Selected Correspondence Peter

What is Actual Freedom

Well, for a start there is no evidence to the contrary. Richard himself has done a good deal of trolling through the writings of others and all he has ever found is evidence of people who have experienced a spiritual freedom of the soul and not an actual freedom from the soul. I have also satisfied myself that this is so by my own investigations – I remember at one stage realizing that not only was Richard the only one who was actually free of the human condition, he was also the only genuine atheist on the planet.

In other words I take it as a reasonable assumption of fact because there is, thus far, not a skerrick of empirical evidence to the contrary.

Contrary to popular belief, speculations such as ‘maybes’ or ‘what ifs’ are not empirical evidence – no matter how many speculations or how many speculators there are.

I don’t know whether your reference to ‘a culture eons ago’ refers to the widely-held notion that there was somehow a Golden Age or that at sometime, somewhere on the planet, there existed a peaceful tribe of uncorrupted innocents. If so, there is no evidence that supports this notion in any way – the archaeological and anthropological evidence is that all tribes and all cultures were deeply fear-ridden, dominated by superstition, enraptured in mythology, fiercely territorial, and so on. I fail to see such tribes and cultures as being fertile ground for someone to be able to take the time and make the effort to become free of malice and sorrow.

The other notion – that maybe someone became free of the human condition and kept it to his self or her self – has been floated before but it is my experience that this theory lacks any credibility – simply because the intent needed to become free of the human condition is pure in that one does it not only for this body but for ever other body. Or to put it another way, the very process of wanting to become harmless is motivated by a genuine concern and caring for all of one’s fellow human beings and this alone makes the idea of keeping the discovery of an actual freedom to oneself a red herring.

I experientially understood that Richard was the only (genuine) atheist on the planet when I had a pure consciousness experience of the actual world – the physical-only world that has no room in it for any meta-physical entity, force or energy.

Atheist : 1. A person who denies or disbelieves the existence of God or gods. Opp. Theist. 2. A person who denies God morally; a godless person. Oxford Dictionary

Richard neither believes nor disbelieves the existence of Gods or gods – he permanently lives in the actual world where there are no Gods or gods. In other words he is a genuine atheist not a philosophical atheist, or an agnostic, and nor is he in denial. I realize the semanticists and pedantocrats on the list will have a field day with my use of word atheist – I thought it meant someone who has no beliefs in Gods or anything metaphysical – but it appears that at least some on the list had no trouble in understanding my meaning.

By the way, I see the rumour that Vineeto said Richard was the only atheist on the planet has taken hold, but in an effort to lay it to rest before it gathers even more legs and becomes a factoid, I offer the following piece from my journal.

‘I was looking for evidence and facts – not hopes or beliefs.

The case for the defence was definitely not looking good, but I still found myself defending at least something of the spiritual and hanging on grimly. Surely there was a ‘Something’ else? Was it possible that I, and everyone else on earth up until now, had got it wrong and that only Richard was right? I had been reading widely throughout this time to check out the facts of what Richard was saying and what I found was astounding.

I found that the whole of philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, astronomy, physics, indeed all of man’s knowledge, and wisdom is based on an underlying assumption of a ‘something more’ than the physical universe. A belief in the meta-physical permeates all human thinking and wisdom. If one eliminated this assumption or belief the whole lot comes crashing down like those card stacks I used to make as a kid. Then it all started to make sense to me, to fit the facts – everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong – everyone!

There has been no actual evidence or facts after thousands of years to support the belief that there is a God or a Something else. The cry in the churches, temples, ashrams and satsang halls is still one of trust, faith and hope to maintain the belief in a Something else. It was as though I was able to begin to see through the whole charade and fantasy of the spirit-ual world – to be able to see things from another perspective. It was like a mist or a veil clearing. It was then that I realised that Richard was the only atheist I had met and seemingly the only one that has ever been.’ Peter’s Journal God

Given that you claim this to be a given fact – perhaps you could supply some names of these relatively unknown teachers whose words have not been published in order that we can all check them out. Thus far, many people have made the claim that there are other teachers who are talking about an actual freedom from the human condition and that there are other methods that offer a way to become actually free from the human condition and all of the claims have thus far proved to be bogus – including the most recent to this list.

I think Richard has since directly addressed this matter but I would re-iterate that I never had any trouble at all with his claim. But then again, I do acknowledge that I am naïve.

I’ll pass on that one. The statement makes no sense to me whatsoever.

The only proof ultimately worthwhile is one’s own experiential evidence that it is so. I found naiveté was the key to remaining open to taking Richards claim being genuine and being able to see ‘my’ doubts to be precisely what they were – ‘my’ doubts. It was then that I discovered that my doubtful feelings have their roots in fear.

*

I remember that I could not but write my journal in order to tell others that the actualism method worked in that it produced down-to-earth results – that it was possible to live with a companion in utter peace and harmony and that it was possible to be virtually free of malice and sorrow. To imagine that one could keep an actual freedom to oneself beggars belief.

