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Peter’s Correspondence to the Actual Freedom List
Hi Everybody, It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then just to loosen up. Inevitably though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker. I began to think alone – to relax I told myself – but I knew it wasn’t true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time. I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don’t mix, but I couldn’t stop myself. I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, ‘What is it exactly we are doing here?’ Things weren’t going so great at home either. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother’s. I soon had a reputation as a heavy thinker. One day the boss called me in. He said, ‘Look, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don’t stop thinking on the job, you’ll have to find another job.’ This gave me a lot to think about. I came home early after my conversation with the boss. ‘Sweetheart,’ I confessed, ‘I’ve been thinking ...’ ‘I know you’ve been thinking,’ she said, ‘and I want a divorce!’ ‘But, surely it’s not that serious.’ ‘It is serious,’ she said, lower lip aquiver. ‘Your thinking too much ... if you keep on thinking we won’t have any money!’ ‘That’s faulty thinking,’ I said impatiently, and she began to cry. I’d had enough. ‘I’m going to the library,’ I snarled as I stomped out the door. I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche. I roared into the parking lot and ran up to the big glass doors ... they didn’t open. The library was closed. To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night. As I sank to the ground clawing at the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye. ‘Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?’ it asked. You probably recognise that line. It comes from the standard Thinker’s Anonymous poster. Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker. I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video. Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting. I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed ... well easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking.
Hi Everyone, Just a note with some more about theoretical scientists. I had dug out some relevant quotes but Richard was quicker to reply. I thought I would leave it but a recent meeting twigged me to post them anyway. Vineeto and I were invited out to dinner recently, and after the meal the evening turned to an interesting discussion on life and the universe. We merrily talked of what is actual and they merrily talked of what is spiritual, so few alleys of conversation were pursued to any depth. The woman was particularly interested in the ‘method’ we were using and I asked her: ‘method to do what?’ As it turned out, she didn’t have an aim in life but was just interested in finding a new method per se. She was simply on a spiritual quest for methods, paths and teachers. That conversation soon dwindled, and in an attempt to inject a bit of common sense into the evening I steered the discussion back to the actual – tapping the arm of the chair to give an illustration of what is actual. The man immediately told me it was a scientifically proven fact that the chair did not exist as the essence of matter was ethereal and constantly fluctuating between here and there – pointing over there – and as such could not be actual. Needless to say I nearly fell off my chair, literally, as what I was comfortably sitting on had magically been transported, by scientific theory and this man’s belief, over to the opposite corner of the veranda. Which only goes to prove that believing what theoretical scientists say could be a danger to one’s health – as well as one’s sanity. So a few quotes – from the late Darryl Reanney’s book – The Death of Forever – A New Future for Human Consciousness. Longman 1991 While his teaching background is microbiology and biochemistry he draws on a broad range of theoretical sciences to substantiate his vision in understandable form.. As such, he reveals much that is usually ‘hidden’ from the lay person by scientific jargon and bewildering mathematical complexity.
Hard to even make a comment on that one, given that science is reaching far into the realms of the invisible – and apparently the realms of the unmeasurable – exotic imagination runs riot in the search for the truth.
No words for the truth as we try to interpret the signals from the future? No words to describe the truth from the further shore?
Now we get to the crux of the matter as to why I nearly fell off my chair – it was being ‘quantum tunnelled’ at the time. In a bid to inject a degree of common sense (?) into this I’ll risk a quote from Paul Davies about Quantum Theory.
Now, if we note the word theory and Mr. Davies words ‘... only on an atomic scale ..., ... may not be ..., ... should be envisaged ..., ... slightly nebulous ...,’ then I am quite happy for them to imagine, invasive and theorize for all they will, as long as the chair doesn’t fly across the room and the coffee cup becomes so nebulous that it can’t hold coffee. It is a far, far stretch from Mr. Davies description of the ‘theory of things so small that we can’t actually substantiate them’ to the fantasies of Mr. Reanney and the Mystics. They are frantically clutching at straws in order to turn the actual into an illusion, the substantial into the insubstantial, the obvious into the apparent, the material into the ethereal – in short to escape from this actual world, as evidenced by the senses into ‘another’ world of imagination.
What to say? It appears that cosmology has invented the lot. The cataclysmic ‘end’ of the world, the black hole of hell, the ‘parallel’ universes as in levels of consciousness and reincarnation on a universal scale! I guess we will soon see a rash of Past-Universe Therapies for the ‘therapeutically under-nourished’. Alan, if you ever get to this side of the world we could make a bob or two running ‘Meet the other-you’ sessions. We could connect people to their other selves that exist in parallel universes. We could issue certificates to people who could wave them at their partners or the police and say ‘It wasn’t me – It was the me that is now in a parallel universe that did it!’ Could be a winner ...
Does that also mean that if somehow we could all manage to avoid living in ‘real’ time and hang out in ‘imaginary’ time we would avoid being ‘doomed’ and avoid the black hole? Having invented black holes – a mathematical supposition given credence by the discovery of some, as yet, unexplained observational irregularities in the vast depths of space, the theoreticians are indeed having a field day. I find it telling that the scientists have to resort to fanciful speculation as they approach ‘nothing’, the subatomic where mass (as in substantially evident) disappears; and when they explore the ‘vast’ – the more distant (as in substantially evident) realms of the infinite universe.
It comes as no surprise that science is firmly rooted in mysticism, shamanism and alchemy and steeped in the search for the meaning of life. It has been a bare few centuries since science has very hesitantly emerged from the control of the church in Europe. Galileo was forced to publicly recant his finding that the earth orbited the sun because it did not fit with the flat-earth version of the universe described in Genesis. Nowadays we have the ability to eliminate many hereditary diseases with the simple manipulation of genetic codes but research has been curtailed as ‘unethical’ – religion still reigns supreme. One should not meddle with ‘Mother Nature’ or God, or whatever – or there will be Hell to pay! Well, I’m busy meddling with Mother Nature’s implanted instincts – and the rewards are extraordinary. Those who think genetic engineering is the answer to the human dilemma ignore the stranglehold that morals and ethics have on the Human Condition. Better to get on with the job yourself – neither God nor science will be of help. Well there are a few more quotes so I will just tootle on and finish ...
It would seem to me that Mr. Einstein’s greatest contribution to physics is to theoretically propose ‘another’ dimension – space-time – which gave validity to the mystics ‘other’ dimension. Interestingly after the publication of his theory it was Herman Minkowski who offered a geometric picture of this new spacetime and it was only reluctantly that Albert accepted it. On my reading he seemed wary of the many extrapolations that resulted from his theory but by then Fame and Fortune were his for the basking in. Mr. Hawkings recently added imaginary time to the space-time dimension and ‘Bingo’, the theoreticians have completed the scenario of the actual being illusionary – both in matter and space, as well as time.
Having ‘confirmed’ that matter, space and time are illusionary we then have to evolve to a four-dimensional state of consciousness to access the ultimate truth. This theory gels so neatly with the mystical Altered State of Consciousness or Higher Consciousness as to make a mockery of theoretical mathematics, physics and cosmology.
And just to round off, the late Mr. Reanney managed to convince himself – with the help of theoretical science – that his consciousness is eternal. Of course, he will not be reporting back from the fourth dimension as no information can cross the space-time ‘boundary’ at a black hole or a naked singularity. Thus this theoretical (and mystical) forth-dimension will remain forever ‘unknown’ to mortal man in his state of ‘lower’ consciousness. Well enough twaddle – time to kick back for a coffee and couch in three dimensions. There is a ‘high probability’ that the couch is still where I left it, and the coffee is still in the jar. There is a lot to be said for what is actual and that’s a few more words for the case for the affirmative.
