Others ~ Selected Correspondence

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Yes, they have the same source in the old brain. What I am saying is that it has to be unravelled. I can’t just see that one connection and disappear all of it. I might have thought that when I was spiritual but it goes deeper than that.

Yes that is the crux of the matter for me I suppose. I don’t see this as a spiritual versus actual problem. I use to be a big J. Krishnamurti reader. I was an atheist and a naturalist long before I ever read him and afterwards this did not change. I tried to read between the lines. It seemed to me that what the man was speaking of was a real state, only a brain state or change what have you and nothing spiritual about it. In simply watching all of my thoughts and emotions non-judgmentally I found myself by necessity going into the thought and or emotion to discover its cause. That is why I see actualism as just a rewording of the old.

Yes, this is the crux of the matter to see the difference between spiritual and actual. I also use to think that K was not spiritual but now I see that he is spiritual to the core. By experiencing the actual world one can see that there is nothing spiritual about it. The spiritual is all in ones psyche in the form of beliefs and feelings which do not exist in the actual world. No 16 to No 87, 6+8.9.2005

My own experience was that the entire rotten edifice pretty much came tumbling down like a house of cards in short order once I made the decisive step, which for me was to abandon the Krishnamurti-esque facade of belief, throw in the towel on the K-list, and commence to make the most earnest inquiries into Actualism. I think for quite a time I had done my share of fence-sitting and questioning my beliefs, as well as outspokenly questioning the beliefs of other spiritual adherents (undoubtedly always easier to do than question your own beliefs).

All this fence-sitting was but a preliminary step to falling right off the cliff and abandoning all forms of spiritual belief and embracing the eminent sensibility of Actualism. At first, I thought that Richard’s holding of the great spiritual teachers of history responsible for all the murder and mayhem that had occurred for thousands of years was going a bit too far, for I thought that surely there must be some good in these belief systems by virtue of the fact that so many people routinely signed-on to these spiritual and religious forms. It took me awhile, then, to completely demolish every last vestige of spiritual belief. But once the decisive steps were taken, the rest fell into place very quickly. At this point in time, it is difficult to fathom that I once was so deluded. Gary to Vineeto

Simple: I have problems... which will not go away by saying ‘be quiet; quiet mind is noble; ...’ etc. so I understand why I am not being quiet and happy given that this is the only life and why am I wasting it away. Then I get into the psyche and remove the misconceptions and things get better.

I have no clue as to the mental state and No 58’s current intentions: except that he and you are saying the same thing in essence: methods cannot work... words/knowledge rubbish.... yours is similar to JK and his to UGK... yours to arrive at some stillness through negation... his to negate for negation’s sake... No 33 to No 56, 10.2.2004

You stated that you took ‘some time’ in going through the website. I find myself wondering if you read the offerings with both eyes open, so to speak. Because you opine that Richard ‘tries’ to prove that K. is spiritual when, to my way of thinking, K’s own written and recorded remarks prove indisputably that he was not only spiritual but a deeply religious man.

There is abundant writing and correspondence on K’s writings and lifestyle in the Actual Freedom writings. Given the unprecedented quantity and accuracy of much of the source material, the sheer volume of words left by K, including video and taped discussions, it is only too obvious to me that K was religious to the bootstraps. Both he and his followers swooned to his descriptions of the Unknown and the Eternal. A receptive soul will find much in K to be ‘attracted to’ as are you. As a former K devotee, I found Richard’s writings on the subject the first sensible and intelligent critique of K that I had ever read. It went a long way in opening my eyes to the lie of Enlightenment.

In much the same vein, the denial of K followers and admirers reminds me much of the denial among religious Catholics who, given indisputable evidence of the corruption at the heart of their church and in their trusted leaders, cling ever more strongly to their belief system. One can see this phenomenon at work at the present time given the, apparently now, worldwide incidence of sexual abuse by clerics. If the underlying core tenets of the system are corrupt, no amount of skating around the surface is going to change things one bit.