While on this topic, I’ll just add a note of sensible caution. In my early days of being an actualist I was so enthused that I would often talk about actualism to people who were not interested in anything else but battling it out in the real-world or who were so convinced their spiritual beliefs were right that they could not even conceive that what I was saying had nothing at all to do with spiritualism. I soon discovered that it pays to be prudent as to whom, where and when it is appropriate to discuss the discovery of an actual freedom from the human condition.

One other piece of sensible piece of advice I gave myself came from my time of exploring the dark underbelly of piety and morality – and that was to ‘never goad a fanatic’. I do like the leisure and the pleasure of being able to report my successes and share my experiences in using the actualism method here on this list from the safety and comfort of my own lounge room.

I did answer your question but I phrased it by using an example from my own experience. It may have been a bit obtuse but I was saying that I completely understand why Richard has gone public with his discovery that it is possible to become actually free from the human condition, in toto.

I must admit that I have trouble relating to your objection. Would you take a scientist to task for claiming he had discovered a cure for a disease you had that was thought by everyone else to be incurable? Or would you take the time, and make the effort, to find out if his claims were valid. If not, why would you take to task someone who claims to have discovered a way of becoming actually free of the human condition of malice and sorrow?

Because I wanted to be free of the human condition, I naively took his words at face value and set out to prove that his discovery is repeatable. And, if I take your words at face value – ‘I am applying the process ... time will tell’ – I take it that this is what you are also doing.

I didn’t, and couldn’t, wait for the end of the process to happen before going public with the news that the actualism process can – as Richard said it would – lead to anyone with the required commitment becoming virtually free of malice and sorrow. I did not see any sense at all in withholding such a discovery from my fellow human beings.

And cynics, sceptics, naysayers, red flag wavers, flat-earthers, deconstructionists and destructionists aside, if I take what others are reporting on this mailing list at face value there is evidence that others are using the actualism method and finding that it produces tangible results. I would say that not only is actualism proving to be effective in that it is producing repeatable results but also that its growth is proving to be exponential – which is what the phrase ‘spread like a chain-letter’ means to me.

But then again, I do acknowledge I am naïve.

Which is but confirmation of the status quo.

‘Not at all interested in ‘the idea of a ‘selfless cognition’’ may be a better way of describing it.

It is useful to consider that an actual freedom from the human condition is not considered normal by the psychological and psychiatric standards applicable to the human condition. But then again, that is to be expected, is it not.

The other relevant point to consider is that Richard is not someone who has suffered brain damage but is someone who has managed by his own efforts to rid himself of malice and sorrow – an event that coincided with the extinction of all traces of either a psychological or psychic ‘self’.

Sometimes when I sit back and reflect upon what is actually happening with the setting up of the AF web site and with the discussions on this mailing list, the sheer enormity of it is beyond comprehension. It is common to talk of human development going through certain stages such as the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution and currently we are in what has been called, amongst other things, the information revolution. To think that the next revolution will see an end to animosity, duplicity, resentment, unhappiness and despair and herald an ongoing era of sensitivity, sincerity, cooperation and joie de vive in short peace on earth& It is almost unimaginable except for the fact that the very beginnings of this era are happening right now.

I think this is good a part of the reason but not the whole reason. I definitely have lived in a time of unprecedented safety, comfort, leisure and pleasure the likes of which would have been inconceivable to my father’s generation and which is still inaccessible to many on the planet. As such I have been able to pursue freedom rather than struggle for survival but this has also been the case for many, many people throughout history, but all have either bowed down or buckled under to tradition.

The East has a very ancient tradition of supporting gurus, teachers, monks and sannyasins by the millions so that they are free to contemplate upon the meaning of human existence on earth and stuff-all of practical use to humanity has resulted. In China a stifling social, ethical and moral belief system is the result, in Japan a regimented warrior-religion of such life-negating ferocity that ritual suicide is lauded and in India there is a mind-boggling potpourri of beliefs whose only commonality is a total negation of thinking per se.

In the West a similarly privileged class squandered their opportunity to find a way to personal freedom and global peace on earth by a combination of intellectual navel-gazing and a fascination with mysticism which also managed to infuse the physical sciences with a whole meta-physical bent – the cunningly named theoretical sciences. A few brave attempts have been made to break free of the power of the church and seductive lure of spiritual belief but threat of ostracization, persecution and even imprisonment, torture and death served to silence any sensible debate, let alone individual outbreaks of freedom from spirituality.

However the prime reason that no-one up until now has discovered actual freedom is that the instinctual lure of narcissism is far, far more attractive than a nothing-in-it-for-’me’ extinction. And the only reason it was discovered when it was, was that the ultimate state of narcissism, known as Enlightenment, did not sit at all well with Richard. After all, he was a country boy from the farm who knew nothing at all about Eastern Spirituality in his early life. When his personal search for freedom catapulted him into in a glorious altered state of consciousness, he naturally thought he had discovered the ultimate state of human existence. As he talked to people about his state, he gradually realized that he was in a state commonly known as Enlightenment in the East. Although he makes no bones about the Glory of living in an altered state of consciousness –and there can be nothing more glorious than swanning along feeling like you are God – he remained suss of the ‘other-worldly’ aspects such as feeling immortal, feeling omnipresent and omnipotent and the fact that the ‘worldly’ passions of fear, anger, nurture and desire were still present.

