Selected Correspondence Peter

Freedom from the Human Condition

The natural (default) condition of all human beings in all societies down the ages has been, and still is, one of antagonism and anguish.

Perhaps some practicals example of what I mean by the default position might be useful.

In 1999, I was visiting a former client who wanted some advice in order to retrofit his house with additional rainwater tanks, solar power and the like because he, like many others, was convinced that there would be a world-wide break down of services due to massive computer failures at the turn of the millennium – http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/cyberspace/jan-june98/y2000_6-11.html

He then proceeded to tell me of his other preparations – stock-piling food, cash, petrol, planting a vegetable garden and the like. When he came to the end of his list, I asked him had he bought a gun? He looked at me quizzically and then I explained that if the doomsday scenario was true and all essential services did fail and you were the only one with water, food and fuel then you may well need a gun in order to protect your stash. In other words, when what is often referred to as the thin veneer of civilization breaks down, the default human condition comes to the fore.

The reason I could so readily see the flaw in his planning was that I came to be aware of this default position in operation in myself – whenever ‘I’ didn’t get what I wanted or felt ‘I’ deserved then ‘I’ felt resentful, a subtle or not so subtle anger resulted and ‘I’ begin to plot a subtle, or not so subtle, revenge.

The other examples of this default position – and they are so widespread as to be universal – come from observation of species of animals other than we human animals. As you have recently noted on this mailing list, chimps are of particular interest, being our closet surviving genetic cousins, in that they too wage war, they too murder, rape, pillage, have family disputes, compete for status, resort to subterfuge, become depressed, waste away from grief and so on. I remember at one stage thinking that human beings are different in that we are not wild animals but domesticated animals but I soon realized I was looking for excuses rather than clearly looking at the facts of the instinctual passions in operation.

I recently read a book by a biologist on the subject of violence in which the author also took note of violence in other animals including chimps in the context of discussing the nurture-nature debate as to the causes of violence in humans, citing many observations of animals in the wild as well as laboratory studies on mice. In the very next chapter however she made the statement that human animal children ‘are born innocent’, a statement which made a mockery of her observations that malice is indeed instinctual in animals and blatantly contradicted her presentation of the evidence for malice being instinctual.

Upon refection, I could well understand her stance for to admit to, and fully take on board, the fact that malice was instinctual to the human animal flies in the face of the born-innocent belief that is core to the nurturist credo. Not only that but to acknowledge that the malice and sorrow within the human condition is deeply rooted in the instinctual animal passions would mean that the nurturists would be seen for the band-aid dispensers they are and the spiritualists would be seen for the snake oil sellers they are

It’s understandable that a way of becoming free of instinctual malice and sorrow will be fought tooth and nail, not only by those with a professional and personal interest in hawking the traditional solutions, but by each and every instinctual being … including ‘me’. But then again there is no one with a more vital and pressing interest in my being free of the human condition than ‘me’.

You may well think I am flogging a point here but what I am attempting to do is indicate that becoming happy and harmless does involve a good deal of work and stubborn persistence in that one is attempting to do something that is unnatural in that it runs counter to traditional human aspirations, both socially and instinctually.

 believe that Peter wrote the following:

The modern scientific empirical discoveries of neuro-biology and genetics, with regard to the human brain and how it functions, have revealed two very fascinating aspects –

1. The brain is programmable in the same way a computer is programmable. The program is formed by physical connections or pathways between neurons, and this program is mostly formed after birth. These pathways (synapse) are capable of being changed at any time. The old connection simply ‘dies’ for lack of use and a new one is formed.

2. The human brain is programmed, via a genetic code, with a set of instinctual or base operating functions, located in the primitive brain system which causes automatic robot-like animal reactions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire to be transmitted via chemical messages to various parts of the body including the neo-cortex. Genetic adaptations and alterations, such as would be necessary to alter or delete this now-redundant crude programming, are well documented even within the lifetime of individual members of a species. ../actualism/path1.htm

I am interested in the evidence for the empirical discoveries from the scientific literature. If possible, can you please provide the literature that points to/ or infers 1 & 2?

I gleaned the information regarding the first aspect from watching many television documentaries on the functioning of the brain, not from scientific literature. I have seen images of the functioning of the brain in response to various stimuli be they physical or imaginary, I have seen and heard reports of cases where, after an accident or illness affected certain areas of the brain other areas were activated and took over the disabled functioning, I have seen and heard reports of the functioning of the brain at a microscopic level via neural pathways known as synapses and have seen and heard reports that experimentation has revealed that these connections are electrochemical in nature and that repeated ‘firing’ of these connections causes the connection to strengthen and that neglect of these connections causes them to weaken.

All of this makes sense to me, in particular the effects that chemicals such as adrenaline, serotonin and dopamine have on the brain’s function as it directly accords with my own observation and experience as to how this brain operates – the effort it takes to get new connections up and running automatically, as well as the effort it takes to break a connection once it has become so strong as to be habitual, as well as the observation and experience that once a connection is no longer utilized for a period of time it eventually ceases to function.

With regard to the second aspect, the empirical evidence has been from the study of animals and the sole extent of reading that I did was LeDoux’s research on mice – as you would appreciate it is somewhat problematical to conduct such invasive investigations of the human brain in action. Despite this, LeDoux himself has no difficulty in translating the results to the workings of the human brain and recent research has revealed that the functioning of the human brain is substantially influenced by an array of chemicals that are triggered off by the amygdala in response to the limbic region of the brain.

As for the comment about genetic adaptations and alterations in the lifetime of the species, again this information was sourced from a documentary of a scientist moving same species frogs to varying altitudes and noting their adaptations to a markedly changed environment. I went looking for documentary evidence of his research some time ago but could not find it, so I have since amended the wording (it being part of the Introduction to Actual Freedom that I penned several years ago) to reflect a more cautious wording.

In my early days of writing I was much more cavalier in my approach but since then I have come to realize that many people focus on the details rather than the gist of what I was saying at the time. Upon reflection I did take their point on board – what I write should be subject to scrutiny and with a fine tooth comb if necessary – but I bulked at going over all of my writing and reviewing it for technical correctness, not to mention political correctness. My interest in actualism has always been, and always will be, experiential and I have little regard for intellectualism for intellectualisms sake – common sense is more my area of interest and to me what I have written above makes sense, both in relation to empirical scientific discoveries as well as my own experiential investigations as to how my brain operates and how it has progressively changed in it’s operation since first becoming an actualist.

It’s a particularly delicious rainy winter day here, which presents a good opportunity to get back to the topic that was originally under discussion – psychic vibes. I’ve noticed that a lot of people have difficulty in understanding psychic vibes mainly because they attempt to intellectually understand how such vibes operate rather than *feel* how such vibes operate in action in their daily life.

As I write this it does seem somewhat too obvious to have to say it but much of human communication is done via affective feelings and this is so because human beings are at core feeling beings. To observe how human beings communicate via feelings is quite straightforward – if someone is feeling sad then that person conveys their feeling of sadness to other people in various ways, be it by the tone of voice, by appearance of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, by body posture and so on. The other person, tuned by experience to takes notice of these signs, then feels the same feelings as the other person and a mutual communication is established on the somewhat fickle basis that they both are apparently feeling the same thing. The same form of feeling-communication can also operate amongst a group of people – if everyone is apparently feeling the same feeling at the same time then a feeling of camaraderie based on mutually-shared feeling of sadness operates.

However, when one begins to become a bit more aware of one’s own feelings in such situations, it becomes obvious that when one meets someone who is feeling sad about a personal loss, one is automatically twigged to remember a similar loss of one’s own in order to have a similar feeling to the other person – to sympathize as in suffer-with. What is interesting to take note of is that whilst the feeling of sadness is similar for both, they are more often than not both feeling sad about quite different issues.

One can see that the very same thing operates with regard to feelings of anger and resentment – if someone is feeling angry and resentful then that person conveys their feeling of anger and resentment to other people in various ways be it by the tone of voice, by appearance of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, by body posture and so on. The other person, tuned by experience to takes notice of these signs then feels the same feelings as the other person and a mutual communication is established on the basis that they both feeling the same thing. The same thing operates amongst a group of people – if everyone feels the same feeling about the same issue at the same time then a feeling of camaraderie based on mutually-shared feelings of anger and resentment (most usually towards other human beings) operates.

