Selected Correspondence Peter

Actualism and Actualists

Matter, the stuff of which a thing is made, is commonly classified into three types – animal, vegetable or mineral.

If you asked a biologist, a doctor, a zoologist, a microbiologist, a mother or a teacher whether animal matter is passive, as in inert or inactive, he or she no doubt would look at you askance. That animal matter is ‘not merely passive’ is surely obvious but the extent to which it is not passive is literally breathtaking.

As an example, the smallest unit retaining the fundamental properties of life are cells, the ‘atoms’ of the living world. A single cell is often a complete organism in itself, such as a bacterium or yeast. Other cells, by differentiating in order to acquire specialized functions and cooperating with other specialized cells, become the building blocks of large multicellular organisms as complex as the human being. It would require a sheet of about 10,000 human cells to cover the head of a pin, and each human being is composed of more than 75,000,000,000,000 cells.

As an individual unit the cell is capable of digesting its own nutrients, providing its own energy, and replicating itself, in order to produce succeeding generations. It can be viewed as an enclosed vessel composed of even smaller units that serve as its skin, skeleton, brain, and digestive tract. Within this cell vessel innumerable chemical reactions take place simultaneously, all of them controlled so that they contribute to the sustenance and procreation of the cell. In a multicellular organism cells specialize to perform different functions. In order to do this each cell keeps in constant communication with its neighbours. As it receives nutrients from and expels wastes into its surroundings, it adheres to and cooperates with other cells. Cooperative assemblies of similar cells form tissues, and a cooperation between tissues in turn forms organs, the functional units of an organism.

In other words, the flesh and blood body known as No 32 is a cooperative assembly of cells that has developed from the multiplication of cells produced by the union of a male sex cell and a female sex cell. One day sufficient of these cells will cease to function as living organisms causing the flesh and blood organism known as No 32 to cease to function as a living organism. The dead cells that constitute the organism known as No 32 will then decompose, becoming the minerals of the earth again, and those minerals in turn will to help nourish or form other cells, be they vegetate or animate. The matter that is this planet is in fact in a constant state of being cycled between animal, vegetable and mineral – i.e. matter is ‘not merely passive’. Information on cellular life forms gleaned from Encyclopaedia Britannica

If you asked a botanist, a horticulturist or a gardener whether vegetate matter is passive, as in inert or inactive, again the response would be predictable. Having done a little bit of gardening and a good deal of tree planting in my life I am constantly amazed at the variety and virulence, prodigiousness and persistence of vegetate matter on this planet. Indeed scientific research has revealed vegetate matter that uses chemo-synthesis rather than photo-synthesis as its energy source together with many species that blur the distinction between vegetate and mineral matter and between vegetate and animal matter.

Similarly, if you asked a geologist, a meteorologist, a mineralogist, a chemist, an engineer or an architect whether mineral matter is passive, the answer again can only be no. It is obvious that inanimate matter is ‘not merely passive’ when in a gaseous state – the ever-changing atmosphere that surrounds this planet consists of a mixture of gases, water vapour and minute solid and liquid particles in suspension – this ever-changingness is what we humans call the ‘weather’. Equally it is obvious that inanimate matter is ‘not merely passive’ when in a liquid state – the very water of this watery planet is a constant hydrologic cycle of evaporation, movement within the atmosphere, precipitation, the downhill flow of river water, lakes, groundwater, ocean currents, glaciers, ice flows and icecaps.

What is not so obvious to many is that mineral matter in its solid state is also anything but passive and this is so because of the vast time spans involved in the movements and changes of mineral matter. Geological materials – the solid stuff the earth is made of – consist of mineral crystals continuously being cycled through various forms of host rock types – igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary. This ongoing process – commonly referred to as the rock cycle – is dependant on temperature, pressure, changes in environmental conditions within the earth’s core, within the earth’s crust and at its surface, and time. So slow is the general rate of change that geological changes are measured in millions of years, although events such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions bear instantaneous evidence as to the intensity of change.

I recently saw a computer graphic representation of the palaeogeographical changes of the European continent that have been mapped as occurring over several billion years. Whilst the time span is so enormous as to be almost inconceivable, what could be readily seen from the speed-up graphic was the constant rising and falling – literally a wrinkling and buckling – of the earths crust, an example of matter being ‘not merely passive’ on a scale that is astonishing. As if this were not proof enough, one needs only to consider the extent of changes and timescales involved in the study of astro-geology – the scientific discipline concerned with the geological aspects of all of the mineral matter in this infinite and eternal universe.

Whilst the fact that matter is ‘not merely passive’ should be patently obvious to modern-day humans, this was not so for those who lived in ancient times when ignorance of the actual nature of the matter of the universe led to the fear-ridden fables, superstitions and beliefs that all matter, be it animate or inanimate, was infused by good and evil spirits. It is obvious that if one ever aspires to live in the actual world, the first necessary step is to stop giving credibility to any of the ancient fables, superstitions and spirit beliefs that constitute so-called ‘ancient wisdom’.

No. Matter, when experienced in a PCE, does not change its properties for the properties of matter are inherent to matter itself. Water is not alive, as is animate matter, nor is it intelligent. Intelligence – the ability to think, reflect, plan, communicate, and to be aware of that ability as it is happening – is a faculty unique to the animate matter of the human brain. Trees are alive in that they are vegetate matter and I have described vegetate matter as being ‘not merely passive’ above. Trees are not intelligent.

Animals are alive in that they are organism consisting of cooperate collections of animate matter or living cells. The only animal with the capacity to be intelligent is the human animal – albeit that this intelligence is somewhat impaired by the genetically-encoded rudimentary instinctual survival passions that have now well and truly passed their use-by-date.

When the intelligence that is a function of the human brain is temporarily freed to operate unimpeded by the animal survival passions, as ‘experienced in a PCE’, the normal ‘self’-centred values that human beings impose on the matter of the universe – it’s ugly, she’s ugly, it’s abhorrent, he’s abhorrent, it’s dull, he’s dull, she’s dull, it’s depressing, he’s depressing, it’s annoying, she’s annoying, it’s aggravating, he’s aggravating, it’s beautiful, he’s beautiful, she’s beautiful, it’s dear to me, he’s dear to me, she’s dear to me, it’s spiritual, it’s divine, he’s divine, she’s divine, and so on – all fall away, as if a veil has suddenly been lifted.

What is suddenly seen is that the matter of the universe – all matter, be it animate or inanimate, be it animal, vegetable or mineral, be it unfashioned by humans or fashioned by humans – has an inherent quality. The inherent quality of matter is something that is experienced sensately and a sensate-only experience of the quality of matter experienced in a PCE is a sensuous experience – it’s warm, it’s cold, it’s moist, it’s dry, it’s shiny, it’s smooth, it’s soft, it’s sweet, it’s tangy, it’s quiet, it’s boisterous, it’s loud, it’s scintillating, it’s fascinating, he’s a fellow human being, she’s a fellow human being, and so on. In a PCE the universe is experienced as it actually is – perfect, pure, pristine and peerless.

Again, the quality of an object does not change when an object is looked when one is having a pure consciousness experience, because the quality of an object is inherent to the object itself. What happens in a PCE is that ‘I’ temporarily disappear, along with the ‘self’-centred and anthropomorphic values and judgements ‘I’ automatically impose upon all matter, be it inanimate or animate – a constant evaluation of every thing as being good or bad, right or wrong, beautiful or ugly, something to envy, scorn, fear or desire, something felt to be ‘mine’ or ‘yours’, someone felt to be friend or foe, and so on.

A currently fashionable value that many people unwittingly impose on objects is that they regard any objects that are fashioned by human beings from the mineral matter of the earth as being ‘unnatural’, hence artificial, going against nature, alien, improper, false, ugly, deviant, corrupted, evil, harmful and so on, whilst they feel matter in its raw state to be natural, wholesome, beautiful, beneficial, good, pure, innocent, true, unadulterated and so on.