My two cents for now. Gary to No 41

I will comment on the link you provided. But it may not be the commentary that you are looking for, so bear with me. Perhaps as you were alluding to, I do not think there are very obvious spiritual/religious references in the ‘First Public Talk given by J. Krishnamurti’. Sometimes one has to go outside of a particular talk or lecture to find other references to these things. I am sure, without investing the time and energy to do so at the present moment, that I could provide you with some material from talks around the same time which show more obvious references to ‘that which is eternal’ or ‘that which is beyond time’.

Let me take, however, from this talk, the one you provided, the following excerpt:

‘Do you know what it means to live in the present? Which means to have no time at all, to be free of time. Not so that you will miss the bus – I don’t mean that. If you forget time you won’t be able to get home. We mean by freedom from time implies freedom from the whole structure of the ‘me’, which is time, which is the past. And one has to learn about all that. You can’t say, I’ll be free, or ignore it.’ http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/K/ObsWoMe.html

Now Krishnamurti intimates in this passage that it is possible to be completely free of time. No clearer reference could be offered, in my opinion, that there is a Timelessness, that there is a something beyond thought, totally uncorrupted by thought. What he is really saying here is that it is possible ‘to have no time at all, to be free of time’. We can find numerous references in other writings and talks of Krishnamurti of this timelessness when thought comes to an end.

There are such a lot of points raised in this talk, as in many of his talks. It seems fruitless to go through and discuss each and every one. I hardly expect you would want me to do that. You say that this talk is your favourite. May I ask why?

To answer a question you posed: is it relevant? I would say it is relevant. It is certainly not irrelevant. Krishnamurti was in many ways a pretty slick character. He for the rest of his life tried to downplay his identification with a power or entity and some of his earlier shenanigans with the occult, yet he kept coming back to it by inference over and over again. Richard in his writings has been particularly adept in pointing out the contradictions in K’s writings as well as the passages in which he shows himself to be of the eastern spirituality ilk.

Is it contrary to the facts? You bet your booties. That which is Timeless, That which is Eternal, which by other names is called the ‘What Is’, and still yet by that which is Holy, is the product of a fevered imagination. Nothing more, nothing less. It does not exist in actuality and it does not exist for an actualist. Gary to No 41

In a previous post, you asked me to stick to the article you provided. This seems to be a fair request.

There are a number of things in the talk which I take exception to, and I shall try to point out what those are. The first thing is the whole business of labelling and verbalizing. In the article, Krishnamurti states:

Look, I want to learn about myself because I see how extraordinarily important it is if I am at all to understand the world, action and a new way of living altogether. I have to understand myself – not according to some philosopher, psychologist however learned. I want to learn about myself as actually what I am, without any distortion, without suppressing anything, what I am both consciously as well as unconsciously. I want to know myself completely. Now how shall I learn? How shall I learn about what I am? To learn there must be a certain passion, a great deal of curiosity, without any assumption, taking things for granted, to look at myself without any formula. Can one do that? Otherwise you can’t learn about yourself, obviously. If I say, ‘I am jealous,’ the very verbalization of that fact, or of that feeling, has already conditioned it. Right? http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/K/ObsWoMe.html

Therefore I cannot see anything further in it. So there must be a learning about the usage of words, not to be caught in words, and the realization that the word, the description, is not the described or the thing.’

One of the things I found extremely tedious and eventually completely non-productive about Krishnamurti-ism was the assumption that the very verbalization of something conditions it and is therefore invalid. In this passage, the verbalizing of a feeling, the fact of having a certain feeling, according to K. conditions it, and so therefore one ‘cannot see anything further in it’. I have found this not to be so. This is quite different from actualism, where there is not only the labelling of one’s experiencing of the present moment, but the verbalizing of it and the active investigation into it further. As the investigation proceeds, eventually one runs up against the instinctual passions.