When I first started to become aware of how these affective feelings operate (both mine and others) in my daily life I was astounded at how my interactions with fellow human beings were indeed feeling interactions. I also started to become aware of the fact that these feeling communications could be both transmitted and received without any verbal communication whatsoever. I became aware of the fact that I could detect the mood (the feeling that someone was feeling and transmitting) the moment they walked in the door, even before they opened their mouth and said anything. I then became aware of the fact that I also invariably transmitted my own feelings to others in exactly the same way – the experiential understanding that I along with the rest of humanity am a feeling being – which in turn led me to acknowledge that ‘I’ am my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’.

Once an ongoing awareness revealed how all human beings communicate by overtly transmitting and receiving feelings the next thing that I became aware of were the less obvious means of affective-feeling communications – communication via psychic vibes or psychic currents. Quite often the stronger the feelings are that the person is feeling and the more they want to keep their feelings hidden from others, the more likely it is that they will transmit their feelings via invisible psychic currents. I say invisible because in these cases there are quite often no obvious clues to be had in the tone of voice or appearance or body language and so on as to what the other is feeling – and in some cases the other may not even be aware of having the feeling themselves. But the feeling is there nevertheless and because the feeling is there as an undercurrent as it were, the feeling will most likely be received only as an undercurrent.

This undercurrent of psychic vibes is murky business indeed as it most often operates at an unconsciousness level, i.e. it operates underneath the ‘radar’ of normal awareness. It is also murky in that is one can never be sure what the other is feeling by reading the overt signs, which means that one has to revert to guesswork as to what the other is really feeling. Once I became aware of this I saw the utter futility of attempting to know with certainty what any other person was actually feeling at any time so I eventually gave up this ingrained, instinctual and automatic habit – the habit of having one’s psychic radar always ‘on’ as a method of ‘self’-defence against likely predators, in this case all of one’s fellow human beings. This in turn helped me focus my attentiveness exclusively on my own feelings – what I was feeling right now in this moment and what feelings I was either overtly or covertly transmitting to others.

I do acknowledge that it is somewhat difficult for people to really get in touch with their feelings in order to be able to see how feelings operate – how they are transmitted, how they are received, the pivotal role they play in human communication, the overt affective feelings, the covert psychic undercurrents, what triggers various feelings into operation and so on. I know that I had difficulty at first in getting in touch with my feelings, the primary reason being that we human beings are taught that expressing certain feelings is ‘bad’ and we are taught that it is best to repress such feelings by either keeping a lid on them and/or not paying attention to them. A little introspection however revealed that it was not that I didn’t have these feelings, it was simply that I had repressed them, tucked them away, very often so much so that I wasn’t even aware that I was indeed having the feelings at all. I also found that my years on the spiritual path reinforced my notion of being a good person in that I was given licence by the belief inherent in all spiritual teachings that ‘I’ was good and it was ‘others’ who were evil combined with the feeling-fed conviction that ‘I’ had a special insight of the truth and it was others who were ignorant.

I’ll leave it there as this is getting a trifle long, but the main point I am attempting to make is that the only way you can understand how psychic vibes operate is to firstly get in touch with your feelings and then observe how you invariably continuously transmit these feelings to others as well as to feel the feelings that you invariably pick up from others and then observe the manner in which you receive these feelings from others and how these feelings then trigger off feelings in you.

Or to put it another way, it makes no sense to intellectualize about feelings, one needs to feel feelings in order to observe how they operate in action.

I would like to ask Peter and Vineeto to write about some difficulties they found in this part when they practised this method initially.

Although I will answer your questions I suggest that it would be best to read what I have written previously when I was in the throws of making these investigations as what I wrote then was more pertinent in that it was written closer to the events.

What does one do when one feels bad?

Get back to feeling good as soon as possible as nothing good that can be said about feeling bad – and I say this despite the fact that many people laud the bitter-sweet feeling of sorrow.

How much of study is required?

None at all if one realizes that nothing good can be said about feeling bad.

Having said that, it is generally not that easy because not only is feeling good disparaged within the human condition – the ultimate Catch-22 put-down being that feeling good about being here means that one is uncaring or even callous because one is not feeling bad for those who are feeling bad – it is also the default instinctual condition given that the prime instinctual passions are those of fear, aggression, nurture and desire, all of which contribute to ‘feeling bad’.

Just the right amount to get back into feeling happy and harmless once again?

Yes – with the proviso that if one finds oneself repeatedly feeling bad when a similar event happen or in similar circumstances then it obviously makes good sense to get to the bottom of why it keeps happening so as to not have feeling bad happen again when a similar event happens or in similar circumstances.

If one has 100% intent can one just look at the feeling and get back to being happy and harmless instantaneously?

Yes – with the proviso that this is often difficult to do initially as one discovers that one has had a life-long habit of being angry – of holding a grudge against someone, of feeling righteous about something or another, of blaming others for doing something or of not doing something that I believe they should be doing or not be doing and so on – or of feeling sad about my lot in life, of being envious of others, of feeling resentful of others, of feeling as though I don’t belong and so on.

Is the amount of work that is needed inversely proportional to the amount of pure intent to be happy and harmless?

Does it not make sense that unless one has a 100% intent to do something then one will never be successful in doing what it is that one wants to do?

And is it inversely proportional to one’s grip on the method?

As for ‘one’s grip one the method’, the main difficulty with the method is its simplicity and straightforwardness – denial and obscuration being the main tricks a social/instinctual identity employs in order to evade exposure. The good thing is that attentiveness combined with pure intent allows you to understand and experience this aspect of the human condition in action and thus prevent it from getting in the way of your being happy and harmless.

When I look into the feeling – there is the cause of the feeling and there is the effect of the feeling and there is no clear boundary in between ... at least in the beginning.

It’s good to keep in mind that many a person is in prison solely because of the effects of a feeling, be it anger, jealousy, envy, resentment, greed and so on. They are locked up away from mainstream society for many and varying reasons of course and the courts by and large take note of the varying causes in order to determine what are called mitigating circumstances but by-and-large they are there because of the effect of a feeling.

The effect (the expression and evolution) of the feeling dominates the cause. One may feel irritated because his boss said something about him and might discharge that irritation on his child’s undone homework thinking that it is the cause. I guess more attentiveness reveals the actual cause. But is there always a cause? How about when one deals with instincts? Is there a cause or trigger?

Given that I have written millions of words on this subject I am reluctant to track over it again … other than to say that if you are being attentive of the consequences your feeling irritated has on your own wellbeing and on the wellbeing of those upon whom you inflict your irritation and this is not enough of an incentive to stop feeling irritated, then no amount of musing about cause and effect will help.

I am reminded of those who argue about the possible link between violent videos and violence and whether or not one is the cause of the other, all the while blithely ignoring the fact that both are expressions of violence and that violence is and always has been endemic to human nature. The current popular argument is about the ‘causes’ of terrorism, a by and large diversionary argument that completely avoids the fact that such acts of senseless anarchical violence are part and parcel of the human condition and always have been part and parcel of the human condition.

I am in no way discouraging you from doing all you can about eliminating malice and sorrow from your life – it is the very best practical contribution that one can make towards ending all the wars, rapes, murders, child abuse, conflicts, despair and suicides that plague humanity – but when all is said, and all is done, an actual freedom is only to be had by stepping out of the real world and into the actual world.

… it was just that ‘I’ along with everyone else on the planet, and everyone else who has ever been on the planet, have got it 180 degrees wrong. What Richard’s discovery reveals is that there is no freedom to be had within the human condition – the answer lays in becoming free from the human condition in toto.

I guess the difference is that I understood what Richard meant when he said everyone has got it 180 degrees wrong – in that everyone has been searching for the meaning of life within the existing human condition, by way of either materialistic or spiritual pursuits – which then meant that I didn’t waste the opportunity that meeting Richard presented by indulging in knee-jerk reactions or wallowing around in doubt. Once my interest and my own enquiries established a prima facie case the next thing to do was obvious – give it a go.