The root source of these emotion-backed judgements imposed on the objects fashioned by human beings from the mineral matter of the earth, is the belief that human beings were pure and innocent in their primitive stone-age state and that this purity and innocence has been corrupted by the technological progresses of the iron age, the bronze age, the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, the invention of electricity, the silicon chip and so on. In its crudest form this belief manifests as a collective feeling of guilt that human beings are aliens who have and are still corrupting and polluting the natural environment of the planet.

As can be seen, for an actualist there is a good deal of work to be done in demolishing these beliefs by replacing them with facts before one can expect to be able to sensuously experience the inherent quality of the matter of the universe, unimpeded by ‘my’ beliefs, values and judgements that ‘I’ unwittingly and automatically superimpose on everything I see, touch, hear, smell and taste as well as every human being I meet in person or hear about.

There is a world of difference between the normal human perception of the way it ‘really is’ or the way ‘‘I’ feel it to be’ and the ‘self’-less perception of the actuality of the universe as experienced in a PCE.

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As I said above, animals are alive in that they are animate animal matter, but the only animal with the capacity to be intelligent is the human animal – albeit that this intelligence is somewhat impaired by the genetically-encoded rudimentary instinctual survival passions that have now well and truly passed their use-by-date.

A practicing actualist commits himself or herself to removing all of ‘my’ values, judgements and demands that ‘I’ unwittingly impose upon other people such that they can be clearly seen, and treated, as being what they actually are – fellow human beings. Or to put it another way, a practicing actualist is someone who has devoted his or her life to actualizing peace on earth.

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There have been many people who had an influence on my life. The three stand-outs that are relevant to this discussion are my father, Richard and Vineeto.

My father, because the only advice he ever offered me was ‘It doesn’t matter what you do in your life, you can be a brain surgeon or a dunny-cart man (the man who used to call and collect the pan of excrement from beneath the toilet at the bottom of our garden), as long as you are happy’. What he didn’t tell me was how to be happy because he, along with everybody else, didn’t know how.

For the ‘how to’, I had to wait some 35 years before I came across Richard who had discovered not only how to be happy but how to be harmless – it is impossible to be happy unless you are harmless. And Vineeto’s influence was that I was able to see first-hand that the actualism method worked not only for myself but for someone else – the proof of the pudding that the actualism process produces happy and harmless people, regardless of gender, nationality or prior belief.

As for the possibility of another person changing me, I gave up this belief by becoming an actualist – becoming an actualist is the practical acknowledgement that no one can change me but myself. Further, becoming an actualist is the practical acknowledgement that I cease wanting to have power or control over the lives of others.

Whether or not an actualist can influence another person is entirely up to the other person and what their interests are. In my case, I was vitally interested in what Richard had to say as well as how he lived his life.

Speaking of which, someone asked me the other day what I would do about the war in Palestine. I replied that if I lived in the area, the first thing I would do was stop being a Jew or Muslim because it is obvious that religious fervour fuels much of the hatred on both sides. The second thing I would do was stop being an Israelii or a Palestinian, because nationalistic fervour and territorial instincts fuel much of the hatred on both sides. And finally, I would leave the area, vote with my feet, abandon ship, get out, be a traitor to the cause.

The person who asked seemed to think I was somehow cheating by not offering a solution, not taking sides, not apportioning blame and so on, but he completely missed the point of my answer. He asked me what I would do and what I would do is make the only practical contribution I could – take unilateral action by stop being a believer, stop being a passionate combatant, stop looking for someone to blame and stop seeking retribution in the name of justice and fair play. It is quite extraordinary to see – as well as personally experience – the grip that the combination of ancient beliefs and instinctual passions has over Humanity, so much so that no-where is common sense to be seen. Common sense reveals that the only thing that can be done about peace on earth is personally doing whatever needs to be done to become actually free of malice and sorrow.

Or, it could be said that the only responsible and practical contribution one can make towards bringing an end to the on-going wars between human beings is to rid oneself of every skerrick of malice and sorrow. In other words, if you feel responsible, be responsible and act responsibly. Use whatever passion and motivation you have – don’t stifle it because the process of actualism cannot be a dispassionate business.

What I do get from this group at times is a tendency to formulate fairly broad responses in quite black and white terms, at times sounding like a party line. Yes, the basic AF tenet is black and white, but I am suspicious of any system that attempts to fit the entire universe into one of two bins. Elemental particles may be black/white, but when you mix a lot of them together, it sure starts to look grey.

So, the basic actualism tenet is black and white but ‘this group’ tends to formulate fairly broad responses in quite black and white terms. As part of this ‘group’, I have no trouble at all with making things black and white, bringing issues and beliefs out of the shadows into the light, understanding what were formerly grey areas, calling a spade a spade when appropriate. This is the whole point of actualism – to clearly understand the human condition and how it operates in black and white terms in order to be free of it. If you want murkiness and greyness, not-knowingness and uncertainty, obscuration and ambiguity, then there are a multitude of other forums on the Net whose discussions would better meet your criteria.

I didn’t state that I was pursuing grey-ness. I have no personal interest in ambiguity, that’s why I’m here. I was simply investigating some remaining sticking points, some ‘real’ world scenarios that I’ve been using as litmus tests. Vineeto in her last post to me actually answered most of them to my satisfaction, so my black/white/grey thread is concluded satisfactorily.

I apologize for the presumption on my part. What you said was that you were suspicious of a system that attempts to ‘fit the entire universe into one of two bins.’ I unwittingly leapt to the conclusion that, as you were suspicious of the ‘black and white’ proposition inherent in actualism, you may have still held some lingering fondness for the greyness typified by traditional spiritual teachings of ‘not-knowing’ and ‘not wanting to know’. I was also unaware at the time of writing my response that you had meanwhile concluded this thread to your satisfaction. Sounds good to me.

I do like the written-word communication of mailing lists. Putting things down in black and white presents a way of making things clear, whereas the spoken word always leaves room for greyness and ambiguities, not to mention the usual ‘but you just said … ‘no, I didn’t’, ‘yes, you did’, no, I didn’t’ disputes that commonly arise. By being able to refer back on what was actually said, the process of checking beliefs or convictions against facts becomes simple and straightforward.

You wrote commenting on something I wrote to Gary –

Someone asked me the other day what I would do about the war in Palestine.

I replied that if I lived in the area, the first thing I would do was stop being a Jew or a Muslim because it is obvious that religious fervour fuels much of the hatred on both sides. The second thing I would do was stop being an Israelii or a Palestinian, because nationalistic fervour and territorial instincts fuel much of the hatred on both sides. And finally, I would leave the area, vote with my feet, abandon ship, get out, be a traitor to the cause.

[someone asked me the other day what I would do about the war in Palestine.]

And yet surely it is obvious that the only thing I can do something about is the things I can do something about. It therefore follows that, because I don’t live in Palestine, I had to preface my reply with ‘if I lived in the area’.

You may be familiar with the cliché ‘Think globally but act locally’. A sincere interpretation would mean that if one is concerned about wars in general, or the war in Palestine in particular, then one should act locally. And there is no place more local to act than to cease making war with the human beings one comes in direct contact with, be they family, friends, workmates or whatever. Need I say, this involves ceasing being angry, annoyed, peeved, resentful, blameful and so on.

It took me a long time to fully comprehend that getting emotionally involved in someone else’s problems and/or contriving imaginary solutions to others’ problems was merely a convenient way of avoiding the responsibility of looking at, and doing something about, my own malice and my own sorrow. A large part of the business of actualism involves breaking this ingrained habit.

[The person who asked seemed to think I was somehow cheating by not offering a solution, not taking sides, not apportioning blame and so on, but he completely missed the point of my answer]

No. I was well aware that the questioner was busy with being emotionally involved in someone else’s problems and then contriving imaginary solutions to these problems. I simply responded by offering a solution that I found worked for me – I stopped believing in all forms of religion, spiritualism and mysticism and became an atheist and I stopped believing I belonged to a patch of dirt or a group of people and became an autonomous citizen of the world.

By doing so, I found this took much of the wind out of my own malicious and sorrowful feelings – which is precisely why I related the anecdote to Gary in the first place.

