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Peter’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List Correspondent No 58
Hi, I’ll repost a U.G. Krishnamurti quote that Richard recently posted to you as you might have missed its significance first time around –
I have also watched several videotapes of U.G. Krishnamurti with gatherings of his followers and I particularly remember him being scornful and dismissive of an elderly gentleman who had made the effort to travel a good distance simply to ask him a question. I found his action to be offensive – far from harmless. I don’t think UG has any doctrine that says he should act in a certain way, whether that is harmless or free from anger. That’s precisely my point, and the reason I said U.G. Krishnamurti was a dead-ender. He makes no claim to be either happy or harmless, nor is he happy and harmless, so I saw no point at all in following him or trying to emulate him because I have always been interested in the possibility of living with my fellow human beings in peace and harmony. You certainly don’t have to condone his behaviour. I neither condone nor condemn his behaviour – despite his reports of what he thinks and feels, he is simply a fellow human being who has landed in some sort of weird psychological state. And nor do I condone nor condemn those who follow him – it is but a testimony to the desperate lengths that many people go to in their search for the meaning of life. I know this well, because I have literally sat at the feet of a few shamans and snake-oil sellers before I became an actualist. Harmlessness; what is the actualist definition of harmlessness? How about – ‘Effortlessly living with one’s fellow human beings in utter peace and harmony’. That’s the challenge I set myself and I started with proving that it was possible to do this with one person and then I worked on the other issues that prevented me from living in utter peace and harmony with all of my fellow human beings. Do you eat meat and therefore kill life to sustain your own? Do you unsuspectingly step on insects or do you unintentionally hurt someone? I was a vegetarian in my spiritual years – it was the ‘done thing’ to do – but when I stopped believing in spiritualism I stopped believing in vegetarianism. It then became obvious to me that the most conspicuous carnage that has occurred and is still occurring on this planet is the carnage that is wrought by human beings on other human beings as well as that which human beings inflict upon themselves. I then set my sights higher than conforming to righteous dietary ethics and focussed my attention on the more pertinent issue – stopping being antagonistic towards my fellow human beings. Will you kill or injure to defend your life and or property? Life, yes, property no – I have insurance that covers what few goods I have. Do you live under the law that protects you at the point of a gun? If you mean: are the police in this town armed – yes, they are. Such is the human condition that without them this ‘peaceful’ part of the planet would rapidly devolve into barbarianism and anarchy. What is the actualist definition of harmlessness? There is no ‘actualist definition’ of harmlessness other than what the word means.
You will notice in the definition I gave you above, I simply re-adjusted the dictionary definition of harmlessness to mean ‘living with one’s fellow human beings in utter peace and harmony’ so as to give it a more down-to-earth meaning and to make it more specifically relevant to what I can practically do to bring an end to human malice and sorrow. Is this possible? Yes – despite the overwhelming conviction that peace on earth between human beings is but an impossible dream, being harmless and living in peace with one’s fellow human being can be an actuality. Where do you draw the line? The expression ‘the buck stops here’ comes to mind. Or ‘somebody has to be the second and the third and so on’. Or ‘why not me?’ As you can see, I didn’t draw a line, I just moved the pointer to me. Presently one may not be displaying anger or harmfulness but what happens tomorrow one can never know unless one lives in a bubble. While not yet actually free of the human condition, I am virtually – as in almost completely – free of malice and sorrow. As such, I don’t wonder what will happen tomorrow for the simple reason that I cannot remember the last time I felt angry, felt resentful, felt aggrieved, felt annoyed etc. Why should tomorrow be any different? I am not hiding from the world, I don’t live in a bubble, I am not self-deluded – I am a down-to-earther, living in the world-as-it-is, with people as-they-are Richard, in all his self-aggrandizing glory, states that today was a perfect day and tomorrow will be as well. As to why one would make such a statement, I wouldn’t know unless one were trying to sell something, actualism and his method, in order to perhaps give his best shot at his stated altruistic goal of world peace, through his method. There is another explanation of course and I don’t know whether it has occurred to you. He could simply be stating a fact. * And Richard has said he has no psyche or I as ego, so does that mean he has ‘me as soul’ with the instinctual passions? UG has said ‘There is no self, there is no I, there is no spirit, there is no soul, and there is no mind’. Is he missing something that renders him ‘harmful’ or is he simply fooling himself? I am left wondering whether you have read I won’t repost it here but it does make very plain why U.G. Krishnamurti is a dead-ender as far as eliminating the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire are concerned. These instinctual passions sound fairly similar to other theories I have read about conditioning being transmitted though the genes or DNA. On this list, No 59 has pointed out several instances where this is the case, none to your satisfaction but close enough for me. Yep, it is clear that you both are intent on fudging the differences between actualism and spiritualism – ‘close enough is good enough’. UG says the body experiences fear for its own protection. When you are looking over the edge of a cliff, some people may walk to the edge and look over fearlessly and others will keep a ‘safe’ distance. Does that mean you or Richard will walk right up to the edge on a windy or windless day? What will you do? What keeps you from the very edge? Fear? Intelligence? Self preservation? How are you splitting up these three and dividing them? No. Such matters are matters of common sense. Nowadays I am always careful to avoid situations in which I can be either injured or killed, which was not necessarily the case in the years when I was occasionally stirred to do dangerous things in order to break the monotony I used to experience in doing the mundane activities of everyday life. How will you behave when you come across a dangerous snake on a walk in the wilderness? Will you instinctually jump back? Is that fear? I haven’t had occasion to come across a dangerous snake in the last few years but I have noticed a few occasions when I have had a reaction to an unexpected noise or an unexpected movement close by. What I noticed was that an instantaneous preparedness to act, or even an instantaneous evasive action, had kicked in before I had a chance to make a reasoned assessment of the situation, but I also noticed that there was no increase in heart rate and no tensing of the muscles as I used to experience when in the past the feeling of fear accompanied the instantaneous thoughtless response to danger. I liked the fact that the feeling of fear did not occur for it was a matter-of-fact confirmation that I was indeed becoming actually free of the instinctual feeling of fear. Is that the body’s fear that UG is talking about? No. In the practical example I gave above, it was clear to me that the body itself does not feel fear – ‘I’ feel fear. This does not mean that this body is reckless and fearless when ‘I’ no longer rule the roost – it means that common sense is then free to