It took him 11 more years of ‘Self’-investigation, running the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ before this Altar-Ego collapsed, thereby finally completing the process of ‘self’-immolation.

I termed it ‘willing to stick my head above the parapet’ which has proved an apt description given the pie-throwing reaction of most of the several hundred people who so far know of existence of actualism.

That is exactly why I wrote my journal and have rarely stopped writing since then, and that is also why Vineeto writes. It’s part of sticking your hand up to be counted. Writing on this list is a direct and simple way of reporting success, investigating beliefs, sharing information, discussing issues and following threads. This way you don’t need to do a survey because the original accounts are available for anyone else who may be interested.

I think I know what you are getting at but self-awareness is not a precious thing to be cultivated within a cocoon of one’s own making. Being actively and thoroughly involved in the business of living in the market place is what tests an actualist. During the whole period of investigation that I described in my journal, I moved houses several times, I began living with a woman, had a very active sex life, designed, supervised and built a house and spent several hours a day listening to what Richard had to say about actualism and actual freedom. Being careful, as in being considerate for your own safety and of those around you, and keeping one’s hands in one’s pockets, as in avoiding acting on any extreme passions that may be stirred is certainly essential, but the dare in actualism is to start living fully for the first time in your life and not to play safe any more.

At the risk of flogging a point, ‘self’-awareness is not about keeping the lid on your feelings, it is about reducing the debilitating effects of the extremes of malice and sorrow and cranking up the felicitous feelings – feeling good, feeling really good, feeling excellent, tipping over into amazement and wonder at doing this business of being alive, while being aware that we are alive, on this paradisiacal planet. It’s about cranking up an unconditional joie de vie – i.e. not conditional on the circumstances of your life right now, on changing the world as-it-is or changing people as-they-are.

This cranking up feeling good about being here can often feel like trying to get out of a vat of thick glue – the glue being one’s social/ religious/ spiritual conditioning and one’s instinctual bondage to the rest of Humanity. The trick is first to become free of feeling you are stuck in a glue pot, which is to get yourself to the stage where you are virtually unencumbered by malice and sorrow. The price one pays for becoming virtually free of malice and sorrow is that one needs to become virtually free of one’s social identity and all that this implies. Cherished emotional bonds and empathetic relationships will be sacrificed together with all loyalties, allegiances, dependencies, bondages, etc. Aside from the practical and sensible family responsibilities which are usually easily met and prudently obeying the laws of the land, one needs to aim at becoming autonomous rather than remain shackled to being ‘who’ other people wanted you to be or still want you to be.

This becoming autonomous can seem a daunting task but the rewards of relieving those closest from having to suffer the burden of ‘me’ and ‘my’ moods and ‘my’ resentment is palpable, as is the feeling of being free from the social compulsion of having to think, feel and act exactly as one’s peers do.

It’s that Yippee stage that moved me to write my journal to trumpet the benefits of actualism and the joys of virtual freedom in particular.

Having said all that, in my usual long-winded style, I do appreciate your comments for they are a timely warning. Actualism, by its very nature, is a tumultuous process and consideration for others and one’s own safety should always be paramount – which is where common sense comes in. ‘Keep your hands in your pockets and drive safely’ would be my advice based on experience to date but I would add ‘avoid seriousness, avoid playing safe and go for gay abandon’ as well while I am at it. It’s a matter of keeping your feet firmly on the ground and flying at the same time, which takes a bit of getting used to at first.

Richard terms it as living at ‘the cutting edge of reality’ and I have described it as always being ‘right at the front of the stage’, as opposed to sitting in the audience, hiding in the chorus line or wafting around in the fly gallery with the Gods and Goddesses.

Personally, I did not have to dredge this deep to cut the ties to sorrow but I did explore fear to its limits of dread and terror. It does seem that exploring and experiencing the extreme limits of some of the passions may come about on the path to becoming free of them, but as more information and experiences are logged up this may well be unnecessary for many who follow. I can remember after my dread and terror experience saying that I had done that and didn’t need to explore any further.

I’ve made a fairly close assessment of the particular qualities that Richard has that enabled him to break free from the Human Condition – to have rid himself of any social or instinctual identity whatsoever. What sticks out for me is stubborn persistence – an adamant refusal to ever give up. Curiously enough, this attribute is common to all pioneering explorers – all human advancements have been founded on this very attitude. The difference between Richard and any others who are following him is that there is such a good descriptive map of the path to freedom laid out now. We know by our own pure consciousness experiences that ‘self’-lessness is possible and we now know how to make it incrementally happen. We also know by our own pure consciousness experiences that peace-on-earth exists right here, right now and that only ‘I’ stand in the way of experiencing it. Some parts of the journey can indeed be intense and difficult but it is useful to remind yourself every now and again that all the turmoil and intensity is only going on in your head and heart – the actual world is always perfect and always peaceful. You will find that the further you travel along the path the more you will understand this dichotomy between real and actual and the more you will get to experience the perfection and purity that is always ever here.

I got bored reading all the reams of information you put out before, that is not your fault. I just don’t like to spend that much time reading emails. I would like you to try to tell me in no more than 30 words what it is you are saying in your book!