[I replied that if I lived in the area, the first thing I would do was stop being a Jew or Muslim because it is obvious that religious fervour fuels much of the hatred on both sides.]

[the first thing I would do was stop being a Jew or Muslim]

Yep. Remarkably effective, hey. It is such a simple thing to do – to totally bypass ‘the complexity of this enormous problem’ – to find, instigate and follow through with a do-it-yourself, by yourself, for yourself, solution. Of course, from a real-world point of view anyone who is not passionately supporting ‘good’ causes is seen to be a traitor, and from a spiritual point of view anyone who is not passionately supporting the ‘Creator’ is seen to be evil.

Only by stopping being a believer – and stopping being emotionally involved in someone else’s problems and then contriving imaginary solutions to these problems – are you able to become attentive to the fact that peace on earth already exists and always has.

No. It is quite clear that people have to be vitally interested in peace on earth for them to even consider eliminating their own malice and sorrow. Peace on earth is a personal responsibility – to expect others to do it, or wait for others to do it, whilst doing nothing about your own malice and sorrow is but a cop-out.

I do understand ‘where you are coming from’, if I can use that phrase. When I first came across actualism I was enthused by its ramifications in bringing an end to the horrendous conflicts between human beings that plague this verdant planet. I wrote my Journal specifically to tell others that actualism worked, I subscribed to two spiritual mailing lists in order to tell others about actualism and even sent copies of my Journal to people I thought would be interested. I fully expected others to readily see the sense in actualism and be eager to try it for themselves.

In hindsight, part of this enthusiasm was to spread the message, part was to find security in numbers and part was a passion for peace on earth. The ensuing years have demonstrated that only a small percentage of those who thus far read anything of actualism are at all interested in peace on earth, so obsessed are most people with the spiritual promise of an other-worldly peace, after physical death.

This has meant that increasingly my focus changed from wanting, or waiting for, others to change and getting on with the business of changing myself. It does take a good deal of stubborn effort and constant awareness to come to the understanding that the only person that one can change, and indeed needs to change, is oneself.

If I can summarize, it is vital for success to continuously remember that actualism is a method of bringing an end to your own malice and sorrow – not that of others.

I went back to the question after my digression and realized how cunning and smart this ‘identity’ is. It actually believes it is here for my protection and well-being. Certainly the most prudent action taken was to not by any means treat it as an enemy, or something to be gotten rid of. Richard’s seemed to have atrophied naturally, rather than intentionally wanting its destruction which causes conflict and friction, which is the very antithesis of this work.

Devoting your life to becoming happy and harmless cannot be seen from a real-world point of view as ‘prudent action’, as it is commonly-held wisdom that life on earth is essentially a suffering business – in other words, that one needs to fight to survive and that one learns and grows through suffering.

Devoting your life to becoming happy and harmless is by no means an easy business because it goes against all of your social programming and it goes against all of your own survival instincts – which is exactly why ‘self’-immolation is the only way to become actually free of malice and sorrow.

Consequently, if you want to devote your life to becoming happy and harmless, you have to want it like nothing you have wanted before.

Actualism involves much more than a ‘shift in perception’, it involves the deliberate dismantling of one’s social and instinctual identity, a process which will not only bring about a change in your thoughts and feelings but also your actions. Whilst questioning and challenging the beliefs of others is by no means a safe and sensible thing to do, questioning your own beliefs is safe in that the only thing you are doing is diminishing your own miserable and malicious ‘self’. This process is utterly safe because ‘you’ are in control of the extent and pace of the process of your own ‘self’-investigation – only ‘you’ can challenge your own beliefs, no one else can.

You can escape your fate and become the master of your own destiny – the experience of actualism is that no one is standing in the way of you becoming free of the human condition.

I have just written to No 39 on this very subject –

Devoting your life to becoming happy and harmless cannot be seen as prudent action as it is common wisdom that life on earth is essentially a suffering business – that one needs to fight to survive and that one learns and grows through suffering. Devoting your life to becoming happy and harmless is by no means an easy business because it goes against all of your social programming and it goes against your own survival instincts, which is why ‘self’-immolation is the only way to become actually free of malice and sorrow. Consequently, if you want to devote your life to becoming happy and harmless, you have to want it like nothing you have wanted before.

We have recently had a History channel added to our satellite Pay-TV channels. As I have tuned into it over the past few days, I am reminded yet again as to what a tragedy the human condition really is. Apart from some programs that document the amazing history of the advances wrought by human ingenuity and common sense in the face of ancient ignorance and superstition, human history has been a on-going litany of cunning savagery and horrific acts of cruelty and torture, the likes of which is seen in no other animal species.

And if this isn’t enough, this pathos-ridden tragedy is fondly imagined to be a noble struggle between copious cosmic forces of good and evil and it is never acknowledged for what it is – an impassioned instinctual battle for survival that has now well and truly reached its use-by date. Rather than some clear thinking and clear-eyed seeing of the current human situation as-it-is, what is proffered as ‘solutions’ is yet more passion, yet more confrontation, yet more self-pity and more self-love … and yet more re-runs of eons-old beliefs and concepts that have not only failed to bring an end to human malice and sorrow but have only added fuel to the tragic saga.

And if this isn’t enough to fill one with despair, to top it all off, overarching all of this is that daddy of all beliefs – that ‘you can’t change human nature’. This belief not only ensures that human beings will remain forever entrapped within the human condition, but it also serves to perpetuate the fictitious battle between good and evil thus enshrining the ultimate power and moral authority of the goody-two shoes spirit-ual believers. And history shows that they have often wielded this power with ruthless efficiency to quell any who would dare to question their Divine authority.

From this perspective, the human condition can clearly be seen – and on occasions be actually experienced – to be a closed-loop, ‘self’-perpetuating psychic and psychic nightmare.

However, it is never too late to start on the adventure of becoming free of the human condition of malice and sorrow and the way out is both simple and direct – you devote your life to becoming both happy and harmless, because nothing less than a 100% commitment will do in order to break free of the nightmare. Nothing less than a 100% commitment will suffice to propel an actualist to step out of the impassioned illusionary real world and to leave his or her impassioned illusionary ‘self’ behind, where it belongs.

As you said, … ‘it’s a matter of pure resolve/intent’.

Your post clearly points out an essential prerequisite for anyone to be interested in becoming an actualist – a thorough disillusionment with both real-world materialism and other-worldly spiritualism. This disillusionment has to be more than intellectual – it has to be firmly rooted in life experience. It is not enough to think that materialism and spiritualism fail to bring happiness and contentment, one has to experience for oneself that the tried and true values and dreams of humanity have all been well and truly tried and that all have well and truly failed.

The early stages of an actualist’s investigations into the human condition are marked by a curiosity as to exactly why the tried and true values and dreams of humanity fail, and this stage can be quite dramatic because what one is also doing is questioning all of one’s own values and dreams. By being more and more aware of ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ one starts to see clearly that people in the real world are too involved in their own ‘self’-centred battle for survival to savour the delights of being here, doing nothing in particular. It also becomes apparent that the spiritually inclined have totally abandoned all thoughts of being here and have opted to withdraw ‘inside’ in to a fantasy world of their own creation.

As this investigation proceeds there comes a stage when it becomes so obvious that everyone has got it wrong, and always has got it wrong, that one begins to lose interest in, and emotional contact with, where one has come from and starts to more and more wonder and delight at the perfect peacefulness and peerless purity of this paradisiacal planet we humans live on. The habitual feelings of malice and sorrow together with their panaceas, love and compassion, eventually loose their tenacious grip in the face of a fascinated awareness of being here. As one’s awareness of this awareness becomes increasingly ‘self’-less, there is less experience of ‘me’ being aware, and more and more a bare and pure sensuous discernment of the universe happening at this very moment.

In hindsight, this stage represents a point of no return on the path to freedom as the emotional ties that bind you to humanity – the feelings of malice and sorrow together with their antidotal feelings of love and compassion – are so weakened as to be ineffectual. I once experienced these ties as long tentacles stretching way into the distance behind me – tentacles that stopped me from being free. I also realized that if these tentacles were broken then ‘I’ would be no more. And not only would ‘I’ cease to exist – but even more shocking – nobody would miss ‘me’.