If you ask yourself the seminal question for an actualist ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’, how else are you going to answer that question without verbalizing it? How do you answer that question without using words? If you follow Krishnamurtian ‘choiceless awareness’, I posit that you will end up Enlightened as Krishnamurti was, but you will never free yourself from the malice and sorrow that exemplifies the Human Condition. Labelling a feeling, any feeling, is the start of your investigation into human conditioning, not the end of it. When I practiced Krishnamurti’s choiceless awareness I found myself stymied in my investigations and not changing.

Krishnamurti-ism also, as Peter has deftly pointed out in another post, attracts intellectually inclined people. He focuses on thought almost exclusively and this can be extremely appealing to people who live in their heads all the time. Part of actualism is getting down out of your head and into your feelings. I both label and verbalize my feelings to myself and once I do that, the investigation leads further a field and one can trace a particular feeling to the triggering event. By verbalizing the feeling or emotion and investigating it, I have found that the feeling or emotion readily dissolves away.

But, as has been pointed out in the writings on Actual Freedom, it is important not to lay exclusive claim to a particular feeling or emotion but to recognize that it is part and parcel of the Human Condition itself. Thus, instead of saying ‘I am jealous’, one might say ‘This is human jealousy’. Because the feelings are not ‘mine’ or ‘yours’ in a possessive sense, they are universal in their occurrence. This takes the investigation to a different level entirely.

Another point I want to come back to is the business of the relation of time and the self.

Again, in a particular passage in the talk, Krishnamurti says the following:

Do you know what it means to live in the present? Which means to have no time at all, to be free of time. Not so that you will miss the bus – I don’t mean that. If you forget time you won’t be able to get home. We mean by freedom from time implies freedom from the whole structure of the ‘me’, which is time, which is the past. And one has to learn about all that. You can’t say, I’ll be free, or ignore it. http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/K/ObsWoMe.html

Now I ask you seriously: do you really think that it is possible to ‘have no time at all, to be free of time’? I do not agree that freedom from time comes with freedom from the whole structure of ‘me’. Time is a fact, is it not? The sun rises each morning, and sets in the evening again. A person is born, grows old, and eventually dies. The flowers come each spring and, after blooming, wither away. Time affects this human body and every other human body on the planet earth. All these things happen in time. To think one can be free of time is nonsensical. Gary to No 41

I took a peak at the link you provided (http://64.225.88.61/kdocs.htm) and while I hardly have the time or the inclination to read it all, I did ‘enjoy’ skimming through it, although not for the same reasons I used to enjoy reading K writings. Of course, what you provided was ‘early’ Krishnamurti, and I see it is not long after his completion of the ‘process’ (about 6 years in fact), that mystical opening of the Third Eye and kundalini energy described in the Mary Lutyens book ‘Krishnamurti: The Years of Awakening’ (1975).

The reason I ‘enjoyed’ reading some of it was that it took me no time at all to locate passages which leave their unmistakable spiritual imprint and place Krishnamurti undeniably in the mystical/spiritual camp, despite his avid denials in later years. Take for instance this passage, off of page 12:

Krishnamurti: The point is that, at the root of both wanting and giving, there is a going outwards away from yourself, and this is what you have to resist. But, if you do, what is left? When you are not giving or wanting something, what are you? You are Being, the only positive thing in man.

Being is fearless and does not depend on anything outside itself: hence, it does not cast a shadow. It knows no separation and it is immortal. And so, when you as an individual enter into that pure Being, you become the delight of life’s expression, because you have been through everything. Such Being is life’s fulfilment. That is what everyone is seeking: to be himself: no to depend on external things for his wanting or giving. When you are such Being, you are as the sunshine in which all things grow and in which there is nothing that is either evil or good, bad or indifferent.

