENT: My sexual social conditioning is both family derived and spiritual (Christian). It sounds something like this: find a suitable good looking/loving woman, bond/marry with her (eventually have 2 kids), respect her and ‘enjoy’ a lasting relationship without cheating on her.

The problem is that after I am involved in a relationship for a longer period of time the sex is not as great as in the beginning so I tend to look for new partners.

PETER: Yet again evidence that the instinctual passions are ultimately stronger than social conditioning, hey?

RESPONDENT: Is your sexual pleasure diminishing/increasing/remaining constant in quality as time passes?

PETER: Nowadays sex is such an ever-fresh sensual experience that I no longer suffer from the problem of feeling trapped, being bored, wanting to move on, imagining I am having sex with someone else, retreating inside in order to evoke a personal bliss, being senselessly driven to ejaculate, and so on.

It’s quite remarkable what is to found at the end of the path that humanity has always hung a sign that says ‘do not enter here’.

*

PETER: In hindsight, it was fortunate that I had made living with at least one person in utter peace and harmony my number one priority in life at the time and this meant that I then had sufficient motivation to experientially investigate the mores and moralities of societal sexual and gender conditioning as well as the murky depths of the human instinctual sexual drive – to push on beyond where I had always stopped before.

RESPONDENT: What I notice is that after sex there is a very pleasant atmosphere, anxiety-free, relaxing and the problems, mores and moralities vanish albeit for a brief period. I enjoy these moments more and more and as they begin to slip away I track the gradual arising of the anxiety level and what causes it.

PETER: As a suggestion, I found it vital to check out the precise nature of the feelings I was having not only after having sex but also whilst having sex. It’s also found it good to keep in mind that any prolonged or strenuous physical activity can produce an increase in hormonal levels that induce feelings of well-being and even euphoria – I have friends who get a high from the hormones produced from prolonged running.

*

PETER: Personally, I have found the whole investigation into sexuality to be one of the most daunting of practical investigations as well as one of the most rewarding. Daunting in that one inevitably confronts the most strident of societal moralities and taboos as well as the strongest of the human instinctual drives both of which make the investigation close-to-the-bone as it were – and rewarding in that, as each murky layer is seen through, one moves closer to the intimacy that living with another person in utter peace and harmony actually is.

RESPONDENT: It’s so easy when not in the grip of the values, beliefs and instinctual urges that dominate 99% of my waking life. In such moments it’s surprising that they exist at all and have such a debilitating effect on my well-being. In the after-sex moments I can see the utter futility of real-world struggles and controls, they don’t exist at all.

PETER: I can only reiterate what I have said about putting the desire for an actual intimacy first – unless you are interested in the tantric ‘sex-for-the-sake-of-getting-blissed-out-of-it’ approach that is becoming more and more fashionable these days.

*

PETER: Again with the benefit of hindsight – and something which is obvious to me now – the only reason I was able to make such an investigation, and reap such rewards, was that I made intimacy my first priority which meant that getting to the roots of the sexual malaise became a subsequent preference.

RESPONDENT: The sexual act is the most direct form of intimacy that I experience and I usually experience it not with my partner as social conditioning somehow gets in the way (I’m working on that) but with (new) partners that are interested only in sex with no subsequent expectations.

PETER: And as I have said, the intimacy that I sought was the intimacy that comes from living with another person in utter peace and harmony – from the shared mundane experiences of eating a meal together, watching a television program together, having a coffee in a café, shopping for food, strolling through town, tending the garden, having a chat as well as the mundane experience of mutually enjoyable sex. As is evident from a pure consciousness experience – there is far more to intimacy than having sex with someone.

RESPONDENT: It pays off to keep the eye on the ball in case you have not read that post… snipped from <No 57 Re: Nice enough but ... (plain text) >

[Peter]: ... ‘It started off as a slightly awkward social evening but as it continued it proved to be profound for me. I do not remember a great deal of the post-dinner conversation, but a few things stick in my memory.

‘Everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong,’ Richard said at one stage. I was starting to have some doubts about Enlightenment, and that ‘crack in the door’ was enough for me to reply, ‘Really? – I’ll think about that for a bit’.

‘The only danger is you might become Enlightened,’ said Richard about the experimental method he had devised to eliminate the identity in toto – that psychological and psychic entity that is the root of sorrow and malice and that dwells within all human beings.

‘It is possible for a man and a woman to live together, twenty-four hours a day, in utter peace, harmony and equity, totally enjoying each other’s company, and the sex is great,’ said Devika. Now I was really interested!’ Peter’s Journal, Foreword

I’d be a hypocrite if I were not to admit that one of the reasons that I decided to deeply dive into the third alternative when I read Peters Journal. Ah well Boys will be boys I guess.

PETER: You forgot ‘and girls will be girls’ – unless you think that only half of the human species are capable of enjoying the pleasures of sexual play.

RESPONDENT: It is mainly the difference in plumbing systems of man and women that makes the difference so interesting and at times very attractive.

PETER: Whilst it is the difference in societal conditioning and instinctive programming of men and women that makes sexual play so often disappointing and at times even objectionable. Whenever I have had the opportunity to discuss the topic of sex with either men or women I find that the same issues equally plague both sexes and nowhere did I find anyone with solutions, and especially so in the spiritual world.

I have always said that the opportunity of unravelling the human sexual enigma was one of the things that attracted me to actualism – after all there is no more intimate activity that one can have with a fellow human being than to share the sensual pleasures of mutual sexual play. And a fascinating journey it has been as I experientially ventured through my own gender conditioning and my own spiritual/ religious morals and taboos – my social identity – and on into the malevolent instinctual urges that this social conditioning is designed to pacify … until I finally came out the other side.

The result of making that exploration – a very down-to-earth exploration – is that sex is now always sensually pleasurable, always fresh, novel, easy and playful. The other aspect of having made this investigation is that increasingly there have been more and more experiences of an actual intimacy with a fellow human being – the uncomplicated innocence of mateship that the fickle feeling of love always promises but never delivers.

RESPONDENT: How did you handle the instinctual desire of sex/lust? Isn’t it very lucrative? How can you let go of that?

PETER: Well, in hindsight it was very easy to ‘let go of’. The only thing that is needed is to experience the dark side of the sexual predatory instinct – as in allow oneself to uninhibitedly feel the full range of feelings and deep-seated emotions associated with the sexual predatory instinct – and that experience itself was enough for me to want to let go of it as though it were a hot brick I was holding in the palm of my hand, as it were.

The other point worth mentioning is that in my experience the best way to experience the full gamut of the feelings and deep-seated emotions is if one is having sex with another person. This way one can avoid the pitfalls of intellectualizing about something that can only really be explored by a practical exploration. The reason I say this is that many people who have become aware of the dark side of their own sexual nature opt to run for the shelter of celibacy rather than use opportunity that human sexual attraction for another human being and sexual play with another human being offers to experientially investigate one’s own accrued sexual mores as well as one’s own sexual instinctual passions … in action as it were.

I don’t know what your particular circumstances are but when I came across actualism, I made a deliberate decision to find a female companion in order not only to finally get to the bottom of the morass of the sexual mores and instincts that plague all human interactions but also to fully investigate the love/hate trap that all human beings inevitably fall into in order that I could eventually experience the actual intimacy with another that I so craved yet was so afraid of.