So, I’m not the only one who is not impressed with the human general state of affairs?

Granted, the race is still incredibly young ... we’re measuring the age of ‘civilization’ in the thousands of years. It’s just so painfully obvious what we’re doing wrong, and how easy it would be to do it right.

I might suggest that if it were so easy then there would be peace on earth by now. The problem up until now is the instinctual notion of ‘we’ – the passionate bond that ties human beings together ensures that ‘we’ either sink together or tread water together. As such, ‘we’ will always get it wrong and the only way out of the mess is for individual members of the species to take unilateral action – to lead by practical example, to prove that it is possible to become actually free of malice and sorrow.

I had similar problems with words when I first came across actualism. I started to become aware how loose I was in the meaning of words but that this was generally the case in any discussions about freedom. I realized that it suited me not to question too deeply what was being said because the freedom I was seeking was a feeling-only, other-worldly experience and not a sensate-only down-to-earth experience. After writing my journal, I set about writing a glossary of common terms used in actualism, giving their dictionary definitions and an explanation of the difference between the word’s actual meaning and its varied and confusing spiritual meanings.

Widespread change is always precipitated by individuals who dare to question the status quo, not always to their physical well-being.

Yep. Those who challenged the status quo of beliefs with the empirical discovery of the actuality of the situation – in other words the facts – often had a hard time of it and Galileo’s treatment stands out as a classic example. Richard’s discovery that it is possible to become free of instinctual malice and sorrow, be it virtually or actually, is still in its infancy but there will come a stage when it becomes more widely known and the opposition will possibly become organized and institutionalized. However, the internet offers a wonderfully subversive means of dissipating this discovery and it is hard to see that censorship will thwart this.

I also remember passing through a phase where I imagined all sorts of retribution would be heaped upon me for being a heretic but the fears eventually wore themselves out in the face of the long-sought-after realization of peace on earth. Simultaneously I also realized that as the process took hold my whole drive to teach others started to collapse and I began to realize that rather than becoming rich and famous, I was also becoming increasingly autonomous and anonymous.

There is an inherent safety in focussing all of one’s attention on changing oneself and not others.

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I don’t know what you mean by a ‘non-linear mechanism of information’.

My experience was that it took a great deal of conscious effort to take my social-cultural-spiritual bias out of language such that I was able to understand the written words that are used to convey the process of becoming free of the human condition. It is common to all spiritual teachings to disparage the written word as a means of communication and to encourage affective feeling-only communications such as satsang, communal prayers and meditations and the like. To describe a room full of people sitting silently with their eyes closed as communicating with each other is clearly nonsense. What in fact they are doing is retreating from the trials and tribulations of communicating with their fellow human beings and imagining a world where ‘we are all one’. Seventeen years on the spiritual path was sufficient experience for me to notice that spiritual beings were just as lost, lonely, frightened and cunning as real-world beings. The myth of peace and harmony between spiritual beings is just that – a myth.

Personally, when I met Richard’s discovery, I found it refreshing to come across a clear no-nonsense description of the human condition together with a coherent description of how to become free of it – and all of it written in dictionary definition words that said what it meant and meant what it said. It was a refreshing and radical change from the spiritual teachings I had followed for all those years.

But again, breaking free of my spiritual conditioning did take a while. I remember, after many months of listening to Richard, I was so fascinated by actualism that I wanted to know what was the hidden secret behind it all. If it meant Richard had come from another planet and a spacecraft was going to land and take us away, then I was in to it. It seems so silly now but I was so spiritually indoctrinated that the word was not the thing and that there was a secret message behind the words that I could not conceive that someone would have the audacity to not only say what he means but to mean what he says.

There is no secret message behind the words of actualism for it unabashedly points to an experience that everybody has had in there lives – a pure consciousness experience – and it explains the very simple, but at first difficult to put into operation, method of achieving that same tangible pure consciousness experience of freedom from the human condition, 24 hrs. a day, every day.

I might just end with a tip for beginners and that is to start the method of becoming attentive by focussing on obvious things and good examples are being grumpy about the weather, being upset about the traffic or being annoyed by what someone else says or does. This way you become used to becoming aware of how you are experiencing this moment of being alive and begin to notice what it is that is preventing you from being happy and harmless right now.

Let’s be a little realistic. Only time will tell whether actualism will have great impact on the course of human history.

Actualism is not about changing the course of human history – it is a do-it-yourself method designed solely for individual change. The world is full of people hoping that someone else, or something else, will somehow change the course of human history, all the while being despairing realistic about the prospect of a mass miracle happening. It is an essential prerequisite for an actualist to fully realize that the only person one can change is oneself.

If enough people take up the challenge of being an actualist then the course of human history may well change in the next millennia or two. What ‘I’ realized was that if that was to happen then it was up to ‘me’ ... for I was one of the very few people who had serendipitously come across actualism, i.e. ‘I’ could only either be a pioneer, an objector or a fence sitter.

I realized the buck stopped with me, as they say – and integrity meant I couldn’t keep on passing the buck, nor the blame, on to others.

For an actualist these regular flare-ups present a potent opportunity to study the human condition ... with the ‘lid off’, as it were. One only needs to turn on the television, soak up as much information as possible, and observe beliefs, morals, ethics, values, attitudes, feelings, emotions and passions in action ... as well as be able to feel these reactions as they arise in oneself. As you become aware of your own beliefs, morals, ethics, values, feelings and passions, as and when they arise, you begin to understand the nature and extent – the very nitty gritty, if you like – of your own social and instinctual programming. You start to both understand, and directly experience, the role that one’s own social conditioning plays in fostering and maintaining human animosity and suffering as well as be able to understand, and directly experience, the underlying passions that are the very root of human malice and sorrow.

Being an actualist means one is pragmatic about people as-they-are and the world as-it-is. An actualist does not waste time or opportunity by looking for band-aid solutions within the mayhem of the human condition ... for it is clear there are none to be found. The human condition is a self-sustaining closed loop in that it is perpetuated by clinging to and lauding archaic beliefs, come-what-may, and it is continually ennobled by clinging to and lauding the animal instinctual passions, no matter how horrific the outcome.

The whole point of actualism is to be happy and harmless in the world as-it-is – i.e. not to rant and rave about how bad the world is and not to fluctuate between being angry or sad at one’s lot in life. If you want to change your lot then you change it. Similarly the whole point of actualism is to be happy and harmless with people as-they-are – i.e. not to rant and rave about how bad people are and not to fluctuate between being angry or sad at the human condition. If you want to become free of the human condition then you set about irrevocably changing yourself.

Once you get the gist that actualism is about going down the road never travelled before in human history you start to realize the full implications of the fact that everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong. One then starts to see the folly of the human condition in toto and the envy, umbrage and criticism of others still ensnared by the old ways can be easily and clearly seen for what it is.

Yes, I think it has never been done before but now it is and I want to be in on it in a front seat. It means the end of ‘me’ and nothing but experiencing the 24hour a day perfection and purity of this physical universe, all while doing what one usually does, whether it be working, driving, tending a garden, going to meetings, whatever.

One needn’t go off to some monastery or trooping off to Byron Bay to make a pilgrimage to visit Richard to begin to experience this pure sensuous quality of life. It is right here right now. One becomes progressively more and more practiced in identifying what it is that is standing in the way of experiencing this perfection all the time, 24 hours a day.

Yes. Actualism is about getting in to being fully alive for the first time in one’s life. It isn’t about getting out of it, as in escaping from this physical world into an imaginary spiritual world. It isn’t about having instantaneous access to some Cosmic Wisdom, being Chosen to be a Saviour of mankind, acquiring Divine Protection as an antidote to one’s primordial fears or having Existence miraculously provide for one’s basic needs.

