VINEETO: Erich Fromm sums up the reason for addiction as follows – In fact, one way in which Fromm sees man trying to overcome his feeling of separateness is through orgiastic states, including drugs. In a culture like ours where this behaviour is disapproved of, ‘while they [drug users] try to escape from separateness by taking refuge in alcohol or drugs, they feel all the more separate after the orgiastic experience is over, and thus are driven to take recourse to it with increasing frequency and intensity.’ Schur, Edwin M. Narcotic Addiction in Britain and America. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1962. http://www.peele.net/lib/laa4.html

GARY: I have noticed in just about all psychological writings the concept of the ‘self’ is very important. Indeed, it is central to any description of human beings and what makes them tick. Although I have but a passing acquaintance with the work of Erich Fromm, I see that in his writings he talks of the importance of having an ‘integrated’ self: that psychological health is derived from integrating the various aspects of the self and achieving an optimal balance within oneself. To the various theorists who posit the importance of a healthy, integrated ‘self’, actualism would make no sense at all and indeed would be thought to be a dangerous and insane enterprise. Because actualism posits that what is known as the ‘self’ is actually the root cause of our troubles. Once I peeled through the layers of my social conditioning and social identity, I found that at the core ‘I’ am but a shivering, hunkered-down, frightened creature seeking biological survival at all costs. It almost seems in a way that when one gets to the bedrock human primitive instinctual passions, one runs right up against a wall which is unmoveable and impregnable.

Richard’s discovery, that it is actually possible to eradicate the animal instincts, is greeted with scepticism from every corner and, were it not for the Pure Consciousness Experience, impossible to believe.

Erich Fromm’s assertion that the addict seeks orgiastic states as a release from the feeling of separateness I would have to confirm from my own experience, from both experience with chemical substances and from relationships. Very early on in my use of various mood-altering chemicals, including certainly alcohol, I was most interested in getting completely obliterated – ‘out of my skull’ – whether perhaps due to genetic predisposition to addiction (in my case a definite factor as alcoholism runs in the family) or some combination of unfavourable conditions early in life, not the least of which was a drinking mother – I found that chemicals were the perfect release from crushing feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, and numbing emptiness and what seemed to be the meaninglessness of existence. Concurrent with my chemical addiction was addiction to various friends and family members, a disabling interpersonal dependency in which I clung to and manipulated others to prop up what felt to me to be a meaningless and empty life. But I also discovered, later as a teenager and young adult, through the use of psychedelic substances such as LSD and mescaline, that these chemicals opened a portal in the mind through which the physical world of the senses could be experienced more directly and more vibrantly than ever possible in the ‘normal’ state. Lest I sound like I am advocating the use of these substances, I am not. I have not used any since at – the latest -1980. But one PCE I had reminded me strongly of being on a low dose of LSD – I had the sense again of a portal in the mind opening up and of a vibrancy and clarity of perception being possible strikingly in contrast to the ordinary, ‘normal’ state. The fact that this extraordinary state can be experienced without the use of chemical aids is tantalizing.

RESPONDENT No. 28: I thought it useful to go and read that bit (I assume it was ‘Infinitude Is The Boundlessness Of Space And Time ‘) myself. We’ve had plenty o’ intellectual wanking on this subject lately and the bit that caught my attention is:

‘However, I fail to see how anyone can grasp all this as a concept.’

RESPONDENT No. 27: In my recent reflection, I can see how it’s impossible for someone to ‘grasp all this’ as a concept – yet it seems to me that one can grasp it as a concept to some degree hypothetically. For example, you’re spatial orientation is normally dominated by concepts like up/down, left/right and so on. But these are completely relative – everyone can reflect on the fact that people on the other side of the globe have a different orientation – so that you can grasp that your orientation is arbitrary.

It follows that since there is no absolute point of reference defining up/down, left/right, etc – that you are both in no orientation in particular and every possible orientation all at the same time.

Well, the same goes for an infinite universe. Once you grant that it’s possible the universe is infinite – and see that when you imagine the universe – you put boundaries on it like the boundaries of a room (if inside) or the boundaries of the earth and sky (if outside) – and you realize with no boundaries or edges that you are in no particular place thus everywhere all at the same time.