Hi Everyone, Just a bit more from the meta-physicians of mathematics, theoretical physics and cosmology. I thought I would post some quotes on the subject of infinity as they reveal much about the tortured imagination of the human mind. Imaginative flights of fantasy, such as we see in children’s fairy stories, are well documented, fervently believed in, passionately defended and financially well supported in the ‘adult’ worlds of science, religion and philosophy. Much convoluted and twisted thinking has gone into making up stories about ‘what lies beyond’ – whether it be beyond the stars in the physical world, or beyond death in the spiritual world. The theoretical scientists realm is supposedly that of the physical world but when they encounter infinity – the fact that this physical universe has no limit, no ‘outside’, no edges, nothing ‘beyond’ – they eagerly succumb to the spiritual or ethereal. I remember, it was a stunning realization when I contemplated on the fact that the universe is infinite. No outside ... this is it. And I am nowhere in particular – there is no bottom left-hand corner in infinite space. And there is no room for God. I had had previous glimpses of the infinitude of the universe while sleeping out at night in the desert when the stars alone were as bright as a coastal full moon night. Or the evening when we stopped to camp and sat out on deckchairs to watch the sunset. As the sun was setting to a huge golden-red ball I turned to see the moon rising behind me – an equal sized golden-red ball on the opposite horizon. What a sight, I didn’t know which way to look, such was the magnificence of it all. The actual leaves any paltry imagination for dead. So, on to some quotes from – Paul Davies, The Edge of Infinity, Beyond the Black Hole, Penguin 1994, Chapter 2 – Measuring the Infinite
The ‘end of the universe’, in spacetime terms, is an illusion built upon an illusion. Spacetime is an imaginary ‘other dimension’ invented by Mr. Einstein – so whatever is theorized to happen in spacetime is twice removed from the actual universe (with actual time and actual space) that we live in. All this nonsense is based on the stubborn and instinctual fear of acknowledging the fact that the physical universe is infinite and eternal – no other worlds, no other place, no other dimensions.
A little disclaimer he slips in here but then proceeds to apply his mathematical theories to the real world – predicting the existence of black holes and singularities in the physical universe despite a stunning lack of any factual evidence.
‘... impossible to believe, yet they are true’. ‘True’ is a word that is currently so abused as to be useless. Christians believe the virgin birth was true, NDA-followers believe that inert planets hurtling through space affects their moods and behaviour, Trekkies believe in Warp-speed and wormholes, and Mr. Davies believes in an edge to the infinite universe. Strange tales, but ‘true’ ...?
I hate to quibble about words, but Mr. Oxford says of infinity –
So how is it almost impossible to make it larger? Could it be by inventing a plug hole in the middle – a black hole – so we can all disappear down there one day? Or how about a hole that ‘new stuff’ comes flowing in one day? Of course, you would have to bend space a bit around the holes but ... then again ... why not? It is just a theory after all ... truly ... honestly ...
How not to win friends in the church. Mr. Davies has no such trouble, as he collected a cool million dollars in 1995 for the ‘Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion’.
Questions ‘frequently asked by children’ and adult cosmologists? Answers provided by science fiction writers and cosmologists – if there is a difference between the two. The only difference between Paul Davies and George Lucas is that one writes science fiction books and the other makes science fiction movies. As for the cosmological ‘answers’ – beyond the stars we see from earth have come pictures of vast nebula thousands of light years across, fantastic arrays of particles, rocks, gases, storms, eruptions, explosions, lights, clouds. All actual – requiring no imagination. All obvious – raising no question. All perfect – requiring no solution.
Yep, insanity and madness prevail. And the passion and fervour of Holy Mathematics is indicated by the phrase – ‘a paradise from which no one will drive us’. Their search for God, ‘eternal and perfect’, involves trust, faith and belief in concepts that are held to be truths, all firmly based on the quick-sand of imagination. An imagined new dimension – spacetime that bends, folds and warps, that has holes and peaks; an imagined time that can run backwards, split into two or more and even loop the loop, imaginary numbers that are unreal, irrational and illogical; imaginary matter that is negative, uncertain, anti or virtual, particle and/or wave or even string-like. And from this mish mash come theories which are ... ‘impossible to believe, yet they are true’. ‘True’ they may be called, but factual they are not – nobody has found a black hole, or a worm hole, let alone a naked singularity! It was nuclear chemists and engineers who developed nuclear energy and the bomb. According to the book,
i.e. he didn’t think it was possible. Further, Edward Teller states
The Americans got to the moon with Newtonian physics and engineering, not Einsteinian theory.
The more I read and understand Mr. Einstein, the more mystical and Guru-like he becomes. It’s all mythical tales and wishful thinking of anywhere but here, and anytime but now. Anything to avoid the fact that we are mortal and that neither goodness nor Godness can make us happy and harmless. Anything to avoid the instinctually-sourced malice and sorrow of the Human Condition. Anything to avoid the fact that this is the only moment one can experience being alive. Anything to avoid being here and now in this very actual world, happening at this very moment. What a waste to bury one’s head in the sand or in the clouds when what is actual is perfect, benign, delightful, magnificent, tangible, tactile, tasty, vibrant, alive, immediate and right here on this planet. And it is the destiny of all committed actualists to experience this actuality 24 hrs. a day, every day. To sacrifice one’s self – to psychologically and psychically self-immolate, in order that the perfection and purity of the infinitude of the physical universe can become actualized in a human being. In order that the universe can experience itself as a human being. Good, Hey.
Hi Alan, hi Mark, A post firstly about something Alan wrote that particularly ‘pricked up my ears’. And, to insert a quick ‘plug’ for the benefits of virtual freedom, even if one does not go all the way. At a time considered to be the most stressful there can be in a persons life – selling a house, selling (or closing) a business and a likely break up of a marriage – here I am, enjoying every moment and delighting in the experience of being alive – I thoroughly recommend it. Yes, indeed – this is what it is all about. This is why we delve into beliefs, explore feelings and emotions, contemplate upon the Human Condition, and dare to be different. The practical, down-to-earth results in everyday living – for what else is there? The whole aim of the exercise is to become actually free of malice and sorrow – to become happy and harmless. And this is done incrementally, bit by bit, and the results come incrementally, bit by bit. The ‘events’, realizations, wobbles, etc. are then seen for what they are – interesting by-products of coming closer to a sensible and sensate experiencing of the ‘main event’ – that which is happening right now. There is no suffering on the path – anything that occurs in the head or heart is but the consequence of daring to devote oneself to becoming free. While the challenges may seem daunting on occasions, the rewards for stubborn persistence are abundantly apparent in the increased ease and delight in everyday life. It is this everyday happiness and harmlessness that gives one the confidence to pursue the unimaginable – the living of the Pure Consciousness Experience 24 hours a day, every day. It reminds me that whenever I have written, or said to anyone, that one of the reasons I abandoned the spiritual world was ‘that I did not like how the ‘Enlightened Ones’ were with their women, I didn’t like their lifestyle, and I didn’t like how they were with each other! ’ – I have had no response. Sort of a blank look, as though – ‘What is he on about?’ The Divine Status of the Gurus apparently exempts them from regarding and treating their fellow human beings as exactly that – fellow human beings. This superior and ‘Holier than thou’ attitude also permeates into the minds and hearts of their disciples as they worship, idolize and attempt to emulate the Gurus. Why do humans persistently worship the elite few God-men as having achieved the pinnacle of human achievement yet persistently ignore their ‘personal’ lives and behaviour when ‘off stage’. There is no ‘on-stage’ and ‘off-stage’ in actualism, there is no divine life and secular life, there is no other place or other life – be a past life, a next life or a life beyond physical death. Actualism is 180 degrees opposite to the spiritual escapism and, as such, I was delighted to read of your experiences, Alan. They accord with my own everyday experiences and are evidence of the success being reported by the handful involved at the moment. Mark summed up the success he is having compared with his years in the spiritual world so well recently, and it is well worth repeating what he wrote –
This is written by someone with 20 years experience on the spiritual path – an experiential understanding of the significance of those three words, ‘fellow human beings’. Whomever you meet is simply a fellow human being – and one finds oneself increasingly regarding and treating others as such on the path to freedom from malice and sorrow. Those three words – ‘fellow human beings’ – are the very key to peace on this planet and it will eventuate incrementally as more and more people have the experiential understanding that Mark has written of. Other than spiritual and religious morality the ‘best’ that Humanity has come up with in order attempt to bring some semblance of ‘civilized’ behaviour to the planet is the ethical concept of Human Rights. Human Rights do naught but enshrine the differences and separateness in noble moral and ethical codes that are not only unliveable but actively perpetuate the continuation of division, conflict and war – an endless fight for one’s Rights, and the endless despair at having them ‘denied’ by others who are fighting for their Rights. One man’s God is but another man’s Devil. What is right for one is wrong for another. Justice for one means that someone else has to have revenge wrought upon him or her. Retaining one’s ‘heritage’ means retaining the prejudices, superstitions, ‘hurts’ and angers of one’s parents and tribe. The concept of Human Rights is a well-meaning, but futile, attempt to force human beings to try and stop the instinctual urge to kill each other. ‘Twill never bring peace and harmony. So Mark, you have ‘hit the nail upon the head’ in your seeing through the failure of the ideals of Love and Compassion in the spiritual/religious world. It is, after all, no different to the love and compassion that continuously fails in the real world. All are but failed attempts to ‘keep the lid’ on the animal within us. The only way to peace and harmony is to get rid of the animal in us completely and Actual Freedom does just that. Actual Freedom heralds the beginning of peace on earth for human beings, an end to the appalling suffering, violence, oppression, corruption and despair. An end to all the wars, ethnic cleansing, sectarian troubles, fights for Rights, revenges, genocides, repressions, rapes, murders and suicides. One at a time, we will step out of that real world and leave our ‘selves’ behind. Fear and aggression – the animal survival instincts of a dog-eat-dog world – are now redundant for modern human beings. They need to be eliminated in order that we can begin to treat each other as fellow human beings and not as ‘friends’ or ‘enemies’ in a perpetual battle for succour, security and survival. It’s such a buzz to get to the bottom of what it is that ails the Human Condition. To see that it is naught but the ‘self’-centred survival instinct that is at the root of sorrow and malice and to set about eliminating it in oneself. What an amazing time to be alive ... * P.S. I’m running on a new mail program, so I will send the background to this message later – maybe in a few days when I have sorted things out a bit...!