operate, unimpeded by the brutish and debilitating instinctual passions. I did have a snake-related incident that is worthwhile recounting because it is also an experiential confirmation that not only do ‘I’ feel fear but also ‘I’ can cause the bodily symptoms that we associate with the feeling of fear even when the body itself is in no danger at all As I was asleep one night I had a dream in which ‘I’ was bitten on the thumb by a very poisonous snake. Immediately there was excruciating pain and the thumb started to discolour and the skin was withering and dying before ‘my’ eyes. I then woke up out of the dream and I could still feel the pain in my finger and I still felt in shock despite the fact that I could see my finger was okay and that I had no bodily signs normally associated with fear. In other words, I experienced psychosomatic symptoms of fear bought on solely by ‘my’ dream. Maybe he calls it fear and you call it intelligence. A difference in semantics but no difference in actuality, in the movement of the body away from danger. No. Fear and intelligence are not the same thing at all. Fear is an instinctual passion, whereas intelligence is a function of the human brain. I don’t know whether you have noticed it but instinctual passions inhibit the free operation of intelligence. * No glamour, glory nor glitz to be found hereabouts. Why can’t you enjoy the ‘fickle spotlight of fame’? As long as you don’t get addicted to it, what difference does it make? What kind of freedom is it if a little media spotlight can ruin it? It is mentioned here about being altruistic – what kind of altruism is it when one won’t give up their foxhole to further their stated goals of peace on earth? Why not go out and promote actualism on the Oprah Show like Deepak Chopra? Why not go mainstream? Well for a start, it was only a few hundred years ago that human beings burnt other human beings at the stake for being heretics and actualism is heretical. The fanaticism of the self-righteous is not something to be taken lightly. Galileo was forced to recant his discovery that confirmed that the Bible was wrong and the earth rotated around the sun. Charles Darwin agonized for decades before going public with his discovery that God didn’t create all the creatures on earth and then he made sure he avoided the spotlight of fame thereafter. And there are many people who are more than willing to kill others in order to defend their beliefs if they feel them to be threatened. Need I go on? Richard stated in a recent post that in a few years he will go off to a secluded retreat to enjoy the rest of his life in ‘paradisaical obscurity’: I am not saying anything against doing that but if one really believed that their method could bring peace on earth, why not go on a promotional tour? Maybe you all should get off your backsides and start competing with the tried and tired and failed methods and religions around the globe instead of remaining anonymous and in your comfort zones hidden from the glamour, glory & the glitz as you say? It obviously hasn’t yet occurred to you yet as to why actualism is not popular – actualism it is not popular because it is non-spiritual and spirituality in some form or another is de-rigueur within the human condition. As such, actualism will only appeal to those who are disenchanted with spiritualism and want to become free of the human condition in toto. * I can see why you have been attracted to U.G. Krishnamurti. He eliminated what he saw as the negative aspects of spiritualism and ended up in some type of permanent nihilistic state. Aiming to get rid of the negative was never enough for me because I had a positive aim – to find the meaning of life. What meaning could be found? Aren’t you looking for the meaning of life or are you content with your life as-it-is? I remember when I left home and school, I was bewildered by what could be termed the mainstream of life. I remember wondering to myself – is having a wife, two kids and two cars the meaning of life? The same thing happened when I left the materialistic world and threw myself into the spiritual world. I remember wondering to myself – is becoming an Enlightened Guru and having my ‘money for nothing and my chicks for free’ the meaning of life? Neither meaning stacked up as far as I was concerned. If there is any must it not be found in the moment to moment living? If not there, then where? The phrase moment to moment living implies ‘me’ having a ‘life’ that starts at birth and continues as an unchanging feeling-fed continuity until death. Yeah sure it’s ‘me’ or ‘you’ having a life until death. What else could possibly be having the life? You will probably say it’s the flesh and blood body ... fine ... that is me or you , no? I wasn’t making an intellectual comment, I was making a pragmatic comment as to ‘who’ people think and feel they are. Normal experience has it that ‘I’ am an entity who looks out through the eyes of ‘my’ body in order to see whatever is happening outside, who listens to sounds through the ears of ‘my’ body in order to hear what is happening outside and so on. Everybody has a feeling of being an alien entity isolated from or cut of from the outside world – this is the primal feelings of loneliness and alienation that everybody feels and vainly attempts to assuage. This is the basis of spiritual belief – the belief that ‘who’ I really am is a spirit-ual being, i.e. a non-corporeal spirit, temporarily residing in a mortal flesh and blood body and thus capable of living on after the death of the mortal flesh and blood body. * Actualists use the word ‘universe’ and spiritualists use the word ‘god’. When actualists use the word universe they are referring to the physical universe – as in
whereas when spiritualists use the word God they are referring to a mythological non-physical Being or Life-force or Creative-Energy that supposedly has created, or is in charge of, or is running, or is permeating, the physical universe. They are not the same thing – one is an actuality, the other is a fantasy. Your word is more impersonal, more benign. You can’t say this is my universe and your universe like the wars over my god and yours. Not one would assume that it is hard to argue or fight over a fact but human beings are prone to argue and fight over the silliest of things. I know I was before I stated to become attentive to my feelings. Universe is a scientific term, god a religious, spiritual term. Yes but not only are they different terms, they are different words that refer to different things – one being a fact, the other being a fantasy. Words do have meanings – the word tree refers to something that is different to what the word sky means, exactly as the word universe means something different than the word God means – at least it did before the latter-day spiritualists collared the term universe and stuck a capital ‘U’ on it, thereby unilaterally anointing all matter with Divine status. Your universe is benevolent and their god is benevolent. I don’t know which God you are referring to but even as a kid I couldn’t understand that if there was a God, why he didn’t get off his throne come down and sorts things out and put a stop to all the misery and mayhem that human beings inflict on each other and themselves? I figured even then that if there was a God … then he was a very sick God indeed. You say how could anyone believe that we are here to be miserable. So do they. Au contraire. I often hear it said that ‘suffering is good for you’, ‘that you learn from suffering’, ‘that one grows stronger by suffering’ and so on. Even Buddhism, the flavour-of-the-decade Clayton’s religion – the religion that people take up when they don’t like religion – makes it clear that we are here to suffer, that life is fundamentally disappointment and suffering
