PETER: Yes and many spiritual people have come to this point of realization as well, which is why they are seduced into following the traditional path of leaving the real world and turning away to live in ashrams, monasteries or sanghas. Others spend increasing time in meditation, doing yoga, going in, etc. or some other form of cop-out. The pertinent difference between actualism and spiritualism is that an actualist’s intent is to step out of both worlds – both the illusionary grim reality and the delusionary sugar-coated Reality and leave all identity behind. This is why it is important to eliminate all of the instinctual passions – both the savage and the tender passions, lest one ends up living in an imagined state of freedom rather than being actually free of malice and sorrow. It is useful to keep in mind that Richard became Enlightened after less than two years of effort, whereas it took him eleven years to eliminate the tender passions that gave credence to his new grand identity. Even when all identity collapsed he went through a considerable period of acclimatization and adjustment – after all, being the only human living in the actual world was quite a shock to the system.

GARY: The only other thing I would mention is that there is another easy way of understanding the nature of the animal instinctual programming that I have run across and that is to observe children. Granted that the children that I work with as a social worker have, in many cases, been horribly abused by their parents and caretakers, but they seem not to have developed the internal controls that are inculcated by society as morals, ethics, and values, and the underlying instinctual package is plain for all to see. The malice and sorrow of these little people, their fights with one another, their pain and suffering, is readily apparent. The children are very obviously in a primitive survival mode almost all the time. The destructiveness of these self-centred passions is something I wrestle with everyday in my work.

PETER: Having had children myself and watched others, it is readily apparent that fear, aggression, nurture and desire are instinctual passions and not something that is taught or picked up from others or one’s environment. Chinese anger is the same as African anger and Australian anger. As for the nature vs. nurture debate – the instinctual passions are ‘natural’ in that they are genetically encoded and ‘nurture’ plays a minor role in the degree and manner of suppression or expression of these passions. Even then, the role of ‘nurture’ in the suppression and control of the instinctual passions is by no means certain as innate differences can be readily observed in very young children even with identical upbringing.

GARY: There is another thing about nurture, aside from the ‘nature vs. nurture’ debate. There seems to be a feeling among those who I am going to dub ‘naturists’ that if only enough nurture is supplied to each and every human being, the problems of humanity will be solved and there will no wars, no violence, etc. It’s the old ‘what the world needs now is Love Sweet Love’ syndrome, and it is strong among those who are positive, nurturing types. Obviously children need a great deal of nurturing, and I am not suggesting to stop nurturing them. But nurture does not eliminate the genetically encoded instinctual passions of aggression and fear. 16.1.2002

GARY: In a way, it almost seems that it is exceedingly difficult for a human being to recognize the immediate and actual as exactly what it is, rather than what it is not. I wonder if it would be possible to raise children with an immediate appreciation and delight in what is actually present, something they have innately anyway, with no imaginative fabrication of what is not there.

PETER: Also innately present in children are the instinctual passions and these passions will always take precedent over any potential for an ‘immediate appreciation and delight in what is actually present’ – in fact, the crude animal survival passions exist to do precisely this. Which is not to say that it makes good sense not to indulge a child’s natural tendency for fantasy and imagination – a tendency that will anyway be fostered by interaction with their peers, despite the wishes and actions of any parent.

GARY: Yes, of course. In hindsight, I see I made a rather big speculative leap in considering the raising of children who are devoid of the instinctual passions. While such speculation is interesting, it is just a sidetrack from the main event: freeing oneself from malice and sorrow. In my work with children, it is amazing to me to see the degree to which malice and sorrow are inveterate to the human condition. I have also seen a large degree of denial about the presence of malice in children – people are wont to believe in the innocence of children and cannot seem to see that sometimes their actions are most malicious. I was at a training recently and the trainer was describing a child lashing out in anger and hurting someone else’s feelings, and added the proviso: ‘But it wasn’t really a malicious action’ or something of that sort. There seems to be a deep-seated human need to believe that childhood is a time of innocence which malice and sorrow cannot intrude into. But this is obviously not the case. 28.6.2002