So do not seek to understand this Being through any one particular channel. It is far above all these petty creations of illusion. Seek it by casting out all fear, for when that is done life will show you what it means you to be. (http://64.225.88.61/kdocs.htm) pg 12

While the excerpt is off of page 12, one would not have to look that far to find those silly capitalized words, ie. Truth, Being, Beauty, etc. I still cannot believe that I once eagerly lapped up this nonsense. When I first approached the Actual Freedom writings, I thought that Richard was being too strident in blaming all the enlightened beings down through history for all the wars, misery, torture, rapes, etc. I thought this was certainly going too far, and that there must still be something ‘good’ in these spiritual teachings, or in the teachers themselves. After a little while longer, it became evident to me that I was still hanging onto the tattered threads of my spiritual beliefs and that I still did not want to abandon my spiritual teachers. But I no longer think thusly.

One of the things I enjoy nowadays is being able to see clearly the lie of Enlightenment. I enjoy having the discernment to see that Krishnamurti, while his readings are interesting, belongs in the same camp with all the snake-charmers, charlatans, preachers, God-men, and God-women down through history. To my mind, he is not different from some back-country evangelical preacher preaching to his congregation in a tidewater chapel. I do indeed enjoy having the intelligence nowadays to question the validity of what he is talking about. It is satisfying to be able to see through his sermons.

I think if you are a spiritualist yourself (and there are some indications that that is so), you will no doubt enjoy reading K, but for quite different reasons. Gary to No 44

Vineeto: ‘Watching’ is a spiritual term and means that you dis-associate yourself from these particular feelings (which spiritual people insist on calling thoughts).’ Vineeto to No 33

I think perhaps Vineeto might be referring to a common misunderstanding among the devotees and followers of J. Krishnamurti, among whom I used to count myself.

Thought and thinking is given a tremendous amount of attention among the Krishnamurtiites but feelings and passions correspondingly little. Krishnamurtiites speak a lot about bringing thought to an end, little realizing that human beings are for the most part deeply emotional and instinctual beings.

That little commentary aside, if you are confused about the difference between thinking and feeling, I would suggest that you attend to what happens to you when you feel really angry and really annoyed. See if you can differentiate between which of the things that is happening to you can be put in the ‘thought’ category, and which of the internal happenings can be put in the ‘feeling’ category. Feelings are very visceral, very immediate, and very powerful. They consist of a movement, physically, emotionally, and they are happening in your body. For instance, what happens when you are angry?

Do you ever get angry? What does it feel like? Do you get sad? What does sad feel like?

Personally, I have no difficulty getting into my feelings because, being a product of the 60’s and 70’s, I had plenty of therapy from different people most of whom were very concerned with helping me ‘get in touch with my feelings’. Actualism is much more than ‘getting in touch with feelings’. Actualism, as I understand it, is deep investigation of one’s emotional and passionate nature with the end aim being the total elimination of the ‘self’ with its’ instinctual and emotional underpinning. Gary to No 33

I’m 51 years old, having been born in 1950. My parents were married during my father’s service in the US Army in WWII and I was their only child. I grew up during the ‘baby-boom’ era of the 1950s. I dropped acid and went to school stoned during the 1960s and almost drank myself into an early grave in my thirties. The pain and suffering were unbearable and I had to keep myself permanently stoned to be able to even cope with it all. I stopped the booze and the drugs in 1985 and became interested in picking up with my life where I left off with it all.

What was on offer was a spiritual solution to the problem of addiction that I readily lapped up. This then led to exploration in other forms of spiritualities and with my ending up in a cell of liberal Quakers. I then got interested in the teachings of Krishnamurti (Jiddu, not U.G.) and it was during this time that I encountered Richard’s writings on the K list. I don’t really know what happened but common sense prevailed and I came to this list to find out more about an Actual Freedom and met Peter and Vineeto and a host of others. I came here to learn and I am here still to learn as much as I can about an Actual Freedom. I appreciate all these discourses and the various threads that are happening. They all make me think but naturally some are of greater interest than others. I often find myself thinking about some issue, coming home and looking on the list and someone is writing about the identical issue at the same time I’ve been thinking about it. I enjoy writing to people and I seem to enjoying it more than usual lately. The new computer system I have makes it more enjoyable, I think.