You imply a purpose to life, so do they. You may have more in common with them than not. Nah, not a skerrick. I gave up spiritualism when I realized that the Good is but the flip-side of Evil and that both concepts are nothing but human feeling-fed fantasies. * That said, how can Richard or anyone know whether there was not some American Indian, Mayan, Incan, Aboriginal or any other from such an uprooted, extinct or rubbed-out indigenous culture and peoples who hadn’t accomplished the very same thing? In your attempts to disprove Richard’s claim you have yet to provide any evidence that anyone else has become free of the human condition of malice and sorrow … let alone provide any evidence of anyone who has said, or is saying, that it is possible for anyone to become free of the instinctual passions that are the root cause of human malice and sorrow. In the light of this failure you are reduced to clutching-at-straws propositions, which do nothing but highlight the lack of facts that support your case. The onus is not on me to disprove Richard’s claim. How could I or he prove this? It boggles the mind to think that one could possibly know. Really, it doesn’t matter to me whether he is the first or not or what condition he is or isn’t in. I am happy for him and you and all the others you all have helped. What a load of codswallop. You came to this mailing list pre-primed to disprove Richard’s claim and now you are wimping out because you have been unable to come up with any evidence whatsoever to support your claim. Of course you will dismiss this because you have already made it clear that you are not at all interested in whether Richard actually has discovered a way to become free of malice and sorrow –
This makes it clear that the only motive you have for writing on this list is to be adversarial. And not only that, your claim that you ‘are happy for him and all the others he has helped’ stands contrary to what you have written on this mailing list to other list-members –
These are not the words of someone who is ‘happy for him and you and all the others you all have helped’ but rather the words of someone who is scornful of, rather than happy for ... How is anyone to know what has happened to every single human that has ever walked the face of this verdant and azure planet? But you do claim to know and you have made it plain that you do know –
As you have made the definitive claim, ‘he is certainly not the first’, then it is certainly up to you to provide the evidence to back your claim. The other relevant point is that you remain fixated on the discoverer and have made it clear that you have zilch interest in what it is that he has discovered, which makes your contributions to the focus of this mailing list an irrelevancy.
Just to remind you, here are a few examples of your contributions on the subject of bringing about an end to malice and sorrow –
In a few years, Richard may disappear to finish his days in obscurity. I don’t see why others who were in the same condition before him, didn’t do the same. Hence, no trace. The prime reason the AF Trust was established was to ensure that Richard’s writings and the writings of other actualists would be available for others to peruse. A Trust is a handy legal entity to do this because its existence is not dependant on any one single person and when one person dies the other Trust members can continue to support the Trust or other members can be enjoined to continue the work of the Trust. Who knows how long this will last but I shall certainly be supporting the Trust and its aims as long as I am alive, and there may well then be others who would be interested in taking my place so as to maintain the website. * Clearly the writings of Carlos Castaneda point to the Indians of the Mexican peninsula devoting their entire existence to such goals. One is not likely to find such evidence scouring the internet. Speaking of straw-clutching, Carlos Castaneda’s writings have long been exposed as being fiction masquerading as fact. All one needs to do is type ‘Carlos Castaneda’ into a good search engine and one can readily see that his fictional stories have nothing to do with actualism and everything to do with shamanism, spiritualism … and pop-psychology. I didn’t know his writings had been ‘exposed as being fiction masquerading as fact’. There seems to be too many nuggets of truth in his tales for it to be completely fictional. Yep. People do find it hard to completely dismiss fictions such as these. The fact that the hoaxers who perpetrated the first crop circles owned up did nothing to daunt the true believers let alone discourage the copycats who keep the hoax running. I noticed that the hoaxer who perpetrated the Bigfoot hoax in the U.S. was recently revealed but this did little if anything to dint the hopes of those who are still ‘searching for Bigfoot’. I never said he had anything to do with your actualism. So I’m now to take it that when you said –
you weren’t referring to the goals of actualism? This does make the conversation somewhat surreal. There is obviously shamanism, spiritualism and other isms intertwined in his tales. As I understand it, shamanism and spiritualism are not just intertwined in his tales, they are the very substance of his tales and hence the very appeal of his writings – the belief that they contain nuggets of truth. All I meant was that if there is any truth at all to his writings, [which I think there is] then this points to some subculture of peoples devoting their lives to uncovering the meaning of life, not unlike the goal of actualism. Shaman, sages, gurus, spiritualists and the like all believe that the meaning of life for a feeling being (a spirit being) is to be found in the spiritual world (the world of spirits) – where else? Whereas an actualist devotes his or her life to eliminating his or her feeling being, along with ‘his’ or ‘her’ associated malice and sorrow, in order that the already existing meaning of life that is the actual world can become apparent 24/7. No similarity at all – different people, different worlds, different intent … and different results.
To No 37 – I don’t know about you but I like it when I come across some information that reveals what I had previously accepted as being true was all of a sudden understood to be not necessarily so. When I started to dare to question the truths that I had accepted as being facts it was scary stuff, sometimes it felt as though ‘my’ whole world was collapsing, as though ‘I’ was being torn apart – but once I got over the initial fears the thrill of discovery took over. Think of how thrilled you will be when it hits you that your assumptions, masquerading as facts, of Richard being the first and even being what he claims to be, are not only bunk but useless items of self aggrandizement and self glory. Perhaps that is the only thing separating your current state of virtual freedom from his hallucination of actual freedom. Can you dare to care and care to dare, and thus question these useless truths Peter? Facts don’t come any more useless than these. But I did question ‘these useless truths’ as you call them. I may be naïve but my years on the spiritual path taught me the pitfalls of being gullible. When I was a spiritualist I got sucked into some very weird beliefs and I did some very weird things. In hindsight I guess I never took myself too seriously because when it came time to have a long hard look at my beliefs I figured that because I had taken them on at some time then there was no reason at all why I could not simply do without them again. The only reason I had for doing such a radical thing was that I had come across something that was better than my spiritual beliefs and that was the challenge of becoming happy and harmless – after all, being able to live with my fellow human beings in peace and harmony had been a life-long longing for me. Which means I dared to care and cared to dare. Having answered your question, I have a question for you. Given that you consider that an actual freedom from the human condition is useless and that being virtually free of malice and sorrow is equally useless, I wonder why you would waste your most valuable possession – your time – writing to me on a mailing list devoted to such useless enterprises?