I have always said that actualism would have been worth it for what I have discovered about sex alone but upon reflection what I have discovered about sex and the degree of freedom I enjoy from the debilitating societal sexual mores and blind nature’s rather crude sexual programming has come as a direct result of my success in being able to live with my current companion, sexual partner and playmate in utter peace and harmony.

The expression ‘be wary of putting the cart before the horse’ comes to mind.

RESPONDENT: Now, back to my query, I was going to ask you about ‘libido’. Lately I have been experiencing very strong emotions where beliefs and thoughts seem to be absent …heart pounding, corporal temperature change, and an inability to do anything but wait it out, leads me to believe they are the bare instincts or, at least, of a very close nature.

PETER: I recall in my early days of becoming interested in actualism, when I began to understand how radical it was and began to get a glimpse of the consequences of becoming a ‘boots and all’ actualist, I also had many head-spinning and heart-pounding experiences. I remember having many bouts of fear in the early days but I soon learnt to turn them into the thrill of the doing of the actualism method.

Actualism is no small thing to consider doing, let alone totally commit yourself to the doing of it.

RESPONDENT: One of these in particular is what I come to think as the ‘libido’; and I am in a sort of contradiction with this feeling. At first, I could not experience this without the need to masturbate…it was just to damn strong. I even ejaculated once just by looking at someone (I had a good view) and this is (I was going to say not in my nature) not ‘me’ at all, as I have always had the utmost respect for women; another hint that it could be the uncovered instinctual passions.

PETER: Only you can know what it is that you are feeling at any time – this being the whole point of the actualism method after all. The only comment I would offer is a general one – that often the feeling of fear can be accompanied by a heightened sexual excitement. I don’t know much about the specific chemicals involved at all but it would seem that the hormonal rush that follows from being in fearful situations or undertaking dangerous activities is almost identical to the hormonal rush that produce the oft-uncontrollable feelings of sexual excitement. In other words, one instinctual reaction can be accompanied by another instinctual reaction or can precipitate another instinctual reaction.

This accords with my own experience that the instinctual passions are an inseparable package – good is but flipside of evil – which is why it makes sense to pay equal attention to the so-called good feelings as it is to the more obvious bad feelings.

RESPONDENT: Although it is no longer a problem and the last week especially I have had very curious experiences with this. I am no longer driven by this sexual drive in that I don’t even get an erection if I don’t want to, even if the feeling is strong and persists.

PETER: In my experience in observing the feelings that result from being an instinctually driven sexual predator, the whole mating compulsion with its accompanying social rituals is akin to being on an emotional roller coaster ride – most especially in the early post-pubescent years. One of the things I wanted to do in actualism was to free myself from being an unwitting victim of the blind procreation-compulsive passions – not only for myself but also to free others from the ungracious emotional demands and gratuitous mood swings that inevitable result from being an instinctually driven sexual predator.

RESPONDENT: In fact, I have found this feeling to be a natural stimulant, which helps me stay awake, and the friend I am living with is rather surprised by my present active life at night. Quite a handy tool for studying, or walking at night, and it fuels my corporal energy if I am feeling tired or lazy.

PETER: As I said before only you can know what you are feeling at any time and only you are able to make sense of what you are feeling at any moment in time. However getting to this stage of attentiveness does take persistence, as it is not something that is in any way natural.

RESPONDENT: Until recently I had not comprehended what Richard meant when saying he has no ‘libido’ but has an active sexual life, and I still don’t understand it completely, but I suspect it implies having an erection without this feeling I am now experiencing … after all, this feeling is ‘me’. That’s why it also has to be eliminated right? Please correct me if I have misunderstood.

PETER: Speaking personally, the reason I wanted to eliminate the blind instinctual drive to procreate was that I understood – and then experienced – that it prevented me from enjoying the pure sensual delight of sexual play with a willing partner and that its elimination would also free my partner from my ungracious emotional demands and gratuitous mood swings.

Because my intent had two parts to it – being happy and being harmless – I was sufficiently motivated to make the effort to pay scrupulous attention to the invidious nature of my instinctual sexual passions such that they have now almost completely disappeared out of my life.

RESPONDENT: But here is where the contradiction lies: the only way to feel this ‘sexual energy’ is if I am with a woman or if I ‘imagine’ being with a woman. I know that Richard has advised against using imagination … so would it be sensible to let this ‘libido’ come of its own accord? Or can I keep provoking it? It’s quite fun really, I will confess, and it has its uses. But even if I do provoke it, once it’s set in motion, I can stop imagining and it will remain for a while. I am really interested in your comments about all this and any suggestion will be well received.

PETER: I can remember in my teenage years that I would often get rushes of sexual energy that were neither an actual reaction nor an imagined reaction – often erections would simply happen of their own accord in the most inappropriate places. I soon learnt that the way to bring on the rush of sexual energy was to indulge in imagination and the habit continued on through my life even when I was having sex with a willing flesh and blood woman. I’ve come to learn by experience that not only is imagination a very poor substitute for the actual sensual delight of sexual play – continuing to indulge in imagination is one of the prime factors that prevents the possibility of experiencing the actual sensual delight of sexual play.

The other aspect of the instinctual sexual drive – or ‘sexual energy’ – is that its physical manifestation is electro-chemical in nature. The onset of the sexual drive is always accompanied by an influx of chemicals throughout the body creating a physical as well as an emotional craving to penetrate and impregnate or to be penetrated and impregnated. Because the instinctive drive to procreation is vital to the survival of animal species, the chemical flows that accompany this drive are amongst the strongest – and in the human species no more so at the precise moment of sperm release and sperm acceptance. Because these chemical flows are also infused throughout the brain, human beings experience these flows as sexual feelings and emotions culminating with a bonus ‘hit’ if the sexual act is successfully concluded.

Many of these chemical flows are so euphoric in their nature that they are both compulsive and addictive – one wants more because the euphoric feeling is never completely satisfactory and one is driven to keep coming back for more because the feeling is so fleeting. This fleetingness of satisfaction is part and parcel of blind nature’s programming designed to ensure that the procreation of the species is as abundant and as random as possible so as to best ensure the species’ survival and evolution. To paraphrase Richard – ‘Blind nature cares not a fig about my happiness, or my companion’s happiness, or any human being’s happiness for that matter’.

So the question is – would one be willing to forgo the addictive feelings sourced in the instinctual sexual passions, either from flesh-on-flesh contact or from fanciful thinking in order to be happy and harmless in one’s sensuous sexual play with a fellow human being? Personally I found the whole exploration into the instinctual sexual passions to be one of the closest-to-the-bone investigations I made in actualism simply because it involves one of the most intimate actions one shares with a fellow human being – flesh-on-flesh is after all as intimate as one get.

Should you not have a sexual partner with whom to investigate the societal taboos and experience the invidious nature of the sexual passions in practice then no need to worry – the full range of instinctual passions are available to explore in practice, when and as they occur, in your daily life. Each of the instinctual reactions – fear, aggression, nurture and desire – cause a flush of chemicals throughout the body and, with due diligence, one can eventually become aware of the resulting feelings and emotions when and as they occur. Again these chemical flows are not only automatically produced but they are thoroughly addictive by nature, which explains why human beings are addicted to doing physically dangerous activities, to feeling angry at someone or something, to watching violent movies or listening to sad music, to having power over others, to craving the plaudits of others and so on.