And the same goes for time – no beginning and no end gives no absolute orientation – so you are at no particular place in time and every place in time at once. It amounts to saying that all of space and time is here now. What I can say while not in a PCE is a hypothetical statement: If the universe is infinite/eternal – then it follows that everything is everywhere all at once – and there is nowhere but here and now. It all comes from realizing that there is no absolute reference point in space or time – thus no measure or duration.

I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that reflection of this sort can take you a long way towards at least understanding what Richard is saying – then one can make the allowance that maybe the universe is actually infinite/ eternal and my normal experience of it must be an illusion of some sort – sort of like you realize that in relation to objects around you and the earth, you are not moving, but you are moving in space quite rapidly in relation to other planets and the sun – so it is an illusion that you are not in motion relative to the sun, for example.

RESPONDENT No. 28: In my mind this raises another, larger question. History is littered with examples of religious/spiritual epiphanies, wherein the experiencer is completely convinced of the nature of the universe, end of discussion. Some of these are obviously loopy, some less so. They would appear to have rewired their brains to experience the universe in a certain fashion, intentionally or not. We know that the brain can operate in some very funny ways when its biomechanical operation is altered through physical trauma, chemical assault, etc. Richard appears to have rewired his brain internally (and on the evidence I think that is true), so how do we know that it wasn’t simply rewired to experience the universe as timeless and infinite?

RESPONDENT No. 27: First, it wasn’t rewired to experience the universe as ‘timeless.’

Infinite yes – timeless no. If you haven’t noticed the vast differentiation that Richard makes between ‘timeless’ and ‘eternal’ then you may want to do some more reading on the subject. In short, ‘timeless’ refers to an outside of the universe – something outside of time. Eternal means there is no outside of the universe. The ‘timeless’ is metaphysical – eternal is actual.

It seems to me that these concepts are critical to grasp – as timeless is an illusion of the identity and eternal is a fact. The whole of actual freedom lies in the experience of what these concepts express, No 38. If the universe isn’t infinite/ eternal – actual freedom falls flat on its face – it isn’t some arbitrary consequence of Richard’s state of consciousness – but the very possibility for it.

It is the fact (I’m of course speaking hypothetically here since I’m not having a PCE :o) that actual freedom depends on it being a fact that there is NO OUTSIDE to the universe. And doubt can begin to set in if you attempt to answer the question of what is outside the universe. You have to see that the ‘I’ sees itself as outside the universe peering in on it – thus it creates imaginary boundaries and it’s own ‘reality.’ Once you allow the universe to have no outside, then the whole imaginary edifice of ‘reality’ begins to crumble.

RESPONDENT No. 28: Peter, Vineeto and others are attempting the same physical rewiring (not achieved yet... virtual freedom vs. actual freedom) by emulation of that programming... whether they or anyone else can ever accomplish the hard-wiring remains to be seen.If this preposition should turn out to be true, then the issue reduces to selecting a program you like (and AF is the best of the bunch), and applying all your efforts to rewiring your brain to run it.

RESPONDENT No. 27: I see where you are coming from, No 38 – but you are making actualism relative – a truth among ‘truths.’ As if you can pick which one you like best – a sort of pragmatist or relativist version of truth. You can put it that way, but it’s certainly not what the actualists mean.

Put it this way, if the universe actually is infinite/ eternal – there is only one ‘truth’ or fact of the matter – and that’s actual freedom. So the task of hard-wiring the brain is not an arbitrary thing – it’s not a whole lot different from when my brain understands a new fact it has never known before – it’s the fact and the understanding that does the hard-wiring – not the hard-wiring that creates the fact. It may take years to hard-wire my brain to know that evolution is true – as indeed it has taken years for that to occur for me – yet the process wasn’t somehow arbitrary or done by choosing the ‘best’ way of seeing things – it was a controlled process – controlled by the fact of evolution.

The whole difficulty is that we are used to thinking on a relative plane ie, today is Friday, my computer is sitting ‘in front’ of me, I am occupying this particular place in my room, etc. If the universe is non-relative (i.e. infinite) – then we can only be mistaken when trying to orient ourselves to the universe somehow – in other words we are not a part of the universe – but the universe itself.

RESPONDENT No. 68: Once one realizes the inherent selfishness of the ‘self’ it is a bit easier to recognize the little tricks we all get up too. Its nice to look at it in a non-moralistic way too. 5.5.2005

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