You commented on two replies I made in my letter to No 60 –
and …
You know it is possible that you all may use certain words in one sense and another may use them differently. Words change, meanings change, what was once a pure fresh relevant term, becomes outdated, outmoded, loaded with undertones, overtones, mystical tones, spiritual tones, where they may have had none to start with. A good deal of the recent discussions about the meaning of words has been a beat up as some correspondents, for whatever motive, have gone out of their way to make something that is very simple, very complicated. If I don’t know the meaning of a word, look it up in the dictionary, if I don’t understand the word in the context it is used, I look it up in a dictionary or if possible I simply query the writer as to what he or she means by the word. Do you actually think Richards’s words will stand the test of time? Of course. Do you really think that human beings will forever be instinctually-driven beings, will forever be fighting and feuding, will forever be miserable and depressed, will forever be ridden by superstition, will forever be prostrating themselves before mythical Gods, or practicing dissociation by turning ‘inwards’ – that human beings can never live together in peace and harmony on this paradisaical planet? One day the spiritual teachings and metaphysical beliefs that are even now so revered will be seen as an anachronism of human beings dark instinctual past and an anonymous man called Richard will occasionally be recalled as the pioneer discoverer of an actual freedom from the old human condition of malice and sorrow. You are already taking some heat for your own journal. Both Vineeto and I have always taken heat for our writings. Very often we have been the subject of even more scorn than Richard has and the only explanation for this that I can come up with is that we both report that actualism does work in practice and that it does work incrementally in that it is possible to eliminate feelings of malice and sorrow from one’s life. Apparently many people find it much more comfortable keeping actualism at arms length by trying to treat it as a philosophy rather than be reminded that actualism is an experiential business that does work in practice. Why don’t one or all 3 of you actualists go face to face, mano a mano, with Mr. UGK and throw your spiritual and other accusations at him in person? You are all so good at kicking the dead and buried, rotten, decomposing corpses of defenceless former flesh and blood bodies. Don’t you think it would further your research, validity and future accusations if you would face a living flesh and blood body (UGK) instead of sitting behind your keyboard, safe from those you criticize, those people as they are? I am sure you could film the entire event and we could make our own judgement, after all you are all for exposing the truth, are you not? You have raised this issue before and you have been informed that we did
indeed try and open You have also recently reported that you have tried yourself and had similarly negative response –
What point you are making in continuing to challenge us to do that which is not possible? We have also had face-to-face discussions with spiritual teachers and Realized Beings on several other occasions but on all occasions they refused to engage in a sensible dialogue and several subsequently posted warnings to their followers to stay away from actualism and actualists. It is clear that spiritual teachers are among the least interested in, and most antagonistic towards, actualism as they have the most to loose in terms of their status and livelihood should they dare to turn their backs on spiritualism. I’d much prefer to dialogue with those fellow human beings who are open-minded about actualism than waste my time talking to those who are already close-minded due to the feelings of aloofness that inevitably accompanies a permanent altered state of consciousness. For those interested in past correspondences of actualists with people
suffering an ongoing ASC here are two links As for the validity of actualism, you have already had a glimpse of the fundamental simplicity and straightforwardness of actualism and its relevance to those who might be open-minded to its inevitable consequences for peace on earth.
Because of actualism’s radical nature it will not and indeed cannot be taught to children by rote. Those adults who wait and hope for the next generation to demonstrate that is possible for human beings to live in peace and harmony are merely following the age-old tradition of passing the buck. Do you have something better to do than to face the living you are throwing stones at? Are you hooked on comedies as well and sitting behind your keyboard? You say you are dedicating your life to this whole thing, why not take a little road trip and further your studies? I am not ‘throwing stones at’ either U.G. Krishnamurti or any other spiritual teacher, be they dead or alive – I am simply pointing out the inherent flaws of the spiritual teachings and of the very state of enlightenment itself, no matter who presents it and whatever form it takes. I’ve done my ‘road trip’ to the East and discovered first-hand the failings of spiritual teachings and the experienced first-hand the duplicity of spiritual teachers. I’ve sat at the feet of more than a few God-men and delved into several teachings sufficient enough to know that the whole pursuit of spiritualism is passé. There is nothing to be found in searching through the dustbin of history, finding a discarded belief or philosophy, dusting it off and re-running with it. It will become, and indeed is already becoming, increasingly obvious to the astute seeker that only a radical new approach will actually bring an end to human malevolence and sorrow … and that is the total elimination of human malevolence and sorrow.
To No 38: Be clear about what you want and what you’re afraid of losing. Fear is always related to not getting what you want or losing what you have or think you have. Not so. There is the fear of actually getting what you want – the fear of being free of the human condition is the biggest fear of all because deep down one knows it will be the end of ‘me’.