As for Richard being ‘a well-meaning madman’, that was a definite attraction. And my ‘proven track record of long-term devotion to causes that ultimately lead to disillusionment’ apparently means that I have a far better experiential understanding of the inherent failures of spirituality than any of my peers.

Well, if you want to get ‘out’ of materialism, then there is mysticism, spiritualism or religion … and if you want to get ‘out’ of both then there is cynicism, nihilism and anarchism … or there is the radical solution, become actually free of the human condition in toto.

It says a lot about the human condition that the idea of devoting one’s life to becoming happy and harmless is felt to be drastic. I remember the very idea of setting off down this path as being terrifying because I knew it was a path that only Richard had travelled before – that big psychic warning sign ‘Do not enter under any circumstance!’ was a dead give-away to me that the actualism process is something brand new in human history.

Although most of the posts on this list are a one-to-one communication, the nature of what is being discussed should be of interest to all and applicable to all. This is because what is being discussed on this list is the human condition of malice and sorrow and how to become free of it.

Only by understanding and acknowledging that the human condition is universal to all human beings can one stop being a supporter of the status quo, stop defending the indefensible, stop denying one’s own feelings of malice, stop indulging in one’s own feelings of sorrow and take up the challenge of becoming actually happy and harmless.

In my early days of actualism I remember asking Richard a ‘dumb’ question as to what was the source of the human condition. He replied that it was the genetically-encoded instinctual survival program – a program that is universal in its basic format in all sentient animals – and in the human species this program manifests itself as instinctual passions, mainly those of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. As I thought more about it, it became obvious that I had each of these passions extant, and flourishing, in me.

Despite my good intentions, my moral forthrightness and my spiritual leanings it was obvious to me that I was, at heart, an instinctually driven being – utterly obsessed about my own survival and the survival of my genes. As I became aware of these passions in operation I came to more and more understand and experience that this programming acts not only to prevent my own happiness but also acts to prevent me from being harmless to my fellow human beings.

Although I usually like to base my understandings on my own experience, it is also useful to observe others, and by doing so I could see that everyone, without exception, is instinctually driven, which is why the best they can hope for is a relative happiness and a conditional harmlessness. Another observation that can be made is that what human beings proudly call ‘civilized behaviour’ is but a thin veneer that readily dissipates when a person, tribe or nation feels they have their backs to the wall or when they take offence at the words or actions of others. Then the human condition does indeed become ‘something concrete’ – manifested as murder, rape, domestic violence, child abuse, suicide, torture, ethnic cleansings, genocide, acts of terrorism and territorial and religious wars.

As you can see, it doesn’t take a great deal of thinking to see the link between your own personal feelings of anger and acts of terrorism and war and your own feelings of sadness and the universal feeling of despair that inflicts all of humankind.

I have recently been watching the television coverage of the first anniversary of the bombing of the World Trade Centre towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. I was particularly struck by how well documented these acts of carnage were whereas our knowledge and understanding of most other such acts of violence throughout history are based on written accounts, bland official records, sketches and paintings, black and white photographs and official war films or, more recently, brief film clips on TV news reports. This has meant that while everybody is familiar with the Nazis’ persecution of the Jews, there is no similar close familiarity with, for example, the Japanese ritual slaughter of Chinese at Nanking, the Stalinist and Maoist systematic murder of tens of millions, or with the Communist genocide in Cambodia. Few deliberate acts of bombing of civilians have been recorded as they happened – the obliteration of whole cities in Europe and Asia in the Second World War was often only recorded from a distance or as piles of rubble, after the act.

I have a somewhat hazy but vivid memory of the very first time I became aware of the sheer horror of what human beings do to each other. I was about 10 years old at the time and my parents had just purchased their first television. I snuck out of bed late at night in order to watch and came across a film showing piles of skeletal corpses in a concentration camp. Whilst I vaguely remember being stunned at seeing this appalling and inexplicable act of evil, I can only assume that I thought that it was an aberration from the past and had nothing to do with me, i.e. the only way I could cope with what I saw was to dissociate from what I saw.

This memory surfaced again when I watched the two planes crashing into the World Trade Centre towers and then seeing both towers collapsing. Nowadays, as an actualist, I know that such acts of mass murder are in fact not an aberration and that dissociating or turning away from such acts means that I am only avoiding the opportunity of investigating my own social conditioning that makes me liable to be complicit to such acts as well becoming aware of my own instinctual passions that are the root cause of such actions.

As I watched the anniversary reports, the Mayor of New York commented in the aftermath of the attacks that he now knew what Londoners had endured for months in the Second World War and he could well have added the names of many other European and Asian cities. In a similar vein, I now know that the Holocaust, although horrific in itself, was not in itself an aberration because the persecution and murder of religious groups and tribal factions has a long history stretching back thousands of years. I also know that persecution and bigotry is inherent to all faiths, be they Western or Eastern. This is so because, by the very nature of all religious and spiritual belief, each faith believes that their particular morality, belief, God, Prophet, Guru or Godman is the only true, right, good and therefore, either implicitly or explicitly, that all other faiths are false, wrong, evil.

But I also know – thanks to Richard’s pioneering discoveries and my own experiential investigations – that tribal and religious conflicts are but the symptoms and the real cause of all human conflict lies where no-one dares to acknowledge, let alone investigate. I know by personal experience that the root cause of the violence, misery and mayhem that human beings continue to inflict upon each other is not the result of some metaphysical Evil force that continually needs to be opposed by the forces of Good but is solely due to the maladroit instinctual survival programming genetically-encoded by blind nature into each and every human being. And I know by experience that this programming can be changed – if one so desires.

There is another event that happened this week that I would also like to relate to you as it relates to the topic at hand and it helped me to throw some light on some of the feelings that have surfaced around the bombing of the WTC towers. I happened to have a chance conversation with a teenager who had been given a school assignment to comment on the rights and wrongs of the US attacking Iraq. As he read out some of the questions he was supposed to address, it became clear to me that whoever had posed the questions had an anti-US bias. What also became clear was that the teenager had very little knowledge of the facts of the situation. He didn’t know anything about the recent history of the Gulf war, of the Iranian-Iraq war, of the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein and the gassing of the Kurds, let alone the long history of conflicts in the region.

It struck me that he, like each and every other child born on the planet, had been inculcated with a particular point of view and opinion about other people, in ignorance of the current and historical facts of the situation. In common with every other child he was being taught – whether by his parents, peers or teachers – not only that there are good and evil people and tribes in the world but specifically who these people and tribes are. In this way, these beliefs then becomes set in concrete for a lifetime, only ever changed in order to remain compliant to the mood swings of society in general or one’s peer group in particular.

All of this I know from my own observations of my own social identity in action – of becoming aware as to how I was gullibly sucked into believing that what I was told and taught to be true by others was fact. Whilst it is obvious that I knew no better as a child, this is not the case nowadays. Nowadays if I catch myself feeling anti-anything feelings, I want to know why. I want to investigate the facts of the situation. I remember at the time of the bombing of the World Trade Centre towers being particularly curious about the amount of anti-US feeling that the event aroused. Many people of all nationalities were expressing the opinion that the US was at fault and that it had ‘got what it deserved’. Often I would hear that ‘it was terrible, but …’

I was reminded of school ground taunts and fights when there was general gloating when someone paid-back someone else for some wrong, and it often made no difference at all whether the wrong was actual or perceived. What I see in the human condition, and have discovered operating in ‘me’ and as ‘me’, is a basic feeling of resentment intrinsic to being a human being. This base-line feeling is what fuels much of the resentment against other individuals, groups, tribes or countries who are seen to be, or who are, more powerful, more wealthy, more fortunate, and so on. Many seek to counteract their feelings of resentment with the antidotal feeling of self-righteousness whereby they aspire to feeling ‘above’ the ‘ignorant’ behaviour of others, whilst many others seek solace in feeling grateful to their own personal protector-God.