PETER: Whenever an adult observes a child there can be a degree of envy at what seems to be a carefree state. This is due to the fact that the instinctual animal ‘self’ is not substantially formed until about age 2 in children, i.e. the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire are not yet fully functioning. The other relevant aspect is that the child’s social identity – the befuddled mishmash of an individualistic persona and a collective social conscience – is not yet fully formed until the age of about 7 years, which means much of the childhood years are spent in ignorance of the grim everyday reality that every adult experiences. 

GARY: The envy can be for the child’s spontaneity and energy – they seem to have an inexhaustible supply of spontaneity, wonder, and excitement. And children can say things that are remarkably perceptive and ‘off the cuff’. This contrasts with the adult mode of functioning which seems to be ever-vigilant lest one defies some social convention or one of one’s imbibed and socially inculcated ‘must’, ‘should’, ‘ought to’ irrational beliefs. The spontaneity of childhood is soon enough trained out of one by one’s teachers, parents, etc. and the social identity becomes calcified and rigid. Then people try, through various means, to regain that ‘lost innocence’ but never seem to succeed.

I seem to recall, as a child, having times when I had the most intense fascination with what I was doing at the time, whether I was playing with something or studying something, or just experiencing something. Later, these experiences I tried to re-create through drug use. The ordinary cares and woes fell away and there was this intense fascination and absorption in the moment and what I was experiencing. Later, and more recently, I found in the Pure Consciousness Experience what I was looking for: this incredible vibrancy, aliveness, scintillating, coruscating (all those Richard-words and more to describe the experience) quality. It is the most amazing thing when one shifts into apperception, and one experiences naiveté.

It is not for nothing that Richard describes naiveté as ‘the closest approximation to innocence one can have whilst being a ‘self’’. In this state of naiveté, there is such an experience of wonder and one is in touch immediately with the purity and pristine-ness of the physical actuality of the world around one. When this happens, one has connected with the long-sought Meaning of Life. The search is over – there is nowhere else to go.

You went on to say:

PETER: Whilst very early childhood is an ignorance of the grim instinctual battle for survival in the real-world – as well as the repercussions of the socialization process – this psychological and psychic battle will inevitably be experienced first-hand by every child in family interactions, playground exchanges and, after puberty, in the world-at-large. <snip>

GARY: At the present time, since the ‘real world’ is such a grim, dangerous place, there is no alternative but to shelter the child from the ‘grim instinctual battle for survival’ as long as possible. This only makes sense from a real world perspective. Since humans are for the most part all engaged in this grim instinctual battle, too many children unfortunately fall prey to the predatory nature of human beings. Compared to spiritualism, Actualism has its eyes wide open to the widespread phenomenon of child abuse. This is one of the things that attracted me to Actualism – we are concerned with finding a solution to problems which concern everyone and which are universal – although the ultimate solution of these problems is most radical indeed ... only when humans cease ‘being’ will there be an end to all the child abuse, war, rape, murder, torture, etc.

PETER: The deep-seated belief that the ignorance of the formative, preoperational years of childhood is an innate innocence is what fuels the whole fanciful notion that nurture is the panacea for instinctual malice and sorrow, and that ‘proper’ nurture can even prevent their onset. Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the faith that nurture can assuage or overcome malice and sorrow is seen as inviolate within the human condition. Like all belief and faith, it only has legs for want of a new and effective workable alternative.

GARY: You have again hit the nail on the head, so to speak, with this observation, and I must say that it is a remarkably persistent notion. I find myself falling into it too – that if these children only had enough love, everything would be alright. It is the old ‘What the world needs now is Love Sweet Love’ idea, sung once as a pop music, expressing the hopes of a Generation, but repeated yet again and again.

As another form of ‘nurturance’, apart from what is commonly called Love, is ‘understanding’.