Hi all, I was doing a bit of editing in the Glossary the other day and came across some definitions that I thought was particularly pertinent to the discussions on the list. Most of the people I have talked to about Actual Freedom seem to have no idea what constitutes a belief and what constitutes a fact. Often I would enter into a conversation and find that the person had absolutely no idea of the difference between a belief and a fact. They would insist that something was true, the Truth, ‘my’ truth, they ‘felt’ it to be so, it was their understanding, they heard it was so, etc. and that was good enough for them. When I pointed out that other people of different cultures, spiritual or religious leanings, political or social views held differing views and these differences were the source of confusion, confrontation, conflict, persecution and warfare, I was met with bewilderment. Nobody was willing to admit that their own particular cherished views and understandings were beliefs. It is always the same – I’m right and the others are wrong, my God or Guru is the only God or Guru and everyone else has beliefs – not me! According to the Red Cross over 1 billion people have been directly affected by war or armed conflicts in the last 20 years. ‘Affected by’ includes death, being maimed, tortured, raped, imprisoned, displaced, losing family members, possessions, homes, etc. The vast majority of these wars and armed conflicts are fought over religious, spiritual, tribal, ethical, moral and political beliefs – dearly held and dearly fought over beliefs! Those people who have been, or continue to be, on the spiritual path are those least likely to actively challenge their beliefs for they have been indoctrinated and taught to value belief over fact and they further hobble themselves with faith, trust, hope and loyalty as well. A potent, and very often, lethal mix. So here’s a bit on belief – that which is believed, an accepted opinion. Conviction of the truth or reality of a thing, based on insufficient grounds to afford positive knowledge. Confidence, faith, trust. A Religious tenet or tenets. Oxford Dictionary To believe means ‘fervently wish to be true’. The action of believing is to emotionally imagine, or fervently wish, something to be real that is not actual – actual, as in tangible, corporeal, material, definitive, present, obvious, evident, current, substantial, physical and palpable. A belief is an assumption, a notion, a proposition, an idea that requires faith, trust or hope to sustain in the face of doubt, uncertainty and lack of factual evidence. Whereas a fact is a fact, demonstratively evident to all that it is actual and/or that it works. Many beliefs are masqueraded as ‘truths’ or are merely accepted as facts in lieu of any serious scrutiny, or are protected by the blatant and stubborn refusal to question the facticity of that which is ‘dearly held’ to be true. Simply because everybody believes something to be true doesn’t make it a fact. At some stage in history everybody believed the sun went around the earth and that the earth was flat, but both notions, believed and accepted as ‘true’ at the time, have turned out to be mere beliefs. Indeed, what is esteemed as ‘Ancient Wisdom’ is a literal plethora of beliefs, ‘truths’, superstitions, myths, opinions, assumptions, theories and misconceptions that require active scrutiny and intelligent investigation by anyone who sincerely wants to become free of the Human Condition. After all, the very charter of the Human Condition is firmly based on, and rooted in, this same ‘Ancient Wisdom’. It does take immense courage to stand on one’s own two feet, to stop believing what others tell you are facts, ‘truths’ or the ‘Truth’ and start investigating for yourself – to ascertain and distinguish between fact and belief. A belief is an emotion-backed thought – made to appear real or true only by ‘my’ emotional support for the belief, by ‘my’ passionate feelings, intuition and imagination. As such, ‘I’ fervently wish many beliefs to be true, none more so than the belief in a metaphysical world with its implied promise of an after-life for ‘me’. It is no wonder that all sorts of meta-physical beliefs permeate every corner of human thinking and wisdom, and that these beliefs are so passionately defended. People actually kill each other and sacrifice their lives for their beliefs. People kill and die for their God and their Country. We are instinctually programmed to sacrifice ourselves for what we perceive to be the ‘good’ of the particular tribe we are in. One tribe’s God becomes another tribe’s Devil and, as such, horrendous religious wars, conflicts, persecutions, repressions and tortures are fought over the spreading or defending of particular beliefs. Who ‘I’ think I am as a social being is nothing more than the opinions, values and beliefs of others – my parents and those of my parent’s generation, which in turn came from their parents, and so on and so-on, back into the dim dark ages of the cave-men and cave-women. These very beliefs are what ‘I’ am made of – they form the very substance of ‘my’ social identity. The reluctance, fear and stubborn refusal to question and investigate beliefs can be sheeted home to this crucial fact – to question one’s beliefs is to question one’s very ‘self’. To replace a belief with a fact is to eliminate a piece of one’s ‘self’. The very act of believing supports and sustains ‘my’ very existence for ‘I’ have no existence in actuality. ‘I’ am an impostor, an alien, a usurper and an illusion. However, the effects of this psychological and psychic entity are very real in that it results in feelings of sadness, loneliness and despair, not to mention anger, resentment and hate. Only by challenging the very act of believing itself, can one actively dismantle and eliminate all of the beliefs that ‘I’ hold so dearly. It needs a full-blooded commitment to eliminate belief and acknowledge fact in order to free oneself from malice and sorrow. The physical universe simply is perfect, pristine, pure, infinite, and happening this very moment – it requires no belief, faith, hope or trust that this is the case. Human beings have just been programmed into believing that this is not so. This programming consists of the instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire that we are born with, overlaid with the beliefs we have been indoctrinated with since birth – in total called the Human Condition. Further the advice of parents, teachers, priests, gurus, philosophers – indeed all of the human Wisdom – is founded on the belief that you can’t change Human Nature. Not only is life on earth a sick joke, but there is no cure possible – the Mother of all beliefs! If one is to become actually free of the Human Condition, in its entirety, then it is imperative to find out for oneself the facts, rather than merely perpetuate believing, to sort out what is silly and what is sensible rather than merely accept what others say is right or wrong, good or bad. Then, and only then, can one discover and sensately experience the fact of the delight, ease, magic and perfection of the actual world. Actual Freedom is not a belief, it is a fact. And now ‘fact’ from the glossary which is from a Richard post that I particularly liked. The comment on intimacy is so glaringly obvious as to shake to the very core anyone attempting to live in a ‘relationship’ with another human being. If 1 billion people affected by war and armed conflict is not enough to make us question beliefs, maybe the conflicts that occur in our very own homes will. It will make it a long post ... but you do get quality with your quantity – What has really happened or is the case; truth; reality: in fact rather than theory, the fact of the matter is; something known to have happened; a truth known by actual experience or observation: scientists work with facts. Oxford Dictionary A discerning eye and ear is needed in order to ascertain what is fact and what is merely theory, postulation, concept, commonly agreed, belief, assumption, speculation, imagination, myth, wisdom, real or true. It is easy to see when one knows how to look. Without having to interpret through one’s own belief system – an otherwise intelligent person is thus blind to the obvious – all facts are self-evidently clear. Start with a fact – a verifiable, objective actuality – as the base. Use it as a touch-stone to test the actuality of whatever ‘truth’ one suspects to be a belief. Separate out facts from fiction; find out which part is demonstrably a fact. Anything else is fiction, an illusion. Any belief is nonsensical. By its very nature a belief is not factually true ... otherwise it would not need to be believed to be true. A fact is obvious; it is out in the open, freely available for all to see as being true. To believe something to be true is to accept on trust that it is so. A fact does not have to be accepted on trust – a fact is candidly so. A fact is patently true, manifestly clear. A fact is what is ascertained sensately and thus demonstrably true. A fact has actual verity, whereas a