• Step out of the real world (5.8 billion ‘selves’ battling it out for ‘survival’), into the actual world, and leave your ‘self’ (and ‘Self’ – a mere delusion anyway) behind. 30 words

and as it’s my post, and I am having such fun, you can have another 30 words (at no extra cost – bar the effort of reading)

• For those desperate and daring enough, Actual Freedom actually delivers the much-sought personal peace and sensate delight, utterly free of malice and sorrow, utterly liveable in the market place. 29 words

This seems like a common line of defence when considering doing away with instincts and goes thus ‘emotions and instincts give meaning to our lives and without them life would be robotic and meaningless’.

Well, firstly it seems that ‘meaningful’ to me has both sensible and emotional content in that something meaningful should firstly make some sense and secondly satisfy some emotional need. Unfortunately it is a juggling act which more often than not falls towards the emotional leaving what sense was made, somewhere in the background, out of sight. Now I am asking myself ‘Why must my life be meaningful’ and I am finding this question particularly interesting. There is some fear of reservation but beyond that I would say that, having to be meaningful is not much of an issue for me, which I find somewhat astounding, as I realize that the shackles have been loosened a bit more. What I think is more important than meaningful, is being stimulated by sensory input and removing anything that actively goes towards preventing that. (Within reason of course!)

I seem to have commented on this already. What I did was to make becoming happy and harmless my immediate aim with the ultimate goal of becoming actually free of the Human Condition. This then became my sole aim and meaning in life – a passionate burning ambition.

I thought I had abandoned both my real-world meanings and then spiritual-world meanings in life but the residue of both does take some weeding out. These traditional life-meanings, usually instilled as morals or ethics, or genetically-implanted as instinctual passions, are gradually abandoned as they are seen to be silly, not applicable to my aim in life, or an impediment to being happy and harmless.

As Richard pointed out, an actualist doesn’t aim for a self stripped of emotions and, as such, it is vitally important, firstly to crank up Actual Freedom as one’s meaning in life and secondly not to strangle this passion by suppressing it. This is where the constant remembering of a pure consciousness experience becomes absolutely essential as one’s constant guiding light and aim in life. This memory will serve to keep you on course as you weave your way through the maze and it will prevent you from settling for second best.

This passion for Actual Freedom is exactly why I wrote my journal – to capture the excitement and thrill of the early period of breaking free from the two traditional life-paths within the Human Condition. But I do know what you mean – the falling away of all the traditional meanings of life is a fascinating business, to make sense of the meanings our parents and peers have told us are important and then to discover how blind nature has programmed us to implicitly feel, think and act. The socially instilled meanings vary from tribe to tribe, and produce cultural variations to our basic instinctual programming designed solely to continue the propagation of the species – hence the over-arching predominance of the sexual drive. The other predominant instinct, the fear of death, fuels the search for security, fame and wealth in the real world and security, fame and immortality in the spiritual world. In exploring the brute animal instinctual passions, one soon discovers that blind nature cares not a fig for your being happy and harmless – quite the opposite, in fact.

Yet, as all these meanings, drives and passions drop away, it is vital to remember that the third alternative is definitely not a passionless path.

I distinctly remember a period where life seemed so devoid of meaning that I discovered a stark grey reality – not as a desperation but more of a pointlessness. This proved to be but a passing phase whereby I had left the familiar meanings, feelings and worries behind and began the real business of cranking up sensate delight, a joie de vive and a resounding Yes to being here in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. I found this was initially like daily swimming against what felt like a tide of my own resistance and that of Humanity as a whole. Then came a point where I realized that it was only ‘me’ who had the foot on the brakes, so to speak, and then the whole business became even more thrilling and fascinating.

So, No. 3, the ending of the animal instinctual passions is a passionate affair, as life becomes brim-full with meaning and purpose.

Methinks I was right in suggesting that one can only be interested in an actual freedom from the human condition if one has had sufficient experience with, and knowledge of, the spiritual path in order to understand its central message and why it has not, and never can, deliver peace on earth in this lifetime for anyone – let alone everyone. Your statement is another classic example of human beings forever blaming themselves – and not daring to even question the Gods or the God-men. This belief is so drummed into humans as guilt for our sins or penance for our very existence on earth that it is a miracle that someone has broken free and others are rapidly following.

We are currently having an extremely violent demonstration of the ‘sickness’ of the human condition, which you have probably seen in the media. Blacks, Asians and gays have so far been targeted – watch out, actualists could be next! Which, of course, could never happen – with no beliefs to defend, there is nothing to attack – and all that is required is to come to one’s senses!

Well ... It is pretty certain, given the Human Condition, that, as Actual freedom gains momentum, the ‘shit will hit the fan’ at some stage. Probably the most virulent and vitriolic of objectors will be those who protest at the elimination of feelings, despite the fact that these feelings are sorrow and malice. The cute thing about Actual freedom is that one becomes anonymous – a nobody – and one does whatever one can to sensibly maintain this anonymity. The Net is ideal for this – we could pass each other on the street and not know that we both are actualist. The checkout girl at the local checkout hasn’t a clue that I am not a part of the ‘real’ world, exactly as my former spiritual friends have not a clue that I am no longer in the ‘spiritual’ world. The anonymity is delicious, and I will do my utmost to sensibly preserve it.