Actualism is firstly about freeing this body’s intelligence from any belief that there is any form of Higher Intelligence whatsoever in the universe, then progressively becoming free from the piffle that passes for Wisdom in the human species and then becoming free from the instinctual passions that give rise to the deep-seated emotions of malice and sorrow and their antidotal pacifiers, love and compassion. From my experience the order is important – you start with the outer layers of nonsense and work your way deeper.

And as you diligently go about this process you increasingly become aware of the extraordinariness of what is usually dismissed by realists as ordinary and prosaic or by spiritualists as illusionary and secondary. One’s first PCE is a very startling experience, as if a curtain has suddenly been ripped away to reveal a previously hidden paradise, the utter purity and peacefulness of the actual physical world. But as one proceeds to deconstruct this ‘curtain’, these pure consciousness experiences become less starling and seemingly other-worldly and become more ordinary, down-to-earth and familiar – hence what was once humdrum grim and grey reality becomes increasingly a sensuously extraordinary actuality.

Just a little anecdote about an event that happened the other day that may be useful as a simple down-to-earth description of actualism.

I was talking with someone about the delights of being alive and the everyday abundance of simple pleasures. She said but that’s because I live in such a beautiful location. When she told me where she lived it sounded equally paradisiacal and I said surely you are happy where you are. She said ‘yes’ she was happy ‘but ...’. We chatted on a bit about her ‘but’ and finally she admitted it was not a big ‘but’ and that ‘yes’ she was happy. A minute later in our conversation about how good life was she again said ‘yes, but ...’. After this had gone on for a few more times the conversation ended because she didn’t like me dismissing her ‘buts’ so flippantly.

It struck me that actualism is about getting rid of the ‘but’ in ‘I am happy, but ...’. When one asks oneself ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’ and the answer is ‘I am happy, but ...’, it is the ‘but’ that needs investigating and eliminating. You then just tick them off the list until there are no ‘buts’ left. You can include ‘if’ and ‘when’ along with ‘but’ – anything that stands in the road of you being harmless and happy deserves your full and immediate attention.

This immediate attentiveness can be a bit disconcerting at first when it happens because you can experience yourself becoming sad the moment you listen to a particular piece of music or in the whilst in middle of talking to someone. You can also become aware of the very moment when you begin to get frustrated or annoyed and this can be a bit disturbing if you are in the middle of a sentence or whatever. Often it is impossible to make sense of what is happening on the spot but by your very attentiveness you can nip it in the bud straight away and instantly get back to feeling good. If need be, you can mull the event over later at your leisure so as to root around in order to discover exactly how you have been conditioned and programmed to function. Once you get the knack of this instantaneous awareness, it is great fun.

You know all this anyway, but sometimes some little incident occurs that I think is worth reporting and throwing in the ring because it shines a little more light on the down-to-earth process of actualism. And just a note that this incident has nothing to do with this woman personally – ‘yes, but ...’ is common to the human condition.

I was going to leave it at that so as not to get too long winded but yet another meeting comes to mind that twigged me recently ... so I might as well abandon my attempts at brevity, yet again.

I was having a casual discussion with a spiritual couple, which is a rarity these days, and they were talking about their money difficulties. They had recently received a substantial sum in inheritance and since then money had become their major worry in life. I said that I had determined very early on in life by observing wealthy people, as well as by personal experience, that being wealthy didn’t make people happy – au contraire. I went on to explain that when I realized that money was needed only to purchase the essentials for living, I then used whatever was left over to buy time to devote to finding out the meaning of life. She then asked me if I had found it and, looking for a quick one-liner, I said ‘being here’ and I slapped my thigh loudly so as to emphasise the physical here.

Her partner, whom I knew to be a Buddhist, nodded wisely in agreement as if to say ‘enough said, we are in agreement, brother’ and then immediately went on to tell me about his worries with money, his complaints about this and that and his bitches about particular people and ‘society’ in general. What was startlingly clear was that he was complaining and bitching about being here.

I didn’t pursue the matter because words are wasted on a committed Buddhist whose being here involves sitting in meditation, shutting out both the real world and the sensory world and going ‘there’ – somewhere else other than the world as-it-is with people as-they-are. It is impossible to talk sense to someone who insists that the meaning of life on earth is to be found by going somewhere else, as in cutting oneself off from the sensory world and retreating into one’s inner psychic world. He didn’t even have any ‘buts’ about being happy because for him it was clear cut that happiness and fulfilment could only be had by going ‘there’ – to whatever imaginary world he went to when he was going inside while sitting alone in the lotus position.

I might leave it at that for tonight, No. 3 and send this off as a first part. Only a few years ago I was full-on into building and would like nothing better than getting in to laying a timber floor or cladding a wall – doing it as well as I could. Now I seem to have the same thing with two fingers on the keyboard and there is nothing finer than talking about, and bringing about, peace on earth.

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.

*

So, with the actualism method, one is actually doing the process of change, not merely talking about it. One can talk about irrevocable change until the cows come home but unless and until one actually changes, it is all theoretical. How do you know you have changed – ask yourself the question honestly and with the utmost sincerity – ‘How am I experiencing this present moment of being alive?’ The answer will astound you sometimes.

The spiritual solution to becoming free is to think one is free or feel one is free – to become ‘Who’ you really think and feel you are.

The actualism solution is to irrevocably change oneself – to become what you are and not to remain ‘who’ you think and feel you are, whoever that may be. As you are experiencing, this process of incremental change brings palpable and tangible results, changes that can be talked about, shared with others, made sense of, and even passed on to others if anyone else is willing to listen.

This seems to be the real value of this list to me ... talking about and identifying ‘changes that can be talked about, shared with others, made sense of, and even passed on to others if anyone else is willing to listen’ . Since I have started in actualism, I have quit a number of things that were simply not working anymore. I quit AA, I quit Krishnanmurtiism, and I think have quit the exclusive club called Humanity. I am no longer a card-carrying member of the Human Condition, whilst still subject to the conundrums that characterize and typify that condition, I am able to look very clearly and very comprehensively at just what is happening at the time when it happens. I do not think it is hypocritical to say that I do not want to belong anymore, nor do I want to identify.

The majority of people who have corresponded with Richard over the years have chosen to enter into an intellectual debate with him, defending their spiritual beliefs and attacking what is actual. Eventually they wimp away, or get sillier and sillier in trying to defend the indefensible, but what is noticeable is that their interest is theoretical and abstracted and not down-to-earth and personal.

When I came across Richard I first checked out whether what he was saying made sense, i.e. that it could withstand a thorough intellectual scrutiny. Once I established this and came to understand that what was on offer was a do-it-yourself method, it then became a case of give it a go to see if it works.

This divide between those who are interested in intellectual theorizing and those who are interested in practical change can be seen in the response of many who correspond with either Vineeto or I. We are usually dismissed as clones or disciples of the Guru whereas what we are is the proof that actualism works to rid oneself of malice and sorrow. At one stage we jokingly referred to ourselves as the litmus test – corresponding with us was the measure by which to ascertain whether someone was merely intellectually theorizing or was genuinely interested in practical change.

Which is why it is always a pleasure to talk some common sense with you.

I mused for a while on the possibility of the ‘younger’ generation being interested in actualism but I did see that they were lacking in one aspect – sufficient life experience as to what didn’t work in bringing peace and happiness in their lives.

It has only eventuated through the time of us being together that he has dared to wonder if something else is possible. Trying to translate an experience only results in one telling a story as you have done.

Although the only experiential confirmation of what is being offered in actualism is for you to have a pure consciousness experience or to have a memory of one you had in the past, this is not an essential prerequisite to begin the process of actualism. Although I did have a memory of a PCE that gave substance and credence to what Richard was describing, I was also greatly attracted by the unremitting common sense and facticity of actualism. I suspect that Gary would also confirm that it is possible to be attracted to actualism without having a PCE but if you are willing to sincerely question your own beliefs then at some point in the process a brief glimpse of the actual world will inevitably occur.

This was certainly the case with Vineeto, when after months of intense investigation into her gender, social and spiritual beliefs, her whole persona briefly collapsed, giving her a substantive PCE that then gave her the confidence to really take on actualism, boots and all.