Yes, and I think at the fork in the road many jump into a spiritual quest for the meaning of life. Prior to that, at least in my case, I was carving a niche in society, setting up myself in life, preparing to plant my genetic seed and building a comfortable nest. Divorce, failed relationships, depression, deepening alcoholism, and nearly committing suicide convinced me it was well nigh time to change myself. Gary to No 38

Is it ‘concepts and perceptions and beliefs’ that are the cause of all the ‘suffering and disagreements and wars, and destruction of prior civilizations’ or is it something much more fundamental, indeed essential to the Human Condition that causes all this? What about the instincts (fear, aggression, nurture, and desire)? What do you think about the instincts?

Also, what is this ‘What IS’ that you are writing about? This sounds suspiciously Krishnamurti-an to me. Could you kindly describe exactly what you mean by the ‘What IS’ (I notice you are resorting to the capitalization of these words, which leads me to think you are on about something metaphysical or transcendental here). Gary to No 40

I read your response to No. 13’s post on ‘Mindfulness’, and I believe I detected a statement incorrectly attributed to him. That statement was:

No 13 – A method may be useful to a certain point but then one has to fly on one’s own.

In a post to No 13 I made the following statements:

I’d like to put this business of method to rest for right now. Following methods is of no use at all unless one puts them to practical application. A method may be useful to a certain point but then one has to fly on one’s own. Following a method, if I understand you correctly, can be a way of playing it safe. It then becomes an intellectual, cerebral experience and not the doing of it that is so critical. It is the doing of it that counts, and not the method.

What I meant was that using the method of actualism is useful to a certain point, but when one is totally happy and harmless, there is clearly no need for the method at that time, other than to perhaps inform others of one’s discoveries so they may try it out too.

Whether No 13 is beyond this ‘certain point’ is not to me to say, but his comments would seem to at least indicate that he thinks so. Perhaps he could comment on it, as you have requested. I had originally written to No 13, in part, in order to determine what he thought of the method of actualism. I almost got the impression that he felt the method was an impediment to one’s freedom, and I wanted to know what his position is on this, as it sounded to me suspiciously like those adherents of Krishnamurti who decry any method, even the most soundly based, as a creation of thought, and therefore not the new. But I do not believe he is saying that the method in itself is an impediment, just that perhaps for him it did not work past a certain point. What that point is, I will not speculate.

I have found, and still find, that the methods pioneered by the expert and experienced actualists on this list are a great help. When I am having a pure consciousness experience, following a method is redundant, for I have arrived. The method is not abandoned, however, and is picked up again when the savage or tender passions ‘rear their ugly head’. The running of the ‘How am I experiencing the present moment...’ is most helpful at all times. There are some relatively long intervals of time when I am not conscious of running the question, and I find that my attentiveness slips and I find myself again in the soup. Feelings and passions are bleeding through, creating their own brand of havoc. At this point, the method is sorely needed to return one to being happy and harmless. So that is exactly why the method is needed: as I have not self-immolated, there are the occasional disturbances and emotional bleed-throughs that need to be investigated vigorously and thoroughly using the very methods that others have found and applied to themselves. Gary to Peter

You, Peter, have had a very unique and extremely revealing look at the whole process of a religion forming from the ground up. You have seen firsthand the violence connected with religious life and the stupid posturings of the Enlightened Ones. Your turning away from the spiritual rat race and where you are at in life now should be extremely valuable to those who are disillusioned too with the Glory and Glitz of Enlightenment. I too saw the shenanigans that religious people, including myself formerly, get up to, and had enough. I jumped ship from the Quakers and jumped right on the Krishnamurti bandwagon, and the whole process repeated itself. I was naturally aghast when the whole thing repeated itself. My spiritual pride would not allow me to admit that I had been so wrong about many things.

Actual Freedom and autonomy has to be earned by stubborn and persistent effort – it is not granted by grace to the meek and mild.