To No 38: Be clear about what you want and what you’re afraid of losing. Fear is always related to not getting what you want or losing what you have or think you have. Not so. There is the fear of actually getting what you want – the fear of being free of the human condition is the biggest fear of all because deep down one knows it will be the end of ‘me’. You so sure about that Petey? That it will be the end of ‘you’? Why do I even ask, of course you are sure. Yep. Whenever I write about the time when I was considering devoting my life to becoming happy and harmless and that it felt as though I was entering a tunnel that had ‘Warning, do not enter here’ written above it and I get no reply other than bluff and bluster, I assume that others may well be being confronted with the biggest fear of their lives – the beginning of the end of ‘me’. You have been told it will be the end of you and that ending you will solve all your problems. No. I have experienced the fear of having nothing left to loose other than to devote my life to becoming happy and harmless is. This whole self-immolation thing seems completely bogus to me and why use that silly misleading term except to carve out some bogus originality for yet another philosopher, philosophy, teacher and teaching. That term mystifies the whole thing and scares people. It’s completely unnecessary imo. Remaining who you think and feel you are is only an instinctual necessity for those who want to keep their sorrowful feelings and those who want to continue to blame others for the chronic inability of human beings to live together with other human beings in peace and harmony. For those who are sincere in wanting to be happy and harmless, the feeling of fear that they encounter is not at all mystifying, it is felt to be very real – and especially so for those who have been conditioned by religion and spiritual belief to take their selves seriously. You think what you have written above is the biggest fear? I don’t agree at all. There is no biggest fear. They are all the same and arise from the same source, self-obsessed thought and thinking taken to a neurotic/psychotic level. I don’t get it. Why do you persist with trotting out this old thinking about the source of fear when it is has been utterly debunked as being mythology by experiential neurological evidence which proves that fear is an instinctual reaction that produces an affective reaction that kicks in prior to any cognitive assessment being possible. In other words, although imaginative thinking can produce a feeling of fear via secondary feedback circuitry, the primary source of fear has been proved as being a near instantaneous instinctual/ thoughtless reaction that produces an affective/thoughtless response some 13 milliseconds before the signal reaches the neocortex which only then enables the possibility of cognitive awareness and any consequential thinking to operate. And you don’t have to be a scientist to work this out for yourself. The next time a potentially threatening situation arises, be it driving a car or hearing an unfamiliar noise outside your house at night or whatever – provided you are attentive to how you are experiencing the moment – you will notice that the feeling of fear has already kicked in before you even become cognitively aware of the potential danger. Your foot has already gone to the footbrake and your heart is already pumping faster before you have had a chance to think about what is happening or you are already feeling fearful before you have a chance to even begin to think about what the noise outside could be. The reason I say ‘I don’t get it’ is that when I talked about feelings of malice and sorrow with Richard and he explained that their source was instinctual, there was an ‘of course’ – it was as if I had known this all along but had spent my life denying or avoiding the fact that I was an instinctually-driven animal. After that I refused to be so silly as to go back to believing Eastern philosophy and religion, all of which is based on denial and avoidance of this simple and self-evident fact. This fear you are talking about can be grouped in your societal conditioning fears. All fear can ultimately be sheeted home to the instinctual fear of death. Why do you persist in being so silly as to hold to ancient spiritual beliefs when they have been long disproved and debunked? To me, holding to such beliefs is akin to those fundamental Christians who deny the geological evidence and the fossil record that disproves and debunks the Bible’s fairy stories of a creator God. You have been taught that ‘you’ need to go. The ‘you’ or ‘me’ has and can have no idea what the hell that means except death and it gets scared about the implications of death. Those implications have all been taught to us. No. You would know very well from your own life experiences that the fear of death is instinctual and you would also be well aware that the fear of death comes to the forefront of one’s awareness the older one becomes and the closer one comes to death. The implications of actualism are that one can either assuage this fear of death by latching on to some form or other of imaginary religious/ spiritual/ metaphysical beliefs, live and die as a melancholic and antagonistic materialist or live and die being a happy and harmless actualist. This is not something I have been taught – the facts are now clearly laid out for anyone to see and for anyone to choose whatever alternative they want. If you never heard of all this philosophy and teaching of the self and that the self is the causes of your troubles and that your self must go or die to fix your problems, then this particular fear would never have come into existence. Again, not so. It is common to many people when reaching what is termed middle age – when the years remaining to death become less than those that have passed since birth – to begin to seek the meaning of life. The churches used to be full of the middle-aged and older seeking meaning, whereas nowadays they are more likely to be found frequenting therapy groups, yoga and meditation classes and Internet mailing lists.
I thought to interject in your recent tirade against Richard not only because you have made a number of comments which are distortions of the facts, and blatant inventions but also because you make accusations that refer to me as well. To Richard: In spite of my clear explanation, you still haven’t gotten it. No surprise there. But you keep on with your latest theme of promotion, no matter how lame. Flog it to death if you wish. Its all a smoke screen to the issue at hand which is your assertion that ‘life is too much fun to take serious or seriously or to be serious’ or whatever version you choose. I suppose we should not take the fact of our parents coming down with some disease seriously. I suppose we should not take the fact of one of our children’s untimely deaths seriously & see how much fun that whole episode brings to each and every one of us. I suppose we should abandon our young children to trot the globe in pursuit of our deluded dreams of becoming the first actually free person ever. That would explain why life is too much fun to take serious or seriously or to be serious. I suppose all these wars, rapes, murders, injustices of man on his fellow man would qualify as not serious, not to be taken seriously or just to be plain fun. You have again deliberately chosen to distort what Richard actually said –
– by leaving out any reference at all to the word sincere, thereby attempting to put your own cynical twist to what he in fact said. Now that your beat up about the recent natural disaster has been exposed for what it was, you have since resorted to an even more desperate extrapolation alleging that Richard is supposedly saying that ‘all these wars, rapes, murders, injustices of man on his fellow man … be plain fun.’ (And all this from a correspondent who is on record as complimenting the Introduction to Actual Freedom – which is all about using the actualism method to finally bring an end to ‘wars, rapes, murders, injustices of man on his fellow man’.
The more pertinent question surely is whether or not those who are currently acquainted with actualism are ‘ready for this subject’: not whether or not the ‘world’ is ready for it?) Whilst I do realize that you admitted to being disturbed at the time you wrote this post, your mention of ‘I suppose we should not take the fact of one of our children’s untimely deaths seriously & see how much fun that whole episode brings to each and every one of us’ means that your latest wild accusations are not only aimed at Richard but also include me as well. The reason I mention this is that the death of my 15-year-old son was not ‘plain fun’ for me, as you would have it. It was, however, an event that had a profound effect on me in that it spurred me on to find out the meaning of life mainly in order that that future generations of children should not have to suffer the angst of being instinctually-driven beings – and puberty is a particularly angst filled time for all teenagers due to the rapid onset of the sexual imperative. I also wanted to offer by living example a practical down-to-earth alternative such that they should not have to waste their lives by searching for meaning in the pursuit of a ‘spiritual’ freedom or by meekly following the herd that insist that you can’t change human nature. Given that you have been a contributor to this mailing list for several years
I am somewhat surprised that you made specific reference to the death of one’s children in your rant as it raises the
possibility that it was a barb deliberately aimed at me to see if I would bite (a In order to demonstrate your sincerity, would you care to engage in a conversation with me about the subject of caring … or was the flippant mention you made of the death of children merely another of your unsubstantiated hit-and-run personal barbs?