I came to understand by scrupulous ‘self’-observation that many of the so-called ‘good’ feelings and opinions I held were based on a socially-inculcated and instinctually-natural feeling of self-righteousness and that this feeling is always predicated on the ‘wrongness’ of others. In my case for example, I believed being a spiritualist was ‘good’ because religion was inherently evil, I believed being a socialist was good because capitalism was inherently evil and I believed being an Environmentalist was good because consumerism was inherently evil. It was only when I became an actualist that I was emboldened to question and set aside these beliefs so that I was able to find out by myself, for myself, the facts of the situation.

I’ve come to understand – by carefully observing my own beliefs, feelings and passions and, most importantly, thinking about them – that the root cause of this intrinsic feeling of resentment is that ‘I’, by my very non-physical nature, am forever cut off from the perfection and purity of the actual physical world. However this very act of observation also means that increasingly I am able to rid myself of the social and instinctual programming that gives substance to ‘me’ as a social and instinctual identity. This deliberate act of elimination in turn means that I am more able to be unconditionally happy and effortlessly harmless, which is also why I am able to report from my own experience that actualism can never be a belief because it only works in practice.

It’s so good to be able to do something about one’s lot in life, to incrementally eradicate one’s own self-centred programming and start to marvel at this astonishing, utterly peerless, universe in action.

Just thought I’d write a note about some aspects of the human condition that have particularly struck me in the last few weeks. Most relate to items I have seen on television – a marvellous way to observe and experience the full gamut of the human condition from the comfort and safety of one’s own house.

I recently watched a documentary called ‘Reason for Hope’ about Jane Goodall, anthropologist, environmentalist and renowned chimp researcher. After her early years of studying chimp behaviour, she went through a difficult period in her life when her husband died and she came to observe what she described as the ‘dark side’ of chimp behaviour – sadness, depression, anger, warfare, murder and cannibalism. After initially being shocked that chimps were not ‘innocent beings’, she came to regard the fact that chimps have a dark side to their nature as evidence that chimps were ‘even closer to being human’ than she first thought.

Jane Goodall then described a seminal event in her life, an experience of what is sometimes called a nature experience. From her description, her experience seemed to be a pure consciousness experience – a sensate-only experience of the purity and perfection of the actual world. Thinking about it afterwards, she felt the experience must have been a mystical experience or a spiritual revelation – simply because there was no other explanation available to her. This experience proved to be a turning point in her life – she changed from sceptic to spiritualist, from scientist to saviour, from feeling lonely to being loved, from feeling hopelessness to having a ‘reason for hope’. She saw human evolution as the eventual triumph of Good over Evil and began to cement her place as a champion of the good in the battle against evil – a Saviour, not only of Mother Earth and ‘her’ creatures, but also of Humankind.

It was a classic story, common to many. A period of loneliness and depression, an experience of personal loss or grief, a life-changing experience and a life born again as a Saviour – by whatever name, for whatever cause. What was of most interest to me in Goodall’s case was her description of what appeared to be a pure consciousness experience, her after-the-fact interpretation of the experience as a mystical experience and that she then went on to claim the experience as ‘her’ own – as being a personal revelation from God.

I find it always useful to remember why spiritual belief and superstition have thus far cornered the market in the human search for freedom, peace and happiness. Once someone has had ‘the Truth’ personally revealed to them in an altered state of consciousness – or as appears to have happened in Goodall’s case, misinterpreted a PCE as an altered state of consciousness – they are bound by a combination of gratitude and their own inflated sense of self-worth to spread the word that, while earthly life is a bitch, there is really truly a God who loves you.

Speaking of earthly life’s a bitch, this brings me to the Dalai Lama, who recently visited this country. He did the usual celebrity tour, at one stage addressed a gathering of some 6,000 school children. His message to the young was that suffering was a necessary aspect of human earthly life, that it was the working through of karma accumulated from past lives and that materialism is the root cause of evil in the world. A national newspaper ran an article about the meeting entitled ‘The platitudes of the Dalai Lama’ pointing out the banality of his message of love and compassion and his total inability to make any sensible or pertinent comment on down-to-earth questions raised by the audience.

In taking all this in, I was struck by the fact that only some 30 years ago Eastern spiritualism was relatively new to the West, so much so that most who were interested needed to leave the West and travel to the East. Nowadays Eastern spiritualism is mainstream in the West, Western religions are reviving their mystical roots and absorbing Eastern spiritual concepts and Buddhism is reportedly the fastest growing religion in the West. It only goes to show the staying power of olde-time religions.

And speaking of 30 years ago, I also watched a concert given to celebrate the Queen of England’s fiftieth year of reign and was taken by the fact that many of the performers were the rebellious young of 30 years ago. They had now become totally absorbed by the establishment that they now were the establishment, as the likes of Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Elton John, amongst others, performed for their beloved Queen. So much for youthful rebellion, ‘love is all you need’ and ‘give peace a chance’ as a way to evince change.

The other program I watched with interest was a speech given by the Environmental Guru, David Suzuki to a gathering of journalists. He was publicizing his recent book, which evidently points out that all is not doom and gloom but that there have been signs of some environmental successes in the past decades. As the questions and answers drew to an end he was asked if he had a message for the young to which he replied, ‘keep fighting’ and he then praised those who ‘put their lives on the line’. I wondered if he realized the consequences of what he was saying for he was, in fact, condoning youthful violent protests to the point of ‘putting lives on the line’. Ah well, I suppose by his reckoning there is nothing like a good stir or a good stoush – a cause, by whatever name, does gives the kids something to fight about.

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.

I realize that the things I write about that strike me about the human condition may not have the same impact on you, but I relate these stories so as to encourage a clear-eyed seeing of the human condition. It is my experience that every time I have an insight into the workings of the human condition, it aids me in understanding the nature of the programming that makes ‘me’ tick, that gives ‘me’ substance, as it were. Then it becomes a matter of persistently and stubbornly refusing to blindly follow the herd so enthralled with doomsday visions and so hell-bent on revenge and retribution.

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PS to the Jane Goodall story –

One of her colleagues commented that the research into chimp behaviour was clear evidence that ‘the dark side of human nature was inherited from ancient primate life’. What would have made this observation more even-handed would have been an acknowledgement that the so-called good side of human nature was also inherited from ancient primate life. So far, it appears that only actualists dare to make such a clear-eyed assessment of the human condition – and, as yet, we are few on the ground.

Most people are taught to love themselves, to stand up and fight for their rights, to be proud of their human-ness. In other words, every human being is taught to make the best of their programming and is taught that it is not possible to question the fundamentals of this programming. By dutifully following this ‘self’-centred and socially-condoned path everyone is oblivious to his or her own programming because ‘I’ am this programming and this programming is ‘me’.

There aren’t any individuals within the human condition, there are just team players or those who think and feel they are individuals. Amongst the latter, the common groupings are those who adopt an intellectual superiority via detachment from their feelings and spiritualists who adopt a moral or ethical superiority via dissociation from their feelings.

I remember No 4 some time ago realizing that it is impossible to be unique, as in ‘individual’, while remaining trapped within the human condition, i.e. despite what we may think and feel, all human beings are socially and instinctually programmed to believe the same beliefs.

Interesting reading, and a subtle point indeed. To maintain oneself as an ‘individual’ is to identify oneself in terms of the group, and its processes. It doesn’t matter what side of the line one falls on, one is still defined in relation to the group, hence is a part of it in some fashion.

Even the famed rebels and revolutionaries of history, be they real-world or spiritual, remained trapped within the human condition. As a social identity the only options available are to comply, shift alliances, swap sides, rebel against the current fashionable beliefs or opt for following spiritual beliefs but all of this is but huff and puff within the confines of what can be seen and felt as a cage of beliefs. While you may find this to be a subtle point, it is not one that the famed spiritual teachers can even conceive of because they remain firmly trapped within the human condition.