Yet religious doctrine preaches that ‘the meek shall inherit the earth’. Meekness is an outward form of behaviour that religious people adopt, but they are just as violent in their ‘heart’ because the ‘heart’ (not the pumping organ in our chests) is the seat of our emotional life and the savage and tender passions hold sway there. To be spiritual is really, I think, to be lazy. You pray to God for deliverance and redemption. You actually think that someone or something else can clean up the mess that human beings, that you, have made of the world. This approach is all totally wrong. I have to clean up the mess myself through stubborn and persistent effort. It is not going to be done for me by some Divine Being or God Incarnate. I need to put on my hip boots and wade right into that smelly mess head on and take a good long look at what it is about for myself. Gary to Peter

I am following what is happening on the list at the moment from the quietude of the lurkdom mode, which undoubtedly the protestors would regard as being ‘hypocritical’ of me to do. But I think that they have far more important things to do in going after the ‘big-fry’ of the Actual Freedom mailing list than going after ‘small-fry’ like myself. My interest in coming to the mailing list is, as it was when I first came, to compare notes with people who are doing the method of actualism, to find out what they are experiencing, and to test the validity of the method for myself. I have little or no interest in the tit-for-tat, aggressive back-and-forth that I currently see going on now. It reminds me of the wars that would break out on the Krishnamurti Listening-L list from time to time- there would be various factions of people opposing other people as well as sub-grouping and ganging up on other people. I found these little wars to be stimulating and fun to engage in as I had a large quotient of un-recognized malice and sorrow going on in myself and these little battles soothed me and provided distraction for a while. I remember it being quite a thrill to express my righteous indignation, annoyance, and exasperation. In the main, it was at bottom a feeling of being in the right, while others were wrong. Gary to Peter

One of the things that has become clear to me recently since going into these doubts that I was having is the extent to which belief has been the problem. Somewhere in Richard’s correspondence (I could not find exactly where this morning) he talks about doubt as indicating the presence of belief, and that hit me hard. You also said in another place in the archive about belief being the problem. It appears that I was trying to replace the old beliefs with some new ones, turning actualism into a belief system, and turning the people on this list into gurus and heroes to replace the old ones. This process is so subtle as to take one quite unawares. One’s need to believe is so seductive. This ‘I’, this lonely, frightened ‘me’ wants to turn others into protective parent figures to be believed and venerated. I think I am seeing this more clearly now.

One of the things that has come out of this is that I have chucked Krishnamurti – I finally unsubscribed from the listening-l mailing list. Conversations there were going around and around in endless circles, leading nowhere. I can see now that I turned Krishnamurti into a guru and priest. He became my hero and I became a devoted follower. I have muddled around in so-called choiceless awareness for long enough. It is a morass in which nothing changes while one is waiting for the so-called Timeless moment, the moment beyond time, beyond thought.

So, what has come out of this experience for me is an appreciation of how deeply entrenched beliefs are and how usually unaware we are of their hold on us. I see this process over and over in my life – taking up with various sects, thinking that I have found The Way, becoming disillusioned, breaking away, finding new heroes to replace the old.

It is all so predictable. The problem is twofold: on the one hand believing itself is a problem (something you pointed out), as it is not the actual, and on the other hand, what is believed in, the ‘Tried and Failed’ teachings that lead one around like a dog chasing its’ tail. The need for belief itself appears to stem from the malicious and sorrowful self, the alien entity inhabiting this body, the lonely and frightened ‘me’ that is seeking immortality, an ego desiring to become an immortal soul.

It is thrilling to be chucking these spiritual beliefs and values and teachings. I am feeling free of so much that was weighing me down. I am being watchful for what ‘I’ am going to be up to next – realizing that I can get sucked into the trap of belief as easily as the next person. There is also underlying this a fear, now that I am abandoning ship, casting myself overboard, so to speak. I feel like a ship adrift without a rudder, without the controls of faith, hope, belief. There is also the conditioned fear or dread of some kind of divine punishment, as I am turning away from religion and spiritual teaching.