We actualists simply tell our stories to indicate what is possible – what lays beyond belief. It is up to you to decide if the facts presented amount to a prima facie case for you to then proceed to question your own beliefs.

When you have undertaken this process earnestly you will then start to get your own glimpses of a ‘self’-less state and the process may then well be unstoppable.

*

Extremely rare, as I can still count the contributors on two hands. But the cat is well and truly out of the bag ... and no one can put it back in again.

Good, hey ... for we are talking of the beginning of the end of all the wars, rapes, murders, torture, domestic violence, corruption, suicides, sorrow and despair.

My final thought being on how to create the opportunities for any person as we all have enough experience of the sadness, fear and self doubt, we just need to re-access it or find immediate examples from which to learn from.

By classification, you are ‘any’ person and it does seem that it is you who now have the opportunity. Given you have read the stories of those who are free of, or are becoming free of, malice and sorrow, you may well be attracted to setting an example yourself.

After all, there is no one better qualified – you fit all the necessary criteria.

In speaking to a person without a background in such words and phrases it feels as if the other person is trying to be intimidating.

Many people not only feel intimidated by the words of actualism but also feel personally offended. This is as it should be because the only value in reading any of the actualism writing is to take what is written personally – to acknowledge by your own feelings that you are afflicted with malice and sorrow and to acknowledge by your own feelings the deep-seated longing for an actual freedom, peace and happiness.

If someone is not initially intimidated by actualism, then they are missing or avoiding the whole point of what is on offer in actualism.

Not intentionally but because of a sense of fear one puts up a self-preservation barrier. The language develops as one begins to see things in a different way.

Actualism, by its very nature, abounds with common sense, pragmatism, practicality, down-to-earthiness and is rooted in observable facts and sensate experience. We actualists do like to call a spade a spade.

I don’t want to become an actualist but a free, happy and fully autonomous human being.

This is rather like saying, I don’t want to be a materialist but I want to be a rich, famous and universally-envied human being, or I don’t want to a spiritualist but I want to be a rich, famous and universally-worshipped God-man (or Goddess). I am somewhat bemused that so many people who profess they have an interest in actualism – the method by which to actually become ‘a free, happy and fully autonomous human being’, to use your words – have an aversion to the word actualist.

I simply see it as a useful label. I was a materialist for the first stage of my life until I gave it up because I found it be wanting. I then became a spiritualist for the next stage and eventually found it wanting. Then I came across actualism and became an actualist. I even use the term practicing actualist to make the point that I don’t hold it as a philosophy – a nonsensical thing to try and do – I am putting it into practice.

I can only speculate as to why people have an aversion to the word actualist. It would appear that many confuse the autonomy that is on offer in actualism – I am what I am, this flesh and blood body as distinct from other flesh and blood bodies – with the real-world independence – as in ‘I’ am ‘who’ I am, and to hell with anyone else. And most people are so world-weary that they cannot understand that calling oneself an actualist is a descriptive term and that it does not imply being a member of any of the competitive and hierarchal groupings that typify all the materialist and spiritual associations between human beings.

Or maybe it is simply a sign of a refusal to commit to being an actualist – having a full-blooded commitment is seen as foolishness by many.

The question is: Can Peter and Vineeto still live in a virtual freedom for let’s say a month, without practicing actualism? If not, then someone is in control there creating its actual world. Maybe an actualist I.

A pure consciousness experience is evidence that this flesh and blood body is effortlessly jovial and benign when ‘I’ am not around to continually stuff things up. By practicing the actualism method I have got to the stage where I am virtually free of malice and sorrow, which means that it is only very rarely that ‘I’ and my problems and passions interject such that my happiness and harmlessness is momentarily disrupted. Any such aberrations are of minor consequence and in no way spoil my sensual delight in being here in the world-as-it-is with people as-they are.

As you would know, whilst I make no claims to being actually free of malice and sorrow, I have no hesitation in recommending a virtual freedom from malice and sorrow to anyone who is interested – it is to live beyond human expectations.

This method as far as I can see is designed to work in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are and not to try to change the world (things and events) or the people.

Yep. It is essential to grasp the fact that it is an exercise in futility to attempt to change others.

Actualism is about making the only contribution ‘I’ can actually make to peace on earth – to actively facilitate the pure consciousness experience of the already existing peace on earth by doing all ‘I’ can to rid myself of ‘my’ malice and ‘my’ sorrow.

These are secondary by-products of an actual freedom, but not the aim of the method, so any schemes about how the future of the world or the people should be like smacks of evangelization.

Secondary by-products, hey. If I read you right, you are completely misunderstanding an actual freedom from the human condition by relegating its prime attribute to a secondary by-product.

One of the very things that attracted me to actualism was that it offered a down-to-earth freedom, not an other-worldly freedom, in other words, a freedom in the actual world of people, things and events as-it-is – not in a metaphysical world of ‘my’ imagination nor in a world that ‘I’ hoped it would be one day ‘if only everybody else ...’. I think you have got the wrong end of the stick here and are busy trying to use it to beat up actualism for what it isn’t.

For me the fact that actualism offers an actual freedom in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are is unquestionably its primary feature. If actualism hadn’t offered that, I would have passed it by … and rightly so.

As for your ‘smacks of evangelization’ comment – as you would know most people who have dipped into the spiritual world and have inadvertently stumbled across actualism have trotted out the same hackneyed objection. If you insist on seeing actualism as yet another spiritual promissory enterprise then you can’t help but read everything with spiritual eyes, rather than take what is written as saying what it means and meaning what it says.

Actualism is the third alternative to materialism and spiritualism and because of this it is vital to understand that one needs to think outside the traditional boxes if one ever wants to aspire to experientially understand what an actual freedom from the human condition is about.

Also, if I cannot live in ‘the real world’ – i.e. business world (as-it-is) or ‘dog-eat-dog of people’ (as-they-are at work), as Peter called it, and not try to retreat on a leisure seaside house by the ocean (as-I-want things to be) with a choice person (as-I-want people to be) and create the circumstances (events that I like), then would I be as happy as I am?

I have no problem at all how other people choose to live their lives – it is after all their lives they are living and they will reap the rewards and suffer the consequences of any choices they make or don’t make. Speaking personally, I liked living in cities when I was younger – I had a ball living in London in the 70’s – but I also enjoyed living in a smaller city in Australia when I had children. When my child-rearing responsibilities finished I came across a small sea-side town in the subtropics and deliberately chose to live here as it was the best spot I had discovered in all of my travels. In other words, I chose to arrange my living circumstances ‘(as-I-want things to be)’, to use your words.

After making that decision, the next consideration was making money to support myself and the easiest option was to do what I enjoyed doing and was good at – designing and building houses. I gradually found a small group of carpenters and subcontractors who were interested in doing good work and who enjoyed doing good work and we all had a good time building nice houses for nice people, i.e. I chose to work with people ‘(as-they-are at work)’, associate and live with people ‘(as-I-want people to be)’ and create working circumstances ‘(events that I like)’, to use your words.

All of this seems eminently sensible to me, I simply organized my life in a way that provided the most safety, the most comfort, the most pleasure and the most leisure possible commensurate with the least amount of working time possible – I never believed there was anything at all to be gained by suffering.

The only thing that was still very obviously missing from my life was that I knew I was not free of malice, I would occasionally suffer from melancholia and I wanted to rectify my life-long failure to live with a companion in utter peace and harmony. Then I came across actualism … and the rest of the story is in my journal.

As for your question ‘then would I be as happy as I am?’, it is important to note that I was living in the idyllic circumstances I described above and yet I was not happy and, even more importantly, I had to acknowledge I was nowhere near harmless. The fact that I lived in what is literally a paradise made my lack of happiness even more poignant and even more obvious – and this glaring incongruity was one of the motivations I had for committing myself to actualism.

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I appreciate the type of frank and open discussion and with all cards on the table: exposing me for who I am at this moment in time.

Exposing ‘me for who I am’ is your business and your business entirely.