Still, I fully expect that the ‘shit will hit the fan’ one day ...

Actual Freedom has never been possible before as it was physically impossible to obtain an overview of various social identities and tribal groupings, as well as an overview of the effects of instinctual-driven passions. There has been an explosion of knowledge and information that makes believing in Ancient Wisdom an insult to intelligence. In the past there was always a maybe, always a possibility that someone had a solution somewhere and it was just a matter of finding it. Nowadays you can just log-on or tune-in, and all of Humanity’s wisdom is available for perusal and scrutiny. For the first time in history one has sufficient information to sort out for oneself what is silly and sensible without having to believe what others say.

All that is needed is a willingness to find out for oneself what it is to be a human being.

It’s about as simple as falling off a log.

It’s one of those particularly delicious winter mornings when the air is so clear and crisp and the sun warms one through with a penetration that no other heater can. Everything has a sharpness to it, the sounds have a clarity that seems to upped the volume a bit, and the skin literally bristles. Given that a sub-tropical winter is the equivalent of your spring you will know what I am talking of. The physical universe is strutting its stuff and it’s a delight to be the bit going Ahhhh.... We have had a particularly wet wet-season this year causing the locals to bemoan their existence even more than usual – strange stuff in the light of the constantly amazing variance the elements provide. One never knows when one goes to bed what the morrow brings, such is life.

The path to an Actual Freedom is to devote one’s life to being the universe experiencing itself as a flesh and blood human being, and if undertaken with scrupulous integrity, will inevitably and inexorably lead to one’s self-immolation. This final act will be one of self-sacrifice for it is evident from the Pure Consciousness experience that only ‘I’ stand in the way of the perfection and purity of the universe being experienced as this flesh and blood body called Peter. This full-blooded devotion, as in ... ‘An end to which someone or something is devoted; a purpose, an intent’, or ‘earnest application; zealous or exclusive attachment’... has recently resulted in heady glimpses and experiences of the infinitude of the physical universe. These experiences of vastness and limitless freedom offer tantalizing previews of an inevitable destiny after ‘my’ extinction and have had the unmistakable ring of the authenticity of my first ‘self’-less PCE. The other clue as to their genuineness is the recognition of the seductive parallel of the Altered State of Consciousness whereby ‘I’ am tempted to instinctually grab to become the experience. Thus, ‘I’ become infinite and eternal, whereas in the PCE it is startlingly clear that it is the universe that is infinite and eternal, and what I am is this mortal flesh and blood body, well able and equipped to think and reflect and go oooh and ahhh at the perfection and purity that is obviously apparent when ‘I’ cease to rule the roost. But that won’t happen to me – it’s but a cheap cop-out once you have tasted the actual.

These glimpses are the direct result of this boots and all approach and send a thrill up one’s spine, a tingling in the skull, or an involuntary wobble of the head. It’s fascinating to see that the fear that was there in the days of thinking about the end of ‘me’, or trying to imagine the end of ‘me’, is now replaced by a physical thrill as in – this is what I am doing, or this is what is happening. This is no esoteric explanation and has parallels in the prosaic activities that involve fear or danger whereby, when you get to the stage of actually doing something rather than thinking or worrying about it, one is then too busy with the doing of it that one has no time for fears or worries. And it’s not as though the experience is frantic, or too much – I am at present doing normal things like doing a job, earning a living and reporting, as accurately as I can, on what is going on inside with ‘me’ as it happens. Utterly down-to-earth, normal and anonymous.

Cute, Hey.... And what a hoot it is at the cutting edge.

Well, that’s it from me. Summer is beginning to break through the delightful spring weather here – the rain is warm and the ‘atmospherics’ are vibrant with many electrical storms this time of year. Often the sky pulses with lightning over the ocean for hours at night and the days are an ever changing flip-flop of clear, cloudy, misty, rain, downpours, lightning, sunny, stormy, thunder, hot, moist, cool, still, etc. The days and nights are literally cram-packed with weather. What a paradise I live in on this fantastic planet, and what a time to be alive!

Good, Hey.

All this nonsense, simply in order that ‘I’ as an identity can remain in existence – anything but a nobody, anything but a no-one, anything but cease to exist. This last 15 months since finishing my journal has been a period of becoming a nobody in society’s terms, a no-one in particular in terms of belonging to a group and a no-self in terms of being a feeling being that lives in fear and needs to fight for survival. As the feelings arising from the instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire diminish, being alive here, now becomes such a delicious, ambrosial experience that I am wont to lie about doing nothing, for simply being here is outstanding – and on top of it I occasionally get to do something. I have no objections at all to being here, in fact where else could I be, and where else would I want to be. I am going nowhere, I have come from nowhere, I don’t need to do anything, I am never bored, I have no plans, desires, ambitions. I have no idea what I will do for the rest of my days, nor do I worry – I simply need sufficient money to live. Money for rent, food and clothes and for the pleasures that I fit into the day as well.