What I didn’t find at all subtle, and what really got me off my bum, is the fact that each and every human being is not only socially programmed to remain faithful to Humanity but that each and every human being is genetically encoded with the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire. Understanding this was of such significance to me that I put it this way on the very first page of my journal –

Indeed, that has been the innate drive in my life: to make sense of this mad world that I found myself living in. The insanity of endless wars, conflict, arguments, sadness, despair, failed hopes and dreams seems endemic. And worse still, as I gradually forced myself to admit, I was as mad, and as bad, as everyone else. Peter’s Journal Foreword

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And woe be to you who dares question that belief.

Indeed. History is littered with the bodies of those who were foolish enough to question the belief of others.

Whereas actualism is utterly safe, because the only beliefs you need to question to become free of the human condition are your own.

It sounds as though you have got the gist of what is on offer in the process of actualism.

It is impossible to remain an identity within the human condition and expect to become free from the human condition.

Speaking from experience, I was hardly capable of any sustained clear thinking before I learnt to distinguish and separate thinking from my feelings and beliefs. It took an enormous amount of effort to get rid of the programming that prevents clear thinking from happening.

The first hurdle is the problem of cognitive dissonance – the total inability of a pre-programmed brain to even consider, let alone understand, that there might be an experience of freedom that is actual and sensual and not spiritual and affective. It was only because I remembered that I had had such an experience, that I knew that actual freedom lay completely outside of my spiritual beliefs and preconceptions.

What I was talking about was a pure consciousness experience, but I can well relate to what you are saying. It’s essential for an actualist to be able to feel a fool and freely admit it. When I first came across actualism I had to admit that I knew nothing about the human condition and that I had to throw out everything I learnt and start over again. Whilst I realized I really knew nothing – the spiritual ‘not knowing’ is a fact, not a virtue – I did have a lot of life experience of what didn’t work and this was definitely a plus.

It is so refreshing to be able to be naive without being gullible – it’s one of the many benefits of lived experience not squandered by giving up in acceptance, or giving in to cynicism.

You can never be sure about a belief, simply because a belief requires that you have to believe it to be true or factual. But once you have ascertained the facticity and actuality of something for your self, then you have the certainty to proceed. You may find the bit of writing about fact in the glossary to be good food for thought.

The main reason I wrote was to try and stir some conversation on the list about the events of the past fortnight as the full gamut of the human condition is played out in forte. Thanks to modern communications we get to see all sides, hear all opinions and experience all the passions in a way that was impossible for previous generations. Speaking personally, I have always found television to be an invaluable tool for studying the human condition and no more so than in times like these. This ‘wanting to find out’ contrasts with the attitudes of my former spiritual friends who either shun television and haughtily dismiss what their fellow human beings are doing to each other as something happening ‘out there’ or avidly watch in morbid anticipation of a spiritually-promised doomsday.

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I find it hard to think how much worse human beings could treat their fellow human beings. For a start, the amount of bloodshed, torment, anguish and suffering that religious and spiritual belief has caused, and is still causing, in the world beggars description. Words like horror, repulsion and repugnance fail to convey the full extent of the carnage that has been wrought, and is still being wrought, in the name of the followers of some make-believe God against the followers of some other make-believe God. And what is the best the pious God-fearing priests and followers have to offer as a solution to ending this on-going savagery – religious tolerance. Not an end to the madness, but a rehash of the same old failed message of ‘be tolerant towards those who hold different religious or spiritual beliefs than you do’. Nowhere does one hear a clear and unambiguous voice declaring that it is archaic and inane religious and spiritual belief itself that is the very cause of so much human conflict, animosity, misery and suffering and that it is high time to abandon such beliefs to the scrap heap of history.

Blame is always laid at the feet of the believers who are either too fervent in their belief or not fervent enough – but nobody is willing to question the efficacy of the sacred teachings themselves.

It is interesting to see how collective, and interconnected, the human passions of malice and sorrow are. Fuelled by fear, there is a collective reaction to rally together in defence, lash out in revenge or recoil into sorrow and pity. One can clearly see that the compassion merchants, those with vested interests, come into their forte spreading fear of God and sadness with every prayer, song, speech or discourse. It is not a little thing to do to break free of – to dare to step outside of – Humanity, to actively rid oneself of both sorrow and malice.

As I see it, anyone who strikes at the financial, military and governmental heart of a country is declaring war against that country. It is akin to criminals bombing the police station or students bombing their school – it is an act that cannot go unpunished in the world as-it-is, lest anarchy rules. In school playground terms, it’s time for the teacher to step in and break things up, before things get really out of hand.

One of the aspects that has most interested me in the current situation are the comments of the pacifists and their totally unrealistic head-in-the-cloud attitudes. Many of the so-called pacifists even hold the opinion that ‘America deserved what it got’, which is either supporting one side in the fight against the other or a blind lashing out against authority by people who refuse to let go of their adolescent riling against the world as-it-is.

Yes. It is no good to merely believe that there is no solution within the human condition – least of all the puerile nonsense of praying to non-existent Gods – one has to both understand and experience that the only solution lies in stepping out of the human condition in toto. Perhaps this is what you mean by vigilance.

What I did was deliberately not turn away from what was happening in the world as-it-is, but I literally ‘tuned in’. In this way, firstly I stopped avoiding or ‘turning away’. Secondly, I was able to make sense of what was going on, i.e. I came to understand the human condition in all its facets and thirdly I was able to understand and experience ‘my’ emotional bondage to Humanity and the human condition.

This way you progressively become free of the human condition itself – and you have a fascinating time doing it. Win-win – and how else could it be in perfection and purity.

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I have been fascinated to observe and contemplate upon the machinations that are occurring in the most recent flair-up of a religious conflict that has been ongoing for some two thousand years. There is a wealth of information to be had about the human condition simply by observing and thinking clearly about what is happening. There is also a salient opportunity to check on one’s own emotional reactions so as to ascertain where one is hooked, by one’s own social programming. in to feeling anger, sorrow, despair, fear, piousness, aloofness, or whatever.

I too got a whiff of fear when I first saw the World Trade Centre towers collapse. But since that initial instinctual reaction, I have had no emotional response at all to what is happening. In the process of actualism, I have already experientially explored deeply all of the instinctual passions, be they fear, aggression, nurture or desire and these explorations have enabled me to become free of their instinctual grip. I did very carefully check myself out for I am aware that many spiritual people also have no apparent emotional reaction in that they have disassociated themselves from what is actually happening in the physical world. They, of course, believe they are pure spirit beings and therefore have no association at all with what is happening in the physical world – which is definitely not so in my case.

I was searching for a word that describes my response to the suffering that human beings wantonly, or inadvertently, cause to other human beings and the best word I could come up with was that I am appalled, but without the emotion usually associated with the word. When you know by your own experience that it is possible to incrementally remove malice and sorrow from your life, then what human beings do to each other, and to themselves, all seems so utterly needless and wasteful.

Just as an aside. I hear a lot of people categorize fear as the major factor in their life but it is my experience that sorrow is the predominant and hallowed emotion and it is sorrow that begets malice.

Indeed. If I could encapsulate Richard’s method in a few words – why waste time being miserable and malicious when it is such a sensual delight being here in the perfection and purity of the actual world we flesh and blood humans live in?

It is indeed a good news. Once I realise that ‘It is the human condition that is to blame ... not the flesh and blood body called No. 4’, it makes life much simpler and it is much easier to investigate and remove other beliefs. It looks like that ‘being unique’ is the mother of all beliefs. It has been helpful discussing these things with you.

I have been able to spend many hours discussing such things with both Richard and Vineeto and it is wonderful that this mailing list now allows the opportunity to broaden such discussions into an open to anyone forum. Much of what is being discussed is very difficult to take on board at first reading and it may need several readings and a lot of contemplating before the penny drops – the ‘uh hu, that’s what he or she meant’ bit. First comes the understanding of the fact and then comes the acknowledgement and experiential understanding of the fact and then action ensues.

When I read your exchange with Richard, I thought to myself that he had described the fact of the matter so succinctly – ‘It is the human condition that is to blame ... not the flesh and blood body called No. 4’ . Recognizing and acknowledging this fact means you are instantly able to throw guilt, blame, denial, objection and avoidance out of the window and get on with the job that is always at hand – being happy and being harmless.