So as you can see, there is ample to do if you want to be a practicing actualist – daily everyday life is rich with opportunities for exploration into one’s psyche – without any need whatsoever to indulge in imaginary scenarios in order to provoke desirable feelings. Actualism is not at all about exploring the world of make-believe – rather one needs to intentionally abandon the world of make-believe if one at all aspires to live in the pristine purity of the actual world of the senses.

All that is needed to put actualism into practice in one’s daily everyday life is the sincere intent to be happy and to be harmless. This unwavering intent will then give you the impetus to make the stubborn effort required to become aware of how you are experiencing this moment, the only moment you can actually experience being alive.

RESPONDENT: I’ve read of the natural kind of spontaneous interactions when Peter-Vineeto, or Richard-his partner decide to have sexual relations. Since I’m not currently involved, most of my sexual activity involves masturbation, which I see is obviously mind-based fantasy.

PETER: What I discovered in my experience with sexual desire was that when the initial full-on passionate fantasy with a partner peters out then a purely mind-based fantasy sets in. From what I can gather from observation and talking to others, this is common to the human condition.

RESPONDENT: When I’m having a PCE or doing fine I find myself free from desire. This feels good. Actually unfulfilled desire is physically and emotionally uncomfortable.

PETER: Instinctual desire, whether unfulfilled or fulfilled, is not only ‘uncomfortable’, as you put it, it is also an impediment to peace and happiness.

The spiritualists say that the heartless pursuit of materialistic desire brings neither happiness nor peace but they are only half-right, because what is evident to a clear-eyed, non-spiritual, observer is that the mindless pursuit of spiritualistic desire also brings neither happiness nor peace. The only solution is to be totally free from the instinctual passion of desire, whether it be material – money, power and fame – or spiritual – money, power and fame.

RESPONDENT: If you folks weren’t involved how does non-identity emotive-less sexuality manifest? Before I send this let me question myself? I get that sex is functional like going to the bathroom, eating etc. It is different though since it involves a partner.

PETER: If you remember back to when puberty set in, sexual desire is not a function like going to the bathroom or eating – it is an all-consuming obsession that is only reigned under control by strict social morals, codes and laws. This combination of the blind instinctual compulsion and the impedient social taboos is what prevents the free and innocent enjoyment of sex.

The only solution is to be totally free from both the social-spiritual mores and the animal-instinctual passion for sex.

RESPONDENT: You folks give such raves to your sex lives these days. I would really appreciate more detail if you are comfortable.

PETER: Sexual play, when freed of social taboos and the instinctual drive to procreate, is pure unfettered sensual delight manifested as an actual physical intimacy with a fellow human being. Many people have had this experience briefly in their lives but the full range of instinctual passions and social mores soon set in to complicate and contaminate the experience.

RESPONDENT: My greatest sexual encounters seem filled with lusty animal like passion; intense focused kissing + contact unique to the desires and predilections of my partner. It all seems very based on my deep contact & emotive intimacy with my partner. Since there are so few female actualists, it doesn’t bode well that I would find a potential partner who wasn’t interested in love and the concomitant emotive involvement that 99.9% of the world exists in. I can still go about my business of self-immolation but that’s the facts.

PETER: I would suggest that if you ‘go about your business of self-immolation’ – in other words, the business of becoming happy and harmless – you will make yourself a more appealing potential partner than you are now. Then anything can happen.

Some years ago, when I sat down and thought about my failures to break free of my sexual prudishness and rapaciousness, I came to the fact that my failures were my failures and not my partner’s failures. This realization meant that I gave up the fruitless search for a perfect partner or, even more debilitating, accepting that perfection was not possible. I was then free of my own self-imposed restrictions such that I got on with the business of freeing myself of my moral and ethical inhibitions that prevented me from investigating the instinctual sexual drive that was at the root of my inability to freely enjoy the delights of sex.

As you said –

[Respondent]: ‘When I’m having a PCE or doing fine I find myself free from desire. This feels good.’ [endquote].

So it makes sense that when you are not having a PCE or not ‘doing fine’, then you have something to look at, something to do and something to change. This way you will begin to become aware of, investigate and eliminate the social and instinctual programming that prevents you from seeing and treating females as fellow human beings and not as objects of sexual predilection, resentment or aversion.

For me, being able to experience the intimacy that comes from the demolishing of the programming that divides humans into two alien predatory camps is of greater significance than the personal rewards of unfettered sensual pleasure. But then again, I always put being harmless just a bit ahead of being happy, because you can’t be happy without being harmless.

GARY: I did obtain an introduction to Evolutionary Psychology off the net which perked my interest. I can see some obvious similarities to some of the things we talk about here. You are right that much scientific writing is not only incomprehensible to the average layman (me) but also replete with misleading emotional-moral-ethical perspectives.

Interestingly, the information from Wiener, entitled ‘Young Men More Likely to Wage War’, is a corroboration of a view I have had for a long time: that there is nothing more dangerous than an 18-19 year old male.

PETER: Yes, and the only thing more powerful is a cute 15-16 year old female who ‘has eyes’ for him. The females of the species have developed quite an arsenal of covert powers to seduce, influence and control men, and these essential survival skills are passed from one to the other by imitation and word of mouth. The instinctual sex-drive has always been the downfall of men, which is why the traditional paths to spiritual ‘freedom’ have always emphasized the evil of sex, and encouraged celibacy. All of the Gurus have battled with the evil of sex and for many it has been their downfall. Only recently, the most powerful man in the world was brought to his knees by a young woman eager and willing to get on hers. Couldn’t resist the pun. According to the reports it was a flash of panties that was the original enticement, but history is littered with examples of the supremacy of women’s covert power over men. This is not a denigration of women for they are only playing out the instinctual role that blind nature has programmed them to play, exactly as men play out the role they are programmed to play.

Ultimately each sex is locked into an instinctual battle for domination over the other – with mutually-agreed ceasefires, for the sake of the offspring, the norm for most relationships. The marvellous thing about becoming free of the animal sexual instinctual drive is that the male breaks free of power women have over him and women are freed of the humiliating and debilitating games they have been taught and programmed to play. Then sexual play is freed of inane societal moral and ethical taboos, freed of being a battleground between the sexes in which neither side wins and freed of the instinctual sexual imperative. The sex act then becomes innocent sensuous scrumptious and sumptuous play simply because it is freed of guilt, shame, evil and the blind senseless drive to impregnate, or be impregnated.

GARY: That point gets around to what I really want to talk about in this post, which is my recent discoveries regarding the instinctual passions. I feel I have begun to experience, in a more directly intimate way, what previously I had only had very brief, rather superficial glimpses of: the primitive passions at work in me, the so-called battle between Good and Evil. I awoke yesterday morning in a state of anxious dread. As I investigated into it, I found what I would call a fear of annihilation, a naked dread that I wanted to get away from as much as I could. There was raw libidinal energy also swirling around – I seemed to go from fear to sex in a heartbeat and it was very powerful.

I feel I am getting now a direct look at the caldron of seething passions that are ordinarily contained by the thin veneer of morals and ethics. My most obvious spiritual practices were the first thing to go overboard, but as I continue in this work, I am uncovering the less obvious and infinitely more subtle morality and ethicality that is designed to keep these instincts in check. I have noticed that my way of expressing this in language to myself is definitely archaic: words like fornicator, lecher, warlord, beast, wolf, etc. come into my consciousness and I feel I am peeling away the thin layer of 20th century civilizing influences and getting into a substratum of morality that harkens back to the Christian Dark Ages, or at least it seems that way.