Whilst I found discussing particular topics with someone else can be an aid to understanding life, the universe, and what it is to be a human being – and this is particularly so if the other person has more expertise in a certain field than I do – when all is said and done it is no substitute for developing one’s own ability to think autonomously and precipitating one’s own ability to act sensibly such that one can finally stand on one’s own two feet. To become ‘a free, happy and fully autonomous human being’ as you put it.

It’s been a pleasure to chat with you.

There is no evidence to support that via the AF site anyone has become virtually free and 7 years have elapsed. Still, these are early days... am I sensing hope?

Did you feel hope that someone else will become virtually free of malice and sorrow or are you hoping that you will become virtually free of malice and sorrow? I only ask because there is a good deal of difference between the two – i.e. they are two different feelings.

This is so maybe because you cannot live any ‘teaching’.

To try and live a ‘teaching’ is clearly nonsense.

I was taught how to be an architect at a university and, in hindsight, the whole process was by and large a dismal failure. I was mostly taught by academics who had no idea of the hands-on business of being an architect, let alone any knowledge of the very down-to-earth business of building, and as a consequence when I graduated I knew very little about the practical business of being an architect and nothing at all about practical business of building a building. Over the years, by a process of trial and error, I taught myself to both be a good architect and a good builder – an accumulated expertise based on my own hands-on experience and accumulated common sense and supplemented by the many tips I took on board from other hands-on practitioners.

But working for money is only part of one’s life-skills. Because I live in a country that has moved beyond self-reliant agriculture, cottage industry and snail-mail communication, working for the necessary money to survive has been but an incidental part of my life activities. As for general life-skills and life-attitudes – the process of learning this began way back before I was even aware that I was a ‘me’ and I was unwittingly taught the usual set of morals, ethics and psittacisms that were fashionable at the time. Then at some point in my adult life, my real-world life fell to pieces and I found the wisdom of the Eastern teachings appealing for a while until I discovered that the revered Eastern spiritual teachings were nothing other than Eastern religion.

Having twice found the teachings of others to be lacking sincerity and efficacy, when I came across Richard and his discovery I was very careful to check out his bona fides. The first thing I did was to make it a point to clearly understand what he was talking about – no ifs and buts, no obscuration, no turning a blind eye, as I had done in my spiritual years – and I did this because this time I didn’t want to fool myself yet again. The other aspect was to check out how he was as a human being – was he walking the talk or was he a charlatan?

When I established a prima facie case for Richard’s sincerity and the sensibility of actualism, I then dropped everything else and set about finding out for myself whether I could become both happy and harmless – the essential core of the actualism process of becoming free of the human condition. I found the process to be one of trial and error, lapsing back into old ways of being, becoming aware again and getting myself back on track. It’s an utterly simple do-it-yourself business. It is impossible to live someone else’s teaching vicariously but it is quite another thing to find out whether what someone else is saying works in practice.

Of course, to learn anything new demands 100% effort, otherwise the enterprise is sabotaged before it even starts. I found that out both in my work and with living with a companion – unless I fully committed to doing what I did at work the result was always unsatisfactory and unless I fully committed to living with my companion I always left the door open to failure, and it’s exactly the same with the business of becoming happy and harmless.

This site is mainly the product of a person life experience translated into thoughts.

I don’t know whether you have noticed yet but there are two sections to the website. One section is maintained by Richard and it contains both his writings and his correspondence and the other section is maintained by Vineeto and it mainly consists of Vineeto’s writings and correspondence and my writings and correspondence as well as cross-referenced links to Richards writings and correspondence. What is on offer on the website is far from an abstracted ‘teaching’ of one person.

It’s a huge mistake to think that by practicing ‘it’, you can arrive somewhere.

Unless one has some degree of interest in becoming free of malice and sorrow, reading what is written on the website will be by and large a waste of time and effort – at best only of academic interest to would-be plagiarists.

Thoughts/ideas cannot generate experience, they can do all sorts of things: simulate, represent, imitate, emulate but they cannot experience.

Thinking about whether or not one wants to become free of malice and sorrow is not the same as practicing becoming happy and harmless in one’s daily life. In my experience, prolonged thinking about whether or not to commit to anything merely leads to procrastination and postponement, which in turn leads to feelings of frustration and resentment, which in turn only fuels feelings of doubt and suspicion … and then the whole cycle starts over again.

Anyone who thinks that he experiences something different in terms of consciousness when immersed in a certain thought medium might simply fool himself. It’s at best a lab experience.

I was well aware of that when I came across Richard – but it wasn’t a thought medium I had immersed myself in previously, it was the thought-less feeling medium of spiritual teachings combined with the psychic powers of spiritual teachers. But then again I wasn’t a Krishnamurtiite, so I never was fully indoctrinated into believing that thinking was the root of all evil.

Because I had previously twice experienced the dangers of being trapped within a group-psyche, both as a normal bloke and then as a spiritual follower, I deliberately stopped sitting in Richards’s living room after a while and went out and road-tested actualism for myself, by myself. I also stopped reading his correspondence at this stage because I wanted to practically test the actualism method by myself in my daily life – and not try to hold it as belief or a theory or an ethic within some sheltered workshop.

But i.e. the discussion between No 37 and No 58 you have been sooo blatantly absent. A fellow list member gets literally verbally raped and you apparently shrug your shoulders and say ah well shit happens and No 37 is gone.

Let me get this right. On the one hand you mark me down in your score book for saying that what No 58 had written was codswallop and providing the evidence that it was codswallop by contrasting what he said with how he talked to other list members and then you mark me down for not taking No 58 to task for how he talked to one of those list members. Dammed if I do and dammed if I don’t, hey.

At some point in the early stages of actualism I remember thinking that becoming an actualist would mean that I would have to ‘stick my head above the parapet’. I had witnessed the brickbats and barbs that Richard had got when he wrote on a spiritualist mailing list and I realized that would also be my lot if I dared to say that it is my experience that the actualism method works in that one can become incrementally free of both malice and sorrow if one so desires. Although I knew what I was in for, I found I couldn’t let the naysayers and doomsayers stop me.

I figure it’s exactly the same for anyone else on this list who dares to stick their head above the parapet – it’s up to them what they do with the responses they get, how they respond or whether they respond, because actualism is about having the courage to stand on one’s own two feet.

In a previous point I said that Bohm would regard instinctual passions to be a part of the whole system of thought, so if Bohm sheets home the blame to thought you can be sure he includes a very wide section of experience including instinctual passions.

Why should I assume that he said something when he didn’t say it? Or more to the point, why do you assume that he said something when he didn’t say it?

That’s not something I ‘disclaim away’ from. My disclaimer was in defence of your previous propensity to attribute my complete agreement with my quotes and misunderstanding the purpose of my quotations. I am demonstrating that other people are thinking in the same direction as actualists. You are trying to suggest that unless people use the same terminology as expressed in actualist clichés then they can’t even be remotely thinking along actualist lines. It seems that you actualists hate being anything but totally unique and you’re prepared to argue at great length to be so. Why is that so?

If I may point out, you are the one who has subscribed to this mailing list and you are the one who says that being free of the human condition is not unique and that actualism is nothing but re-branded spiritualism. All I have done is respond to your objections and take a clear look at the evidence you have provided in support of your claims.

Why did I respond to your post at some length? Because I was once in your position and Richard took the time and made the effort to explain to me the difference between an actual freedom from the human condition and the altered states of consciousness that are revered in the spiritual world as well as sharing his expertise as to how he became free of the human condition. And it wasn’t a quick thing to do. It took a lot of time and effort on my part to get the gist of what he was saying – that an actual freedom from the human condition is unique – and the only way I could understand that it was unique was to throw out my spiritual beliefs, exactly as I had to throw out my drawing board before I could really get to grips with using a computer to draw, instead of a pen with ink in it.

And whilst you have indicated in this post as well as in a post you sent one minute after this post that you are ‘done on this list’ I have nevertheless replied because what I write may also be of use to others on the list as well as to you.

I’d say that your little uniqueness sensitivity points to an underlying insecurity.

The marvellous thing about being virtually free of malice and sorrow is that I am no longer plagued by the insecurities others tell me they suffer from. Neither am I plagued by insecurity or doubt when I respond to posts on the list because I can stand by what I write because I write from my own experience, I don’t rely on the borrowed wisdom of others.