It is often thought that if only we ‘understand’ and acknowledge the grievance or sorrow of a person or people, then the solution can be found, or at least the ‘understanding’ will ameliorate the person’s sorrow. From this arises the old adage, sometimes used to quell another’s disturbance: ‘I understand your pain’. Internationally, warring nations and other parties sit down at the conference table to hash out and ultimately accommodate to each other’s grievances in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance and ‘understanding’. Such an approach does not address the ultimate cause of war in the first place and only produces yet the need for more conferences, more negotiation, and more accommodation. Accommodation seems to be one of the outstanding characteristics of the Human Condition, as we are using the term here. One makes countless accommodations in order to continue on ‘being’. 18.7.2002

RESPONDENT No. 60: Nurture is the big problem for me. If ‘I’ permanently self-immolate, it is not just ‘me’ who goes. I take a big chunk of other people’s identity with me. There is something else that I find very hard to come to terms with. Living in a purely sensate and reflective state, it is easy to enjoy the feeling OF other people, but to have no feeling FOR them is difficult to accept. If, heaven forbid, I ever found myself lying in bed with a companion I care deeply about, and if she had a tumour growing in her breast and was consumed with fear and sorrow, I could not imagine enjoying the sensation OF her, without feeling anything FOR her.

RESPONDENT No. 25: I don’t think that feeling something for her will ameliorate her condition. I remember seeing people continuing caring for disabled (former?) partners out of a feeling of loyalty and compassion instead hiring a social worker. They had that particular martyr face. It’s clear that they want to break free from that degenerated relationship and start living their own life... but some of them can’t do it.

RESPONDENT No. 81 to No. 30: It seems like jealousy would be more related to aggression and desire than nurture because one becomes angry at the fact that something else is potentially threatening one’s objection of gratification. Okay, yeah, I think we chalk up the worry and pining to nurture as well, and perhaps the dependency, too, though I could see that being more related to desire. Perhaps some of these simply arise from the combination of the two. I do not know for certain, but perhaps as we explore more, we’ll come to an experiential answer.

It’s harder for me to identify nurture when it arises because it doesn’t seem to appear to me as often as the other emotions, at least not by itself. From what I understand, nurture is basically the instinct used to make sure an adult human cares for its offspring. I can testify that I’ve dreamt of experiencing nurture, and it’s a heart-wrenching, powerful pressure on the heart. Usually those dreams had to do with protecting a small child, so I figured that it was nurture I was experiencing.

I’ve explored nurture far less than the other passions simply because it seems to arise in me far less than the others. Maybe that’s due to a lack of awareness, but I seriously doubt it. Only recently have I really been able to go down into my instinctual passions and see what’s going on. One thing I noticed when I start feeling an emotion and trace it back to its source is that, when ‘down’ in the realms of the passions, they so easily flow into one another. If I’m feeling fear, and an attractive male walks into the coffee house (which is where I’m found most often), the unadulterated desire arises. That, may in turn, flow into aggression, which may flow into nurture, and so it continues to happen.

I thought that was interesting as I wasn’t aware that the passions would do that. I think that because the same general area of the brain causes these passions to happen, and because the chemical flow is being ‘confined’ to that area so that one can consciously observe it, the emotions automatically make shifts because they have no where else to go. If anyone can clarify otherwise, I would be happy to hear thoughts on it. 13.5.2005

RESPONDENT No. 98: How could you care for a newborn without Nurture?

RESPONDENT No. 27: Simple, since you would actually care about the newborn.

RESPONDENT No. 98: How about a dog?

RESPONDENT No. 27: Same, since you would actually care about the dog.

RESPONDENT No. 98: What would drive an actualist to pet a dog?

RESPONDENT No. 27: A person who is actually free would not be ‘driven’ at all. If you are referring to an ‘actualist’ specifically (someone not yet actually free) – then they could easily be ‘driven’ to pet a dog by the same drives that every human being is born with. 25.8.2005

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