PETER: Yes, this dark side of human nature is a fascinating exploration. All religions, be they eastern or western, have condemned sex per se, for there is no more powerful urge in the instinctual repertoire. The instinctual package is designed primarily as a reproductive program for the species and secondarily as a defensive program. Therefore, there is no greater evil to the priests, men of God or the Gurus than the crude sexual drive for it ultimately has the power to override all sense and ‘good’ness.

Some sorts of rules are necessary to keep the lid on the animal instinctual passions and the religious/spiritual texts are littered with moral goods and evils, and ethical rights and wrongs. Religious morality is ultimately enforced by the deep-seated threat of damnation and hell, purgatory and God’s wrath and it is no little thing to dare to challenge, let alone break free of this burden.

It also take nerves of steel to traverse the dark and evil side in oneself without frantically and instinctually grabbing for the light and the good. It is no coincidence that so many people, when they have their dark night of the soul, say they saw the light or that God spoke to them. It was on one of those very occasions when I literally ‘fell in love’ with an Eastern spiritual God-man and had a 17 year excursion into the spiritual world. But for an actualist, forewarned is forearmed so the risk is minimalized – but if you do get to have some affective experiences or Godly experiences it immediately becomes another fascinating aspect of the Human Condition to explore.

GARY: There is one other thing, Peter, that I would like to explore with you and others. There is a sexual instinctive drive in humans. Of that, we are all quite aware. This is the same drive (desire) that causes the male to want to impregnate females (of course I have not considered what the drive is in homosexual individuals, perhaps it is similar or the same but the object is different). In your book, in the chapter on sex, you commented on the pervasiveness of the sexual instinctual drive, the power of this drive, and the central importance of the drive in human affairs. It is indeed a powerful drive, and there are many social mores and customs in place in human society to curb the sexual instinctual drive and regulate it, the institution of marriage and monogamous relationships being one notable example. It is also known that, as far as the physiology of sex, that in human beings sex is subject to considerable cortical control.

PETER: By control, are you relating to the types of experiments whereby a mouse when wired up with electrodes to its sexual pleasure centre in the brain will continually press a button such that it overdoses on sexual pleasure to the point of ignoring the other button that gives it food. I would suggest that human beings may stop short of killing themselves in an experimental situation like this because human beings, unlike the mouse, have the ability to think and reason, but I would not be sure in some cases. If a similar experiment was conducted on human beings, it would be considered unethical, but I am reminded of Milgram’s experiment that I related to in my journal (‘Peace’ chapter), which is why I say I could not be sure of human reactions in a sex vs. food test.

GARY: For instance, castration does not obliterate the sexual drive in humans but does in animals. Apparently there is a lot about sex that goes on in the higher brain centres.

PETER: I have no knowledge at all about sexual physiology in animals, but given they have an instinctual-only brain, if one obliterated the sex drive, end of story. Presumably, by what you are saying, castration can completely remove the sex-drive in animals. The question would then be, does castration remove the instinctual sex-drive in humans? I have heard that castratos remain interested in sex, but I don’t know if their sexual interest is instinctive or cerebral-only. I guess the only way to determine this would be to wire someone up who had been castrated so as to see whereabouts in the brain the lights lit up.

My experience when ‘I’ was normal was that it was impossible to distinguish between feelings arising from the instinctual passions and what was sensate pleasure and clear thinking, for they were all one muddled intertwined mess. The whole point of the actualism method when investigating the sexual instinct is to unravel this mess and eliminate the brutish senseless passion such that sensuous sexual pleasure is free to be what it is – innocent frivolous play. Sex certainly is one of the most interesting investigations for it is one of the most physical, and if you are having sex regularly, the investigation can be intense with no time-off, so to speak. It also directly involves another person, which means there is no place to hide, no avoidance possible. I encountered very intense periods particularly when tackling the morals and taboos that have enshrouded human sexuality in shame and guilt, fear and trepidation, imagination and fantasy. It was as though I had literally stirred up the whole of the church and faced its awesome psychic powers of condemnation, and then it was as though I stirred up the Devil and encountered hellish realms of perversion and damnation. Beneath this again was a level of brutal animal aggression and bestiality. Once I had discovered the raw instinctive level the only thing remaining was investigating imagination and fantasy and then daring to be let my guard down and be intimate during the most direct one to one activity two human beings can do. Skin on skin and sharing and mixing bodily fluids is as intimate as it gets and the transition from raw and naked to free mutual playfulness took a while.

I have written of this before, whereby there is an initial exciting breakthrough with investigations and then there is a remaining ghost-like weirdness that prevails that could be described metaphorically as deleting the substance of a computer program but a few files float around for a while causing trouble and confusion. There is a strangeness that is not only disconcerting but disorienting, as familiar program after program falls to pieces to be replaced by nothing – no new psychological or psychic program at all. The only orientation one has is what is actual and that can only be experienced in this moment.

GARY: My question is this: if the sexual instinctual drive is eliminated, with the other instincts, what is left? Is there enjoyment of sex? Is one rather indifferent about sex? I doubt then that there would be a ‘drive’ underlying sexual behaviour, the ‘drive’ having been eliminated. One would not fantasize about sex, as one often does many times, because the intuitive/imaginal faculty would have been eliminated. With the sexual instinctual drive gone, eliminated, I would think that one would be rather indifferent to sex. What do you think?

PETER: What I have discovered is when the sexual imperative disappears it becomes utterly clear that sex is not an essential need such as food or sleep. When it is not an essential need and there is no blind drive to have or want it, then it becomes an optional pleasure in a literal cornucopia of sensate pleasures. The particularly delicious thing about sex freed of the instinctual drive is that it is not a necessity for then it becomes what it is – one on one intimate innocent play. It is body pleasuring body, mutually agreed, freely given and taken, sensuous pleasure, never the same, always fresh. And the sheer sensual overload results in a post-sex looseness and limpness of the body, with the brain awash in serotonin or dopamine or whatever chemical it is.

I always wanted to get to the core of my inevitable frustration and failure with sex, and now I get to reap the rewards of my efforts every time we play.

*

PETER: By control, are you relating to the types of experiments whereby a mouse when wired up with electrodes to its sexual pleasure centre in the brain will continually press a button such that it overdoses on sexual pleasure to the point of ignoring the other button that gives it food. I would suggest that human beings may stop short of killing themselves in an experimental situation like this because human beings, unlike the mouse, have the ability to think and reason, but I would not be sure in some cases. If a similar experiment was conducted on human beings, it would be considered unethical, but I am reminded of Milgram’s experiment that I related to in my journal, which is why I say I could not be sure of human reactions in a sex vs. food test.

GARY: By cortical control, I meant control of sex by the higher brain centres, such as the cerebral cortex. On the one hand, I am thinking of how humans are able to discern and think about the consequences of engaging in sex, and hence the rise of morality and ethics as a means of controlling the sex act and procreation. But also I am thinking about the sheer amount of imaginative foreplay involved in sex for human beings. In animals, sex is run by hormones, for the most part. It is classic driven instinctual behaviour. While sexual behaviour is similarly driven in human beings, leading to such sexual problems as sexual addictions, there is much more thinking and fantasy activity involved.