I also noted with amusement that I had recently used almost identical terms to describe the universal, common to everyone, nature of affective feelings. Richard’s description – ‘There is no difference between English anger ...’ – was so straightforward that it has stuck in my head as it were. No wonder people accuse me of being a clone – I use similar words and very often the same words to describe the same facts.

Once it sinks in that you are not unique you start to see that you just been infected with the human condition via social conditioning and genetic propensity. Then you start to become a student of the human condition – you make an experiential study of feelings and emotions as they come up, you take a good look at all of Humanity’s ancient beliefs and wisdoms, you also look at Humanity’s ideals, values, morals and ethics in terms of ‘are they silly or sensible and do they work in practical terms’.

You start off by being interested in the human condition, then you find yourself becoming curious, then a fascination grows which can eventually become an obsession. Soon you find this curiosity about the human condition runs almost constantly in the background as a sensual attentiveness and an investigative awareness – a wordless ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?

I will finish off this post with a few observations about the human condition that struck me recently as being particularly revealing.

The first was a saying that I heard recently – ‘The greatest test of love is how much you are willing to fight for it’ . For those who have felt the rage of jealousy or, as Vineeto recently reported, were willing to kill or be killed for their love of God or Master, this is surely sufficient evidence that the feeling of love is by no means benign and, by no means, the means to peace and harmony between human beings.

As I was typing this I just over-heard a comment on a new-age health program stating that the placebo effect proves the healing power of belief. Every now and then something leaps out at me that leaves me astounded as to what lengths people will go to in order to justify their beliefs – they stubbornly refuse to let facts stand in the way of a good belief.

To change subject, I was recently watching a National Geographic program about protecting deer in the US. If you have noticed, National Geographic appears to be the evangelical high church of environmental spiritualism. The program documented a group of park rangers who had built several radio controlled decoy deer complete with motorized turning heads. They would set them as lures in a forest clearing or by the roadside and then lay in wait. When a hunter came along they would promptly arrest the hunter and fine him on the spot.

I found it fascinating to see human beings now using decoy animals in order to hunt and trap other human beings whereas, as a child, it was common practice for human beings to use animals as decoys in order to trap other animals for food. The same instinctual pleasure in trapping and hunting – changing times have just brought about a change in the hunter’s target – from trapping and hunting for food to trapping and hunting humans for love of God’s creatures or to protect Mother Earth. As the dimwitticism goes – ‘The greatest test of love is how much you are willing to fight for it’.

The interesting thing is that sensible conservation has been around at least a half-century before passion and pantheism combined to produce the current religion of Environmentalism. From early on in the 20^th Century, many governments and community groups were actively concerned about resource preservation and conservation, national parks were established, forestry and fishing controlled, pollution reduced, sewerage and water standards introduced. This process was begun as a pragmatic response to actual problems as they emerged, whereas nowadays what is mostly proselytised by institutions such as National Geographic and Green Peace is doom-and-gloom-backed irrational spiritual fervour.

Passion combined with belief not only stifles intelligence – it is ultimately a lethal cocktail that is directly responsible for all the deaths of over 160 million humans in wars in the last century, over 40 million suicides and so many murders, rapes and abused children that it is impossible to estimate. As if this is not horrific enough, there is no end to this slaughter and mayhem in sight because it is held to be inviolate that human beings are feeling beings.

For an actualist feeling good is a start, being virtually free of malice and sorrow is a not-to-be-sneezed-at achievement but it is only a stepping-stone on the path to the final extinction of malice and sorrow.

How else is the slaughter and mayhem of the human condition finally going to come to an end unless we pioneers have the fortitude to do it?

One needs a sense of adventure to be a pioneer ... and to be a pioneering actualist is the greatest adventure. In an age when a blind man has now climbed Mt. Everest and tourists now go into space, the greatest challenge still to be conquered is for human beings to stop doing what doesn’t work, stop beating around the bush and learn how to live together in peace and harmony.

There is no greater challenge, there is no greater need.

A finding from a recent study investigating the causes of human depression might be relevant. One of the major reasons given for feeling depressed by participants in the study was that they felt that nobody was in charge of the human species – no leader or group of leaders, no faceless men, no secret cartel. This feeling of ‘it’s all out of control and there is nothing that can be done about it’ evidently plunged many people into helplessness, depression and despair. The study dealt with one end of the spectrum of the human condition – the hopeless despair of grim reality when stripped of the hopeful fantasy of a greater reality – but what I found most revealing was the reason offered by many for their depression.

What fascinated me for long time in my own investigations was the human instinctual need for a controlling or nurturing being – a daddy or a mummy figure of some description – be it terrestrial or extraterrestrial, corporeal or fantasy, physical or psychic. This need for a mummy or daddy is obviously very real in childhood but adult humans have never quite managed to unshackle themselves from the both the physical and emotional dependency ingrained at childhood.

Adolescence heralds the commencement of one’s instinctual reproductive compulsion and the associated responsibilities and is a time of either unquestioning acquiescence to, or blind against, one’s societal conditioning. Whilst some manage to keep up the rebellion, anger and frustration for most of their adult lives – unless they waft into Acceptance – they in fact do nothing than overtly or covertly spread the seeds of resentment at, and despair of, ‘society’ to the next generation.

And so the cycle goes on and on and on ... as the human condition is actively perpetuated by yet another sad and sorry generation.

As I began to become fascinated with the workings of the human condition, both in its animal-instinctual roots and in its tribal-social perpetuation via childhood reward and punishment, I simultaneously started to become fascinated with the workings of ‘me’. How had ‘I’, as a social identity, been created? What particular morals, ethics, values, beliefs and psittacisms had been implanted by others and what morals, ethics, values, beliefs and psittacisms had I adopted as ‘mine’ simply because they appealed to me at the time or because they were part and parcel of some social group I aligned myself with?

This fascination lead me to actively investigate ‘I’, the controller – the social identity, the ‘good boy’, whose job when he grew up was not only to be a fit member of society but whose life-long responsibility was to constantly monitor, check and control – lest the dark side of ‘me’ should run amok. When I started to peel back the layers of social conditioning, I did indeed start to discover an instinctual ‘me’ – the raw animal ‘me’, programmed by blind nature to be nothing more than a seed-implanting, propagator of the species.

This raw animal ‘self’ may well have both savage and tender passions but these passions, whether they be selfishly ‘self’-protective or unselfishly species-protective, are neither intelligent nor are they benign. It is these raw animal survival instinctual passions, genetically-encoded by blind nature in every member of the human species, that warrant that human existence will forever remain a grim and senseless, human vs. human, battle for survival. By simple experiential observation of these animal passions in action in myself and in other animal species it becomes clear and explicit that to remain a slave to these passions makes it is impossible for me, this corporeal-only body, to ever be a happy body, let alone a harmless body.

But, as you noted, the beginning of this process of active ‘self’-discovery is the observation that there ‘ is no-body or no-thing in charge of the universe ’. If one really takes this observation fully on board, a wonder-full and utterly ‘self’-less experience can result whereby one directly experiences that there ‘ is no-body or no-thing in charge of the universe .’ One then can unequivocally experience that the puerile ancient spirit-ridden beliefs about the universe – those that still pass for wisdom, even to this day – are nought but fear-filled fairy tales that should be confined to the dustbin of history. In such a pure consciousness experience of the infinitude of this physical-only universe and of its this-moment-only happening, it then becomes patently obvious what a folly it is to believe that all this magnificence was created by, or is controlled by, a some-body or a some-thing.

It is this temporary glimpse of ‘self’-less experience that then provides one’s life with substance, meaning, purpose, focus and direction and one then yearns to start the process of actively participating in the happening of this moment, for the first time in one’s life – and most definitely not as a dis-embodied observer, nor as a back-seat passenger. It becomes clear from such an experience that the way to do this is to ask oneself, each moment again, ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive? – for one will then focus one’s attention on how one is experiencing this very moment of being alive, the only moment one can experience.

The process of actualism itself then becomes rich in meaning, purpose and direction. The process of actualism can never be off in the future and there is never an opportunity lost in the past, for it is immediately happening the moment one asks oneself the question ‘How am I experiencing this moment of being alive?’