belief requires synthetic credence. It is a fact that I, as this body, am mortal. I will die in due course ... this heart will stop beating, these lungs will cease breathing, this brain will quit thinking. Herein lies the clue to ascertain why this fancy has persisted: a feeling is not a fact. Feelings have led humankind astray for millennia, without ever being questioned as to whether they are the correct tool for determining the truth of a matter. Feelings are held to be sacrosanct; they are given a credibility they do not deserve. They are seen to be the final arbiter in a contentious issue: ‘It’s a gut-feeling’, or ‘My intuition is never wrong’, or ‘It feels right’, and so on. Thought, shackled by emotion and passion, can not operate with the clarity it is capable of. Surely, to experience what is factual is of far greater import than any conclusion arrived at by thought or feeling – no matter how highly refined the thought or fanatically felt the feeling. To experience the factuality of the ending of ‘being’ whilst this body is still breathing is of the utmost importance, if one is to penetrate into the ‘Mystery of Life’ and discover the ultimate fulfilment ... here on earth. To come upon a fact, all that is fiction must be stripped away. All Sacred Cows must be mercilessly exposed to the most extreme scrutiny, nothing or no-one being exempt from critical examination. Common usage has blurred the distinction betwixt fact and belief so much so that anyone using sufficient sophistry can get away with anything at all and still be considered wise these days. Religious teaching brainwashes people into believing nonsense instead of observing facts and actuality. For most people seeing a fact means betraying their belief ... thus they are rendered incapable of seeing it. One of the ways of ascertaining whether a ‘truth’ is a belief or a fact is that a belief demands loyalty; you give allegiance to it and to the group that espouses it. If you have more than one belief it causes difficulty, as your loyalties can be torn apart. You can feel chaotic, not knowing which belief is ‘true’. It makes you very insecure ... at moments like that you wish that there were one person who could tell you what to do and what not to do ... what to believe and what not to believe. You desire some Big Daddy or Big Mummy to tell you what is ‘Right’ and what is ‘Wrong’. Most people try to resolve their different beliefs through compromise. Two people, holding on to their own beliefs, will get into an argument, a fight. They are separate. One is always trying to get the other to believe in their own belief through manipulation and persuasion ... and by giving or withholding love. The one who is stronger, the most adept in this, wins the other over. As neither can stand separation, they will grab any means to come together – even if this means mutual concessions, or the swapping of one’s belief for the other’s. Seeing that both beliefs are irrelevant, by virtue of the fact that they are beliefs anyway, they can dissolve completely. Then there is nothing to resolve, the problem itself is eliminated. Hence a permanent lack of conflict. With the absence of belief there is no more power battles over whose belief is ‘Right’. Separation is no more ... equity prevails. The result is actual intimacy between autonomous individuals. Just because something is an experience in common, it is not necessarily factual. If something is communally experienced it is said to be objective and it is automatically implied to be true. If one is said to be objective it is taken as an accolade; whereas by being subjective, one is said to be prone to bias, to error. If no-one was bold enough to say that the accepted ‘truth’ is a mistake, then the sun would still be revolving around the earth! In the face of public opinion, one needs to be bold to question the collective wisdom and find out for oneself the fact of the matter. One of the best ways of doing this is to see that something held to be true is not working. Instead of vainly trying to make it work through intellectual dishonesty, one takes stock and applies lateral thinking. One needs to be audacious to proceed where no-one has gone before – and trail-blazers are often castigated for their effrontery. Fancy being ridiculed or ostracized for ascertaining the facticity of something ... for establishing a fact. The criterion of a fact is that it works, it produces results. An insight is seeing the
fact. When one sees the fact there is action ... and this action is the actualizing of the insight so that one’s personality is
changed, irrevocably. As you can see, you can’t have beliefs and be harmless and you can’t have beliefs and regard and treat others as fellow human beings. It’s a simple choice and one that defines and identifies an actualist. An actualist is a relentless pursuer of what is factual and what is actual. So that’s it. Just another attempt to encourage, cajole, tickle, lure, entice, beguile and seduce others to stop believing and start looking at the facts of life, the universe and what it is to be a human being – in 1999.
Hi Everybody, I thought to post the latest article I have penned for the local spiritual magazine. I didn’t write one for their last issue as I found it a bit difficult to water the facts down sufficiently in order that the perpetual pursuers of Truth would consider publishing it. But the editor gave me a ring the other day asking if I would write another article for the next issue. He said that ‘people really like my writing’, so I asked him did he want me to pursue the theme thread of instinctual passions a bit more. There was a silence on the end of the phone and when I questioned further it was obvious that he hadn’t really understood what I had been trying to say at all. Musing about it later I wondered what I could write that would make any sense to any reader of a New Dark Age magazine. When I sat down to write, what came out was obviously influenced by those wonderful social and religious commentators of the 60’s and 70’s – Monty Python – who I had just happened to have been watching on television the evening before. Any serious or thoughtful consideration of the Human Condition is obviously lost on the folks from La-La Land, so I decided to write a bit of millennium humour. It’s hard to send ‘up’ those who are already so far ‘up and away’ – there is only one thing madder than the ‘real’ world and that’s the ‘spiritual’ world – but I gave it my best shot anyway ... Proposed
Well, now that the Millennium has passed and the end of the world didn’t happen, the usual air of gloom-now and doom-soon should reform and settle over the planet. The reason for this on-going existential human predicament can be gleaned from the fascinating insights of a little known prophet called Austradamus who lives in seclusion in the sub-tropical rainforest, just inland of Byron. Born some 2,000 to 3,000 years ago from the miraculous union of Buddha’s mum who was travelling through at the time and a Persian fellow named Ugh or Urr – the bark scrolls are a bit white ant-ridden at this point – he lived a typical Guru’s life and upon death went off astral back-packing for hundreds of centuries. He has recently re-incarnated to settle down to a leisurely semi-retirement on earth. His newly penned and Self-published book, called Austrababbles, chronicles not only his miraculous earthly life and his subsequent visit and adventures on the Further Shore, but also offers a tantalizing preview of this next millennium of human existence. Having come across his book recently, I thought it would be fun to visit him and check out his current earthly manifestation. I tried in vain over several long sittings to tune into his vibrations to contact him for an appointment and finally out of desperation tried the dolphin frequencies. Going deeper and deeper, suddenly there was a distinct sound of Om Shanti Om in a broad Australian-dolphinese accent. Waiting until the incantations finished, I introduced myself and asked if we could meet for an interview. He was most reluctant until I mentioned the possibility of an article reviewing his book in ‘Here and Now’ and all of a sudden the deal was done. He matter-of-factly said that he could do with some book promotion as having amphibians as disciples didn’t pay at all well. He was wearying of living off their offerings of fish, and could I bring some lamb chops and rollie papers from Woollies as he was running low. On meeting, my first impression was how normal he looked but I quickly remembered that his body may have looked earthly but it was the who that was ‘inside’ this body that was extraordinary. We tootled up his path together, exchanging the usual introductory small talk and settled down on his veranda for a cup of lemon grass chai and some vegan cookies. He said the vegan crop had been particularly good this year but, waving the papers I had brought, welcomed the chance to smoke some rather than bake it. I nodded in agreement and suddenly found that I could not stop nodding, in fact the nodding lasted throughout the afternoon and did