Without the need to struggle to exist, and with no ‘me’ to defend, being here is indeed effortless. It requires no ‘me’ to be here for I am perpetually here anyway. ‘I’ play no part in pumping my heart, breathing, thinking, sleeping, eating, walking, seeing, hearing, smelling, touching – ‘I’ am but a dinosaurial-redundancy ... a passionate illusion, ripe for extinction.

My experiential answer to Willie Shakespeare’s famous question – ‘to be or not to be?’ is that being an identity, be it social or animal instinctual, is a bummer – whatever way one looks at it. As this ‘skin’ of identity falls away I am more able to be me, this flesh and blood body, having no relationship or continuity with ‘who’ I was when I started this process. One does indeed step out of the real world and into the actual world leaving one’s ‘self’ behind, as you put it so descriptively. There is yet to be a passionate act of extinction and more and more I have stopped waiting for it to happen – so perfect and easy has life become.

It’s a wonderful business – being alive in 1999!

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.

It has only now become possible to become free of the Human Condition because of the extraordinary change that has occurred in the last 40 or so years, as a significant proportion of the population does not now have to fight for survival – be it territory, food, defence, battling rampant diseases or the like.

The actual world is a safe and benign world – we have won the fight over marauding wild animals, we have tamed most deadly plagues, we produce enough food, we enjoy good living standards, but still humans suffer from sorrow and inflict malice on others. The only ‘solution to date for temporary relief from instinctual fear and aggression has been to conjure up ‘good’ feelings of compassion – feeling sad for others – and love – desperately trying to feel good about, and be ‘kind’ to, at least one other person on the planet.

Isn’t it so bloody good, so liberating, to know the reason for sorrow and malice, to not feel guilty about it, to have a method for eliminating the buggers and to get on with the job? To see clearly that the whole instinctual package was only necessary for the survival of the species and that it is now redundant. Not only redundant but plainly lethal in that most of the 160,000,000 that died in wars this century died not fighting for survival but for passionate feelings such as Honour, Country, God, Justice, etc. And all the murders, rapes, tortures, suicides, sadness and despair occur only because of the ‘animal’ still wired within each of us.

What a grand thing to journey out of sadness and fear, spite and envy, deception and confusion – to more and more experience the sensate delights of this very actual world, happening right now. The only way that such a journey is possible is because one is eliminating all that is in the way of experiencing what is actual – the process is one of elimination, not of building a new belief or concept about how to be, how to cope or how to escape from the world as-it-is and people as-they-are. As such, each step on the path is a factual step, a sincere investigation, a fact replacing a belief, with more and more happy and harmless moments replacing fearful, sad or angry ones.

One would not proceed ‘where few have gone before’ without a glimpse of the paradise that this actual world is – a Pure Consciousness Experience. It is not enough to rely on others’ stories, for then it is only yet another belief, and with belief comes doubt, hand in hand, and the subsequent need for trust, hope, and faith. Merely adopting another belief will not instil the necessary pure intent to guide one through the maze of one’s own psyche.

Actual Freedom is, after all, a new, down-to-earth, non-spiritual freedom.

New as in never been discovered before.

Down-to-earth as in able to be comfortably, effortlessly and easily liveable by anyone in the world as-it-is, with people as-they-are. Non-spiritual in that it is both self-less and Self-less – it is most definitely not an Altered State of Consciousness based on earthly denial and heavenly transcendence.

Freedom as in free of the Human Condition of malice and sorrow – an actual and demonstrative freedom from instinctually-driven passions of fear and aggression, as opposed to the delusion of a spirit-ual freedom, based on Ancient Wisdom’s fairy-tale-battles of good and evil, Gods and Demons.

Well, I’ve done my ‘shop assistant’s’ bit – extolled the benefits of the products available in the ‘How to become Happy and Harmless’ shop. So, happy browsing ...

There is no ‘in the presence of’ in Actual Freedom. This is it. A few Web-sites, a mailing list and about a million words so far. The story of how one man escaped from the delusion of Enlightenment, the method he devised to become free of the Human Condition and the writing of others reporting their success in applying the method. Also documented are the countless objections of many correspondents to the new and radical discovery that human beings can be actually happy and harmless, and the detailed and considered responses to these objections.

Anyone can now be free of the Human Condition (including the belief in a spiritual ‘other-world’ and a life after death), as sufficient words conveying the method, the results, the pitfalls, and the objections are now accessible on the Net.

The new play eventually would see humans playing in a world without wars, without domestic violence, rape and torture. With men and women living together in peace, harmony and equity. With sexual pleasure freed of guilt, shame, aggression and perversion. With no religious or territorial wars fought over right or might. With no police, no legal battles, no need for justice or retribution. Where everyone treats each other as fellow human beings and wishes well of each other. Where equanimity, co-operation, consensus and helpfulness are readily apparent in all interactions. Where the current money and effort used to fight wars and keep the ‘peace’ are used to bring the benefits, comforts and pleasures now possible for the few to all humans on the planet. Where care and consideration replace greed and avarice, ending pollution forever...

We actualists are simply saying – stop believing what the other players tell you is your fated script and stop believing that the rules of the game can never be changed. That it is possible for individual players to delete the old, ancient and decrepit, survival program in its entirety and to now run on the sensible and sensate, stripped-down version, free of malice and sorrow. One can now become free of the Human Condition of malice and sorrow, if you want to make the effort.