PETER: In the human animal, sex is equally and identically run by hormones. In other animals once the act is done, it is most usually end of story. In human beings, once one’s instinctual reproductive duty has been done – find woman, impregnate woman ... or find man, get impregnated – the sexual imperative for both sexes begins to keep an eye out for gratification elsewhere. Both sexes usually resort to playing their societal role as partners and parents and usually have to indulge in fantasy or dreams to maintain interest in staying with the same sexual partner, or sex simply wilts and is shelved as a mutual pleasure.

GARY: Sexuality, on the other hand, as opposed to sex per se is a matter of one’s identity, and this is clearly something that is inculcated in one by one’s parents, family, society, etc. For instance, castration does not obliterate the sexual drive in humans but does in animals. Apparently there is a lot about sex that goes on in the higher brain centres.

PETER: In human beings instinctual sex is made bewildering and confusing by our social/spiritual conditioning and our knowledge that it can result in pregnancy and parenthood. However, no matter how much control we may exert or how sublimated the instinctual drive is, it is always lurks beneath the surface inhibiting or preventing the free sensual enjoyment of sex. So in order to gain free sensual enjoyment of sex the first thing is to investigate the social morals and ethics and then dig into the instinctual drive itself.

*

PETER: I have no knowledge at all about sexual physiology in animals, but given they have an instinctual-only brain, if one obliterated the sex drive, end of story. Presumably, by what you are saying, castration can completely remove the sex-drive in animals. The question would then be, does castration remove the instinctual sex-drive in humans? I have heard that castratos remain interested in sex, but I don’t know if their sexual interest is instinctive or cerebral-only I guess the only way to determine this would be to wire someone up who had been castrated so as to see whereabouts in the brain the lights lit up.

GARY: I don’t know if you are familiar with this or not, but castration has been recommended as a means of controlling dangerous sexual predators (I mean the human kind), like serial rapists. I have read somewhere certain experts opine that it will not work because you can castrate a male human being and they will still have sex and want to have sex. So, this leads me to believe that humans, unlike animals, have a much higher investment of their sexual functioning in the brain and nervous system, and not so much in the hormonal regulatory areas.

PETER: If castration in fact does eliminate the instinctual sexual drive and its accompanying chemical rush, it would seem that the human ability to think and reflect would mean that the castrato would still think and reflect on the physical pleasure that comes from sex. Just as an aside, I was recently watching a program on male impotency. Up until the last decade the failure to have an erection was thought to be mainly due to cerebral psychological problems but now practical medical reasons have been found to be the major causes. It does seem the popular psychological-problems-only approach to sexual difficulties is being questioned, as it will further dented as more people eliminate their social conditioning and their instinctual sexual drive.

*

PETER: What I have discovered is when the sexual imperative disappears it becomes utterly clear that sex is not an essential need such as food or sleep. When it is not an essential need and there is no blind drive to have or want it, then it becomes an optional pleasure in a literal cornucopia of sensate pleasures. The particularly delicious thing about sex freed of the instinctual drive is that it is not a necessity for then it becomes what it is - one on one intimate innocent play. It is body pleasuring body, mutually agreed, freely given and taken, sensuous pleasure, never the same, always fresh. And the sheer sensual overload results in a post-sex looseness and limpness of the body, with the brain awash in serotonin or dopamine or whatever chemical it is.

GARY: Yes, that’s a good way of putting it. There is not the ‘blind drive’ to have or want sex now. Time will tell whether this is mere suppression or sublimation (sorry to resort to Freudian terms on you but I think they are apt here), in which case the sexual instinctive drive will out in renewed fury and intensity, or a natural kind of withering away of the sex drive as a result of practicing attentiveness and sensuousness leading to apperception. Please note that I am not saying that I want to eliminate sex. Far from it. I want to get to the bottom of my sexual hang-ups and free myself from the need to control sexual feelings as well as either resort to over-indulging or under-indulging in sex. In other words, I want to enjoy sex but don’t want to be blindly driven to have it or want it, as you have nicely stated. To me, it seems like a crucial difference. I think it is going to take a long time for me to get to that point.

PETER: Just a comment, based on my experiences in this business of getting to the roots of instinctual passions. Actualism is both practical and down to earth and, as such, one needs test out one’s realizations and understandings to see if they can be put into practice – if they are factual, if they work, and if they work in the world as-it-is with people as they are. In the case of sex, my investigations were serendipitously easy – I had a willing and eager partner who proved equally interested in investigating, discovering and unveiling the social and instinctual taboos that inhibit the free enjoyment of sexual play. However, even in a pre-established normal relationship I see no reason why one partner cannot initiate an investigation by themselves, for themselves, if they are willing to take the risk.

*

PETER: I always wanted to get to the core of my inevitable frustration and failure with sex, and now I get to reap the rewards of my efforts every time we play.

GARY: I feel like there are some rewards at this point but I also feel I am missing out on the sheer delight of having a free sexual relationship with a woman and I am back to being somewhat confused about the whole mess. But I want to tell you that I genuinely appreciate having this forum to discuss these matters and, as you have pointed out in the past, these issues are of universal importance to all human beings, not just a particular and private concern of people participating on this list. Sexuality is such a central part of the social identity and sexual matters have, in spite of the openness about sex since the 1970s, been shrouded in so much secrecy and shame, and I feel such is still the case. Part of it is that I naturally inherited all my ancestors’ fears and shame regarding sexuality but picked up a few new bugaboos myself as I grew into adulthood.

PETER: When I look back over the last few years I am amazed how much I have written about actualism and my experiences. I say amazed because I was never interested in writing, failed English at school and generally scorned those who wrote and taught as those who weren’t the doers. As such, when I found myself writing about actualism and my experiences I have always been cautious to be able to stand behind what I write – as in, I know it is factual and I know by my experience, and the experience of others, what works and what doesn’t work. This is why I am able to endorse and confirm all that Richard writes about.

This reporting to others is the limit of what is possible, and sensible, in communicating something so radically new and iconoclastic as actualism. So, when you ask me to point out any discrepancies, I am at a loss for all I can do is comment on facts and relay my practical experience as to what works and what doesn’t.

Good that it was only your computer that faded out.

PETER: In the human animal, sex is equally and identically run by hormones. In other animals once the act is done, it is most usually end of story. In human beings, once one’s instinctual reproductive duty has been done – find woman, impregnate woman ... or find man, get impregnated – the sexual imperative for both sexes begins to keep an eye out for gratification elsewhere. Both sexes usually resort to playing their societal role as partners and parents and usually have to indulge in fantasy or dreams to maintain interest in staying with the same sexual partner, or sex simply wilts and is shelved as a mutual pleasure.

GARY: That has certainly been true for me. Fantasy and dreams prevent actual intimacy. Sex, in our case, has wilted, but there are stirrings of mutual sensual delight and innocent experimentation. I have been recently been thinking about and mulling over the whole business of the nature of imaginative psychic activity – how such activity removes one from the actual, maintaining and supporting the real world. I have become more aware of the flights of fancy and imagination that fuel ‘me’, with some of the strong affective states that accompany them.

PETER: Personally I found thinking about and understanding some aspect of how I function to be an essential activity, but the real change came in change – overcoming my innate resistance and fear of doing something and doing it anyway. This always involved taking a risk, ‘letting my guard down’ as I tend to call it these days.