not wear out fully until two days later. It was obvious that I was in the presence of no ordinary, mortal human being. I mentioned my nodding to him and he simply nodded back, casually mentioning the difficulty he had at first in getting his new disciples to nod. I nodded sympathetically and knowingly, adding just a touch of humility to cover my swelling pride at being such a good nodder. He explained to me that the major problem with dolphins was that they couldn’t stomach vegan cookies and smoking was not culturally acceptable in their society. He had to revert to mass meditation sessions which, while resulting in a good deal of nodding, he felt was not as effective as direct vegan infusion. He then launched into a story chronicling the close relationship between hallucinogenics and altered states of consciousness throughout Guru-history. I stretched out on the deck chair, bathing in his energy and immersed in his tales of the phantasmagorical, when all of a sudden a mosquito bit me. I took this as a sign from Existence and immediately struggled to make sense of it. Ah, yes. It was a reminder of why I was here – to glean from this mystic his prophecies for the future of mankind. I patiently waited for his current story to end, desperately running my question around and around in my head lest I forget it and lapse back into my state of UA. Some mystics propound that one should strive to achieve a state of UL (Universal Let-go) but what makes Austradamus’s teachings truly unique is his emphasis on UA (Universal Agreement). I had gleaned from his writings that his emphasis on UA had, as its cultural roots, the ancient Austra-wisdom of ‘She’ll be right mate!’ which has been since been abbreviated into the current Austra-vernacular of ‘No problems’ or ‘No worries’ It occurred to me that this was a good line of enquiry to pursue with him but I was suddenly awash with another wave of UA and subsequently lost the plot completely. Then, appearing as though out of the mists of time – had it been a minute, or an hour, or an eternity – I heard his voice chanting in a strange intonation. Opening my eyes I saw him peering into the top of the rainwater tank, miraculously blowing smoke from his mouth, chanting Om Shanti Om, scratching his crotch and swatting a passing mosquito – all at the same time. Despite being in awe of his sublime grace, I rose and edged closer in order to see the object of his attention. There before my very eyes was a bottle-nose dolphin, head peeking out of the water, eyes aglaze with ecstasy, snorting in the smoke. What struck me as unusual was the fact that the dolphin was laying back in the water on a deckchair with its tail up on an old whipper-snipper petrol can, exactly as I had been only moments before. My head swam at the sight before me and I struggled to come to grips with the evolutionary consequences of what I was witnessing. That this was definitely no ordinary man was already obvious and that this was no ordinary dolphin was startlingly apparent. The air was literally alive with static, as I could feel the love mutually emanating from both man and dolphin. I was truly blessed at being present at an event that I knew instinctually was the mere precursor to the extraordinary developments that were to unfold in this new millennium. In a flash of insight I saw that the evolutionary process of Existence is, in fact, a gigantic, endless relay race and I was privileged to witness the first tentative steps of the ‘handing on of the baton’ from human to dolphin. In deep reverence at the significance of the spiritually-rich event I was honoured to be a part of, I watched enthralled. Soon the dolphin closed its eyes and went within and after a suitable pause Austradamus reached up and, unclipping a pair of headphones from the veranda post, slipped them on to the mammal’s head. ‘It’s a bit old-fashioned I know, but Pink Floyd did a lot for me in the early days. Besides, if the buggers would only learn to talk it would make my job easier and this may help. There is so much wisdom I need to pass on and, although he’s cute, he’s still a bit slow on the uptake. Still, it’s early years’ he said reflectively. We left his chief dolphin-disciple to its blissful state and settled back on the veranda again, my head swimming with questions. As though he was reading my mind, Austradamus launched into explanations. It seemed that his current second coming arose from a vegan-fuelled rave he had with a few of his LDM (long dead master) mates at a cosmic trance dance. The thorny old subject of ‘returning to Earth’ was raised by some spoilsport, whose name Austradamus compassionately refused to reveal when I pressed him. I did, however, glean that we are talking about some pretty well known LDM’s from the names of his ‘mates’ that he casually dropped into the conversation during the afternoon. It seemed that none present at the cosmic gathering were at all keen to come back again for another bout of earthly misery and frustration and besides, as Austradamus put it, on the Further Shore ‘the vegan’s for nothing and the chicks are free’. To cut a long story short, it was agreed that someone should do the ‘right thing’ and go back and, in order to decide, they would all go for an aura reading the next day, and whosever’s aura was dirtiest would have to go back to Earth. Needless to say, Austradamas lost – ‘my mantra of ‘she’ll be right’ caught up with me’ he noted glibly. So, about the middle of last century, he re-incarnated into a human body and here he was back on earth again. He said he had a normal earthly upbringing and tootled off to the East with the rest of his hippy mates and subsequently watched with interest the spread of Guruism through the West. Since his teenage years he had been keeping an eye on the human battle betwixt good and evil, Divine and animal, Immortal and mortal and, by his score card, human beings were losing the battle. ‘Guruism has become a crowded market, competition is fierce and the returns aren’t good’ he noted with just a touch of fatalism. The other issue was that he couldn’t reveal his true mission on earth – that of ‘returned-messiah elect’, as he would either be taken as a nutter and lynched or would have to spill the beans on those of his cosmic ‘mates’ who had shunned the mission – not a revelation guaranteed to endear him to his mates’ disciples. While mulling over his Existential dilemma one day, in a cloud of vegan-inspiration, he had hit upon the scheme of preparing a New Species to replace the self-destructive human species – to hand on the ‘Baton of Consciousness’. He said he is currently also looking for some like-minded human helpers who are qualified in genetic engineering to aid his vision. ‘Some arms and legs would be good for the New Species’ he said. ‘The feelings and emotions are already similar in both animals but t’would be good to put more ‘good’ into the dolphins before we increased their brain size, or we would just end up with more dolphin wars, I guess.’ A question pushed off from the deep end of my mind and slowly swam into form. ‘Surely it is the animal passion to fight that causes wars and not thinking ability?’ but the thought faded like a hung-over millennium reveler as another wave of UA engulfed it. Powerful stuff this UA! Austradamus’s hypnotic voice droned on explaining that he spends long hours in another rainwater tank at the opposite end of the balcony sitting underwater on a deck chair, feet up on a whipper-snipper petrol can, listening to tapes of dolphin-speak. ‘I am preparing myself’ he said. ‘If I am to be the messiah of the dolphins I must be able to live among my people and effectively communicate with them’. The cute thing about his new idea, he said, is that ‘Existence gets the chance to wipe the slate clean of human beings altogether and I get to be the One-and-Only Messiah of the New Species. For I am the Creator of the New Species! Now it can be truly said that I am Existence and Existence is Me’. His voice boomed through the gum trees, seemingly rattling their very leaves, on its thundering journey through the valley. I squirmed a bit in my chair, feeling uncomfortably mortal and insignificant in the face of his Divine Vision. Overcome with weariness – or was it wariness – I bade my leave and wound my way back home. A troubled night’s sleep followed and I awoke as though I had been having a dream. Then I remembered the spiritual teachings that in the spiritual world all is an illusion anyway, and the memories of my visit suddenly all made sense again. As I recently reflected it was obvious that the most meaningful and lasting thing that came out of my visit to Austradamus was that it gave me a story to write for ‘Here and Now’. Oh, and Austradamus’s prediction for the new millennium – gloom-now, doom-soon, whoopee after death (same as usual) – and get ready to trade your meditation cushions for snorkels and deckchairs ... Well that’s it from me folks. I was thinking of learning dolphinese in order to warn them of the impending wave of human Guruism but the field of animal do-gooders is a crowded one already.