It was a tough task to give up the spiritual world but I wanted an actual freedom that is applicable in the marketplace, available to all, perfect and pure, untainted by power and authority. Something that was down-to-earth, not ethereal or other-worldly, something that would deliver not only peace for me but offer the solution to the Human Condition of malice and sorrow for all others. Such that one day, albeit centuries away, an actual peace will eventuate on earth between all humans with no more warring tribes and religious factions.

The amazing thing is that the actual world of perfection and purity, infinite, eternal and happening at this very moment is available to all – at this very moment. It is not an invention or a mental construct. To be here in the actual world, fully committed to living this moment, to be doing what is happening, is to be on the cutting edge – fully alive as a sensate, reflective, flesh and blood human being. Being here this way is to be here without a self, ego or soul, as there simply is no room for a ‘me’ in any form.

There is, in fact, no difference between me doing something and it happening, so intimate and directly experienced is this very moment.

What I am describing is not consensual reality, it is the actual, the physical. This is the world that the believers in God apparently regard as Evil or inhuman – hence the comments about ‘don’t feed the animals’. For me, I figured that neither the real world nor the spiritual world were sane places, and I went off chasing the actual world that I had experienced and evidenced in a pure consciousness experience (PCE).

From a ‘real’ world point of view I have gone ‘mad’ and from the spiritual world point of view ‘I have sold my soul to the Devil’.

I thoroughly recommend an escape from both these fantasies and illusions into the actual world of purity and perfection, innocence and delight.

I am having the time of my life...

*

Can not more be done by example, by walking the talk rather than talking the talk?

Precisely my point about the Enlightened Ones when I said ‘I didn’t like their lifestyles, I didn’t like how they were with their women and I didn’t like the whole God-man / disciple business. But when you really look at where Eastern spirituality, and dare I say Osho, was pointing to, it is that you would end up single, celibate and become God. That is ‘walking the talk’ in the East. If there are any women around, their role is as servants and worshipping carers.

For me, I wanted to walk the talk here on earth, as this flesh and blood body, here, now. That’s a major reason why I wanted to live with a woman in peace, harmony and equity – the fire test. That is why I invite scrutiny on this list – the fire test. No Truth that cannot be spoken, no secrets, all open, simple, direct and obvious. I think sometimes people are looking for some hidden agenda, some weird cult or something, some trap.

No, I mean what I am saying. I am simply a fellow human being, reporting on what it is like here in the actual world.

And to get here I followed the well mapped out path to the new, non-spiritual, down-to-earth freedom – an actual freedom from the Human Condition.

All my wishes have come true and much, much more. Life was meant to be easy, friendly, comfortable, peaceful, harmonious, ever-changing, fresh each moment, direct and obvious – and my senses allow my intimate involvement with each person I meet, each event happening, each place I am in. And I can think, reflect, talk and write about what sense I have made of living as a human being – happy and harmless ...

Pure delight...

From my experience my ‘digging into myself’ has had two distinct phases.

1. The spiritual search
   Conducted over some 17 years and involving living and working in ashrams, countless hours of meditation, therapy groups, listening to various masters, and reasonably extensive reading. The culmination occurred after a period of living alone when I had a what would be described as a substantial Satori experience wherein I experienced a lack of ‘self’ such that I was ‘Love’ and ‘at one with Existence’. It was an extraordinary heartfelt experience and I experienced a distinct shift of my identity from the head to the heart. It was indeed Glorious. The problem was that having experienced the workings of the spiritual world and met some of the Enlightened Ones, I was able to question – ‘was this what I really wanted?’ The honest answer was no.
   I had seen enough to know that a system of slavery (discipleship) was inherently flawed and a system of surrender to God-men or Gurus was little more than dictatorship. Admittedly for the supposed Good rather than Evil, but it was still institutionalised insanity never the less. The experiences I had in meditation, in the presence of masters or self-induced, involved little more than a transcendence of the base emotions and instincts in me such that I caused a shift of my identity from the head to the heart, from the ego to the soul. This shift is well known as an Altered State of Consciousness (ASC). Therein lies the fatal flaw with the spiritual search as ‘I’ as an identity remain intact – in fact now Super Inflated by grand feelings into believing that I was God or at One with God. And yet another Guru would emerge into the world and had I been a successful enough Guru yet another Religion would have been born with all it’s horrendous ramifications.