I thought to interject in your recent tirade against Richard … Peter! Where ya been babe?! Long time no correspond. Not so long actually. Just to refresh your memory, this was the most recent of your correspondences –
I didn’t reply because it is beyond me why a supposed adult would revert to the use of schoolboy sexual taunts when corresponding with a fellow human being. Do you think it clever or witty? Do you think it adds spice to your scorn? I know you are on record as saying that writing on mailing lists is a game for you but it does rather seem that you have stereotyped yourself so much that you are now so firmly trapped in your mailing list persona that you have become a parody onto yourself – unless that is you really talk like this to people face to face. But I must point out that Dick has been tirading against moi – in his ahem, malice free way, of course. It’s quite clear that you still don’t get it … despite the fact that it has been spelled out in unambiguous terms many times over on this mailing list. Besides which playing the hard-done-by victim is a pre-school yard ruse that I would have thought was beneath even you. * …not only because you have made a number of comments which are distortions of the facts, and blatant inventions but also because you make accusations that refer to me as well.
You have again deliberately chosen to distort what Richard actually said –
– by leaving out any reference at all to the word sincere, thereby attempting to put your own cynical twist to what he in fact said. Now that your beat up about the recent natural disaster has been exposed for what it was, you have since resorted to an even more desperate extrapolation alleging that Richard is supposedly saying that ‘all these wars, rapes, murders, injustices of man on his fellow man … be plain fun.’ (And all this from a correspondent who is on record as complimenting the Introduction to Actual Freedom – which is all about using the actualism method to finally bring an end to ‘wars, rapes, murders, injustices of man on his fellow man’.
The more pertinent question surely is whether or not those who are currently acquainted with actualism are ‘ready for this subject’: not whether or not the ‘world’ is ready for it?) Whilst I do realize that you admitted to being disturbed at the time you wrote this post, your mention of ‘I suppose we should not take the fact of one of our children’s untimely deaths seriously & see how much fun that whole episode brings to each and every one of us’ means that your latest wild accusations are not only aimed at Richard but also include me as well. My accusations are hardly wild but you read into them whatever suits your agenda. You are right. Wild is too mild a word … hysterical is a more appropriate word. In this particular case, my accusations were not aimed at you. I see. So, when you said –
what you really meant to say would have gone something like –
Would you care to amend your accusation accordingly, keeping in mind that future amendments may well be necessary as others become interested in not taking their own life so seriously? * The reason I mention this is that the death of my 15-year-old son was not ‘plain fun’ for me, as you would have it. It was, however, an event that had a profound effect on me in that it spurred me on to find out the meaning of life mainly in order that that future generations of children should not have to suffer the angst of being instinctually-driven beings – and puberty is a particularly angst filled time for all teenagers due to the rapid onset of the sexual imperative. I also wanted to offer by living example a practical down-to-earth alternative such that they should not have to waste their lives by searching for meaning in the pursuit of a ‘spiritual’ freedom or by meekly following the herd that insist that you can’t change human nature. Given that you have been a contributor … That is most generous of you to refer to me as a ‘contributor’. What gives? Are you buttering me up for a future onslaught? I was simply stating a fact. One of the benefits of having an un-moderated Actual Freedom mailing list is that all aspects of the human condition are freely displayed for all to see … and as one of the staunchest defenders of the status quo the quality, style and substance of your contribution literally speaks for itself. * … to this mailing list for several years I am somewhat surprised that you
made specific reference to the death of one’s children in your rant as it raises the possibility that it was a barb
deliberately aimed at me to see if I would bite (a No, Peter, I wasn’t trying to get you to bite. But perhaps you think you are the only one who has lost a child? Not at all. I know that I am not the only one who has lost a child – it was something I became acutely aware of soon after my own son died. I started to see the nonsense in my feeling that no-one else knew how much I was suffering, that my suffering was special, unique and more profound than others and this was the beginning of the end of me indulging in grief and sorrow. Eventually I saw that the bitter-sweet feeling of sorrow had become an integral part of my identity – sort of a badge of honour that marked me out as being special. As an aside, I notice that someone recently has put a name to another aspect of this innate tendency of humans to indulge in sorrow, the tendency to indulge in feeling sorrow for others – ‘compassion competition’. If you care to look into the matter, as I did at the time, you will find that both are but versions of the eons-old game of human beings attempting to outdo others by claiming the moral high ground. But if you want to head off down that track of tit-for-tatting again: I do happen to know of an actualist whose child was acutely ill at one stage. Would you exclude her from the ‘we’, ‘our’ and ‘each and every one of us’ of your accusations? Or I could ask you – did one of your children die? In other words, were you speaking from your own experience or were you merely intellectually ‘speaking for others’ by proxy when you made your accusation. Given that you made two suggestions to me in your last correspondence, I will take the opportunity of offering you two hints in return.