Hi everyone, I recently wrote an article for the local ‘Magazine of the Buddhas’ entitled It is such a classic case of spiritual denial and/or ignorance that I thought it worthwhile to post the relevant piece together with my comment to the author. Excerpt from the article from the ‘Magazine of the Buddhas’ –
‘Sounds a wonderful millennium wish doesn’t it. Gets you all squishy just thinking about it doesn’t it! Is that steam I see? Actually someone commented that they’d rather not be around for that long, and it got me wondering. Is there really any place more interesting, more fun, than here in the body? Personally, when I’m feeling good, I mean really fucking good, I have no interest at all in being beyond the body. I really enjoy all the bodily things, feelings, emotions, thoughts, actions. I remember at one stage it actually became fashionable in ‘spiritual’ Sannyas circles to wish that this was the last life, that enlightenment was necessary if only to stop the endless wheel of suffering that being in the body is meant to be. I wonder if perhaps this subtle rejection of the body is a hindrance to realization, enlightenment itself. It actually feels a bit Christian to me, and we all know what that means! No passing ‘GO’! I mean really, isn’t the body where everything takes place, the temple in which ‘life’ happens, the vehicle through which ecstasy, sex, wafts of coffee sailing the morning breeze, frangipani adorning the evening air, music that seduces, teases or releases passion, concepts become actual, ice-cream, the sun-sets that enrapture, love, how all the things enter our consciousness, how we become aware of them? So my own wish for me in this millennium, is to be at such peace with who I am in the world and with myself, I am utterly happy to stick around for another millennium. (even if it means a thousand orgasms a year).’ <Snip> Here and Now, Magazine of the Buddhas, January 2000Excerpt from my letter to the author – ‘I presume when you wrote –
you are referring to ‘sannyas’ as being a disciple of Rajneesh. If you are, then you are re-writing history and re-interpreting the central message of Rajneesh’s teaching. Rajneesh’s core teaching, as in all Eastern Religion, is that ‘you’ are not the body, not the thoughts, not the emotions, not the actions. ‘You’ simply have taken up residence in the body and will have an endless round of re-births into earthly suffering and gross form unless ‘you’ can get off the roundabout. The only way to get off the roundabout is Self-realization or Enlightenment. What Rajneesh taught was that we are all ‘only visiting the planet’ and the name of the game on earth is to ensure you get yourself a ticket to ‘somewhere else’ when you die, or else .... His essential message is chiselled in marble in his mausoleum – ‘never born, never died, only visited ...’ – i.e. He was most definitely not the mortal flesh and blood body! So, to call this a mere ‘fashion’ at one stage, is to demean and belittle the teachings of Rajneesh in no small way. I also find curious the use of the term ‘spiritual’ sannyas’. Do you use this term derogatorily as a means of distinction from the non-spiritual ‘social’ sannyasins? Does this define seekers from non-seekers, the piously religious from the perpetually rebellious, those who are still looking from those who have merely given up? I am curious, for you are writing as one who ‘sets the tone’ of what purports to be a ‘Magazine of the Buddhas’ and yet you factually misrepresent and appear to demean the essential message of the Buddhas. Are we perhaps seeing the emergence of yet another new and unique spiritual message? As for ‘it actually feels a bit Christian to me, and we all know what that means!’ , are you saying that what Rajneesh taught feels a bit Christian? If so, then it is a reasonable statement, for Eastern Religion and Western Religion are essentially the same. Both offer the belief in a ‘spirit’ in the body that survives physical death and, if you follow the words of the God-men faithfully, then ‘you’ – the spirit, soul or atman – get to go to Heaven or Nirvana when your body dies. If, however, you are saying the Eastern religious teachings of Rajneesh – of endless re-births into suffering unless you become Enlightened – ‘feels a bit Christian to me’, then this is most definitely factually wrong. The Christians are quite clear in that one gets no second chances. Their hell is ‘somewhere else’, not ‘back here’ on earth again, as the Eastern religious stories have it. As for ‘we all know what that means!’ – I don’t. Are you playing on the hatred of Christians that Rajneesh cranked up on the Ranch and perpetuated by his later claims of being crucified? This is the only sense I can make of what you mean and, if I am right, it smacks of religious intolerance to me. Personally, I have no religious tolerance whatsoever – all religious and spiritual belief is nothing other than ancient fairy stories and senseless drivel that has enthralled the gullible for millennia. But ‘Here and Now’ still carries a Rajneesh flavour and to actively encourage and perpetuate the Rajneeshee-Christian bigotry may be unwise, and particularly alienating, at a time when Jesus is being re-invented as a Spiritual Master and the Son of God bit is being downplayed. Well, these were just some thoughts on the factual accuracy your article, from one writer to another. Personally I find it useful to write accurately although in my case it does reduce one’s ‘popular appeal’ to zilch. But then again, in my last article in ‘Here and Now’ I ridiculed and heaped scorn on all spiritual belief and the spiritual world and yet it still got published in a spiritual magazine! I still shake my head in amazement at what anyone sees of any value in spiritual belief other than the opportunity for ‘self’-aggrandizement – Guru-ism – and the myth of ‘self’ perpetuation – life after death. Still, these fairy stories have been around for millennia and it will no doubt take some further generations to wean people ‘off the dummy’, on to actualism and here to the actual world.’ As you can see, this type of NDA writing represents a classic denial of the essential spiritual message and, I suspect, an attempt to ‘clip-on’ a wee bit of actualism completely misrepresented as ‘isn’t it fun to be in the body!! ... when you are feeling really fucking good’ (And if you’re not feeling good, you can always sneak into a Satsang or do a group which usually picks you up again for a while.) Ho, Hum. It’s cute to see what is happening in the spiritual world ‘some thirty years on’
from the start of the West’s ‘fashionable’ flirtation with Eastern religions and philosophies
Hi everyone, Another ‘new millennium’ message that is worth thinking about – His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama’s (the incarnated Avalokitesvara, the Buddha of Compassion, the Holy Lord, the Gentle Glory, the Compassionate, the Defender of the Faith, the Ocean of Wisdom, the Wish-fulfilling Gem) New Millennium Message
With Wisdom like that, let’s not hold our breathe for peace on earth. I saw him on television recently saying the next century should be the ‘century of dialogue’. Fighting with words instead of guns is obviously regarded as the best Humanity can hope to achieve in the next century. The letters to the editor page of the local newspaper where I live are increasingly full of vitriol, and most often from the ‘really-aware’ crowd. More and more people are turning to lawyers, courts and tribunals to fight others or seek retribution so the fashion for standing up for oneself, defending one’s rights – or sharing one’s truth – represents an escalation in malice, not a diminishing. What happened in Tibet is a classic case of the ideal of non-violence in action. The Good and Holy Leader and his lackeys took the money and fled in the face of aggression, abandoning the ordinary people to their fate. The D.L went to seek shelter behind the Indian army, leaving those behind with no means to defend themselves. Pacifism is like hanging up a sign at the border saying please invade or a sign on your front door saying the doors open, help yourself... To put one’s faith in the ideal of non-violence is to stubbornly remain in ignorance of the source of violence within the Human Condition. Contrast the above piece of wishful thinking with an item that cropped up recently –