*

PETER: In human beings instinctual sex is made bewildering and confusing by our social/spiritual conditioning and our knowledge that it can result in pregnancy and parenthood. However, no matter how much control we may exert or how sublimated the instinctual drive is, it is always lurks beneath the surface inhibiting or preventing the free sensual enjoyment of sex. So in order to gain free sensual enjoyment of sex the first thing is to investigate the social morals and ethics and then dig into the instinctual drive itself.

GARY: Sex is certainly a raw instinctual energy. After digging into the social morals and ethics that control the wayward self, one can more easily see the primacy of the sex drive in humans. I think there is a basic urge to physically be close, as expressed through sexual contact, between people, both males and females. It is ever present when people get together.

PETER: The sexual urge acts to overcome the basic fear people have of other people. As for a basic urge in humans to be physically close, other than the sexual imperative, this is another matter. You probably missed it, but there was a discussion on this list some months ago about a herding instinct in humans – the fear-driven need to huddle together in tribal or family groups for protection against other competing aggressive animals. This is why love and loyalty is trumpeted so strongly in the human condition as a way to overcome the psychological and psychic fear that is the basic genetic endowment of all human animals.

Humans desperately fear actual intimacy because it is too raw, too close – with no barriers, shields or guards available as psychological or psychic defences.

GARY: There are also, of course, strong taboos against homosexuality in both males and females, yet the fact remains that homosexual behavior occurs. Large scale sexual surveys, like Kinsey’s, have shown that homosexual behavior is remarkably common in many people. I remember myself having homosexual experiences when younger. Mostly they were innocent gropings and explorings with male friends. I have never been a homosexual, but the urge was there nevertheless to indulge in sexual play with another male. Due to the strong taboos and forbidden nature of such gropings, I felt a keen sense of shame about these encounters and was greatly confused about my own sexuality when I was a young person. Level-headed and sensible discussion with a reasonable, more knowledgeable person might have dispelled these doubts and confusions, but none was forthcoming and I was too ashamed to divulge my internal turmoil.

PETER: Homosexual behaviour is documented in many other animal species as well, but I have no idea what proportion is genetic/natural, what is behaviourally caused and what is fashionable in humans.

*

PETER: Just a comment, based on my experiences in this business of getting to the roots of instinctual passions. Actualism is both practical and down-to-earth and, as such, one needs test out one’s realizations and understandings to see if they can be put into practice – if they are factual, if they work, and if they work in the world as-it-is with people as they are. In the case of sex, my investigations were serendipitously easy – I had a willing and eager partner who proved equally interested in investigating, discovering and unveiling the social and instinctual taboos that inhibit the free enjoyment of sexual play.

However, even in a pre-established normal relationship I see no reason why one partner cannot initiate an investigation by themselves, for themselves, if they are willing to take the risk.

GARY: My partner is a lot more willing to explore these things than I probably give her credit for. I am finding more and more that it is getting easier to talk matter-of-factly about sexual hang-ups and problems. Humour about these matters is also good medicine. I think talking about these things in this forum, with others, is making it easier to talk to her about it. I think we are gradually beginning to tease this thing apart and, though it will probably take considerable time to investigate all this, I am confident that better things are possible for both of us.

PETER: Yea. Women tend to be a bit more down-to-earth about sex than men. Contrary to popular male belief, it is women who are more interested in action and are usually the initiators, whereas men usually like the idea, talk and think about it a lot, but are hesitant to open up in sex lest they get consumed. I’m for mutual consumption – it’s simply the most fun.

GARY: I thought of someone’s advice to apply the method to interactions with various types of people and find out what you are aware of (I think it was Vineeto). For instance, how do I feel when I am in the presence of women ... how does that differ from my feelings when with a man, or a particular type of man. How do I feel about religious people? Do I have sexual feelings and towards whom? All these types of questions are extremely interesting to look into and it is very different to be aware of one’s experience instead of just taking it for granted or leaving it unexamined.

PETER: My whole exploration into the instinctual sexual drive has brought immense rewards for I no longer am driven by the sexual imperative to blindly spread my semen. This means that I no longer look at women as sexual objects to be given the ‘once-over’ – to be feared, foxed or lusted for. I am now equally comfortable and intimate with all humans regardless of their appendages and appearances. I am now also free of the sexual power that women have had over me in the past, a freedom that was a precursor to becoming autonomous and being able to have an actual intimacy with my sexual companion rather than a fickle emotional relationship based on sexual desire, mutual dependency, need and security.

Just the other day I had a conversation with a woman about sex and intimacy that I could have equally had with Vineeto or with a man if he were willing and able to broach such subjects. In the past I had often found women much more down to earth than men, much more interested in what is really going on in life. Talking to men was another story but sometimes they let their competitive guard down long enough to allow a little sensible talk.

Having explored and eliminated the social mores and instinctual programming that divide the human species into two warring gender camps, there is now no thought or feeling of a man-woman divide from my side to inhibit any communication or interaction with a fellow human being of either sex. For me there are no male topics, no female topics, no men’s business, no women’s business, no taboos, no secrets, no differences.

I am very well pleased with the efforts and results of my investigations into the sexual imperative.

*

GARY: Sound like you are reaping great rewards from your investigations into the sex drive. I am still a bit hung up sexually. One of the things I have really needed to look into was the guilt that was always associated with sex. As I said, the emotional-memory part of my psyche appears to be undergoing somewhat of a progressive shrinkage, and with it is disappearing the guilt feelings associated with the sex act. These guilt feelings are extremely deeply ingrained and a major hurdle to experiencing the pure delight of enjoyable sex. I still am quite inhibited sexually. I think, however, that the feelings of guilt are gradually diminishing as I have been examining these feelings when they do pop up. As I continue with this examination, I am less and less ‘driven’ sexually, and I am freer to examine what you call the sexual imperative.

PETER: I like it that your description of your investigations indicates that any investigation into the passions that prevent one from being a happy and harmless citizen of the world must first be an exploration into the societal beliefs, morals and ethics we have been imbibed with since birth. It confirms what I was saying above and what Richard says – you need to first start investigating the outer layers of social programming in order to expose the deeper layers of instinctual programming. . So many people want to take a short cut and somehow imagine that they can get to the core of the problem without penetrating the outer crust.

Sex is a fascinating topic to explore in that it is so obvious that one needs to first investigate and eliminate one’s morals and ethics in order to become free of inhibitions, hang-ups and taboos. It also is clear that one needs to stop believing what others say about sex for everyone stuffs it up be they in the real world or the spiritual world.

One local Tantric teacher has made it very plain in his sermons that sex is evil and only by making sex into a consciousness-raising exercise can it be purified of its innate evilness. He, of course, was then ready and willing to ‘raise the consciousness’ of any gullible and pretty young women who crossed his path. The carrying-on of such Eastern gurus was the inspiration of my ‘money for nothing and your chicks for free’ comment in my journal.

Personally I found the exploration into sex most revealing as to both the extent and deep-seatedness of my social and spiritual conditioning. It was a very close to the bone exploration as it was always apparent that it was ‘me’ and ‘my’ morality, imagination and fears that stood in the way of the possibility of unencumbered and guileless sexual enjoyment. It also became clear that as I began to break free of this outer layer of conditioning what new and fresh unexplored territory lays beneath – delicious sensuousness and an exquisite actual intimacy and mateship. Then the thrill of being here really starts to kicks in.