What will inevitably come to light over time in this momentary investigation are all the morals, ethics, values, beliefs and psittacisms that constitute ‘me’ as a social identity and all of the instinctual passions that give substance to ‘me’ as an instinctual being. Thus by one’s own curiosity, one’s own attentiveness, one’s own investigations and one’s own experiences, one actively conspires in one’s own ‘self’-immolation.

Another example would be welcome if it serves to throw more light on what you called a serious point. It is sometimes difficult to keep a thread going but it is the only way to investigate exactly why all these other methods, movements, beliefs, therapies, tools, aphorisms, morals, ethics, psittacisms and the like have failed to produce the goods – human beings who can live together in utter peace and harmony. Billions have trod these paths before looking for answers and for things that work and peace on earth still remains a forlorn dream.

Once you firmly grasp this fact that there is no solution to be had within the human condition you cease the fruitless task of racking over the flotsam of history’s failed methods and beliefs looking for the answer and, even more significantly, you stop defending the indefensible. This Ah Ha means you can then begin the thrilling business of looking for why it has all been going horribly wrong and still is. This investigation, if undertaken with gusto, will inevitable lead to one becoming free of the human condition, or to put it another way, to one’s own self’-immolation which is exactly what you have said you are so ardently seeking.

Once an actualist fully takes these facts on board, then he or she can begin the business of actively questioning all those methods, movements, beliefs, therapies, tools, aphorisms, morals, ethics, psittacisms that have failed to elicit peace on earth and begin understanding why they have failed. This process of questioning, investigating and understanding is not a comfortable business for ‘I’, as a social identity, is made up of nothing other than the beliefs ‘I’ was taught or that ‘I’ hold to my bosom as ‘mine’ – hence it is simultaneously a process of ‘self’-immolation.

Many an actualist has fallen for the trap of thinking that what actualism is about is eliminating feelings – a misconstruing that can only lead to some form of catatonic introversion – while blithely ignoring the fact that the real work to be done initially is to become aware of the extent and nature of one’s own beliefs, and then begin the uncomfortable and oft alarming process of replacing belief with fact.

The only way to walk the path to freedom is on the firm footing of facts – they are quite literally the stepping-stones to the actual world.

Once you get the knack of this process of investigating beliefs, the path to freedom becomes indeed wide and indeed wondrous.

He [Bohm] considers the effect that evolution has had as well.

Simply repeating a claim over and over does not make it a fact. Could you perchance provide some evidence where he David Bohm indicates that the genetically-encoded instinctual passions are the root cause of human malice and sorrow and not that thought is the root cause?

I see that you are looking for something that I’m not asking of Dr Bohm. You are demanding that Dr Bohm use your terminology before you will recognise any equivalence. I’ve not claimed that there would be a one-to-one relationship to actualism. I’ve suggested that other people have been thinking along similar lines.

Okay. You have again posted a quote in this post that supposedly demonstrate equivalence –

‘They both then agreed that fear, sorrow, economic conditions, social environment ... ‘does damage to the brain cells.’’

And yet it is clear that the instinctual passions are genetically-encoded in every normal healthy brain, i.e. people with undamaged brain cells feel fear, aggression, nurture and desire. There is no equivalence here – one is a myth, the other is a fact, a fact that has been the subject of historical denial but one that is gradually being confirmed by more and more empirical evidence.

I’ve agreed that Actualism does a good job in asserting the importance of inherited instinctual conditioning but that the notion is not original to actualism. Here’s another quote:

‘Our difficulties arise from our education, our physical and mental heredity which all bear the stamp of false values. The fundamental transformation which is most urgent, is both physical and spiritual’ ‘Living Zen’ page 265 Introduction to the Conclusions

I assume the reason you have posted this quote is because the author mentions the words ‘physical heredity’ – even though he doesn’t make plain what he means by the term. Nevertheless, as I read the relevant part of this quote the author says ‘our physical heredity ... bear(s) the stamp of false values’. If I go along with your assumption that ‘physical heredity’ means genetically-encoded instinctual passions then what you assume he is saying is ‘the genetically-encoded instinctual passions bear the stamp of false values’.

So if fear, aggression, nurture and desire are ‘false values’ then ‘fundamental transformation’ would presumably occur when those false values were replaced by authentic or true values – which in the spiritual traditions means fear is replaced by the feeling of omnipotence, aggression is replaced by the ideal of pacifism, nurture is aggrandized into a feeling of Divine or unconditional love and desire is disguised as Divine gratitude or humility.

All you have posted is yet another recipe for self-righteousness and this bears no equivalence at all with what is on offer hereabouts.

Here’s a source that DOES use your preferred terminology. You won’t like their conclusions (nor do I) and you will dismiss then as ‘spiritual’ but it shows that others are thinking along actualist lines:

‘Explaining the human condition involves looking at what occurred in human evolutionary development when the intellect evolved to the level where it could take control from the instincts. In particular what occurred in the human species when our intellectual, or conscious thinking ability emerged in the presence of our already established genetic, or instinctive self.’ from www.humancondition.info specifically www.humancondition.info/TheHumanCondition.html

Wow. Look at that. They talk about the human condition AND instinctive self!

No equivalence at all. When the author says ‘the intellect evolved to the level where it could take control from the instincts’ he has got it completely wrong. How does he explain the fact that the ‘evolutionary development’ that produced homo sapiens (literally ‘man the wise’) occurred at least 100,000 years ago and possibly even 400,000 years ago and yet war, murder, rape, torture, child abuse, domestic violence, suicide, depression, corruption, superstition and the likes are still endemic within the human condition – so much for the intellect taking ‘control from the instincts’.

A lot of people write a lot of things about the instincts – but none say that it is possible, let alone even desirable, to eliminate the instinctual passions … in fact human beings are mightily proud of being ‘passionate beings’.

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By the way, this survival program is not conditioning endowed by evolution over time – it is genetically encoded as an indivisible package in each and every human being born, i.e. it is not a progressive conditioning, it is an instantaneous condition. The instinctual program is the (human) condition and it is universal to every human being whereas social conditioning is individual in that it has slight cultural and gender variations.

I was talking about evolutionary conditioning of a species, not an individual.

Yes but the instinctual survival mechanism that gives rise to the instinctual passions (fear, aggression, nurture and desire) is universal to the human species – each and every human being is born with them. The instinctual survival mechanism is not conditioning – ‘evolutionary conditioning’ is something you have made up, it is not a fact.

So none of your books endorse the term ‘evolutionary conditioning’? So what if I ‘made it up’? You make up whole sentences.

I don’t ‘endorse the term ‘evolutionary conditioning’ for the simple reason that ‘evolutionary conditioning’ is a not a fact

Let me define the meaning for you – ‘naturally selected patterns imprinted across entire species, that guide the behaviour and appearance of individuals’.

Nice try, but you have again ignored the fact that there is no such thing as ‘evolutionary conditioning’ – the instinctual passions are genetically encoded as one cohesive package and they are not a matter of conditioning because the word conditioning means something that happens over time.

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It’s true to say that the genetic coding is supplied complete to each individual.

Oh, good. Can we agree then that the instinctual survival mechanism – that which gives rise to the instinctual passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire in human beings – ‘is supplied complete’ to each and every member of the human species?

Hey, I never disagreed with that!

Then why do you insist on using the word ‘conditioning’ which means something that happens over time. And not only that, you continue to post quotes from spiritualists who also believe that conditioning is the problem and not the ‘supplied complete’ condition itself.

*

Do realize that this is no little thing to agree to because it is completely at odds with all of the spiritual teachings that have it that we are born innocent beings and only corrupted by conditioning or that we are all blank slate souls who have to suffer the trails of being trapped in a corporeal body in an alien physical world?

Well it’s not hard for a person whose early exposure to spirituality taught them that they bear the stain of original sin.

But that’s a fairy tale and a grim onerous one at that. To compare the idea of a Creator God who condemns human beings to be born malicious and sorrowful with the fact that it is the genetically-encoded instinctual passions that cause human malice and sorrow is nonsense. How you can reconcile agreeing to both is beyond me.