Humankind has lived through a hideously violent century. World War I, WW II, wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Bangladesh, Korea, Nigeria and elsewhere have extinguished millions upon millions of lives. The killings continue today in Sierra Leone, East Timor and Sudan, to name a few. Waging war is nothing new for us humans. Bloody conflicts from the Crusades to Kosovo have been a hallmark of our history. Which raises the questions: Is such behaviour simply part of human nature? Are we hard-wired for war? There’s certainly no definitive answer. But enough scientists have looked into our past – and present – to shed a bit of light on why we do what we do. New Environment, Old Brain When interpreting human behaviour, it’s best to remember that the strongest human instincts are to survive and reproduce. What we need to satisfy those instincts hasn’t changed much since our primitive ancestors roamed the globe; it’s about getting enough food, water and mates. Like it or not, write Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, co-directors of the Centre for Evolutionary Psychology at University of California, Santa Barbara, ‘our modern skulls house a Stone Age mind’. Though modern-day aggressors may not be aware of it, those primitive instincts drive their behaviours too. A strong group benefits from attacking a weaker group if in the process the aggressors gain fertile lands, reliable water, greater market share – any resources that improve their collective livelihood. There’s no denying that aggression has been a good survival strategy. Which is why we humans are genetically hard-wired to fight. But what triggers that aggression and what can magnify it to the point of a Rwanda or a Kosovo? Richard Wrangham of Harvard University sees two conditions necessary for what he calls ‘coalitional aggression’, or violence perpetrated by groups rather than individuals. One condition is hostility between neighbours. Human aggression got more organized with the introduction of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, says J. William Gibson, author of Warrior Dreams: Violence and Manhood in Post-Vietnam America. With farming came the concept of land ownership – and defence – and the development of more complex and organized societies. Suddenly, there was more to covet, more to protect and more people around to help do both. The other condition for group violence is an imbalance of power great enough that aggressors believe they can attack with virtually no risk to themselves. Majorities have persecuted minority groups, whether religious, ethnic or tribal, again and again, believing they’re immune from punishment. The tangled turmoil in the former Yugoslavia is only the most immediate example. Animals Do it, Too Humans aren’t the only ones who gang up. Chimpanzees, with whom we share 98.4 percent of our DNA, are another. Wrangham, who wrote Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, describes five chimps attacking one. Four will hold the victim while the fifth breaks bones and rips out the victim’s throat or testicles. Examples of taking such advantage of imbalances of power are rare in the animal kingdom because that kind of behaviour requires a sophisticated level of coordination and cooperation. However, both chimps and humans are certainly capable of it. ‘There’s always conflict in societies’, says Neil Wiener, an associate professor of psychology at York University. ‘The issue is, when do these conflicts erupt into violence?’ So, a bit of ancient spiritual denial and transcendence contrasted with the dawning of scientific recognition of the facts about the Human Condition. The psychologists all say the instincts are ‘hard-wired’, for to contemplate and investigate further to even consider that they are only software would be devastating to their professional pride and their very livelihood. A bit like the Dalai Lama saying we should stop believing in God because he doesn’t exist and stop attempting to embellish the ‘positive emotions’ because it won’t bring an end to malice and sorrow – not only livelihood threatening in his case but threatening his reincarnation as well. The Dalai Lama often cites a favourite inspirational verse, found in the writings of the renowned 8th century Buddhist saint Shantideva:
Sounds as though he would be out of a job if human suffering came to an end. It’s called ‘having a vested interest’ in supporting and maintaining human misery. No misery – no need for the Buddha of Compassion. One of the most interesting aspects of the wide and wondrous path to Actual Freedom is the de-bunking of mythical heroes, both ancient and current. The Peter I was 3 years ago still held the spiritual Masters in awe, the great philosophers in reverence and unquestioningly accepted the theoretical scientists as being in touch with reality. It was only a matter of overcoming my trepidation, and laziness, in order to investigate the facts and sense of what the philosophers and theoretical scientists were proposing before they toppled from their ivory tower perches. The spiritual Masters were a different kettle of fish as in order to become free of spiritual belief, one needs to break free from the psychic power of the spiritual world. There is most definitely an aura or psychic web that surrounds the Masters and God-men – this is the very source of their power. Underpinning this aura is an almost tangible and palpable fear that locks one in to unquestioning faith, unwavering belief and unswerving loyalty. All of the ancient texts offering salvation or redemption have parallel stories of eternal suffering or hellish realms for those who are non-believers. I remember passing through an intense phase of fear-induced dreams when one of the Masters I had ‘betrayed’ was hunting and chasing me all night long – to pull me back into the fold, ‘or else’. Once one has seen a fairy tale to be nothing other than a fairy tale it is impossible to go back to believing, if one is at all sincere. Then it simply becomes a matter of riding out the storm and dreams are sometimes outlets for the storm to surface. Realizing these fears to be nothing other than chemically induced fantasies is the clue to keep going. I always figured that whatever emotion-backed thoughts went on in my head, or whatever emotional-backed sensations that occurred in the body, were real but not actual. What is actual is what I can sensately perceive – the rest is nonsense. The business of not only leaving the fold of a particular spiritual Master but of leaving the whole spiritual world is not for the faint of heart. One can pass through some hellish psychic realms on the way to freedom. One needs to become free not only of mythical Gods and the beguiling Good, but free from the pernicious Devil and the awful Diabolical as well. What a thrilling adventure – a journey into one’s own psyche is a journey into the human psyche for ‘I’ am Humanity and Humanity is ‘me’. And on the path the God-men and Gurus, Lamas and Popes, Geniuses and Heroes topple off their thrones like nine pins, to become mortal flesh and blood human beings merely suffering from an overdose of megalomaniacal dementia. Being an actualist is such good fun and well worth every dark night or fearful wobble. Cheers ... ... Peter. P.S. The leader of the strongest country in the world, Mr. Clinton, gave his ‘new millennium’ message saying that ‘we human beings need to have dreams that are stronger than our memories’. In other words, let us all try to forget the fact that the last century was the bloodiest to date and dream for some miraculous peace in the next century. Yet, despite the religious prayers and unrealizable dreaming, the facts are –
War deaths have risen dramatically in the 20th century. *There is no information available for number of deaths per 1,000 people in the 1st-15th centuries. **20th century data is up to 1995. (Source: William Eckhardt, ‘War-Related Deaths Since 3000 BC’, Bulletin of Peace Proposals , December 1991 and Ruth Leger Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures 1996)
I recently heard an interview with a scientist who was researching a way to prevent the debilitating mosquito borne diseases that afflict human beings. He mentioned that there are about 3,500 species of mosquitos and about 20 more are discovered every year. I contrasted this information with the fervour and fear that is generated by the commonly accepted theories of biodiversity and species loss. I always say that it is good thing that dinosaurs died out otherwise it would make for tough journey to the supermarket nowadays. Just thought I would throw one in the ring as a start to looking intelligently at the beliefs that contribute to and constitute the generally held view that ‘life’s a bitch and then you die’.