However, I am not angry at religion or the God-men, and I am not angry at myself for believing them. I am, rather, incredulous at my own gullibility, my own susceptibility to the influence of others. The goods that they had to offer me – immortality, Truth, Timelessness – no longer tantalize.

It’s an interesting trip! Gary to Vineeto

No, I am not into defending these ideals and I will not. It was hard for me, looking back at it in retrospect, to admit of my former hero’s (Krishnamurti’s) debauches with his friend’s wife. At the time, I did not see the relevance of inquiring into what he did or didn’t do. But I am looking at that differently now. I think the critical thing is to be harmless. What an enormous hypocrisy to say things out of one side of your mouth while practising something differently in your personal life. I will not be disingenuous.

I too had been interested in all of the New Age gobbledygook. The more bizarre the better. I am still on quite a few New Age type of mailing lists and get catalogues and such in the mail. I throw them in the trash. Gary to Vineeto

I was using the word ‘avoid’ in the sense of this ‘nipping the feeling in the bud’ that you and Richard are talking about, not so much in the sense of avoiding the Glory and Glitz of Enlightenment. I can see now that ‘nipping the feeling in the bud’ is nowhere near the same as suppressing a feeling. For instance, one can nip the feeling of anger in the bud by recognizing a situation as one in which anger has been habitually experienced or expressed. Given that one has experientially investigated into anger and aggression and understood how anger, in any and all forms, blocks the path to freedom, one has a definite choice as to what to do and experience in a given situation.

This is not at all the same thing that spiritual seekers do as in ‘turning the other cheek’ when angry or offended, which is really just a supercilious and hypocritical suppression of one’s feeling state. The actualist experientially investigates feelings and emotions as they come up, whereas the spiritualist is intent upon following spiritual or moral precepts as a way of controlling the wayward instincts. The actualist is concerned to bring about the always existing peace-on-earth in himself/herself and for others through eradication and extirpation of the rudimentary animal instincts with their corresponding sense of ‘being’, whereas the spiritualist merely substitutes ‘Being’ for ‘being’ in a self-aggrandizing grab for the Glory of Enlightenment. No wonder spiritual people remain so violent and arrogant.

At least that has been my experience. Had I not been able to see for myself the deception underneath the hype of religious and spiritual life, I would not be here. Had I not been able to observe and experience in myself the violence, the arrogance, the passion underlying religious life, I would not be here. I have seen for myself, first hand as it were, what has fuelled the religious wars that have occurred down through the ages.

When I first encountered Richard’s writings on the Krishnamurti listening-l list, it was an eye-opening experience. Here was a man talking about war, rape, child abuse, suicide, murder and proposing a practical solution, not just mouthing the usual mystical and spiritual fluff. It got my attention but I could not comprehend at first what he was talking about. The interest lay dormant in my mind for a good long while. I could see and experience in myself firsthand the violence of the list, and participated myself in various ‘wars’ on the list. One could see the web of alliances, feel the quickness of anger when one’s cherished opinions and beliefs were assailed by others. I could not at the time, however, connect the violence of the list with its avowed purpose – I could not understand how a mailing list set up under the auspices of studying Krishnamurti’s teachings could be so violent and chaotic. I think I understand it better and I have refused to be a part of it.

*

In the spiritual approach, it seems that one is always dependent on the group, ie. the other spiritual aspirants, the gurus, the priests and their Teachings, or on some religious or spiritual figure, either dead or alive. In actualism, in contrast, one is entirely on one’s own, dependent on no one, but able to use the expertise of others who have gone before. This is a clear difference. In actualism, you are doing it on your own, perhaps with some help now and then from others, but mainly on your own. As you say, my happiness and harmlessness is entirely up to me. This might be too daunting of a prospect were it not for the fact that one has all the help one needs from this infinite and physically perfect universe.