* As can be seen from I never said you referred to the loss of your son as plain fun nor did I mention your reaction as sincere or insincere. If that is what you think, then it is time for my next hint –
* In order to demonstrate your sincerity, would you care to engage in a conversation with me about the subject of caring … or was the flippant mention you made of the death of children merely another of your unsubstantiated hit-and-run personal barbs. Peter, I am happy to converse with you about anything. Okay, I’ll take your offer at face value. I have already kicked off the subject on the mailing list in response to No
65’s comment about actually caring. Here is As you know, No 65 has steered well clear of wanting to talk about the subject so the door is wide open for you. As the thrust of the conversation was sharing of personal experiences, you may well want to keep Hint #2 in mind. Over to you …
I thought to interject in your recent tirade against Richard … Peter ! Where ya been babe?! Long time no correspond. Not so long actually. Just to refresh your memory, this was the most recent of your correspondences to me –
I meant long time no hear from YOU... I do remember dispensing my sage advice for your well being.... Which to my chagrin, you will ignore. Like water off a duck’s back, such advice as you offer requires no effort at all to dismiss. * I didn’t reply because it is beyond me why a supposed adult would revert to the use of schoolboy sexual taunts when corresponding with a fellow human being. Do you think it clever or witty? Do you specialize in facetiousness? Is that your idea of practicing sincerity? It seems that you, your boss & your girlfriend, whilst criticizing the masses for the very same, can’t walk your own talk. No, it is what is known as asking a straightforward question … Yeah Pete ... it ’t’was fun. For me that is. To which you … eventually … gave a straightforward answer. * I know you are on record as saying that writing on mailing lists is a game for you … as it is a game/entertainment for you, Dick & V. Let us not forget that ‘life is too much fun to take seriously or to be serious!’ I see that you have again reverted to repeating your deliberate distortion of what Richard said by leaving out any mention of sincerity. Just to refresh your memory and that of other readers, this is the actual quote you are referring to –
Yet another example of your ‘repeat -a -lie-for-long-enough-and-it’s-sure-to-becomes-a-truth’ ploy in action. Writing on this mailing list is always fun for me, particularly as the game is a sincere one – to pass on information that will be of use to any of my fellow human beings who are interested in becoming actually free from the human condition. * … but it does rather seem that you have stereotyped yourself so much that you are now so firmly trapped in your mailing list persona that you have become a parody onto yourself – unless that is you really talk like this to people face to face. whatever ... say what you please ... I am not trapped either in this list nor in my moment to moment existence ... so don’t you worry about me ... although I know how concerned you are about your fellow human. I am not worried about you at all No 58. I was simply giving you some feedback that it appears to me that your game has been running on a such a limited repetitive loop for such an extended period that you have become a parody onto yourself. * But I must point out that Dick has been tirading against moi – in his ahem, malice free way, of course. It’s quite clear that you still don’t get it … despite the fact that it has been spelled out in unambiguous terms many times over on this mailing list. Besides which playing the hard-done-by victim is a pre-schoolyard ruse that I would have thought was beneath even you. Beneath ‘even’ me? Is that some sort of back-handed compliment? No. It was simply an observation of pre-schoolyard behaviour. It is quite a common ruse for children to say things like ‘it wasn’t me, it was him’ or ‘he started it’ or ‘Mum, she is being nasty to me’ and so on whenever they are caught out. The reason I said that I would have thought such a ruse was beneath you is that I presume by the fact that you are writing on this mailing list that you must be an adult. It’s quite clear that Dick thinks I ‘still don’t get it’ and since that’s his opinion, of course it is also your opinion ... whatever it is you both mean by ‘it’, I could care less. It is precisely because you care less that you don’t get it. Or to put it another way, whenever feelings prevail – and ‘care less’, or not caring, is a feeling – common sense is nowhere to be found. * …not only because you have made a number of comments which are distortions of the facts, and blatant inventions but also because you make accusations that refer to me as well.
You have again deliberately chosen to distort what Richard actually said –
– by leaving out any reference at all to the word sincere, thereby attempting to put your own cynical twist to what he in fact said. Now that your beat up about the recent natural disaster has been exposed for what it was, you have since resorted to an even more desperate extrapolation alleging that Richard is supposedly saying that ‘all these wars, rapes, murders, injustices of man on his fellow man … be plain fun.’ Whilst I do realize that you admitted to being disturbed at the time you wrote this post, your mention of ‘I suppose we should not take the fact of one of our children’s untimely deaths seriously & see how much fun that whole episode brings to each and every one of us’ means that your latest wild accusations are not only aimed at Richard but also include me as well. My accusations are hardly wild but you read into them whatever suits your agenda. You are right. Wild is too mild a word … hysterical is a more appropriate word. Now you are acting hysterical and making wild & hysterical accusations. No surprise unfortunately. I am simply making the point that your accusations against Richard were couched in universal terms – as in speaking as ‘we’ and ‘us’ so as to include everyone including me and everyone reading your post – and that they included everyday universal examples of events than either can or do happen to anyone at some stage in their lives and as such they were wild accusations, as in ill-considered, erratic. When I raised the question of whether or not these accusations were aimed at me, given that you used the example of anyone whose child had died, you replied they were not aimed at me, an admission on your part that your accusations were indeed ill-considered and erratic. It is the last sentence of your accusations that tips them from being wild into being hysterical, as in farcical, in that you accuse those who are devoting their lives to doing something practical about eliminating the malice and sorrow that is the root cause of ‘all the(se) wars, rapes, murders, injustices of man on his fellow man’ of regarding them as ‘plain fun’. Regardless of what you think of actualists’ efforts or how misguided you may think they are, none have said anything remotely resembling what you accuse them of saying – quite the opposite in fact. What makes this aspect of your accusation especially farcical is that you are on record as praising the ‘Introduction to Actual Freedom’ that I penned which is all about bringing an actual end to the abomination of ‘all the(se) wars, rapes, murders, injustices of man on his fellow man’. But then again you are nothing if not inconsistent in your posts to this mailing list. Your latest accusations wherein you merrily lambast Richard for not only not caring about ‘all the(se) wars, rapes, murders, injustices of man on his fellow man’ but go on to imply that he finds them to ‘be plain fun’ stands in stark contrast to your own teachings on the same subject posted only two weeks prior –
In the light of your own teachings on this list, I would now describe your accusations as not only hysterical but hypocritical as well. * In this particular case, my accusations were not aimed at you. I see. So, when you said –
what you really meant to say was –