PETER to Alan: I am continuously amazed by people’s stubborn refusal to even admit that they have less than perfect relationships, that they are prone to malice and sorrow, anger, resentment, despair, resignation, self-deception, or whatever other feeling. Those still on the spiritual path see themselves as having risen above these mundane worldly matters and having ascended into the higher realms of ‘love for all’, feeling ‘That Which Is’ or being ‘grateful to Existence’.

Just as an aside, while I think of it, I once chatted to a man who had just been newly inducted into the spiritual world and we got to chatting about sex. He proclaimed to me that he now had a freer attitude to sex and was not only with his partner but with other women as well. He said sex had never been better as he now felt he was making love to all women when he had sex. It was ‘universal woman’ whom he made love to – the archetypical woman. It suddenly dawned on me that this Tantric-like practice was nothing more than a fantasy escape from the actuality of having sex with the particular flesh and blood woman he was in bed with at the time. In the ‘real’ world men and woman invariably revert to fantasies to maintain an interest after the initial instinctual attraction wanes, and Tantra is simply the spiritual version of these fantasies. Of course, it is a ‘higher’ and more ‘noble’ fantasy, but it is nothing more than an escape from the reality of sex. It is demeaning to the partner one is with as he or she is not the flesh and blood body person but is reduced to a figment of one’s own fantasy world – and then they have the audacity to term this fantasy ‘being intimate’. All the ‘action’ and ‘intimacy’ goes on only in one’s head. One literally goes into cuckoo-land – all in denial of the shameful, guilt-ridden reality of the sexual instinct in action. It is all about feeling and has nought to do with the luscious sensuality of the sensate sensuous experiencing of innocent sexual play.

For me, it was such an adventure to get to the bottom of the stifling mystery, the conspiracy of silence, the moralistic mumbo-jumbo and beliefs that actively prohibit free sexual enjoyment and a direct intimacy between any couple, be they normal or spiritually inclined.

PETER: Richard, Well done!

A mailing list hey ...

And I see in typical Webfashion that the subject is SEX... typical.

But it’s a great subject to discuss, explore, dig in to, understand but above all to do! Isn’t it astounding the amount of physical pleasure delight and downright fun we humans can have with sex. The smell, the touch of the skin, the penis, vagina, clitoris, breasts, nipples, buttocks, back, eyes ... all the senses on an escapade of pleasure ... And with another human being.

It’s such a direct experiencing of another – so direct and actual that it leaves what many attempt to obtain in Tantra for dead. I once had a very strong Tantric experience where, on reflection, I had an amazing orgasm accompanied by waves of Love and Bliss. I searched for years after for the same experience but it always eluded me. It appeared to be some elusive carrot on a string, forever to search for. Well what I have and experience in sex now far exceeds an elusive mirage. It is actual, sensual, and freely available. And the senses being free of churning feelings and emotions such as fear, guilt, comparison, love, duty, etc., are on full alert if you like. Fully here, firing on all cylinders, absolutely no limits to the amount of pleasure shared.

To have found an equally sexual other-sex human is indeed remarkable.

That there exists a state that is beyond Enlightenment and includes the free delightful enjoyment of sex is indeed proof of the perfection of the universe – as I experience it actually, here now, right this moment .. and again and again.

So I’m enjoying very much the mailing list and no doubt we will get to discuss many fascinating things apart from sex, but seeing everyone else was talking about it I just thought I’d get in my bit...

PETER to No 4: That was quite a loop, so I’d better get back to ‘sensate experiencing’, which was the starting point of this post. You have probably seen the new ‘180 degrees diagram’ by now, so you will have a picture to expand on the multitudinous words describing and articulating the difference between spiritual and actual. One of the many things that the spiritual path fails to address is human sexuality and sensuality. Denial of the instinctual sexual passions is rife – after all we are talking of the ‘wisdom’ of cave-men – and sublimation as the principle of celibacy is common. For the less-evolved, moralistic control, as in Tantric practices or ‘love’-making, is practiced but is considered a lesser path. Ignorance, superstition and fear are intrinsic to both normal and spiritual understanding of sex, human reproduction and sexual pleasure.

When one dares to lift the lid on all this nonsense and get stuck into the whole business of human sexuality one can discover a sensate experience that is deliciously sexual – free of instinctual drives and wallowing in sensuality – free of the necessity for prudish morals and restrictive ethics. And sex is but the icing on the cake, an abundant extravagance, on top of everyday sensate experience. For an actualist, everyday sensate experiencing is sensual, luxuriant, lush, abundant, prolific, verdant, extravagant, profuse, ever present, immediate, right here and now.

By the way, the Oxford Thesaurus lists only two antonyms for the word sensual – Antonyms: SPIRITUAL; ASCETIC . Need I say more? Probably not, so I’m off for a little sensual lie on the couch.

So, I will add the word sensual to sensate experiencing from now on so as to make the distinction between what is actual and what is spiritual. It’s good to lay down an accurate description in words of the experience of actualism – after all, it is a totally new human experience.

PETER: When I serendipitously came across Richard three years ago, his writing only consisted of his Journal and I avidly read it front to back many times and I would dip into it whenever I deliberately made the time available. It took me months and months, often contemplating sentence by sentence, to even begin to understand the mind-bending enormity of the fact that everyone has got it wrong – everybody is looking 180 degrees in the wrong direction.

As I managed to free myself of my spiritual beliefs and became virtually free of malice and sorrow, ... <Snipped>

G. G.: But your writings on women seem quite lusty.

PETER: By daring to remove the socially-instilled moral and ethical inhibitions that act to shackle and spoil all human sexual play I was able to investigate the base instinctual sexual passions ... whereupon I discovered the very reasons that society imposes its shackles and no-nos in the first place. The human sexual passions are inseparably intertwined with our genetically encoded animal survival instincts, the main ones being fear, aggression, nurture and desire. As such, I discovered deep-down in me the reason men and women are perpetually at war, the source of jealous murderous rage, the rapist in me, the sexual hunter, the sexual animal, the hellish sexual realms, the fear of being consumed, etc.

It is a fascinating journey to travel to the depths of one’s very own psyche but it is immensely rewarding for I have faced my demons and found them to be very, very real but not actual. These discoveries have enabled me to free myself of being driven by the instinctual sexual passions and blind, driven sex and what remained is open eyed, luscious, scrumptious, sensuous, sensual, sumptuous, voluptuous, delightful, delicious; sometimes sweet and gentle, and sometimes bawdy and risqué, sometimes a frolic, a gamble a dance, a lark, or a romp – never-ever the same, and never-ever boring.

To have broken free of my sexual predatory instincts and from societal mystiques and taboos has made all of the effort, and all of the fears faced, well, well worth it. Sexual play puts a ‘three lemon grin’ on my face every time, to use Vineeto’s term.

Sex is one of the most fascinating explorations on the path to freedom for it encapsulates the extent to which human sensuousness is inhibited in the real world and denied in the spiritual world. I wrote about sex in my journal but sex is not something that interests spiritual seekers – it is definitely off the agenda. They do tend to deliberately hide themselves away from sensuousness.

What a silly thing to do, for the actual world abounds with sensual delight.