I did not get too involved with Eastern spirituality. I seemed to gravitate towards a modified version of Christianity. I observed the Quaker religion for awhile, and thought of becoming a Quaker. I attended meetings for almost two years. But I found a definite hierarchy among even Quakers, and I found that even most Quakers, while espousing non-violence, peace, and universal brotherhood/ sisterhood, were actually quite violent and narrow minded about their brethren that strayed from the fold. A schism in the local Quaker group allowed ample opportunity to observe all the quirks of character and dark sides of the people involved, including myself. That began my separation from the sect. I had already discovered Krishnamurti teachings. I let go of the Quakers at the same time I took up Krishnamurti-ism. I did not realize at the time that I had only substituted one religion for another. I was most gullible, believing that Krishnamurti was not a spiritual figure, notwithstanding his pronouncements on the Buddha, Truth, Love, etc. Gradually, but increasing momentum, the cracks began to appear in the Krishnamurti teachings, brought on partly by an interest in what Richard was talking about. Once the whole system started to crack apart at the seams, there was no stopping it. Gary to Vineeto

’Tis hard to remember, but I think I just took what was being said at ‘face value’ and evaluated it for myself so as to see whether it made sense or not. It seems to me looking back at it that there were plenty of assurances that whoever was writing to me was not telling me what to think or what to do. For instance, in early correspondence with Peter I remember explicitly his assurances that he was not telling me what to do or what to think but rather that I would have to find these things out for myself. I found this also with you and with Richard.

That is not to say that I have not had plenty of objections to actualism myself. No, wait a minute, ‘objections’ is too strong a word. I have had... questions. I have had confusions. That might be a better way of putting it. How can one object to being happy and harmless? I suppose one always can, but to what point?

One of the things that fuelled my intent to move on ‘beyond the common aversion to cults that most human beings have’, as you put it, was the frank recognition that I had myself fallen into the trap of cultism with Krishnamurtiism. In fact, I think I had recognized this well in advance of my break from Krishnamurti. I had been taken in, suckered as it were, into a deep adoration for the man that I finally recognized to be a sign of religious devotion. I was to a large extent blind to the obvious faults of Krishnamurti the man and I was quite oblivious to the charge of Krishnamurti being a spiritualist to the core levelled by Richard. But I did see a kind of devotional fervour on my part towards Krishnamurti, even though he is dead, and it is a fortunate thing that I could see this as it hastened my departure from Listening-L.

I also saw the same thing with Quakerism. My involvement with the Quakers predated my involvement with Krishnamurti. I jumped ship from the Quakers with the conviction that their way was not ‘the Truth’ and found Krishnamurti, whom I believed had found the Truth. Eventually and predictably, I became disenchanted with Krishnamurti.

One might well ask how do I know I didn’t just jump from the frying pan right into the fire, so to speak – in other words, since I had fallen for cultic behaviour myself, first with the Quakers and then on the Krishnamurti list, how do I know that I am just not repeating that pattern on the Actual Freedom list? The answer to that lies, I think, in my awareness of the issue of cultism. Since I had been aware of the feelings and passions involved in my own cultic behaviour (albeit a mild example of cultism), I was the more prepared to inquire and investigate into this issue when I first approached the Actual Freedom mailing list. I didn’t and still don’t want to end up in a cult. And I don’t think this is a cult. Uniformity of language, terms, and definitions concerning actualism. Yes, that does occur. But I do not think that is prima facie evidence of cultism. Were uniformity or similarity of linguistic expression a sign of a cult, you might just as well say that social work is a cult, or that teachers are a cult.

Another thing that fuelled my intent to move ahead with the study of actualism was that here was something new and fresh. To begin with, something about Richard’s writing struck me as being entirely original and able to stand completely on its own. In Richard’s writings to others, there appears to be a complete absence of guile, deception, and rascality.

For some reason, the framework in which actualism is presented has never bothered me. If someone has found something and wants to share it with others and wants to have a website detailing these discoveries, what the heck – then go for it. If I don’t agree with the information on the website or it doesn’t suit me, I don’t have to stick around. I can take it or leave it as I so choose. Gary to Vineeto

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