2. The search for an Actual Freedom
   Having met Richard and quizzed him extensively and read his writings, it became painfully and shockingly obvious that I had merely scratched the surface of becoming free. The first essential step was to question all that I had taken to be the Truth, a process that was to demolish entirely any pride I felt about ‘my’ achievements and realizations on the spiritual path. I discovered that it was necessary to eliminate the ‘self’ in its entirety – both ego and soul, both who ‘I’ thought I was and who ‘I’ felt I was.
   The essential guiding principle is the pure consciousness experience or PCE. This experience is one that everybody has had in their lives wherein one directly experiences the innate perfection and purity of the physical universe free of any ‘self’ whatsoever. No ego and no soul sullies the unfiltered sensate experience of the actual. I have written of the PCE that I was able to recall, but it did take some digging to remember it, as it had no emotional imprint on my memory, such was its purity – and ‘I’ was not present as an emotional experiencer or interpreter.
   The PCE is the essential reference point in the search for an Actual Freedom as opposed to merely a synthetic spiritual freedom or ASC. Even then the lure of the power and authority afforded by Enlightenment is a potent force to be battled with. The only danger that exists on the wide and wondrous path to actual freedom is that you may become Enlightened, but the path is becoming a little more well trodden now – a mere handful admittedly, but sufficient to provide written information to other intrepid travellers.
   So the point of this is that it is essential to have an intent as to what it is you want to do with your ‘digging in’. What is your aim, what is your goal, what is it you want to do with your life? As with any activity or action in life an intent is essential. For me it was become the best I can be, to live in the state I experienced in the peak experience (PCE) as a constant 24 hrs. a day, on-going experience. To be the universe experiencing itself as a flesh and blood mortal body, free of any psychological and psychic entity whatsoever.

Actual freedom or actualism is of course not merely a theory or philosophy but a new, down-to-earth non-spiritual path to freedom – an actual freedom from the Human Condition of malice and sorrow.

Now actual means it works. It means that given sufficient effort and intent that one can virtually eliminate sorrow and malice from the human body. This means in practical terms that one no longer suffers from feelings of sadness, melancholy, boredom, neediness, sympathy, empathy, despair or fear, let alone annoyance, offence, anger, revenge or violence. It is then possible by practical demonstration to live with a companion in total equity, delighting in freely and mutually enjoyed sex, discussion and physical intimacy. The physical pleasures build and build, as does the awareness of the immeasurable and limitless perfection and purity of it all, increasing off the scales. One literally ‘buckles at the knees’ as the paltry attempts of the old ‘I’ to fearfully hang on wither in the helter skelter slide to freedom.

And all this is actual, sensate – as evidenced by the physical senses – not merely cerebral or affective. You know, things like the smell of a woman’s armpit during sex, the feel of the breast or bum, the way you can tease a nipple to hardness, the fresh unique journey that is each sexual encounter as a literal salubrious smorgasbord of sensuality unfolds as wave after wave of pleasure engulfs us both. To feel a woman as equally sexual such that you don’t know who is thrusting or who is wiggling or where you end and she begins. To ride wave after wave of pleasure of such intensity that ejaculation is but a side order, not the main meal. And after ... to lie back and chat about how it was for each of us, to compare notes, to discuss the nuances, pleasures, particularly delicious bits, or just to lay back in that state where all the cells of the body are sexually alive and tingling and drift off into a delicious half asleep state. To drift off entirely or to eventually surface and wobble to the shower where you realise that to have hot water on tap to pour over your body is a simple pleasure that rivals any. Then maybe a cup of freshly ground coffee and a post-coital cigarette, and wonder what other pleasures are next, and in what order they will come. Hedonism has got nothing on this. Freedom is this and much more, Konrad, much more. Can’t I tease you into considering the possibility of living in paradise, here, now, on earth.

It is a paradise not only of physical pleasure as it also offers a stillness and purity wherein one is no longer driven by the instincts, where the mind is a perfectly clear and delightful and playful thing and the usual feelings of fear and aggression are replaced by a consuming sense of well being and benignity. And loneliness disappears as one immensely enjoys ones own company. Good Hey....

So Konrad, unlike the other metaphysical and philosophical theories of freedom this one works and delivers and as such easily rebuffs charlatans and frauds. The proof is in the actual and in my experience if you can prove an end to malice and sorrow in equitable one-on-one companionship you have ‘put your money where your mouth is’. There is no greater test of fire than sexual freedom and equity, than for man and woman to live together in utter peace and harmony – not in theory but in practice.

The Gurus have failed to deliver, they have had their day. The old ancient, long dead ones have eschewed morals and ethical precepts for their followers who have fought horrendous wars as to the Rightness of their masters or own particular God’s vision. And as for the modern Gurus, I know them well to be pretenders. I have seen the despair that ravages their private lives and those around them. The chaos and duplicity of their personal lives, their sexuality, their treatment of women, the psychic powers and the entrapment, surrender and eventual total emotional dependency and enslavement of their disciples is but a sad useless re-run of all that has gone before. No wonder the spiritual or religious pursuits require bucket-loads of faith, trust and hope – it is needed in the face of its continual failure to produce the goods – peace on earth.

So, of course actual freedom will have no gurus, no pretenders as the proof will be in the pudding, so to speak. The Americans say: ‘can you walk the talk?’ Australians say: ‘Can you put your money where your mouth is?’ And its success will be that it is actual, it does work, it does bring change that is tangible. So I will watch with amusements your attempts at hobbling a bit of actual freedom talk into your philosophy – you are doomed to failure, but what the heck! What I am saying to you is that Enlightenment is finished, now that Richard has exposed it from the ‘inside’. Discipleship and the Spiritual Path are also finished and Vineeto and I have exposed the fraud that it is anything other than Eastern Religion masquerading in sheep’s clothing. So maybe, just maybe it is worth while considering that everybody (including yourself) has got it 180 degrees wrong. Not just a bit wrong but all wrong.

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Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless

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