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The conditioning, however, takes huge amounts of time and works on species.

Well if you can see the sense – and accept the scientific evidence – that the instinctual survival passions are genetically-encoded and as such are ‘supplied complete’ to each and every member of the human species – then can also probably see that conditioning – be it ethnic, racial, social, cultural, religious or whatever – is what happens to each and every human being after birth? Let me put it another way. The instinctual passions are universal to all human beings – there is no difference between the fear a Greek woman feels or the fear a Liberian man feels, there is no difference to the anger a Roman centurion felt to that which a Stone Age girl felt. In other words, whilst there are undoubtedly ethnic, racial, social, cultural and religious differences between these people, the feelings they feel and the passions they are driven by are universal to all human beings.

Yes. Well put.

And how you can reconcile agreeing that the instinctual survival passions are genetically-encoded and as such are ‘supplied complete’ to each and every member of the human species with your continued use of the word ‘conditioning’ and your continued posting of quotes that insist that thinking is the problem is also beyond me.

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I think it’s quite right that Actualism stress the role of genetic inheritance. You have no argument with me on that.

Are you clear that what you are agreeing to … because what actualism stresses (that the genetically-encoded instinctual passions are the root cause of human malice and sorrow) is diametrically opposite to all of what all of spiritualism teaches (that human beings are born innocent and only corrupted by conditioning or that we are all born as blank-slate souls who then have to suffer the trails of being trapped in a corporeal body in an alien physical world before a final release ‘when the body dies’).

I’ll cut you some slack here – you don’t mean ALL spiritualism. Think ‘original sin’.

No 49 has picked me up on this point as well. At one time I understood that it was common-usage to use the term spiritual when referring to Eastern spiritualism and the word religion when referring to monotheist religions but nowadays religion now has also laid firm claim to the word spirituality. Even as a kid I found the idea of a Creator God sitting on a white cloud to be nonsense, which is one of the reasons I tend to ignore the fairy tales of monotheism when I use the word spiritualism

By the way, one of the reasons I came to see Buddhism as being as silly as Christianity was the fact that there is no evidence that a Mr. Buddha existed as a flesh-and-blood-body person other than in the stories in the Buddhist religious texts, exactly as there is no evidence that a Mr. Jesus existed as a flesh-and-blood-body person other than in the stories in the Christian religious texts. I then came to dismiss them both as being nothing but the mythical creations of an impassioned human imagination.

Dimlogicism

In fact it is a variation on dimwitticism (coined by Peter if I recall that word correctly) so... what is the art of dimlogicism, basically an exercise in linguistic mathematical naivety and/or naive linguistic mathematics or/and mathematical naive linguistics.

I think you will find that there is already an appropriate word that applies to the subject matter you were addressing – mentalism*).

*) Mentalism – The theory that physical events are ultimately explicable only as aspects or functions of the mind; belief in the primacy of mind. Oxford Dictionary

Mentalism is a particularly chronic form of self-indulgence and one that mostly afflicts the males of the species. I have an actualist friend who finds a good deal of the conversation on this mailing list to be bewildering and lacking in common sense.  I point out to her that this is how men think, by and large, and have done for thousands of years – they persist in trying to make a philosophy out of the utterly simple and entirely down-to-earth business of being alive.

You close your eyes to complexity and call it simplicity. Fun game isn’t it? It has all kinds of other applications too!

My investigations into my own psyche – the human condition in action as ‘me’ – led me to understand that I was merely inculcated into believing that life is full of complexities. As such it took a good deal of effort to get in touch with my naiveté such that I could firstly intellectually understand and then experience the utter simplicity of doing the business of being alive.

Here is a bit from my journal that is relevant to your comment. One of the particular events that twigged me to the utter simplicity of being what I am was making breakfast one morning and realizing that I had done this about 17,000 times in my lifetime and would continue to do so until I died – that, after all, the doing of everyday events such as this are what being alive is actually about.

‘Since I met Richard I have been challenging the very act of believing itself, and I am actively dismantling all of the beliefs that I find so as to strip away the veil of misery and sorrow, which they maintain and constantly reinforce.

No longer seeing the world through grey or rose coloured glasses, no longer with my head in the sand or in the clouds, means that I am different from other people. I actually experience the world as it is as a perfect place (except for human beings, of course). It requires no belief, faith, hope or trust that this is the case; the physical universe simply is perfect, pristine, pure, infinite, and happening this very moment. Human beings have just been programmed into believing that this is not so. This programming consists of the instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire that we are born with, overlaid with the beliefs we have been indoctrinated with since birth – in total called the Human Condition.

Further the advice of parents, teachers, priests, gurus, philosophers – indeed all of the human Wisdom – is founded on the belief that you can’t change Human Nature. Not only is life on earth a sick joke, but there is no cure possible! The Mother of all beliefs!

It is only a belief-system, but it is very insidious. It creates an imaginary world, made of beliefs, that is so dense, so elaborate and so convincing that it seems real. But it is not actual or factual. And when one first peeks through a crack in the door out from this world it can look overwhelming fearful – that is why it takes pure intent and certain courage to tackle the journey out.

The essential thread for me was having had a significant peak experience in which I had experienced an absence of ‘self’, and where I actually experienced the delight, ease and magic purity of this planet. I think most people have had similar experiences, sometimes through drugs, and these glimpses of such a startling potential sent so many of us to the East in the first place. But then, of course, with the newly acquired ‘spiritual’ beliefs firmly in place any subsequent experiences became spiritual in nature – and I’ve had a few in my time. I am not talking about the fickle feelings of bliss, love, beauty, or oneness. Here I am talking about a direct experience of the actual physical world of people, events and things as they physically are – be it an ashtray, a sunset, a rainy day, talking to the cashier at the bank, the bedroom ceiling, going to work on a Monday, getting a flat tyre, doing nothing or something, having breakfast for the 17,000th time – in short, everything and anything actual. The world of people, events and things – not the world of imagination.

By living in the actual world I now associate with people in an entirely new way. Gone is the need for ‘friends’ to share my sorrow with. Gone is the need to be part of a ‘group’ as a protection from imaginary fears, or for the sharing of common beliefs. Gone is the need for someone to look after me, someone to care and support me. I have no need for love as a temporary bridge to overcome the feelings of loneliness and separation. I have actually always been on my own and looked after myself very well in my life, and people have simply come and gone, for varying periods of time and involvement. It’s only that now I don’t have any pretences or bargains, where I do something for someone only in return for their helping me. Now if someone does something for me it is an unexpected bonus and if I do something for someone else it is a pleasure, freely given.

I am, for the first time, living my own life, not someone else’s. The bargains, bonds, deals, clinging and neediness have simply disappeared. I now regard allowing freedom, as far superior to giving love, with its accompanying needs, demands and expectations. To allow anyone I meet to be free of me, as I am free of them. A free association. I am now able to enjoy and delight in the company of my fellow human beings for as long as is appropriate. It may be rather constantly with Vineeto, or briefly with the check-out girl at the local supermarket.

However, I am under no illusion, and know that the essential nature of people is malicious and sorrowful; in fact, now it is even more obvious to me, so well do I know the Human Condition. I am now free to take people as I find them, without investment or expectation, suspicion or competition, attack or defence. Consequently my interactions are invariably delightful and interesting – but then again so am I, so why not? I harbour no hidden suspicions or doubts, fears, secrets or ulterior motives – those feelings we usually label as ‘intuition’. What you see is sincerely what you get. It is such a relief not to run an identity or a ‘self’, and to have to battle it out or herd together with others in order to ‘survive’.

What I have found is that this is the only game to play in town, and it’s called actually becoming happy and harmless, not just pretending or avoiding. I become free instantly, incrementally, as each belief is replaced with the facts. If something pops up that is preventing my happiness right now then I have something else to look at.

And I simply work my way through the list... Then the day comes when being happy and harmless is my very nature, rather than being malicious and sorrowful, as is Human Nature. Then it is effortless – once the work is done.

It is indeed a wide and wondrous path to freedom...’ Peter’s Journal People

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