A snippet of a conversation to The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List – a mailing list specifically set up to facilitate discussion about the new discovery that it is possible for human beings to become both happy and harmless – A – Through HAIETMOBA nothing can be solved, because trying to reject the problem saying, look is harmful for me and destroys my happiness and I want to be as happy as possible, then the only thing that happens is one reinforcement of the self, because is the self that wants to be more happy. B – This is a fact. A – The one who wants to be more happy is the problem and we try to solve the problem through the creator of the problem, think that of course is impossible. Is like to try to put out the fire through gasoline, which was the cause that began the fire. B – You articulate the fact of this conundrum very well. A – Vineeto says, ‘Try NOT TO STOP THE PROBLEM’, which is another striving, problem is not enough the problem, now we added also the striving not to stop it. And who is the one who is trying NOT TO STOP the problem? Is he different from the desire to stop it? And so we have another conflict . B – Yes. A – The only thing we can do is watching the problem and our striving to stop it, without interfere in neither. So we can be aware to the reaction to the problem and aware to the reaction of the reaction. B – This is the path (continuum of behaviour) to the liberation of a human being from great suffering--to see what is, without further interpretation, and to continue to do so. A – If one understanding comes, that we are the problem, the problem is not different from us, then comes a stoping to interfere with the problem, not because is wize etc, but because we see we can not do anything about it. B – At this juncture, as there is no longer resistance to play into the schism and the schism is healed, bridged by a different working of the brain. Then thinking can be used as a tool, but it is no longer creates psychological suffering. Decisions are no longer based on the false reference point of a ‘self.’ A – What can I do if something is me? NOTHING. This nothing is the end of the problem and not my desire to more happy. B – This is a fact. But a person must look at what he is conditioned NOT to see, NOT to look at, so a person must keep looking, no matter what. This could be unpleasant, as does not the conditioned mind form as a movement away from pain and toward pleasure? . Walking on a narrow mountain path and daydreaming is not the same as walking on a narrow mountain path and being attentive. .One must also point that that the conditions of the situation require the ongoing use of the discriminative faculty, though not in a psychological sense, as one does not look up at the birds in the sky, but specifically at the path, watching for stones and roots. … A – The one who wants more happiness will be worse than what is now even after twenty million years, because he will continue to feed the problem, because he creates it, he is greedy. But if I see that greediness is me, I am not different from greediness, then I do nothing about it, to stop it etc. Then THERE IS a possibility for the problem to transform to something else. B – There is much more of a possibility, but one must see oneself functioning under all kinds of conditions, because different situations bring up different responses. Moreover, if one does not want to fall off the mountain path of living life with a clear mind, one must continue to be attentive to what is going on, from point a to point b to point c ad infinitum, not just for a flicker here or there. So there begins to be a plane which is established out of this continuum. What do I mean by a plane? It is a symbol for the way material begins to reorganize and stabilize when there is an ongoing awareness and not just awareness in flickers. [emphasis added] For some reason this particular conversation struck me as typifying the reaction to
actualism that comes from those who have been influenced by the philosophy and teachings that emanate from Eastern religion One correspondent basically states that it is not possible to be happy in the world
as-it-is with people as-they-are, because wanting to be happy only feeds the problem because we know we can do nothing about
becoming happy The other correspondence is in total agreement with this philosophy and picks up on the
first correspondent’s lead that there is a possibility for the problem – how to be happy in the world as-it-is with people
as-they-are – ‘to transform to something else’ and suggests that her awareness reveals that there ‘begins to be
a plane which is established out of this continuum’ – alluding to her own method I say this because I too have experienced the angst of growing up and gradually becoming aware of the harm that human beings are capable of inflicting upon each other and also of the harm that they can inflict upon themselves. My father, who had experienced the horrors of being a soldier in Europe and the Pacific in World War Two, only gave me one piece of unsolicited advice as I was growing up, which was – ‘It doesn’t matter what you do in life, whether you are a street cleaner or a brain surgeon, just be happy’. The only thing was that he didn’t say how because he didn’t know how to be happy. And here I am, many years later, telling my fellow human beings how it is possible to be both happy and harmless and they are busy telling me that the very desire to be happy is the problem and declaring that that happiness can only be found on ‘a plane outside of this continuum’. Presumably this is the very same advice that they would pass on to the next generation – it is impossible to be happy, let alone harmless, in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are, what you need to do is follow the teachings of the East and seek happiness and fulfilment somewhere else other than in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. The conversation only served to remind me that those in the post-WW2 generation who by and large rejected the fairy-stories of the Bible and yearned for peace and harmony have squandered these youthful yearnings and settled, in their latter years, for ‘olde-time religion’, albeit with an Eastern flavour this latest time around. It’s times like this that I am especially pleased to have to extricated myself from the quagmire of Eastern religion, philosophy, spirituality, superstition, metaphysics, supernaturalism, cosmogony and mysticism.
No 16: The only ones who I have ‘felt’ intimidated by here are P and V. More so by V because I actually spent a lot of time trying to have a discussion with her. I realize that this was because of my own stupidity because no one forced me to continue trying to discuss it with her. Anyway, that was the reason I was so turned off to actualism when I first came here. I felt that she was trying to shove it down my throat and asserting her authority to do it. P and V are the reasons I never committed to actualism and probably the reason I never will. The only thing I am committed to at this point is becoming free of the human condition. Intimidation 1.2.2005 No 60: I haven’t heard it stated so boldly before, but I’ll second that. They have been the strongest deterrent to me too. Intimidation 1.2.2005 No 59: I’ll third that. Intimidation 1.2.2005 I am always somewhat bemused when correspondents on this mailing list claim that I am preventing them from being happy and harmless. Such declarations always set me wondering who or what else is preventing them from being happy and harmless? Is it really only me or do they get annoyed by other people as well – doesn’t their boss at work occasionally say something that causes them to be unhappy, doesn’t their partner, siblings or parents sometimes say or do something that causes them to feel irritated? Do they not on occasions feel frustrated when their computer breaks down … or when the weather is not as they would want it … or when the traffic slows to a crawl? Do they not feel morose when listening to sad songs or when watching a movie about the trials and tribulations of human relationships? Or am I to presume that if Vineeto and I were run over by the proverbial bus tomorrow then all of a sudden these correspondents would be magically both happy and harmless? Besides which, is it not the case that the website is set up such that Richard’s writings are separated from those of Vineeto and myself and that if they want to follow Richard’s lead and set their sights on becoming happy and harmless then they are not only utterly free to do so but that they also have available a complete set of instructions as to how he went about it? I can only suggest that such protestations be seen for what they are – yet another spurious objection to being happy and harmless.
Those interested in actualism may well find the following link of interest as it gives some background to some of the philosophy currently being peddled on this mailing list – http://www.newtonphysics.on.ca/HEISENBERG/Chapter4.html#Section2
A post came in from No 99 a while ago that I had earmarked to respond to but didn’t get around to. The relevant part of his question was this –
Recently a post came in from No 100 asking very similar questions so I thought to respond to both together –
Whilst I can understand the difficulty that some people have with the notion that peace on earth already exists and has always existed, let alone grasp that this is a fact – and particularly so if they cannot remember having had a pure consciousness experience themselves – this need not be so, particularly in the current times we live in. One of the most telling examples of the already existing and always existing peace on earth for me was looking at photos and videos taking by human being beings from spacecraft whilst orbiting earth, journeying to and from the moon or even whilst standing on Earth’s moon. I have written of this before to another correspondent –
I was so taken by the blue and fluffy white actuality of this planet that for a long time I had a photo of an earthrise taken from the moon’s surface as a desktop image on my computer in order to remind me everyday again of the sheer magnificence of the peerless perfection and peacefulness of this planet. Of course one does not have to leave the planet or see photos of the planet taken from afar to gain such a perspective or to have such insights – I had a similar experience in the desert one evening whilst watching the red ball of the sun setting over the western horizon only to happen to turn around and be confronted by an equal-in-size red ball of the moon rising over the eastern horizon, directly opposite. It was immediately apparent that this very earth itself was also a similar ball hanging in space and a little reflection revealed that the borders and boundaries, conflicts and chaos, emotional trials and self-centred tribulations on this ball are all human impassioned fabrications. The reason I mention this experience is that this experience in the desert was not a ‘self’-less pure consciousness experience (and nor was it an altered state of consciousness) – it was simply an opportune moment whereby the actuality of the perfection of this physical planet became apparent and obvious. I have also written of similar experiences in my Journal–
Many people I have talked to have had comparable experiences or similar insights such as these at some stage in their life whilst sensately experiencing the magnificence of the physical universe but most have affectively interpreted – or misinterpreted – what they are experiencing in exactly the way human beings have always habitually done – by feeling awed (at the work of some mythical Creator), by feeling grateful (to some mythical Creator) or by becoming totally delusional (by feeling that they are at one with the Creator or indeed that they are the Creator himself, herself or itself). When the emotions take hold of the experience in this way what is totally obscured is the actuality of the physical experience itself – a taste of the already and always existing peace on earth. What I am attempting to point out in this response is that one does not necessarily have to remember having had a PCE to twig to the fact that peace on earth already, always exists – there are a myriad of clues laying all round that allude to this fact – providing one is willing to let go of one’s accrued real-world cynicism or one’s imbibed spiritual-world fantasies that is. And the cute thing is once you start to become aware of these clues, one’s own innate naiveté will be not only rekindled but will begin to blossom … and this will in turn allow for the circumstances to be ripe for a PCE to occur, all by itself as it were.
Peter’s Text ©The Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved. |