*

G. G.: I thought Richard’s path is beyond such things as desire – sexual or otherwise – because his reality is emotionless

PETER: Ah, well. To move beyond merely thinking what ‘Richard’s path’ is about you would have to read what he is saying but that would be too tedious and boring according to you. But unless you do so you are merely objecting to something you know nothing about and obviously do not want to find out about. Objection for objection’s sake? No wonder you are feeling bored.

RESPONDENT: Obviously, you have never listened to any of Osho’s Discourses or you would know that Osho talked about sex many times and he used very ‘green’ or ‘sex-full’ jokes in his discourses (jokes about blow-job, prostitutes, sexual intercourse, etc.). Osho used words like fuck, shit, bullshit, orgasm, penis, vagina, cunt to name a few. Do you think other so-called gurus like Sai Baba, Radha Swami, Maharishi would speak this way? These people think that to be spiritual you have to be very polite and avoid obscene language. For me, it is these gurus who are full of shit.

PETER: When reading and listening to Osho discourses, what I see is a traditional Eastern approach whereby one is to eventually transcend sex as a bodily, earthly, function. He also talked a little of Tantra, regarded in the Eastern traditions as a ‘lesser’ path. No-where have I read of him talking of the physical pleasure of intimate sex. No descriptions that indicate that this was his personal experience, rather than merely a teaching of the traditional path. As for being the sex-guru, my thinking is he assumed that given sufficient ‘indulging and expressing’, that one would eventually transcend sex. This same theory was used in therapies where by expressing and indulging in emotions such as anger, sorrow or aggression he assumed a transcendence could be achieved. The actual success rate seems very poor to say the least. For the few, a transcendence (rising above) may be achieved but the problem is that, if the boat is rocked too much, the emotions and feelings eventually re-surface. Hence the tradition of the celibate nun or monk in a cave or monastery.

PETER to Konrad: Actual freedom or actualism is of course not merely a theory or philosophy but a new, down-to-earth non-spiritual path to freedom – an actual freedom from the Human Condition of malice and sorrow.

Now actual means it works. It means that given sufficient effort and intent that one can virtually eliminate sorrow and malice from the human body. This means in practical terms that one no longer suffers from feelings of sadness, melancholy, boredom, neediness, sympathy, empathy, despair or fear, let alone annoyance, offence, anger, revenge or violence. It is then possible by practical demonstration to live with a companion in total equity, delighting in freely and mutually enjoyed sex, discussion and physical intimacy. The physical pleasures build and build, as does the awareness of the immeasurable and limitless perfection and purity of it all, increasing off the scales. One literally ‘buckles at the knees’ as the paltry attempts of the old ‘I’ to fearfully hang on wither in the helter skelter slide to freedom.

And all this is actual, sensate – as evidenced by the physical senses – not merely cerebral or affective. You know, things like the smell of a woman’s armpit during sex, the feel of the breast or bum, the way you can tease a nipple to hardness, the fresh unique journey that is each sexual encounter as a literal salubrious smorgasbord of sensuality unfolds as wave after wave of pleasure engulfs us both. To feel a woman as equally sexual such that you don’t know who is thrusting or who is wiggling or where you end and she begins. To ride wave after wave of pleasure of such intensity that ejaculation is but a side order, not the main meal. And after ... to lie back and chat about how it was for each of us, to compare notes, to discuss the nuances, pleasures, particularly delicious bits, or just to lay back in that state where all the cells of the body are sexually alive and tingling and drift off into a delicious half asleep state. To drift off entirely or to eventually surface and wobble to the shower where you realise that to have hot water on tap to pour over your body is a simple pleasure that rivals any. Then maybe a cup of freshly ground coffee and a post-coital cigarette, and wonder what other pleasures are next, and in what order they will come. Hedonism has got nothing on this. Freedom is this and much more, Konrad, much more. Can’t I tease you into considering the possibility of living in paradise, here, now, on earth.

It is a paradise not only of physical pleasure as it also offers a stillness and purity wherein one is no longer driven by the instincts, where the mind is a perfectly clear and delightful and playful thing and the usual feelings of fear and aggression are replaced by a consuming sense of well being and benignity. And loneliness disappears as one immensely enjoys ones own company. Good Hey....

RESPONDENT: You see, the ‘practice of detachment’ can work both ways! The overall rule seems to be that we can live our lives as we please ... as long as we invest our energy in detachment.

PETER: I don’t practice detachment in any way at all. What I did was undertake a thorough investigation into all that prevented me from being fully and intimately involved in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are. This includes working in the market place, running a business, living with a companion with all the delights of intimacy, equity and sensuous sexual play, being free to enjoy all of the sensual delights such as eating meat, drinking coffee and smoking tobacco and being able to directly relate to all of my fellow human beings without imposing ‘my’ instinctive feelings or ‘my’ ethical or moral judgements upon them.

*

PETER: Freedom and perfection is only possible with the extinction of the animal instinctual passions in human beings...

RESPONDENT: As for your confusion about Peter’s words, No 14, I guess what we are supposed to believe is that a ‘24-hour relationship’ ... ‘in this paradisiacal planet’, as well as those ‘intense romantic encounters’ suggested by Peter’s partner months ago has absolutely nothing to do with ‘passion’, it’s totally free from it!!

PETER: Again you use inverted commas as though you are directly quoting words that were written. Vineeto never used the words ‘intense romantic encounters’. In fact, it was only by removing the passions of needing to be loved, feeling sexual cravings, feeling hate, feeling dependent, wanting ‘space’, wanting to be open but keeping secrets, promising to forgive but looking for revenge, wanting to surrender but feeling resentful, making compromises that satisfy neither, wanting to give fully but being afraid to, etc. that we are able to live together in utter equity, peace and harmony.

One often hears in the spiritual world the admission that human love does not work and the only solution is to feel Divine Love for all, but this experiment has been found wanting for feelings of Divine Love, no matter how grandiose, are but feelings based upon the same instinctual passions. Divine Love includes right and wrong, good and bad, jealousy, anger, blame, retribution, disappointment, demand, loyalty, power, surrender, etc.

Actual intimacy is not possible between humans who are programmed by blind nature to feel they are separate beings, and merely adopting a new identity who then feels non-separate and all-loving does nothing to tackle and eliminate the instinctual passions at their very source.

RESPONDENT: I just wonder where one can learn such technique! I am sure many of us would be interested in the subject, especially the ones who practice celibacy.

PETER: Indeed. None of what I am talking about can be learned by spiritual techniques for one-to-one peacefulness, an extinction of instinctual passions and the delights of free sexual play are not even on the discussion agenda, let alone part of any religious teachings

I always found it curious that those who were serious about attaining Enlightenment for themselves had to turn away from the ‘temptations of the flesh’ to achieve it.

There is a long and on-going tradition in both Eastern and Western religion for men and women to become celibate monks and nuns. In the East there is also a tradition of Tantric ritual copulation that is for both partners, a form of sacralization, the act being a participation in cosmic and divine processes. However, Tantric practices often involved much abuse of women and acts of bizarre rituals as a method of ‘purification’ particularly for the man. The compulsive nature of the sexual drive has always both terrified and confused the spiritual seeker and the easiest way out has always been the practice of avoidance leading to the denial of celibacy.

I always wanted to get to the roots of sexual evil and mystique and the method of investigating and eliminating the instinctual sexual drive has freed me from the brutish and senseless sexual imperative and allowed me to discover the sensuous delights of intimate sexual playfulness.

Actualism Homepage