Must be hard being in a tiny minority, holding all the answers with so few people listening and being so misunderstood.

I have always been a minority in that I have always been on my own presumably from the time I was led by the hand to the school yard for the first time, although I have no memory of the day. It’s taken me a long time to come to acknowledge the fact and to be comfortable with the fact to the point of thoroughly enjoying my own company as it were. As for holding all the answers, I don’t pretend to, nor am I interested in, nor could I possibly do so. But when it comes to how to become happy and harmless I am an expert on the subject and I am only too happy to respond to those who write to me telling me they think and feel this is neither desirable nor possible.

Looking at the website I can see great ideas floating in a vast sea of effusive, wordy turbulence.

If that’s the case then it’s clear why you keep saying that you are ‘done on this list’.

I see this is an expression of wonder and enthusiasm but I also see a counter current of wordcraft designed to allow no deviation. Linguistic excess as a bulwark against insecurity perhaps. The actualist path may be wondrous but it’s not wide.

The actualism path is wide for those who fully launch themselves upon it; it’s just that everybody else has written a sign ‘Do not enter here’ over the entrance … and there are plenty of spiritualists milling around waving red warning flags at the start of the path so as to warn the ‘fool-hardy’ from taking the plunge.

It’s an excellent day to sit at the computer writing, occasionally looking out across the lush subtropical scenery towards the rocky headland that stands sentinel to the broad sweep of the sandy bay this village is built upon. The onset of spring has bought with it its usual delightful variations – coolish remnants of the past winter and warmish reminders of the summer to come. T’is grand to be alive.

I am reminded of a conversation I had with an acquaintance recently. We were mutually chatting about what we are doing with our lives and I mentioned that I had abandoned the traditional supposed meanings of life and made being happy and harmless my goal. He said that that sounded like ‘a good philosophy’ and when I went on to attempt to point out that it was not a philosophy I held but that it was something I put into practice in each-and-every-moment, he again reiterated that it was ‘a good philosophy’ and the conversation soon ended.

I was reflecting the other day on the fact that unless someone is willing to let go of their past then they are not going to be interested in starting afresh as an actualist. I think I have described it before as rather like holding on to the side of the swimming pool rather than striking out for the other end and Vineeto has recently called it ‘closing the back door’.

A decisive break with the past has to be made for any significant change to happen.

As I remember the early days of actualism the whole issue of self-exploration was daunting rather than complicated. Daunting in that everything that stood in the way of me being happy and harmless had to be examined, but not complicated in that the issue that needed my attention was always what was happening now – in short, being attentive to how I was experiencing this moment of being alive.

Something I wrote about my experience at the time may strike a chord with you –

‘It felt like I was actually re-wiring my brain, and that is exactly was I was doing. I, as a human being had been wired or programmed in a certain way. This wiring consisted of the beliefs that had been instilled in me from the time when I was first rewarded for ‘good’, or punished for ‘bad’, behaviour and included the morals, values and ethics that made me a fit member of society. On top of it, and developing from the age of about seven were the beliefs and traits I would take on and develop as ‘my own’ identity. Underlying all of it were the animal instincts of aggression, fear, nurture and desire that we are born with.

I remember lying in bed one night and seeing all of this programming as a huge mountain that loomed over me – vast and impossible to climb. Then I went to sleep, forgot about it, and the next day found I was busy demolishing some particular part of it. It reminded me of how I would deal with fear in my life. I would stop my mind from going off into all the worst possibilities and just do the next thing that needed to be done. Applied to the process I was involved in, it worked well, and if it sometimes didn’t, it just meant waiting for the fear to wear itself out – which it always does – and then getting on with the job.’ Peter’s Journal Intelligence

I did begin to have some insights about the ‘sameness’ and non-uniqueness of human beings even in my spiritual days and again I have written about it my journal –

‘I threw myself into doing groups, but after about three full-on months I realised I was just hearing the same thing again and again. Everybody had the same problems with only very slight variations. Everybody had had a bad childhood, everyone was lonely and sad, and justified it or blamed someone else or some situation for their suffering.

Compared to the last twelve months since meeting Richard, it was a mere ‘scraping of the surface’, an extremely superficial look at the Human Condition. The groups involved a lot of ‘getting it out’, resulting in deep grief and tears, followed by a Rajneesh discourse tape, more tears, and ending in wonderful blissful feelings. The problem was always that the bliss did not last – either someone cut in on you in the food queue or you went home to do battle with your lover again.’ Peter’s Journal Spiritual Search

As you can see, my observation of the human condition is that people’s perspectives are not so many and varied as people would like to believe. This is because every human born is genetically-encoded with the same set of animal survival instincts – a fact that is being increasingly verified and mapped by empirical scientific research. Further, from birth onwards, every human being is inevitably instilled with a set of morals, ethics, values, aims, attitudes and outlooks that have only slight cultural variations.

It is exactly this two-fold programming that both creates and maintains the current human condition – hobbling people to the past and actively preventing the substantive personal changes that need to be made in order for someone to become actually free of the human condition.

As for needing ‘more ground work’ to ‘be laid out’ – there are currently over 4 million words freely available on the AF website, all of which challenge the social and instinctual programming that each and every human has been unwittingly subjected to.

If you want a textbook, we do have two available.

Reading Richard’s Journal was enough to convince me that Actual Freedom was worthwhile getting off my bum and going for. I hung with reading his Journal for months, going over and over it with a fine-tooth comb – and a dictionary – until I understood and took on board exactly what he was saying, not only about the nature of Actual Freedom but also about the process involved in becoming actually free of malice and sorrow.

One of my objectives in writing my journal was not only to write a personal narrative of the hands-on process of actualism but also to present it in a form that would allow for ease of reference to particular crucial issues that an actualist will invariably have to tackle on the path to becoming free of the human condition. Hence the chapter headings – Death, Living Together, Love, Sex, Spiritual Search, God, Intelligence, Peace, People, Fear, The Universe, Time, and Evolution. In each chapter, I wrote not only of my understanding of the subjects at the time, but also of my own real-life hands-on process of investigation into each issue and then explained the changes the subsequent realizations wrought in my daily living.

Perhaps one day, there may well be others who want to flesh out this information with accounts of their experiences of their own investigations and subsequent life-changing results.

As well as the two journals and the extensive correspondence to the various mailing lists, the website also contains a well-sorted library of topics. Vineeto has spent a good deal of time cataloguing much of the correspondence and articles into sections so that the writings relating to particular issues can be easily sourced and Richard has also referenced a good deal of his writings.

As for teaching this stuff at school, this is the stuff of pipe dreams.

I remember when Richard was putting the finishing touches to his Journal and the idea came to publish it. It soon became obvious from feedback from publishers that they would not touch it with a barge pole because the writing was totally iconoclastic, radically irreverent and completely nonconformist. After all, in many parts of the world heresy is still a criminal felony. As it turned out, it was only due to the availability of do-it-yourself desktop publishing and the relative economy of short runs of modern printing that enabled the journals to be self-published in paperback form. Further, because of the heretical nature of actualism, it is only because the World Wide Web is uncensored that the writings are available and this forum is possible.

As for school curriculum, it is useful to keep in mind that one of their primary roles is to instil in an unsuspecting new generation the passed-on values, morals and ethics of the previous generations. By doing so they maintain the status quo of the human condition and perpetuate its roots in the dim and dark past – including its perpetual overlapping cycles of youthful rebellion and senescent resignation and the fantasy that human existence is essentially a battle twixt Good and Evil.

Actualism is a do-it-yourself, by yourself, business – something only you can do, something you do for this body as well as for every other body. Actualism is not, and can never be, a ‘do-as-I-say’ teaching, a ‘let’s-all-do-it-together’ fantasy, or a ‘will-you-please-do-it-for-me-and-I-will-be-eternally-grateful’ power trip.

Understanding that actualism is a do-it-yourself business – and taking on the challenge – is an act of sincerity.

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Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless

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