And now you are being just a plain moron Peter. Don’t put words in my mouth unless you get some perverse pleasure at having them spat out at you and your actual & actualist absurdity. What I am doing is explaining why your accusations, as you wrote them, were aimed so widely as to include me. I then substantiated my point by giving an example of how it would have had to be phrased for the accusation to have not been aimed at me. This is something that a moron – ‘an adult with a mental age of between about eight and twelve’ – (Oxford Dictionary) would have great difficulty in doing. * Would you care to amend your accusation accordingly, keeping in mind that future amendments may well be necessary as others become interested in not taking their own life so seriously? No I would not care to amend a thing. You read into them as you will. Your interpretation is your problem & pleasure & not my concern either way. I see you have dug into your bag of stock-standard ploys and bought out the ‘that’s just your interpretation’ platitude with yet another – ‘that’s your problem and not my concern’ – tacked on for good measure. Your repetitive reversions to such hackneyed responses is one of the reasons I said that ‘it appears to me that your game has been running on such a limited repetitive loop for such an extended period that you have become a parody onto yourself’. * Given that you have been a contributor to this mailing list for several years … That is most generous of you to refer to me as a ‘contributor’. What gives? Are you buttering me up for a future onslaught? I was simply stating a fact. One of the benefits of having an un-moderated Actual Freedom mailing list is that all aspects of the human condition are freely displayed for all to see … and as one of the staunchest defenders of the status quo the quality, style and substance of your contribution literally speaks for itself. Of course you would think this. This is how you have been brainwashed by your resident Dick. Right on cue, yet another of your Some examples of your use of this tactic from the last few weeks –
* … I am somewhat surprised that you made specific reference to the death of one’s children in your rant as it raises the possibility that it was a barb deliberately aimed at me to see if I would bite. No, Peter, I wasn’t trying to get you to bite. But perhaps you think you are the only one who has lost a child? Not at all. I know that I am not the only one who has lost a child – it was something I became acutely aware of soon after my own son died. I started to see the nonsense in my feeling that no-one else knew how much I was suffering, that my suffering was special, unique and more profound than others and this was the beginning of the end of me indulging in grief and sorrow. Eventually I saw that the bitter-sweet feeling of sorrow had become an integral part of my identity – sort of a badge of honour that marked me out as being special. As an aside, I notice that someone recently has put a name to another aspect of this innate tendency of humans to indulge in sorrow, the tendency to indulge in feeling sorrow for others – ‘compassion competition’. If you care to look into the matter, as I did at the time, you will find that both are but versions of the eons-old game of attempting to outdo others by claiming the moral high ground. But if you want to head off down that track of tit-for-tatting again: … It is you who is heading off down that track of tit4tatting ... again. Sometimes I choose to go with someone in their tit-for-tat arguments but if I do so, I generally take the opportunity to post something of substance based on my own experience that adds to the understanding of whoever it is who is reading this post. * … I do happen to know of an actualist whose child was acutely ill at one stage. Would you exclude her from the ‘we’, ‘our’ and ‘each and every one of us’ of your accusations? Or I could ask you – did one of your children die? In other words, were you speaking from your own experience or were you merely intellectually ‘speaking for others’ by proxy when you made your accusation. In this case I am speaking from personal experience. In that case would you like to write about personal experience? As you know, I have written about my own personal experience when my young son died and I found the very act of writing about it was a great aid in being able to make sense of my feelings about it Either way it’s irrelevant to your tit4tat tactics. What is relevant is that there is a marked difference between someone speaking intellectually about a subject and someone speaking from personal experience about a subject. * Given that you made two suggestions to me in your last correspondence, I will take the opportunity of offering you two hints in return.
I don’t care about credibility nor smidgeons thereof in your eyes nor anyone else’s. Ah, therein lays the essential difference between the care with which I write and the care-less-ness with which you write. Above you criticize humans wearing badges of credibility claiming moral high grounds & now you suggest I play that game. I am not about to play the twists & turns of your games. I suggest that you scroll up and re-read what I actually said as it bears no resemblance to what you think I said. I did not ‘criticize humans for wearing badges of credibility’ – what I said was –
No criticism, no mention of humans in general, no mention of credibility – I was speaking of my own personal observations and – consequently – my observations of the human condition in action. With regard to the moral high ground this is what I said –
Again no criticism, no mention of humans in general, no mention of credibility – I was speaking of my own personal observations and – consequently – my observations of the human condition in action. You have made it perfectly clear that you have no interest in playing such a game yourself but therein lays the very means of discovering how the human condition is played out in each and every feeling being, in this case ‘me’. The trick to beginning to play the game was to cease pointing the ‘torch’ of awareness on other people, turn it around and begin to focus it on my own feelings, my own actions and my own reactions. 1st; I shouldn’t play the ‘eons-old game of human beings attempting to outdo others by claiming the moral high ground’ and then 2nd; my ‘posts will have at least a smidgeon of credibility if you speak from your own experience’. Make up your mind or: Hint#1: keep it & your Hints to yourself if want it both ways. All this falls flat for the simple reason that I did not say you ‘shouldn’t play the ‘eons-old game of human beings attempting to outdo others by claiming the moral high ground’’. This is yet another example from your limited repertoire of tactics on this list claim that someone has said something that they haven’t said and then rile against them for supposedly saying it. Countless conflicts are begun or sustained by people either intentionally or inadvertently using this tactic or get hoodwinked by it, whether it be intentionally or inadvertently. * In order to demonstrate your sincerity, would you care to engage in a conversation with me about the subject of caring … or was the flippant mention you made of the death of children merely another of your unsubstantiated hit-and-run personal barbs. Peter, I am happy to converse with you about anything. Okay, I’ll take your offer at face value. I have already kicked off the
subject on the mailing list in response to No 65’s comment about actually caring. Here is Those posts were too long & not aimed at me and I don’t care to reread them. Post your relevant points from them to this discussion & I will be happy to engage you in what you refer to as a discussion. Another of the tactics you employ on this list in order to avoid engaging in discussions about what are commonly known as sensitive matters is to focus on style, thereby avoiding having to make any reference to, let alone make sensible comment, to the content of the posts – Peter is too long-winded, Richard is nitpicking, Vineeto is a bitch, and so on. As for these posts not being ‘aimed at’ you, this is a discussion forum and as such anyone is free to respond to any post that is of interest to them on any subject that is of interest to them, i.e. whilst I usually address a post to a single person I am well aware that the post is dispersed to or is available to all list members. Be that as it may I’ll repost a (brief) section of the first post mentioned so you can get the gist of what I was saying and how I was saying it –
So there you go – Topic: the significant events in your life that set you caring about what is often called the ‘plight of humanity’. Type of discussion: swapping personal stories, just as one does when one puts one’s feet up and swaps life stories with others. Over to you ... again …
Peter’s Text © The Actual Freedom Trust |
